Using Simulations in Teaching English at the Tertiary Level: A Case Study

Language teaching is ideally suited to language practice. Language teaching can be an interesting process when teachers make efforts to explore a variety of approaches.Unfortunately only a few teachers can do it. It can be caused by the lack of experience and knowledge about the varieties of teaching methods and techniques. There are many techniques that can be applied in teaching English in the language classrooms especially at the tertiary level. One of the most popular and emergent of these is simulations. The growing popularity of simulations invites the production of insights that help academic teachers to use simulations and games in their courses. Their use largely depends on teachers' personal initiatives and experiences in courses rather than on grounded information about which simulations work in which courses and for which learning objectives. Some benefits of simulations are allowing students to experiment with new vocabulary and structures and giving them a chance to carry out a task or solve a problem together. Though, simulation can be used at every step or stage in the English language teaching process but it is strongly felt that its use is direly needed in the skills in evaluation process as it is endowed with the power to transpose the normal classroom into an authentic setting where language skills can be evaluated under more realistic conditions. The research presented here explores the rationale and unique benefits of simulations in evaluation processes with the help of a language assessment model designed at an engineering college in Fatehgarh Sahib district of Punjab (State of India) to test communicative English.