[Pac-Man noises]
Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking,
and welcome to this educational philosophy video on
how to learn English with the Pac-Man method.
Pac-Man? Educational philosophy? Huh?
Now, before we start, we should learn a little bit about Pac-Man and his history.
First, Pac-Man was originally a 1980s arcade game, a very popular one, as you can see by the
t-shirt. And the goal of Pac-Man was to eat all of the pellets in a maze. Now, a pellet
is a compressed, little ball. Think of something you can feed a bird or something you can feed
a fish, or think of a pellet gun. In Pac-Man, these pellets represented food for Pac-Man
to eat. Now, in the 1980s at the arcades, a little pellet, a little dot on the screen,
it could have represented anything.
So, it is a 1980s arcade game. The goal of Pac-Man is to eat all of the pellets in a
maze. The difficult part about eating all of these pellets is that there are ghosts
constantly chasing you, trying to kill you, attack you, eat you, and you have to avoid
them. Now, you can fight back. How to fight back in Pac-Man is
you need to eat a power pellet.
And this power pellet turns the ghosts blue,
and allows you to chase them and eat your enemies.
What was really difficult about this game is that it had 256 levels. 2-5-6.
Can you think about a game today that has that many levels? It's ridiculous. So, this was something
that was really, really difficult to master, and it had a ton of levels, a ton of patterns
and mazes and content that you had to memorize.
Does this sound familiar to you?
So let's see how this relates to English.
Now, imagine for a moment you are Pac-Man.
I'm Pac-Man.
Every level, every maze in Pac-Man
represents an element of the English language that you have to learn. So, a Pac-Man maze
could represent an academic vocabulary list that you're trying to learn, it could represent
a grammar tense, it could represent a pronunciation point that you are currently studying. For
example, a Pac-Man maze could be the present continuous tense, it could be how to use "will"
in many contexts. Now, what you have to do in mastering this vocabulary list, this grammar
tense, this pronunciation point is complete the level by eating every single pellet of
information in that level, before you can continue and do other things.
Now, the ghosts, what do they represent? What does this guy represent? This guy, this guy,
and this guy? These are blocks to learning. These blocks could be bad experiences you
have had with English in the past. These could be fear about not knowing enough. A block
to learning could be a negative person in your life who tells you:
"You'll never learn this language."
Avoid those people, just like you avoid the ghosts in the game. Now, a block
to learning could be a bad teacher, someone who gives you bad information about English.
And a block to learning, similar to fear, could be just your own low self-confidence.
You know that feeling where you think:
"I will never learn this language"?
And I understand that feeling, because I am currently studying French, and I feel that way about French,
so I'm right there with you.
Now, how can I improve? How do I make sure that these blocks to learning are conquered,
that I can destroy them, and get through them? Let's look at that.
So, your goal when learning English with the Pac-Man method
is to avoid those blocks to learning, triumphing over
your fears, and growing in your own self-confidence as you get better, and better, and better
with English the more time you spend with it. Just like the more time you spend with
a Pac-Man video game... Well, we don't have arcades anymore with Pac-Man in them, really,
but the more time you spend playing anything, the better you will be at it. Just like the
more time you spend practicing English, studying English, listening to English - the more confident
you will become and the more knowledgeable you will become.
So, to improve and continue improving, what you need to do when learning something
is eat those language power pellets,
those things that teach you to study, understand, and practice, and to speak confidently.
I'm not scared of you, I'm not scared of you,
I'm not scared of you, and I'm not scared of you!
I can do this!
So, maybe you are, you know, studying the verb "will", and you feel stuck. You think:
"I don't understand when I use this."
But if you keep studying, keep going, if you don't
give up and you find that moment when you say:
"Wait a second, wait a second, yes, I understand! I get it!"
then you will feel much more confident. Then it's time to practice it and use it.
Now, finally, what I want to tell you guys is: Just like in Pac-Man, in English you need
to be flexible. Now, what this means is... In Pac-Man, if you just go in one direction
and one direction, it's much easier for the ghosts to catch you. What you need to do is
move left, move right, go down, go up. So, for example, if you are studying the present
continuous tense and you're studying how to use the present continuous tense just for
what you're doing in the moment, but then you find out:
"Huh, I can also use the present continuous tense to talk about future plans
or something that's definitely going to happen in the future",
don't be afraid to go in that direction, and then come back and see how
everything links together. So, language learning is not really a straight line.
It is like a Pac-Man maze. You do have to learn a little bit of this, and then:
"Oh, okay, this is interesting. Let's go here now."
Okay?
So make sure that you are flexible with learning.
And if you fail, if you get the "GAME OVER" screen, if your fears catch you,
don't be afraid, because you can always try again,
and maybe one day with more practice, with more studying,
understanding - you will get to level 256.
That is the Pac-Man method.
So, if you'd like to test your understanding of this material, you can
check out the quiz on www.engvid.com.
And if you enjoyed the video, please like it, leave a comment, subscribe to the channel,
and check me out on Facebook and Twitter.
Till next time, thanks for clicking.