I (Terry) taught English for 50 years. Very early on (about the time when the above photo was taken) I was struck by the fact that many students study English for ten or more years, but never learn it well enough to actually use it. My main interest, then, became to help them finish the job. I began to focus on authentic materials, content produced for native English speakers.
This is where I focused during my Masters program. Later, I ran a learning program for a big English-language newspaper for more than 20 years, producing lessons each day on the latest news. This was relatively easy because (1) there is always something interesting or exciting happening in the news and (2) because news stories are full of teachable patterns. News stories have a particular structure and recurrent topics (elections, floods, protests, etc.) with their own themes and vocabulary. Read one flood story and you immediately start building background knowledge for the next.
After retirement, I started taking a close look at the video games my son was playing. The language he and his friends were using was much less formal than the language of news stories. It was conversational English, something that had been largely missing from my previous project.
But, like the newspaper, there were teachable patterns here too. For one thing, gametalk tends to be limited. Gamers focus on the game at hand, what is happening now, what has just happened or what is about to happen next.
Invididual games will have their own patterns and topics of communication. In battle royale games like Apex Legends, Fortnite or Playerunknown’s battlegrounds (PUBG) players talk first about where to land. Then the focus changes to finding and sharing weapons and equipment and finally to locating and eliminating the enemy.
In survival games like Minecraft or Raft, player communication focuses on finding resources, building up a supply of food and water, crafting equipment and structures, and watching out for life-threatening creatures.
Naturally, we have packed our website and Youtube channel with content to prepare learners to communicate on all these topics.
Apart from encouraging learners to check out video games (and, of course, pointing them to ‘Real English for Gamers’), there are a number of ways you might want to use gaming content as well. You can, for example, use video clips from prominant gamers for listening practice. You’ll find many examples on our website. Start here.
Video gaming can almost make good extra-curricular material, perhaps as part of an English club. Students can play as groups of two, three or four and it is good if at least one member is fluent in English. The goal is to complete a game completely in English. Students can also make videos of their gameplay, so they, with your help, can go back over situations where they were not sure what to say. Where there is a problem, we likely have a solution in our Grammar for Gamers section.
Once students have experience playing in English, the next step would be to join in muliplayer games with English speakers from around the world. Notice that our web site has content preparing them for the kind of smalltalk they may engage in with their new teammates (here and here)
Here’s something to think about. I suspect there are real money-making opportunities out there as well. Coaching has become a big thing in the gaming world and there are dozens of players coaching for pay through Fiverr and other outlets. I haven’t seen anyone combining gaming and English, however.
Parents might go for the idea – turning a time-wasting obsession into something productive.
If you try out coaching, be sure to suggest ‘Real English for Gamers’ to help you students get prepared. You might even send us interesting video clips. We’ll post them if they fit our audience.
Oh yes, it is true many gamers use language is that is, shall we say, less than polite. But it is easy to find gamers who don’t. I would encourage learners to avoid using such language, even if they hear it from their teammates. Contrary to what they may be believe, it won’t make them sound impressive and, if used in the wrong situation, it can have negative consequences. For more, see vulgar language
