ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ Los Baños (UPLB) Communication Arts Assistant Professor and UPLB Learning Resource Center Director Mariyel Hiyas Liwanag has invented a tabletop game designed to teach students about the country’s native languages.
This board game was the topic of her Ph.D. dissertation, Isabuhay: Isang larong disenyo para sa mga diskurso ng mga wikang katutubo, at De La Salle University. Her work earned her the Gawad Julian Cruz Balmaceda from the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino (KWF) and a Php100,000 prize.
Tabletop games, as their name suggests, are played on flat surfaces like tables and involve physical objects or pieces. This category includes board games, card games, miniature war games, tabletop role playing games, and others.
Drawing from her experience as a teacher, learner, and a game player, Liwanag believes that games like Isabuhay can be vehicles for discussions about Philippine languages, especially among high school and college students.
In an interview with The Philippine Star, she explained that in Isabuhay, players are divided into four teams, where participants take on roles such as teacher, researcher, agency representative, and language promoter. Each role contributes specific skills to advance the game and save native languages from extinction.
Cards represent ‘events’ within the game and are based on the history of native languages in the country, including the impacts of mining and migration, which displace communities and affect language vitality, as well as contemporary issues like bilingual education policies.
Liwanag drew upon a broad array of scholarly frameworks to create Isabuhay, including theories of games and narratives by Espen Aarseth, principles of collaborative learning by George Jacobs and Peter Seow, and ideas about game-based learning by James Paul Gee.
Currently, Liwanag is working with UPLB to secure the copyright to Isabuhay.
Read the PhilStar article on Isabuhay here:
View details about Liwanag’s dissertation here:
