Learning a foreign language with a video game.

[clyde]

My wife is learning Korean and I'm trying to help. I'm considering ordering a kid's learning DS game from Korea or something. I haven't looked at what is available yet, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Have any of you had success in learning a foreign language with the help of a video game and its objective-based systems? Or have you tried, only to discover unseen obstacles?

[TychoCelchuuu]

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[tegan]

[Justin Leego]

I... Is that the official Old Boy app?

[tegan]

It's a Japan-only Nintendo-published DS title meant to help teach simple English to Japanese people for travel purposes.. Every screenshot I've ever seen is hilarious, and primarily seem to involve teaching people how to shop for condoms and swear at baseball games.

 

[TheLastBaron]

I've played a couple games that helped me with a foreign language, though not as directly as a game actually intended to teach the language.  One was playing HoN with my friend who was a German exchange student when I was in high school while on Skype with him and some of his friends, and another was the mod Nehrim for Oblivion, which is a total conversion/original game in the Oblivion engine with completely original voice acting (which is in German and you can choose between the subtitles and text in the game being in English or German).  In both cases I didn't really learn German as much as I improved at it as at the time I had already taken a couple of semesters of German at college and without that baseline I probably would have gotten nothing out of either experience.  Basically I just sort of picked up some stuff, and it was probably not the fastest way to learn as for a foreign language if you aren't speaking it you aren't going to learn much and even on Skype with Germans I just used English.  I probably picked up the most from that though, and unfortunately unless you know a bunch of people who speak the language you're trying to get better at that want to play games it's probably the hardest to do, I can't even really do it anymore since none of them except the one I actually know has moved to Dota 2 and he plays maybe once a month.

[clyde]

Yeah, we've been watching Korean dramas obsessively for about a year now. That has acclimated us to some common phrases and the general tone of speech. She has taken it further by watching youtube classes. But as I'm watching her learn I'm thinking to myself "Video games could do this so much better." Seems like designers could simulate immersion and even script events to add relevance and context to new vocabulary and syntactical protocol.

Still, I was just thinking that I could find some educational kids game in Korean or something more demanding (but still approacable) than subtitles on Dramafever. Haven't had much luck though. There are flash card apps, but I need something more like a dating sim where you play as a English girl who suddenly finds herself in a Korean boy band and has to improvise.

[Tanukitsune]

Wasn't there an Chinese MMORPG that taught you Chinese? I can't remember the name though?

[Justin Leego]

http://enterzon.com/

[elmuerte]

I just realized that English is a foreign language. Back in the day not a lot of games were localized in Dutch, so there was no other way then to play the game in English (and have an English manual).

[Merus]

Has someone linked Duolingo in here yet? No?

 

It's not a game, but it's a gamified language teacher website that's apparently not too bad if you can get past gamification.

[Ucantalas]

As is the case with most language apps, Duolingo is nice, but works best if you're using some kind of lessons besides it. Duolingo ends up being just rote memorization if you aren't using other tools outside of it.

I started trying to learn German with Duolingo, and while its nice and I have learned stuff, I am completely baffled by the grammar because it doesnt have actual.... lessons. Just activities.

[Apelsin]

Well, I pretty much learned English by playing video games and watching TV-series when I was around 7 years old, so it is definitely possible.

Never tried any games specifically designed to teach language though.

[clyde]

Well, I pretty much learned English by playing Video games and watching TV-series when I was around 7 years old, so it is definitely possible.

Never tried any games specifically designed to teach language though.

Do you remember any break-throughs. I'm interested in finding mechanics that act as entry points for beginning to decipher an unknown language. Moments in a game that could give you the first piece of the puzzle that you can then attach more pieces to.

[chummer]

I'm interested in finding mechanics that act as entry points for beginning to decipher an unknown language. Moments in a game that could give you the first piece of the puzzle that you can then attach more pieces to.

What a weird coincidence  I just got done playing a few hours of The Longest Journey and reached the point where the character crosses into another world where a different language is spoken. The game doesn't handle it well (you essentially just have to choose a 'listen' action out of a dialogue tree until the foreign language turns into English) but it got me thinking about how a game would teach a player a new spoken, language, as often written languages in games are just 1 to 1 stand ins for the English alphabet.

 

I can imagine that the dialogue between the player and the game would consist of player actions (for instance, following set of directions the game gives to you in the language), but that doesn't address the learning part. Maybe the game gives you a guide so that when you point and click on something, the guide will say the word that represents it in the language. The problem with that is that it wouldn't teach sentence structure and grammar rules.

 

This is a fascinating design challenge that I need to think about some more.

[Apelsin]

Do you remember any break-throughs. I'm interested in finding mechanics that act as entry points for beginning to decipher an unknown language. Moments in a game that could give you the first piece of the puzzle that you can then attach more pieces to.

 

Well, unfortunately no. It was some time ago and my memories from that time are fuzzy at best.

The one thing I do know is that I played a lot of NHL, and my parents keep telling me how I eventually started doing running commentary on my own. I think the repetitive nature of sports commentary (or sports in general) and how reactionary it is to players actions within the game helped me figure out what actions would produce what response from the commentators.

 

That in turn allowed me to start mimicking it and eventually figure out the meaning of the individual words.

Thinking about it now in retrospect like this it sounds a bit like how a child learns their first language. Never thought about it that way before. 

 

That said, we have a very good environment for learning English here in Sweden as we are constantly exposed to it from a very young age. Movies and TV-shows are subtitled rather than dubbed, a vast majority of music played on radio/TV is in English (Even when performed by Swedish artists) and video games are, of course, predominantly in English as well. This probably played a pretty big part in how I learned the language as well.

[Gormongous]

This is not the same at all, but I've been fairly impressed by Duolingo thus far. Sure, it's the most superficial gamification ever, but it uses its lessons to gauge your skill level, ultimately to crowdsource you documents they've been hired to translate. And it's free!

 

*Pockets his commission*

[clyde]

Maybe the game gives you a guide so that when you point and click on something, the guide will say the word that represents it in the language. 

 

 

 

The one thing I do know is that I played a lot of NHL, and my parents keep telling me how I eventually started doing running commentary on my own. I think the repetitive nature of sports commentary (or sports in general) and how reactionary it is to players actions within the game helped me figure out what actions would produce what response from the commentators.

These thoughts make me imagine the foreign language being used as a predictive tell in the game. For example, when a enemy is about to club you he says "I'm going to hit you with my club" or maybe friendly NPC's could do the job of describing what is about to happen in a repetitive fashion saying things like "He's going to hit you with the club!" or "She's got a knife!". If the player hears prediction of events in a foreign language repeatitively, it might teach not only the meaning of the nouns and verbs, but also subtilities like subject/object syntax. 

[toblix]

Whoever recommended Duolingo: I pretty much know French now.

 

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[TheLastBaron]

So Duolingo came out with an android app a few weeks back and I've been using it.  At this point I'm not sure if the gamey-ness of it is a plus or a minus.  One one hand it does encourage me to use it every single day which is really important when learning a new language, but since I just want to level up I've been testing out of most stuff instead of actually doing the full lessons even though I would probably benefit from doing all of the lessons in a block even if it's something easy since it's been a while.  I also almost always only do whatever my daily goal is, so if I get an email saying "Today's goal: Learn the skill Blahblahblah 3  You're only 4 lessons away."  I'll open my phone, go to whatever the thing is, start it, test out, then close the app and be done for the day.  Obviously eventually I won't be able to test out of stuff anymore, but I'll probably still fell like I just need to do whatever it tells me and then stop.