This in HPR episode 2006-2029 entitled Thought Song Language Learning Part 3 Game Sash Story Mode.
It is posted by the ODD Gummy, and in about 26 minutes long, and Karimak Lean flag.
The summary is, I discuss some of my thoughts on how games might help in language learning.
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Hello, this is Dio Diti Dummy with another episode of HPR-Public Radio.
This is the third episode of a 3 part series talking about or discussing what my thoughts
on language learning.
So the first two episodes, the first one was about kind of traditional language lessons,
my thoughts on how they might be better suited for me.
The second episode was about how to use chat programs, modify them a little bit to help
in language learning, and this one is going to be about games.
My ideas on how games specifically computer games might be able to assist in language
learning.
So one of the things that has always been an issue for me, the casual person, well I guess
I won't tell the story again, because I said it in two episodes, but basically in a
real short and form, I'm interested in languages, but I don't not interested enough
that I'd take away, that I would take away time from either work family or friends, those
kinds of things.
I don't only do this learning languages as a hobby, that's put it in a nutshell.
So taking from my hobby slash fun time, it might make sense to use video games.
And my thinking is that if you can make the video game interesting enough, and not like
on the education games for kids, and you can obviously tell that it's an educational game.
Like for example, the way you claim a cliff is to do math problems, so not that kind
of educational learning, but I'm thinking more where the game is immersive and interesting,
and you're doing it just for the game, and the fact that you're learning a language is secondary,
and maybe with a little luck, it doesn't even, you don't even really notice it, it's kind
of in the back burner, and you're interested in playing the game.
So that's the concept in a nutshell.
And similarly to, well some guiding principles are maybe ways to make this happen, or
similar to the discussion on applications to help you learn languages, well I guess a computer
game would be an application as well, but so where you would start off, in this case
you don't start off knowing any of your native language, like on the chat program for
instance, you the spell checker database had all of the native language, and as you
progressed, the native language database dwindled, but in this case, you wouldn't start
off with any native words, everything would be the new language, but it would start off
really very basic, and even though you have to learn to progress to the game, the goal
is to make it not seem like you're doing that, so I assume there's a ton you can do
this long manner of ways, but here's one that I thought of, and this is something I thought
of four or five years ago, back when I was really considering maybe trying to develop
a course for myself to study, but I never really did, but here was my general idea, of course
I didn't write this stuff down, so I don't really know if this is exactly what I had
in mind, but I think this will be good enough to get the point across, and even now I'm
just going to go off the top of my head, well, I mean I've already had the idea, but I'm
going to retell it off the top of my head, I don't have any notes or anything like that,
so I'll wander like I normally do, so in my mind when I was thinking about this, what
I had in mind really was point-and-click adventure games, for those of you who don't remember
exactly what those are, take a look at Scum V and the games they support, or the kind
of games I'm talking about, so that's what I had in mind, so in my thinking, and I probably
played some games, something like this, if I remember, well I don't remember the games,
but I remember one game that was kind of similar concept, and that the person, and I think
this is pretty common in these kind of games anyways, but anyway, so here we go, I'll just
kind of give, so in my, so the concept, when I first thought about this, I thought that
I might have you, this would be kind of first person, so you wake up in your in a hospital
room, or some kind of a clinic, maybe not a hospital, maybe maybe some kind of clinic,
and so you open your eyes, and well of course the first thing you see is got to be a beautiful
nurse, or well nurse, either way male or female, this depending on what you're, what
you're interested are, so what would be beautiful to you, so you open your eyes as beautiful
nurse, and you look around, and she's saying something to you, but you don't know what
it is, and you just simply don't know what she's saying to you, and it's in a language
that you don't know, so you don't even know, as far as the game goes, you don't know what
language it is, and so you try to say hello, or where am I, or something like that,
oh, that's, that's right, I forgot, there are a couple of, at the very, very beginning,
I'm thinking that you would start off with a couple of English words that you don't
know how to say, so when you do the little dialogue box, it will come up and you have choices
hello, who are you, where are you, and you quickly find out that they don't understand
anything you say, which for some native English speaker, in my case, I wouldn't have to
be that way, but in my case, that's kind of unusual, I can go almost, well I've been
to remote places in Thailand, in Germany, and the Philippines, well that's enough, and I've been
in the really remote places where the people there don't really think they know English,
but they still know English pretty well, right, they know numbers, they know the basic
hello you, but they don't a lot of them don't think they know English, very rarely do that,
come across somebody who knows who really doesn't know any English, and truth be told,
even those people probably knew some English, but maybe they were just too shy to say anything
at all, because a lot of those people that I would see would still the TV around them would be
an English, so anyway, so for me that would be kind of interesting point of the game that they
don't understand at all with what I'm saying, but so anyway, quickly you realize that neither
you nor the people taking care of you understand, even though what language you're talking about,
