Videogames as language classes
When she gets too burned out on studying, Sarah’s been playing the game “Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life” on our GameCube since I bought it for her for Christmas. It’s a lot like both Animal Crossing and The Sims in that you’re controlling a character in all aspects of his life, as he attempts to run his farm, make friends, engage in romance, and more.
Meanwhile, I’m attempting to learn basic Italian for our upcoming trip. I’ve been using the short lessons at LearnItalianPod.com as well as at the BBC website, and I’ve got a book out of the library to help me.
While watching Sarah play for a few minutes the other day, it struck me that combining these two activities could quite possibly be the best way to learn a new language. When I start learning a language, I find it pretty easy to learn the rules of grammar: how to construct sentences, in what order to place words, how to manipulate endings to form plurals, etc. What I have trouble with is learning enough vocabulary that I would feel comfortable, or at least not totally lost, in all the various situations I might find myself.
Harvest Moon takes your character and has him engage in a large number of common real-life activities: cooking, shopping, ordering food, looking for people, exchanging small-talk, sleeping, cleaning up, and so on. What if, instead of all English, it began the game by replacing a few common words with words in another language. Instead of “bring your milk to this cooler,” it could tell you to bring your latte to the cooler. Instead of picking a flower, you’d pick a fiore. Instead of your cow being hungry, it could be affamata. Slowly, as the game progressed, more and more common terms could be replaced with their foreign equivalents. At some point, new characters could appear who only spoke in Italian, and you’d have to figure out what they’re saying in order to interact. Eventually, all the text in the game could be in Italian, and if the change was gradual enough, over the course, of many dozens of hours of play, the player might not even miss a beat.
This would, I think, work better than other methods, because 1) people love playing videogames, and will gladly do them for hours, even if they don’t necessarily understand all the words, 2) part of playing games is solving puzzles, so players’ brains would just interpret the foreign language as another type of puzzle, and 3) all the words used would be shown in a familiar sort of context, with visual cues to aid in understanding.
Videogames appeal to young and old alike, so this could potentially be a great learning tool for anyone. Kids are naturally more adept at learning languages, too, so it would work even better for them. And the marketing opportunities are tremendous: sell it to videogamers as a game, or to parents or educators as a learning tool.
January 9th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
An uncharacteristic thing is happening to me: I want to play a computer game. Crazy! I was thoroughly absorbed in Myst III: Exile when my laptop was stolen about four years ago and hence my game lost. I was also somewhat enjoying Legacy of Time. Except for playing Sims for an hour on your laptop at Christmas, I haven’t played anything since. I am looking for a recommendation, something I can get lost in. I would enjoy another puzzle, but nothing where I have to shoot anybody. What’s out there that is good?
February 21st, 2006 at 12:41 pm
can you tell me what types of videogames and consoles are useful for a language class?
February 21st, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Miguel,
Unfortunately, I don’t know any games that are useful like this. I hope someone makes some, though.
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:46 pm
This isn’t quite the same kind of game that you’re speaking of, but I’m reminded of Slime Forest. It’s a CRPG that (like most CRPG’s) is largely about wandering around slaying monsters. But instead of just clicking the “attack” button over and over again, you deal damage by identifying and translating Japanese characters.
April 23rd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Jota,
That sounds like the current style of educational game, which is largely “take a game, and stick some educational stuff into it.” I don’t think this works, since doing multiplication in order to shoot alien spaceships is only marginally more fun than doing multiplication on its own, for a kid.
The stuff I’m envisioning doesn’t make the learning a blatant part of the gameplay, but rather tries to sneak it in. With four chickens on the screen, the game could say “You have quattro polli. How many do you want to sell? Un pollo, due polli, tre polli, quattro polli.” Even little kids would quickly pick up on the various meanings of the Italian words, and it would hardly distract from what was actually occurring in the game.