How to Use Escape Room Activities to Enhance Language Learning

Escape room activities are powerful tools for creating a joyful, low-stress learning environment that lowers the affective filter and boosts motivation. Solving puzzles together with peers creates ample opportunities for language production. When integrated into the English language classroom, these activities help students develop both critical thinking and language skills in meaningful ways. In this article, we introduce a sample escape room activity from our own practice, then walk you through the process of planning and implementing a similar activity in your own classroom.

What Are Escape Rooms?

Escape rooms are games where groups of players solve a series of puzzles within a time limit. The puzzles are usually tied together with a story or theme. In traditional escape rooms, players need to solve all of the puzzles before time is up in order to find the key to escape the room—hence, the name of the game! However, in a classroom setting, the same concept can be used more broadly. For example, if the players are working at a travel agency, they have to solve puzzles to find missing information for a client to successfully take a trip.

To adapt this game format for the English language classroom, design puzzles that require learners to apply what they are learning in a particular lesson or module. Depending on how you build the puzzles and clues, students may need to use target vocabulary or grammar to find the solutions.

Benefits of Escape Room Games in English Language Teaching

Incorporating games like escape rooms in the language classroom helps to engage multilingual learners of English (MLEs) in active learning by increasing motivation and reducing anxiety. The Universal Design for Learning guidelines emphasize the importance of nurturing joy and play to support learning in all contexts (CAST, 2024). Escape rooms involve playful scenarios and competitive elements that spark interest and engagement. These aspects also help to lower the affective filter and encourage language production (Krashen, 1982).

Additionally, MLEs can develop other 21st-century skills through solving escape room puzzles. Escape rooms can develop learners’ collaborative, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills as learners work together in groups to solve the puzzles (Yang et al., 2023). Further, these activities allow learners to make connections between the language classroom and real-world situations (Gómez López, 2019). Escape room puzzles are typically designed around real-world scenarios and ask learners to use language in authentic contexts.

To see how this works in more detail, let’s look at a sample escape room activity from our own teaching practice.

Example Escape Room Activity

We designed this escape room activity for an in-person intermediate level communication class in a university intensive English program. The activity uses the previously mentioned example scenario: a travel agency. To begin the activity, we tell learners that they work in a travel agency and need to solve travel-themed puzzles to find missing information to complete a boarding pass (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Boarding pass with blanks to be filled in as learners solve puzzles. (Created by the authors and used with permission.)

How are these puzzles related to student learning objectives or course themes? In this course, our MLEs are studying travel-related vocabulary, the present perfect tense, and passive voice. The puzzles include riddles, finding information on a map, calculating a cost using a spreadsheet, and more.

For example, one specific puzzle asks the students to read several sentences that state events from a sequence (e.g., “She has already gone through security, so she gets a coffee.”) and place the sentences in order on a timeline, as shown in Figure 2. This sequencing puzzle reveals information about when the client has departed and arrived—helping groups complete the boarding pass and solve the game.

Figure 2. Screenshot of an escape room puzzle posted on our learning management system.

To implement this escape room activity with our students, we planned the escape room puzzles, built the materials in our learning management system, and piloted the activity with one class. We began the class by reviewing the instructions in the LMS with the students and then projected a timer on the screen at the front of the room. All the teams completed the escape room within the time given, but one team finished first. During the activity, all the students were highly engaged trying to solve the puzzles.

After the activity, we collected feedback from the students and they shared how they enjoyed the escape room. For example, one student said, “Today’s activity was incredible and unique comparing to the activities we have done before, [because] we were asked to solve the puzzles and work in teams.” We then made revisions to the materials and delivery before using the escape room activity in our other classes.

7 Steps to Create Your Own Escape Room Activity

The next section presents a set of steps to help you get started in creating your own escape room activity. In the following, we walk you through the same process we used to create and implement our travel-themed escape room.

Step 1: Reflect on Course Context

Describe your teaching and learning context. The following questions will guide how you design and construct the game and puzzles:

• • Is your class online, in-person, or a hybrid?
  • What are your students’ proficiency levels and backgrounds?

Step 2: Plan for Curriculum Integration

Looking at your syllabus and course objectives, decide when to implement the escape room activity and how it will fit within your curriculum. Think about the following questions:

• • When is the best time to implement the escape room activity? (e.g., Module 4 or Week 5)
  • What is the topic for that module? (e.g., tourism)
  • What are the module objectives? (e.g., use the present perfect in the context of traveling)
  • How long should the activity be? (e.g., 45 minutes)
  • Will the activity be fully online, in-person, or hybrid?

