![]() Video game recommendations for language learners Language learning also encourages us to see ourselves in new ways and in relation to new people and cultures. Players typically take on a persona, goal, and personality quite different from their usual ones-it's a chance to step into a whole new world (and worldview!) and learn from others in that space. Gamers are good at taking on new identities.Sometimes, tutorials are embedded into the game's narrative, so players don't even realize they're learning something new! Many games, and levels within a game, start with a tutorial: a safe place for learning the mechanics and controls of the games without serious consequences. Gamers are good at absorbing information.As gamers progress through more advanced levels and challenges, they build and practice a lot of different skills-and success means learning to use those skills together! This kind of flexibility and applying familiar skills in new ways is exactly what is required of language learners. Gamers are good at combining and compounding skills.Gamers have to learn how to pay attention to many different elements and sources of information in order to be successful! Educators call this multiliteracy-proficiency in gathering and assessing lots of kinds of information. Gamers are good at integrating lots of information.We'll get to the other linguistic benefits of playing a game in the language you're studying, but there are more general skills that gamers are building that they can leverage for their language learning: (You can read more about some of these topics in Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal.) It helps that video games are controlled environments that remove some of the more intimidating variables of practicing a new language in the real world, and many learners find them more engaging and motivating than other kinds of practice because you drive learning through your own curiosity and interest. Which means you might already be able to guess the answer to Language Noob's question… Are video games good for language learning?Ībsolutely! Because players are highly motivated to succeed in the game and talk with other players-whether to collaborate, compete, or gather information-players end up doing exactly what us language teachers are always encouraging: They just communicate! Players focus so much on getting their point across, in order to do something else with the information (like understand a task, avoid danger, or order a hamburger in Yakuza!). Using video games to support language learning isn't just a hobby-there are whole fields of research, like CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) and DGBLL (Digital Game-Based Language Learning), focused on how gamers use these tools for learning (intentionally or not). Oh, Language Noob, we're so glad for the chance to talk about language learning with video games! □ In fact, we also talked to two fellow language learners and gamers at Duolingo, Karl Channell (Principal Product Designer) and Shawn Buessing (Senior Engineering Manager) to get even more recommendations to share. Is it possible for video games to help language learners? What's an efficient way to learn through video games? I was wondering how to use video games to help learn a language. Our teaching experiences involve different languages, but that's not what we're writing about today-instead, this week, we're answering a question about another one of our passions! Let's take a look. This is Rich's first Dear Duolingo post! Before joining Duolingo, he was an associate professor of English and taught English as a second language in the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong. Rich Forest, Duolingo Learning and Curriculum Manager. Kristina Schoen, who you might remember from posts on grammatical gender and possessive pronouns in German, and Dr. Hi there, learners! This week, Dear Duolingo is a team effort-which is appropriate given this week's question! We're Dr. ![]() Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for language learners.
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