EFL/ESL/ESOL teachers: Help make your students’ video-gaming time a learning experience
Serious suggestions for helping students use their out-of-class recreational gaming time to improve their English language skills.
Terry Fredrickson
Real English for Gamers (YouTube channel) content creator
Suchart Kevin Lotscher
Real English For Gamers (REFG) coordinator and video editor
Introduction
Chances are, many of your students spend a lot of time outside of class playing video games. They probably don’t realize it, but this is a great opportunity to improve their English language skills.
You can help them.
It won’t take a lot of class time. The above video will get you started. It is full of in-game video clips which will give you a good picture of what the online gaming experience can be like for English learners and how the learners themselves can actively take advantage of what is available.
The focus is on video gaming outside of class. The only in-class activities we are suggesting aim (1) to make learners aware that they can use their recreational gaming to improve their English and (2) to give them ideas on how to do this productively. This should take only one or two sessions with your students to get them started, and then, they are on
their own.
The Content of the Video
The video is made up of explanations interspersed with illustrative video clips. In the first clip we meet Murkie, a non-native speaker who has joined popular gamer Nick Bunyun (one million YouTube subscribers) for a game. Notice that she is a proficient gamer herself, making for smooth exchanges with Nick.
Her strong point is listening comprehension. In video gaming, this involves the ability to understand the English spoken by English speakers to other English speakers – “real” English where no concessions are made to less proficient speakers. And for those brave enough, like Murkie. it also involves joining video games with English speakers, native and otherwise.
Although playing with proficient English speakers is the goal, it is more practical for most learners to start by watching gameplay videos featuring highly-proficient English speakers.
The focus is on video gaming outside of class. The only in-class activities I (Terry) am suggesting aim The second gameplay clip, from Among Us, is a good example of the fast, unscripted language learners will be exposed to. But it also points out how learners who know the game are by no means lost. They know what is happening, a huge advantage for listening comprehension.
Active Learning
Your goal as a teacher is to get your students actively involved in improving their English. They should not be simply watching videos passively.
The next segment of the video (using a clip from Animal Crossing) illustrates what your students can and should be doing – watching, replaying, using closed captions, searching for and learning new words and phrases – like “looks can be deceiving”.
This would make a very good classroom activity (See “Classroom Activities” below). Students could work in groups with short clips from their favorite games and share what they come up with. The video also suggests a vocabulary sharing activity that you can easily use.
More on sharing
If your students are actively using authentic English-language content (video games or otherwise) outside of class, it would be good to set up a vehicle for them to share what they are learning. A classroom Facebook page might be a good idea. The main video suggests vocabulary, but there are many other topics they can share. The video in part 3 of the classroom activities below will give your students many ideas. Be sure to have them watch it.
Playing with English speakers
Back to the main video. The first video clip in this section illustrates well the first piece of advice I would give learners who want to join English- language video games: Learn the game. I suspect you will be impressed with Nick Bunyun’s new playing partner, nine-year-old Anton from Greece.
Anton understands very little English, but he knows the game and he has excellent skills. Notice that he is also learning English from his playing partner.
Learners, of course, will not only want to master the game, but also the language they need to play comfortably with English speakers. The next set of clips gives practical examples of how this can be done. Again, teachers might want to play these clips for their classes and some might want to go further and try the techniques with other gameplay video clips.
The video ends with a clip from a Minecraft tutorial, a good reason why serious gamers should take an interest in English-language videos. Tutorials abound in other languages as well and there is no harm done if students first go to their native language, but they should give English a try.
Classroom Activities
I am assuming that class time is limited for many teachers who have a full curriculum to get through. Thus, I am suggesting only a few in-class activities. And since many teachers will probably not be gamers, I’ve put together a number of video clips they can use for group work.
Activity 1: Listening actively
The video shows how students can replay sections they have difficulty to understand, check out subtitles to see what is actually said and to slow down the speed if necessary. We’ll leave the subtitles to the next activity.
The video here contains five short clips from a variety of video games we have used in our “Understanding Real English” series. You might want to do the first one with the class, but the rest can be done in groups, perhaps assigning a single video to each group. Students should watch and listen to the full clip at least twice and then replay difficult sections. Since this is “real English” students may not understand fully. They can experiment with slowing down the speed, but even that might not work fully. Still, they should get a basic understanding of what is happening and what is said.
The videos are:
Activity 2: Check your understanding
Here students will see the subtitles, so they can find out exactly what was said. Again, they should listen more than once and replay the parts they had difficulty with. The next step is to look for words and phrases that are new to them and find out their meanings.