Step 3: Choose a Theme

Choose a theme for the escape room that would work well for your context and curriculum. Think of a brief story idea.

• • For a module on tourism: The escape room is set in a travel agency where students need to find missing information on a boarding pass.
    
    
  • For a module on jobs: The escape room is a career fair mystery where students solve challenges at each booth to complete a job application.

Step 4: Decide on the Final Task

Before you can design individual puzzles, you need to determine the final task for the escape room—in other words, set the ultimate challenge to solve the game! Think about the following questions:

• • What is the final task? (e.g., complete missing information in a boarding pass, complete a job application)
    
    
  • Think about how much time the activity will take. How many pieces of information will be needed to complete the final task?
    
    
  • How many puzzles will students need to solve to find the information?

Step 5: Design the Puzzles

Make a list of the pieces of information needed to complete the final task, potential puzzle types you could use for finding each piece of information, and notes for connecting each puzzle with your module objectives (see Figure 3). Decide if each puzzle will be fully online or if you will use in-person materials.

Figure 3. Sample planning list for designing your escape room puzzles.

Here are some suggested puzzle types:

• • Riddles – answering short word or logic challenges
  • Word Puzzles – solving anagrams, crosswords, or word searches
  • Math/Logic Puzzles – completing number sequences, simple equations, or logic grids
  • Codebreaking – decoding messages using ciphers
  • Physical Puzzles – manipulating objects or paper
  • Hidden Clues – finding messages in images, texts, or around the room
  • Sequencing/Sorting – putting steps or items in the correct order
  • Matching – connecting related items
  • Pattern Recognition – identifying visual, numerical, or positional patterns

Step 6: Build the Materials

After you have planned your escape room theme, final task, and puzzles, your next step will be to build the materials. This is the core of the game and where you will likely need the most preparation time.

1. 1. Create a digital module in your learning management system or a Google Drive folder where you will collect all of the materials for this activity. Even if your escape room puzzles use in-person materials, creating an online module or folder for the escape room introduction and puzzle instructions will keep you organized and facilitate the implementation. If you do not have access to an online platform, you can also use paper instructions and materials.
      
      
   2. Design materials for (1) preteaching vocabulary, (2) introducing the escape room concept and the theme/story for your escape room, and (3) giving general instructions for the escape room activity. These may include mini-lessons, instruction sheets, assignments, and more.
      
      
   3. Design the materials for each of the escape room puzzles and the final task. Refer to your notes about which puzzles will be online and which in-person. These materials can include handouts, readings, sentence slips, maps, images, and more.
      
      
   4. Write clear, direct instructions for each puzzle.
      
      
   5. Prepare any in-person materials (e.g., cut paper sentence slips).
      
      
   6. Test the escape room puzzles to make sure they function as intended. For example, go through each online puzzle in student view to check for any glitches; for physical puzzles, test them with a friend or colleague.

Step 7: Implement the Escape Room Activity

Your last step is implementing the escape room with your students. Here are some suggestions and tips for success with this step:

• • Create student groups before class. Think about student personalities, home languages, and other criteria. What grouping method will work the best for your particular set of students?
    
    
  • Prepare for student questions. Think about how you will give hints or help without revealing answers to puzzles.
    
    
  • Set up a timer displayed in front of the class.
    
    
  • Arrive early if possible to set up the classroom, especially if using in-person materials.
    
    
  • Plan an activity for groups that finish early.

You can also download our editable Escape Room Planning Template (.doc). In each section of the template, write notes and ideas to plan your activity. You can follow the template closely or adapt it in whatever way necessary, depending on your teaching context and classroom environment.

We hope that these shared steps and template assist you in designing and implementing your own escape rooms. Through these activities, you will engage your students in motivating, fun, and challenging puzzles that support them in achieving learning outcomes.

References

CAST. (2024, July 30). Nurture joy and play. CAST UDL Guidelines. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/engagement/interests-identities/joy-play/

Gómez López, A. (2019). The use of escape rooms to teach and learn English at university. In S. Pérez Aldeguer & D. Akombo (Eds.), Research, technology and best practices in education (pp. 94–102). Adaya. https://www.adayapress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/RTB9.pdf

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon.

Yang, C., Chang, C. Y., & Jen, H. J. (2023). Facilitating undergraduate students’ problem-solving and critical thinking competence via online escape room learning. Nurse Education in Practice, 73, Article 103828. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2023.103828