Abstract:

Within the teaching-learning process of English as a foreign language, work is done from different approaches that favor the development of the four communicative skills. Although adequate performance in these four skills is basic to be able to assume that a student is communicatively competent in a foreign language, one cannot lose sight of the set and quantity of lexical entries that he or she has; that is, the vocabulary. However, it is very common in the Colombian context to find that students feel considerable demotivation for learning English as a foreign language due to multiple reasons. Such is the case of the students of course 903 of the Salesiano León XIII school in the city of Bogotá. In view of this, a tool was sought that, through the game, could serve as a didactic strategy to awaken students' interest in learning and thus improve their appropriation of vocabulary. To achieve this, a strategy was used that articulated the communicative teaching of languages with the design of board games as didactic material, which allowed the generation of adequate learning spaces so that students felt sufficient confidence in the appropriation of vocabulary and their participation in the activities. The results obtained from the interview, the survey and the observation as collection instruments, made it possible to show that, with the learning path proposed by the strategy, the students were much more receptive in their English classes, considerably improved their communicative performance, specifically, because board games were consolidated as tools that helped create a connection between students and learning English; once this connection was established, the motivation appeared. When the students had to bring materials to school and create the board games with the words from each unit, the motivation kept increasing. When they played, they enjoyed the English class; they were learning vocabulary and using words in real contexts, what's more, they did better on their tests. Therefore, this process provided a tool for the connection of games, technological tools, motivation and English that resulted in the acquisition of vocabulary by students, corresponding to the two units of the curricular periods worked. In addition, students acquired responsibility, respect, collaboration, and teamwork skills. They wanted to learn English and, more importantly, they learned the vocabulary of the two units through board games.

Keywords:

Vocabulary, board games, Motivation, English.