Help Your Kids Learn English with Video Games (SERIOUSLY)

TRANSCRIPT

What if there was a tool that could help your kids improve their English in a way they ACTUALLY like, while also allowing you the chance to connect with them? What if this tool also helped their critical thinking, problem solving and spatial-motor skills?

What if I told you that this tool was video games?

Before you dismiss this as a gimmick (a flashy or clever trick) let me try to remove the stigma some of us have about video games, and let me make my case for it being a really helpful and underrated tool for language learning, among other things (entre otras cosas).

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's up? What's going on? Welcome to another episode of English with Dane, a podcast designed to help you enjoy the process of perfecting your English. As always, I'm your host Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at English with Dane. On this episode, I want to talk about something that might feel a bit controversial, but that I actually think makes a lot of sense. Learning English through video games. Not too long ago, as no mucho, not too long ago, I made a video for social media claiming that if I wanted my kids to learn English and have a positive relationship with the language, I would rather pay someone to come to my house and play video games with my kid for an hour than to send them to a class they might find boring and be really unmotivated to go to. A lot of people commented on the video, sharing their own experiences with learning through not just video games, but music, sports, and other passions they had growing up, and how traditional methods, like standard classes, weren't really effective for them. So in this episode, I'm going to explore that a little bit more because I think this approach really has a lot of validity. So let's start the show. But before we do, a quick reminder that we're doing the full day immersion on the 7th of March, and there are still a few spaces or slots left for this activity, so don't hesitate to reach out and let's have a quick chat to see if it's something that you'd be interested in. Email me at englishwithdain at gmail.com or write to me on Instagram if you prefer. Alright, let's start. You are listening to episode 40 of season two of English with Dane. Hit it. So when I first uploaded that video on Instagram and TikTok, I thought people would come after me with pitchforks, like I was Frankenstein's monster and they were the angry villagers or the angry mob. Pitchforks are orcas, I believe, in Spanish, those big fork-like things they use on farms. You know the visual I'm trying to give. So I thought people would come after me with pitchforks, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Lots of people said that growing up, most of their English learning and exposure came from video games. Zelda, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and other games of the like that forced you to read through a bunch of text, solve puzzles, build teams, battle other players, and just progress throughout the game in general. They also mentioned that school had little to do with this progress, or at least that was their perception. This was all pretty shocking to me at first, but when I thought about it a little bit more, it made total sense. For a lot of us growing up, video games were a passion. They were fantasy worlds that would captivate us and encourage us to explore, play, and evolve. We talked about video games all day at school, we would share strategies and secrets that we figured out, we would draw the characters, we would role-play as them, we would daydream about what living in that world would be like. They completely absorbed us. I always felt like adults didn't get it. They looked down on video games as these things that were just a waste of time that would distract us from our schoolwork and that would rot our brains. To look down on something means to see something as inferior, right? Something less worthy or deserving less respect. So I felt like adults, or most adults, would look down on video games. I remember my parents telling me to stop playing that little game, El Jueguito ese, and do something productive, as if video games were inherently negative, unproductive, and something that we should be shielded or protected from. Don't get me wrong, it's not okay for kids to spend 10 hours a day glued to a video game, pegados, glued to a video game. Of course that's not okay. I'm not advocating for extreme use of them. I think in moderation, and that's the key, in moderation, they are an incredible tool for developing transferable cognitive and perceptual skills. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about these skills are things like critical thinking, from things like problem solving, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. But there's a lot of evidence that shows there are other factors at play too. And obviously, this depends on the type of video games that we are exposed to, but in general, we're talking about things like attention and perception, so selective attention, which is filtering signal from noise, also divided attention, like tracking multiple elements at once, and also faster visual processing speed. When talking about executive function, for example, there's decision making under time pressure. We all know that feeling and how stressful it can be until you learn to navigate it. There's task switching and cognitive flexibility. There's working memory too, so holding and updating, let's say, multiple variables, and of course planning and resource management. I can think of Age of Empires, for example, where you have to collect wood, stone, food, and manage how you use it to make sure your village can thrive and you can turn it into an empire. If you just think it's a silly little game, you'd be wrong. You're learning things that will help you later in life, like budgeting and saving. And it might sound like a stretch, but I think it makes total sense. Also, there's the whole area about learning mechanics. There's pattern recognition, hypothesis testing. So what happens if I do this? Okay, if I do X, then Y happens. So what happens if I do Z instead? This is a super valuable thing to be exposed to as a kid. Mistake tolerance too. Trying to beat a difficult level or a difficult Pokemon trainer over and over again. You get frustrated, you regulate your emotions, you regroup, and you try again. You change your strategy, you train your team, and you go back and try again, right? You beat the level, you defeat that difficult gym in the case of Pokemon, and you reap the reward. Obtienes la recompensa. You reap the reward. Reap spelled R-E-A-P, by the way. You feel a sense of accomplishment and you build resilience, right? In terms of spatial motor skills, there's map reading and navigation too, right? You're figuring out or deciphering where you need to go and solving the puzzles and getting past the obstacles that are preventing you from getting there. Also, timing and rhythm. You learn the mechanics of the game, and you have to focus