VERBA™ is an exciting new card game from The Pericles Group, LLC designed to situate language learning in a richly-authentic, engaging context. The concept is incredibly simple: one player—acting as a judge—draws a random card containing a fill-in-the-blank sentence written in the target language, and each of the other players submits a card from their hand featuring a noun with an accompanying, context-relevant image. The judge chooses the best noun played (e.g., most realistic, funniest), and the player who submitted it scores a point. Play continues with the round’s winner serving as the new judge. As with all of The Pericles Group, LLC's educational games, play and learning objectives are one in the same—players win by directly enacting the desired skill without game mechanics obscuring the learning objective.
Steve (@steveslota) is an instructional design specialist and game design scientist at the University of Connecticut Health Center and a co-founder of The Pericles Group, LLC. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology: Cognition, Instruction, & Learning Technologies and has worked... Read More →
