Marcella's Final Project "Accommodation"

The game “Accommodation” makes the communication theory of accommodation into an educational, immersive, action-packed card game. The accommodation theory basically states that communicators may tweak the meanings of words to fit into what they are trying to communicate depending on the context or sentence. Ronald Langacker wrote about this concept in his Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. One way to explain this theory is to give an example. Think of the word run. When you think of the word run there are many broad things that you could be thinking of. You may be thinking of yourself running or someone else running. Now apply the word run to the word dog. You have to accommodate the word run to the word dog by changing the way you think of the word run. You now have to apply the idea of running to a four legged animal. Another instance of accommodation may occur when you add an adverb to the equation such as the word slowly. You then have to accommodate the words run and dog to slowly. The game “Accommodation” will help students in a classroom setting to learn the accommodation theory in a fun way that requires practicing the skill of accommodation in order to allow students to become more aware of this phenomenon.

Two to Four players can play “Accommodation” and all of the participants will be involved in accommodating words. The game is made up of three 3D printed objects and 2D printed playing cards. The 3D printed objects as well as .PDFs of the instructions and cards for this game are available for free download at the bottom of this blog post. The three 3D printed objects include a box that has labeled sections for the three decks of cards and a section for the 3D printed tokens that serve as a point system for the game. The only other 3D printed object is the lid to the box. The lid has three slots that hold the cards that are being used during game play. The lid also has a peg that will hold it up during game play so that the accommodator can see the cards he or she is accommodating. The 2D printed instructions and cards are the other pieces needed to play the game as well as a piece of paper and a pencil to draw with. There are one hundred and fifty cards available to print. Fifty noun cards, fifty verb cards, and fifty adverb cards. The only other thing you will need to accommodate successfully during this game is your imagination!


The way the game is played is as follows. A quick round of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” will determine who will be the first player to accommodate. The player who wins “Rock, Paper, Scissors” will become the first accommodator and draw one card from each of the card decks. First he or she will draw a noun card and place it in the appropriately labelled slot on the lid of the game. He or she will do the same thing with the verb and adverb cards. For example’s sake pretend that the accommodator draws the words chicken, dance, and happily. The accommodator will then accommodate the three words into either a single action or a single drawing that the rest of the players will attempt to guess. The action or drawing cannot include words or talking, kind of like charades or Pictionary. The goal of the accommodator is to act or draw well enough that the other players can guess the three words that he or she is accommodating. The goal of the other players is to guess the three words. Whichever player guesses the words correctly gets a token. The accommodator gets a token as well. If no one guesses correctly before five guesses then no one gets a token. The first person to gain ten tokens wins the game.

This game teaches the players about the theory of accommodation by allowing the accommodator to accommodate words to each other in real time. What better way to learn than by doing? The players who are guessing are also being exposed to accommodation because they have to think about and guess what words the accommodator is accommodating.

To download the pieces, cards, and instructions for this and any of the 3Dimensionator's games click HERE.

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