and train your sense of timing and adjust until you get it. Fine motor precision, so the ability to make small, accurate, and controlled movements while coordinating them with visual input. Quick story time. I remember once when I was in the hospital because my lung had collapsed, we met the surgeon that was going to be performing the surgery on me, and he was in his early 30s. The surgery was going to involve using these controllers and cameras, I don't know what that's called, and my mom felt at ease. Of course, in addition to the training, but you see the point I'm trying to make. If I told you that this surgery would be performed on you, and one doctor grew up playing video games and the other one didn't, despite receiving the same amount of training in medical school, which one would you want to perform the surgery on you? I know it sounds like a silly argument or a silly hypothetical, but I can't help think that there's some validity to it. Back to what I was saying before, just real quick, before I make the most important point of the episode. With a lot of these video games, you're also practicing problem-solving styles. There's systems thinking, so understanding interacting mechanics. There's probabilistic thinking, so risk versus reward, and you're often practicing optimization under constraints. For example, in a turn-based strategy or tactics game like Pokemon, for example, you have limited resources, so actions or points or ammo or time, and fixed constraints, so enemy positions, let's say, terrain, turn limit, etc. The goal isn't to play perfectly in theory, but to find the best possible outcome given those limits, dados esos limites, given those limits. So how is that not a super valuable thing to get some practice in? I feel like I could go on and on about this, but let's get to the real meat and potatoes of the matter. Imagine now doing all of this in English, doing this in a language that you're not yet familiar with or that you need to work on. Not only is it infinitely more exciting than sitting in a classroom or doing exercises in grammar books, which I'm not trying to demonize, by the way, I'm just trying to advocate for an alternative form of learning. So not only is it infinitely more exciting and intriguing, but it's something that actually provides genuine interest and curiosity. I think finding the way into the language, finding a genuine connection and therefore building a solid and good and long-lasting positive relationship with the language is a much more valuable thing to focus on with children than learning a specific amount of vocabulary, verb tenses, and sentence structures. Children don't learn like adults, right? They learn way faster and they are way better than us. I think that's something we can all agree on. They learn from context and connection and curiosity. And if we give them those tools, or if we allow for them to live in a world where those things are readily available and even prioritized, I think they will thrive. Now, I don't mean that you should leave your kid in a room for eight hours a day with an iPad because they're playing a video game, no. And I don't think that all video games are created equal when it comes to language learning and skill learning either. Playing FIFA for eight hours isn't the same as playing Pokemon for eight hours in terms of problem solving and reading and all of that. But there is a vast array of games, una selección enorme, there is a vast array of games that will not only provide a lot of these things I've mentioned, but will greatly improve a kid's language skills. And I know this from personal experience and from reading all of the comments that were left on the video I made. Let's take it a step further. You can use these games not only as a learning tool, but also as a tool for connection. Maybe your kid is having issues with reading, let's say, and this can of course be in your own native language, it doesn't have to be in English necessarily. But let's say he or she is having some difficulty with reading. And let's use Pokemon as an example again. You can start a game of Pokemon, which, if you're unfamiliar, is very much a game that allows you to embark on a journey or an adventure in which you'll have to catch Pokemon, train them, and ultimately become the champion while getting through countless challenges and puzzles. So you can use it as reading practice while also bonding and sharing an experience and an interest with your kid. You can have them practice their reading while having fun with their mom or dad. What happens often though is that we don't have the patience or the willingness to learn about the games and to involve ourselves in the things they like because we think that these things are just for kids or simplemente te da pereza. But that's something that you need to be willing to overcome and learn to work through or navigate if you want to achieve the results you want. Of course, you can pay someone to help your kid read better, you can send them to after-school programs, you can get a tutor, or you can force them to work on it on their own. But how great would it be if, on top of improving at the thing they're not that good at, they also had the added benefit of this being a time to connect with you and share something they like with you. Maybe it's not the right approach with your child in particular or with you, that's fine. The majority of tips and tricks and guidance in general that I try to give on this podcast isn't for everybody. It's about seeing what works for you and in this case for your kids. Maybe it's the thing that breaks it all wide open, maybe they need or want something else. I just wanted to take some time to kind of try and destigmatize video games, and hopefully after this episode, at least a few of you will see things a bit differently. Some of you wrote to me asking to be put in touch with teachers that would be willing, que estarían dispuestos o dispuestas, that would be willing to do this with your kids because you saw the value in it. I'm sure a lot of teachers would jump at the opportunity to do something like this, so ask around and you might be able to find someone. But maybe that someone is you. And if you think your English isn't strong enough, maybe that's a plus. Maybe it would be cool to play a Pokemon or Zelda or Final Fantasy or whatever game you choose and figure it out together, looking things up, solving puzzles, and writing down some vocabulary or expressions along the way. You don't always have to outsource it, and who knows, you might unlock or discover a new hobby that you initially thought wasn't for you. Give it a shot. Alright, that's the episode for this week. I hope you got something from it. If you don't already, follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Also, this week I'm starting to upload season two of English with Dane on YouTube too. For those of you who aren't on Spotify anymore or are thinking of canceling your subscription, I don't want you to miss out. So go to English with Dane on YouTube and hit that subscribe button. Alright, that's it for me. Talk soon. Later, it