ABSTRACT
An easily overlooked option for game-based education in classrooms is live-action role-playing, commonly known as larping. In larps, participants play characters, fictional personas created for that game. They do so physically, in a way that much resembles improvisational theatre, but is not exactly the same. The setting can be anything, ranging from history and fantasy to modern-day realism, and thus tailored to fit each subject at hand. For example, imagine six people in a room, pretending for an hour that they really are a rock band about to fall apart, who have to sort out their problems, all the while tacitly learning linguistic skills. In this chapter, we discuss examples from applying larps to the teaching of verbal skills in second language acquisition, and provide some instructions on how to use existing larps for education and how to design one’s own.
