Learning English with Adventure Games

Video games can be an excellent source for learning English. Being in front of a console or a computer and playing video games can be a good interaction with English. The stories, the tutorials, the dialogues, the texts… everything can give you the chance of looking at the words, phrases and sentences as they were applied in a real context.

In some cases, it involves more than listening and repeating words. It requires using the language to keep playing because the instructions or hints are included in either phrase the character say or the text you find along the way. Besides, what the characters say is part of the story, so it’s like reading a book in which the action is being described.

There are as many interesting stories and challenges in video games as there are novels and topics in books. Elements like questions, expressions and, of course, a lot of vocabulary are some examples of how games show and apply grammar rules that students learn in school. This means that it doesn't matter what your preferences are, you will always find something for you.

Incidental learning

Playing video games doesn’t have to be a waste of time. Actually, game players can learn a lot through the engagement and immersion provided by the game. This is known as incidental learning: unintentional, unplanned -but not unconscious- learning which results from other activities. This happens through repetition, observation, social interaction and problem solving.

Video games lead players through a series of levels and situations. These changing situations challenge the players to solve the different problems they face. In order to do that, games have to provide the information and tools required to solve these problems. Thus, the need for understanding this information becomes crucial to keep playing and progressing. In this regard, the combination of verbal and visual information in a game can create a much better environment for learning.

The fact that video games involve incidental learning -as opposed to intentional learning- and the playful spirit of the different tasks the players have to perform prove that this form of entertainment can be also an excellent resource to second-language acquisition.

As you can see in this video, a cutting-edge Chinese school is currently using online video games for teaching English.

Adventure Games for learning English

An adventure game is a video game in which you play as the protagonist of an interactive story. The main feature of these games is they emphasize on the story; this allows them to be based on other narrative media, books or films. So, the essential elements of this kind of games are: exploration, storytelling and puzzle solving.

Pointing and clicking are the two actions that a computer user can do with the mouse: moving the pointer to different locations of the screen and pressing a mouse button, usually the left one. This is a method used in adventure games: pointing the mouse over different objects and pressing the button to complete actions or to move the character. In spite of these simple control actions, you have to choose among a finite number of possibilities.

In most games, the possible actions you can do appear, as infinitives, in a lower menu. So, the more you play, the more you get used to the meaning of those verbs. In addition, the semantic connection between those verbs and the items of the gaming environment can be learned through trial and error. For instance, I can’t select “close” while I’m pointing another character, so I must use it with doors and other elements which can be opened/closed.

Adventure games players are required to connect the meaning of some written words with the pictures of the elements displayed on the screen. This connection means knowing not only the name of the objects, but also actions associated with them. Thus, players can improve and expand their vocabulary. Moreover, learning new navigation controls during the gameplay can enhance memory training and, as a result, it can increase the vocabulary absorption capacity.

These games are also known for representing the dialogue as a conversation tree. This means that players have to choose among different sentences when they interact with a non-player character. One specific choice triggers one specific response from the game character and it also determines subsequent choices until the conversation ends.

Conversations can reveal clues about how to solve immediate problems or puzzles and they can even have far-reaching consequences. Game characters may also be convinced to reveal their own secrets, either through conversation or negotiation -by giving them something that they want.

Since the meaning of the given sentences in a dialog tree is, of course, directly related to what the player has done or what the player is about to do, understanding the intentionality of each message is very important. In terms of communication, players have to be aware of the communicative problem in each case and they also have to employ a strategy to solve it. Communicative competence involves not only the knowledge of the language (grammar competence) but also the knowledge of how to use the language and express a message in a variety of circumstances (pragmatic and strategic competence). Thus, success in these games depends very much on the knowledge of the connotative meaning of the different options in a conversation tree.

In conclusion, adventure games can be a very useful -and also motivating- tool for ESL learning because of the:

• Semantic connection between written words and the pictures of the objects and elements displayed on the screen.
• Pragmatic competence required to choose the best branch of dialogue in each case in order to accomplish the goals of the game.

And now...

Take a look at the short video that we specially made for the occasion: