It’s time to unveil the best way to learn English.
In December, I uploaded a YouTube video on a topic that I wanted to cover for a very long time: gaming. As a teacher, I’ve had many secondary school boys and girls who were active gamers and were very fluent in English. They had the vocabulary, they had the speaking fluency, and they could write sentences that were way above their level. After some investigation, I concluded that the shared characteristic of this cohort was that they were all gamers.
Even though they weren’t the students who had the best marks (because we, unfortunately, tested grammar), they were the students who always spoke up, always knew the answer, and were keen on speaking English in class. What made them so confident that they didn’t have any foreign language anxiety?
The answer, again, was their games. Gaming is still the best way to learn English because it combines everything that language learners need to learn a language: comprehensible input, meaningful interaction and output. But, there’s one caveat here: it depends on the type of game you play, as not all games are equally effective when it comes to language learning.
Why is gaming the best way to learn English?
As mentioned, gaming relies on comprehensible input, meaningful interaction and the production of output. You need the input because you either need to read what you have to do in the game or listen to the instructions of non-playable characters (NPCs) or your co-players.
You need to interact because you need to process what you’ve read or heard, deduct the message of the information and do something in-game with what you’ve just deduced. This is an important decision you have to make, and lack of comprehension could be critical: if you make the wrong choice, you could end up losing the game.
Then, you need output because you need to communicate with other players, especially when they’re on your team, and you need to achieve a shared goal (fight all the monsters, collect all the coins, or simply: don’t die).
So the combination of these elements, and, of course, the fact that you’re having fun, makes gaming the best method to learn English.
What kind of games do you need to play to learn English?
The research I talked about in the video made a clear distinction between two types of games: MMOGs and the Sims. MMOGs are massively multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft, Warzone, Fortnite, or Roblox, in which you play together in a big online world. MMOGs offer all of the important elements and will create the best situation in which you can learn English.
Simulation games like The Sims don’t have the same online environment, and playing The Sims doesn’t require the same amount of interaction or exposure. You do get some exposure to English if you play the game in English, and you might get some exposure and interaction on online Sims fora and communities, but these don’t have the same effect as the MMOGs.
So what can you do?
If you want to learn English through gaming, you need to look for an MMOG that you enjoy playing and find team members with whom you can play the game — preferably team members from a different country who don’t speak the same language as you do. Set your game to English, speak English to each other while gaming, and maximise your exposure to English. But, most importantly: have fun while gaming!
