You bring a game to an adult class and someone half-smiles the way people do when they think they're too old for this. It's a fair reaction to most classroom games, which are built for children and lightly rebranded. Adults will happily play. What they won't do is feel infantilised, or spend twenty minutes on something that doesn't move them toward why they're studying.
So the question isn't games or no games. It's which games respect an adult's time and goals.
Formats that land with adults
| Format | Why it works for adults |
|---|---|
| Match Pairs on real-world vocabulary (their job, their trip) | Relevance is visible; no cartoon context |
| Type the Answer, self-checked | Autonomy; they see their own gaps without being called out |
| Scenario role-play | Ties straight to why they're learning: work, travel, life |
| Quick Quiz on their own errors | Uses their experience; feels like progress, not play |
Adults don't dislike games; they dislike balloons and cartoon mascots. Keep the mechanic (retrieval, competition against yourself, a clear win) and drop the childish theme. The same Match Pairs game about airport vocabulary lands very differently from one about zoo animals.
This isn't just taste. Adult learners are wired to learn differently, and there's a name for it.
Malcolm Knowles popularised andragogy, the study of how adults learn as opposed to children. His observations: adults need to know why something matters, they bring a deep well of experience, and they want autonomy over their learning. Read that back against a childish game and you can see exactly why it grates. Tie the same mechanic to the learner's real goal and it stops being a game they tolerate and becomes practice they want.
Malcolm Knowles, andragogy.
The move that makes this easy is building the game from their material, their words, their scenarios. Here's the mechanic, ready to be pointed at any adult vocabulary set.
The mechanic, minus the mascots
Match each phrasal verb with get to its meaning.
0 of 8 matched. Tap a term, then its match.
The takeaway
Adults will play anything that respects them and pays off. Keep the mechanic, ground it in their real goals, and drop the theme meant for eight-year-olds.
Sources & further reading
- Andragogy. How adult learning differs from teaching children.
- The testing effect. The retrieval mechanic that works at any age.
Written by
Builder at Lingoken
By day I build, and I love teaching kids to code. On weekends I dance, contemporary and Kathak. Languages are the thing I keep coming back to: I grew up between a few (Sindhi, Hindi, Marathi, English) and I'm still happily stumbling through Spanish, Telugu, and Malayalam. That slow, enjoyable business of actually learning a language convinced me practice has to be something you want to do, which is what we're building at Lingoken. I write here about making language activities people genuinely enjoy.
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