and so there's a couple things that are clear, well one, you don't know how you got there,
at all, you don't have that memory, the game play could and you know reveal that memory to you
and the future just depends on how you wanted to take it, but these are just some kind of thoughts
to give the idea of what I had in mind, and so you don't know why you're there, you know that you
don't know if they're friend or full, but it's pretty clear pretty soon that they don't want you
to die and they're trying to nurse you back to health. Now of course, you don't know if that's
so that they can try you or you really don't know what it is, and so maybe to get you, but one
thing's clear, you need to learn their language, and for whatever reason, they're not interesting
and learning your language, you have to learn their language, and they won't let you out of the
room or maybe you know that you're pretty confined right now. At first, you're even tied down,
and you don't know if you're tied down because they want to protect you or they want to protect
themselves or some kind of combination thereof, you just know that you're tied down, and so
maybe as you eat or as you do some things, maybe they start to try to teach you the language,
maybe they do so with like cards that have the names of things, and they pronounce the names of
things, so kind of keeping the gameplay and mind, maybe they feed you the first several meals
and where you get a they feed you different things, you don't really get a choice, but they feed
you different things, so maybe in four or five, six meals, you start and they show you the picture
and they tell you the word, and so or maybe when they're feeding you they tell you the word,
so you start learning what kinds of foods are, and maybe they tell you their name,
so maybe you start learning their names, and maybe they give you a name because you don't know
your own name, so maybe they give you a name in the new language, let's just say that, and so you
learn your name, you learn the people who are taking care of you, maybe it's just the one person,
maybe it's more, maybe there's shift who knows, so when you're vocabulary gets good, and then
you are able to pick the things that, well, whenever I don't know, but you demonstrate that you
understand what the things are, so maybe in the menu you could like a option of,
can I have, give me another bite of pork, let's say you still don't pick what you want, or maybe
you do, maybe you pick what you want at this place, finally, to demonstrate that you know what they
are, but somehow you demonstrate you know how to ask for the food that you want, and maybe you
learned some of the foods that you don't want, kind of be interesting, and then so once you
demonstrate that you can order, maybe they let you out of your little room, but maybe you're still
and some kind of a facility, some kind of a hospital type atmosphere of some sort, but maybe
it's like still walled off, but you can, maybe you're given a little bit of freedom to
to walk the grounds a little bit, or maybe to go to the cafeteria to actually order your food,
so you go to the cafeteria, you order your food, and maybe maybe there you tell them your name,
and you tell them who sent you, so you've learned a little bit, you know, from them feeding you,
you learned a little bit, and then again, still it's not like you're trying to make it to where
it's not like you're learning the language as a chore, but you're learning it because the game
needs you to know the words, and then maybe you notice why you're getting a little bit of freedom,
and so maybe you, anyways, you get a little bit of freedom, and you notice why you're walking
around the grounds that you have access to a couple of things. One, maybe you try to do things
like go to places you're not supposed to, and maybe they, maybe they tell you that you're not
and kind of reprimand you, and so you start learning words that mean no in various ways, and maybe
if you keep doing that, maybe you die, right? Maybe that's, if you take them over, you die,
you disobeyed and they shot you, that kind of thing. So, so you're, and then you're notice,
maybe there's a guy that you see, or somebody, maybe it's a woman, depending on how you
want to do this by a game, and you notice that somebody's watching you, but they don't let on that
they're watching you, and you like, overtly, they don't tell you anything, and so the gameplay for
this point is maybe you start having some officials visit you as you progress and get healthy,
and they're coming in and watching you and talking to you, but maybe you're still learning,
you can't quite exactly not talk to them, but you know that there's some officials of that
area who are interested in you, but you still don't know why, and you still don't know,
you still know you can't leave, and so maybe even at this point they are, maybe they're shown
you some kind of artifacts of things that you brought with you, whatever makes sense for the,
for the game, but maybe, and you're still like, no, I can't remember, or maybe you can start
remembering a little bit, but all this time you're learning learning the language, like maybe they
start pointing stuff out and telling you what they are that you can see inside the room and
and maybe the pretty nurse walks you around the garden and, you know, tells you trees and
just different things like that, there's a squirrel there and tell you that, so kind of,
I guess this maybe tropes, actually, of this kind of thing with the person for some reason,
doesn't have any memory. So at some point you're going to learn enough
that that person who's been watching you decides he can talk to you. So let's say for example,
maybe he's not the reason he hasn't contacted you yet, maybe he's watching you and observing you
to see when when you're learning to learn, because he doesn't know your language,
either he only knows that the language you're trying to learn, and so maybe he's just watching
and waiting to see when you're to the point where you can have a meaningful conversation. And at
some point you get to that point where he makes up some kind of an excuse or a ruse to bump into you
or maybe it's a she, again, however you want the story to play out and he gets you alone a little bit
or maybe he even passes you a note, hey, let's meet and so maybe you have to figure out the
notes as let's meet so hopefully maybe you already learned enough that that can happen.