Activity 3: Share with classmates
If your students truly become active learners during their gameplay outside of class, they will have a lot to share. Teachers should take advantage of this. This short video will give learners ideas on how to share vocabulary. It would be good for the class to have an online resource to do this, perhaps through Facebook. If I were still teaching today, I would likely have a class Facebook page and students could use their native language if necessary.
What can they share? This video will give them lots of ideas. We suggest you watch it with them in class and discuss other ideas as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G55e_7g6YqI
Activity 4: Getting Prepared to Play in English
The thought of playing with highly proficient English speakers – native or highly advanced – can be daunting for many learners. For them, it might be better to ease into English, playing with friends in their native language and gradually adding the English they learn from watching videos, the language they share with their friends, and, of course, by visiting our YouTube channel. The goal should be to eventually play a full game in English. Having one or two reasonably proficient English speakers on each team would be a definite plus.
At the same time, they should be actively watching videos and looking for words, phrases and sentences they can use for their chosen game. Helping them along is a big project of ours at REFG and it could be an out-of-class project for interested students.
You might suggest that your students watch our first two videos in the project which focus on MInecraft. This can be in class or out of class, but you might suggest that students start gathering and sharing useful language for their favorite games.
Appendix
Playlists from Real English for Gamers that your students might find useful.
Personal background
I (Terry) come to the topic of games in language learning from a different perspective than most of you. At 76 years of age, my classroom days are over. In fact, I left the classroom in 1992 when I joined the Bangkok Post, Thailand’s largest English newspaper. There, I did daily English lessons on the latest news aimed at increasing the Thai audience for the paper.
Helping English learners improve their language skills outside the classroom had long been an interest of mine and when I did my Master’s thesis, I focused on Stephan Krashen’s approach to schema theory and comprehensible input.
This was wonderful training for my newspaper work since each topic (elections, floods, protests, etc.) had its own schema. Turning current topics into comprehensible input was made easier by the learners’ background from Thai-language news sources.
My Introduction to Video Gaming
Upon retirement, still in Bangkok, I couldn’t help but notice that my gamer son, a Thai, was spending endless hours using his English to play with fellow gamers from around the world. This was real English, fast and spontaneous – the English native speakers use with each other. That’s the top of the mountain for language learners.
Here, too, I noticed that English learners are not without advantages. Many of them are avid gamers who know their favorite games inside and out – even if they play them in their native language. Thus, in an English setting, while they might not initially understand much of what is being said, they know what is happening.
There was clearly an opportunity for collaboration. I provided the theory and the content and my son became my chief consultant as he took over the YouTube mechanics and video editing. Real English for Gamers was born.
Highly-proficient non-native speaking gamers
If you search for English-language game play videos, either on YouTube or Twitch, you’ll see the field is dominated by native English speakers. They come from all over the world, however, and you will likely find some of their accents to be quite challenging.
There are also some highly-proficient non-native English speakers who stream games in English. Your students will likely enjoy many of them and these gamers are living examples of young people who have mastered English.
Famous and popular
PewDiePie (Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg) is one of a kind. He was born and raised in Sweden before moving to the UK as an adult. He has 110 million YouTube subscribers. https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie
Nick Bunyun Born in Romania but moved the United States 20 years ago at the age of 13. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChAO7Y_97MBAgE5xi_eIe-Q
Disguised Toast (Jeremy Wang). Born in Taiwan, moved to Malaysia and then on to Canada https://www.youtube.com/c/DisguisedToast
Robbaz Sweden He’s not PieDiePie, but over a million YouTube subscribers is not bad. https://www.youtube.com/user/Robbaz
WackyJacky101 Denmark https://www.youtube.com/c/WackyJacky101
Xyaa or Morezyaa (Shagufta Iqbal) India Probably a true bilingual – English and Hindi https://www.youtube.com/c/XyaaLive
Lesser known gamers
Here’s a group of gamers/streamers with very good English but not so many followers. They deserve more and your students are likely to enjoy them.
Orangerocktv (Bulgaria)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCeRNjXc5_FrIdKBZ1lpBgA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhFOQxhReSY
https://www.twitch.tv/orangerocktv
Durbem (Croatia)
https://www.youtube.com/user/Tomme991
Denyave (Czechia)
Carnivorus (Germany)
InciteTV (Sweden)
https://www.youtube.com/c/InciteTV
Lucanaii (Lives in the Netherlands) Queen Lucanaii is a gamer with a disability https://www.twitch.tv/Lucanaii
