Hey, what's up guys today? We're gonna
Talk about how you can use video games to learn languages. If you're not already doing this, it could be the thing that
revolutionizes your language learning and brings you to that next level.
I've talked to a number of people who have told me that playing video games was THE
most useful thing they did for learning their target language,
and I can personally attest that it was a huge help for me learning French.
There are benefits and risks to this technique,
and we're gonna discuss those here
so that you can make an educated decision
about the best path for you. One of my three main goals for this channel is to make language learning fun,
because if it's never fun you will fail, and it doesn't have to be as difficult as we make it sometimes.
So let me start with this question:
Do you already play video games? If the answer is yes, then it's a no-brainer.
You should definitely be using video games to help you with your languages.
And if not, you have the potential to pick up a huge new tool for your language learning toolkit.
But you have to be careful because if you do it wrong not only will you learn nothing,
but you will also waste a huge amount of time that you could have used more effectively doing something else.
So let's get into some of the benefits and risks.
First of all, if you're using video games to study, you will never have to force yourself to study your language.
That's why I put so much of an emphasis on making language learning fun. Video games in a foreign language are a type of
simulated language immersion. You're basically going to be
interacting with other people in a virtual setting and you'll get exposure to language the way people actually use it on the street. Not just
the language that people use in a textbook
which is
something that nobody actually talks like. You're gonna learn a lot of vocabulary
that they just don't teach you in class and you're gonna get a lot of repetition of rare vocabulary you'll start noticing certain
vocabulary words pop up every time you go into a battle or every time you're in a new town or whatever
it is in that video game. Gaming gives you a context to place your language learning in.
Vocabulary words just don't mean the same thing to you if you only see them on a flashcard.
You'll remember words better if you have a real-world scenario in which to use them.
And this will help you start building the neural connections that are going to help you remember
these words. And lastly, playing video games in a different language
could bring a new level of fun to your gaming if you already play. If you're really like puzzles or
challenges, then playing in a different language could add that extra level of difficulty that will add to your enjoyment.
And like I said, there's also risks to playing video games. If you choose the wrong game
then you could play for an enormous amount of time without helping your language learning at all. If you view gaming as
studying, then you may use this as an excuse just to justify
playing more video games than you normally allow yourself to play. Another factor
is that these games are designed for people who are native speakers of the language you're learning,
so there's the possibility of
drowning yourself in the language if you're a brand new beginner, and especially if you're not super familiar with the game.
And I believe there's exceptions to this, but that just depends on the game itself.
Now let's talk about what kinds of games to get and where to get them. This goes without saying,
but dialogue based games are gonna be much better than action based games. If you're an advanced learner ,then games that are really
heavy on the dialogue are gonna be great to help you maintain your level.
I just recently bought Knights of the Old Republic for $19.99 on the iPad
There's a good deal of action,
but there's also a ton of
dialogue that takes place in this game. Now all the spoken audio in the game is in English,
but the interface of the game is in french and all the subtitles are in French, and
what I realized is that I was paying more attention to the English audio.
But in the settings you can go in and just turn the audio off so that you have only French subtitles,
and that's what I did, and it was a huge help to my learning.
Obviously, there's a spectrum from mostly dialogue based to mostly action based with some gray area in between.
But if you choose games that are almost entirely action based, you're not gonna help yourself that much.
Obviously you're not gonna learn very much language by playing Mario because you're not speaking at all. You're just jumping on mushrooms and stuff the
whole time. If you're a beginner to the language then I recommend either children's games that you still find enjoyable or
games that you're already very familiar with. I
bought pokemon red in Spanish with the Game Boy
included for $25 on eBay. The language in this game is basic enough to understand even if you're at a low-intermediate level, and
if you're really familiar with the game you'll be able to understand everything that's going on
even if you just have a very basic grasp of the language. Now, where are you gonna get these games in other languages?
They're not like DVDs where you can just go buy them at Walmart and then put them in the DVD player and change the language
In the settings. I don't play a ton of video games on actual consoles
but my
understanding is that you can't change the language of most of these games without
actually moving to the country where that language is spoken, so what are you gonna do to get around this?
Well, I get most of my video games off the App Store on my iPad.
So the secret to this is you go to the screen that shows all the information about the game that you're about to download
You scroll down to the languages area, and it will show all the different languages that the game supports.
And you won't always find games that have audio or subtitles in the language that you're learning
But if you're learning one of the more rare languages,
then you'll just have to look a little bit longer but for French German Spanish, some of the other major ones,
you'll find games all over the place that support the language that you're learning.
Then sometimes you'll be able to set the language of the game from inside the app, but other times
you'll have to go to your settings and
you'll have to find the area that talks about
languages and change the language of your iPad or of your phone or tablet or whatever it is,
so that the language of the game will automatically change to the language that you're learning.
My next recommendation for where to get games if you're old-school like me is getting a gameboy game.
The only thing you have to pay attention to is making sure that you get the right language,
because for gameboy games the language is
specific to the cartridge itself, so I just typed in Pokemon in español and all these popped up.
And if you don't have a gameboy just do a quick search for that on eBay, and you can see they're not super expensive.
Most of them are 20 to 40 dollars sometimes you might get lucky and get a really cheap one on a bid.
But eBay is the best place that I've found for getting gameboy games.
The last place I want to mention where it's easy to get games in other languages is Steam.
This is a place where you can download all kinds of different games from the internet.
And I'm gonna look up Skyrim because I've heard a lot of people say that Skyrim was one of the best games that they've used
for learning other languages. Now, if you go down here to the right, you'll see all kinds of different languages that the game supports.
It'll show you which languages you can set this game to as far as the interface of the game, the
voices and the voice acting, and the
subtitles and you can see here that Skyrim is available in Spanish, English, French,
Italian, German, and nine other languages. And I apologize that my computer is set to Spanish. I didn't think about this when I was recording the video,
but if your computer is set to English or a language that you understand then
you'll be able to understand this portion of the page when you look it up.
And there's a lot of games available on Steam so you should be able to find whatever game you're looking for.
Steam is just a great resource.
So I hope this video has helped you think about how you can use video games in your language learning repertoire. If you like the
video be sure to LIKE and subscribe and I'll see you guys next week!