It could be a lot of things, maybe if you have to confide in someone to see what the note means
or show it to someone maybe you get killed or maybe you build trust or maybe he talks to you in
person to see and that could be a thing too, like so maybe this this person meets you
maybe more than once before he finally confides in you and maybe he's saying the words and the new
language, hey let's meet or some words to test your knowledge and maybe until you learned enough
about that you just think it's a casual, you know an accidental meetings and he's saying just normal
stuff that you don't know and the new language until you finally get a clue and then so at some point
you get to the point where you you're progressing enough where you actually can have this meeting
and then you have the meeting and then in my little mind he's a government official some kind of a spy
and he's your friend and somehow I didn't really work this one out but somehow he's your friend
but he doesn't know your language still so maybe your people infiltrated and spoken his language
because for some reason I my thinking was nobody in this game would know your language and you would
only get menus with your language in at the very beginning really soon the game would be designed so
you don't need menus in your language and you want to get them in your language and so somehow
there's the story unfolds about your mission and that you're a spy and it maybe he doesn't tell
you maybe he doesn't know a lot but so you don't exactly still know you're in one of those
situations where you got to trust this guy because he's the only one who seems to really
be helping you the people who are taking care of you they seem friendly but they don't really
seem you know like they would put their put themselves on the line to save you so they're not yet
someone that you confide in but this guy at least you know or this person you know is or at least
he's told you that he's on your side and then I thought I had kind of two ways to go with that one
I haven't seen before in a video game but the one is maybe you're a spy and the goal is to be
the goal is to help and maybe you're an enemy of this these people who have you and maybe
that's why you don't know so maybe you're a spy of these people I mean your enemy and your
mission here is to make peace so to help them kind of trick them and give them the idea of
making peace with the other one and if this is a co-op kind of game then maybe there's could be
someone else in a different language follow well it doesn't even have to be English right it could
be totally different language two different languages and they're following along and
they're trying to help help your team so kind of if you both get along then maybe maybe you can have
peace of course as you could be a bad guy too and you could be infiltrating so there's all
kinds of different ways to play this and all kinds of scenarios they could come and I had some
you know there could be you could be from the future and maybe someone planted you in the past
to you know to come here and there's some trumped up reason why maybe it's after the there was
some kind of apocalypse and everyone's kind of returned a babble to where they learned their
own languages and not other languages and but just came back to this point in the past so that
you can somehow infiltrate and again make peace or change of course a history or something along
those lines and you could even do this where you're in the past somehow you got you know you
you came on some foreign land and again you still don't know the language and they don't know
your language so I think I think there's plenty of stories in all times to where something like
this could work but again the point is to try to make it to where it's kind of like if you were
really in another place it didn't know your language you're there and you got to learn the language
and how they would maybe kind of normally teach it without the hate of no one in the of your
language and then who knows I mean you could even do this one of those deals where there is no
real objective you know you can just do it where maybe you the the gameplay is kind of open-ended
and they're you know they're not monsters and maybe this curiosity maybe they let you just live
normally and part of the game is just you you know you grown up in that that life and making a
life you learn the language well enough to get a wife and start maybe start a family but I
think that concept could make for a fun game and also could make the learning the language kind of
like I said words you almost don't notice that that's the point because the gameplay is
interested in your the story is compelling and and that's how you learn now and this one has
a benefit because you could then more easily I think than the other two that I talked about you can
more easily work on correct grammar and things from the beginning and you could also teach
slang if that's what you wanted right because normal people use slang so you could you could do this
in a lot of different ways and and again of course the goal is still the same to get somebody up
to that five or six year old level toward they could feel more natural or feel comfortable reading
the the language books and the other language so so the scope of this isn't trying to be
forever and ever and to keep selling you lessons forever and ever and in of course when I first
thought about this like I said it was just point and click games but late the and I don't know
this is what I first thought about this but late the past months there's been some you know
once it come to minor uh club too and uh and lost in Bronx and there's been a couple others
if I'm not mistaken but some HPR episodes a hacker public radio and I guess anyone listen to
this probably knows what what that is but they've been talking about different kinds of stories and
game plays you know how to get different game play and also like um um you're what forgot what it's
called number built your own adventure books is out there called and um and various role play games
and so it seems natural to me too that this could very easily be um the same kind of thing of course
because text adventures came from well pointy click adventures came from text adventures which came from
if I'm not mistaken came from you know build your own adventure books and so this could very
very easily be some kind of those kind of games and I think this could probably be a board game as
well if you thought about it and figured it out and then of course this could also be a book
earlier in the previous episode on this subject I talked about how maybe it's not a bad idea to
just start with with baby books that are just totally in the new language of course I was trying
to get the spin on it towards combination you know baby books but only for adults so this could
be a text adventure where everything is in a book and like I said you do the same thing where you
got pictures and words and that's how you learned kind of still kind of not exactly like a
baby would learn but where you're kind of like a baby but only it's in the context of whatever
story that you're trying to tell and I think that could could work pretty well and of course
there's no reason this could be a proper text adventure games kind of like the info comp games
of the past or well future still our future too so yeah that's my general idea of how
it seems to me like this could really I know for me personally if there was a game I don't
probably would be less compelling if it's a story I created but you know but if there was a story in this
manner I think I would learn better and just for the sake of the game and I think that could keep me
engaged longer if nothing else maybe it would be you know one of those things where when you
training you try to do several different ways so you can come at it from different aspects and
an exercise different quote unquote muscles so that's it I've already rambled on for nearly 30 minutes
I guess that's plenty and I don't think I'm going to edit this at all so that's that's all for now
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