They had more interaction during collaborative building. Basically, Mattie came up with the idea on the fly. He asked emanual to look at Dak’s pig and suggested that they copy Dak’s build. Later they modified it, built a body, a tail, and four legs with hooves, two on each side as if being served on a silver platter.
M: Emanual, I have an idea?
E: What is it?
M:Just look, that’s a pig over there!
E:I know that.
M: Wait. Oh my God. One, two, three, four….
M: Emanual, just look at the pig thing.
E: I thought we’re making a full sized pig.
E: We’ve got 10 minutes to build that pig.
M: I’m gonna go count the blocks, okay?
E: Okay.
He went to Dak’s pig and started counting the blocks. Emanual stayed at their Blue Team building area and followed Mattie’s instructions “Nine on the very bottom...one straight line.” Emanual confirmed what he did “A line of nine blocks.”
M: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. (Counted again)
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Nine on the very bottom. Destroy every block.
One straight line.
E:One, two, three, four, five, six, seve, eight, nine. A line of nine blocks.
M: One two three four five. Destroy four blocks.
E: Destroying four blocks.
M: I have an idea…
E: Done…
During the building process, both Mattie and Emanual constantly evaluated their build, making sure it looked right. Emanual would question their build: “Are you sure this is how it looks like? Doesn’t look very good!” Mattie would fix it. Then Emanual suggested “It needs one touch to it.” Mattie responded that he noticed they needed coal blocks for the final touch.
M: Okay, we need something dark.
E: Are you sure this is how it looks like? Doesn’t look very good. There we go!
M: Because you started building!
E: Okay, let’s just go! Go! Go! Make some more things!
E: We’re making the pig face up there.
M: duh, duh, duh…(singing)
E: That looks good!
M: Oh, no, I forgot.
E: That looks good! It needs one touch to it.
M: Yes, I noticed that we need something very important. We need coal block.
E: Mattie, Mattie, be fast!
M: We need three coal blocks.
E: I’m gonna get coal.
M: What are you doing.
E: You’ve already got coal?
M: Yes.
E: We’re doing pretty good Mattie?
Anybody like our pig? We’re making the face up there!
As an EFL learner, Mattie does not have much chance to converse in English in Taiwan. The speaking activities held in class at school are mainly role play or skit based on the dialogues in the textbook. Students are encouraged to come up with different endings to the dialogue or skit, but these activities are designed for more controlled practice. It is true that Mattie's learned of lot from watching Youtubers play minecraft and reading books about Minecraft, and I believe these helped tremendously in building his listening/reading comprehension and receptive language skills. Speaking English to communicate ideas was very difficult for him at the beginning. Although he understood a lot of the contents of those YouTube videos when he was seven, he was not able to converse effortlessly during his first year in EVO 2017. Therefore, this is why I valued Minecraft as a world that kids can connect with one another. This would be a debate on whether there should be pushed output or what role does Merrill Swain's "Comprehensive Output" Hypothesis play in second language acquisition. Swain proposed that CO facilitates second language learning in ways that differ from and enhance input due to the mental processes connected with the production of language.... to be continued.
