In a paper published in Profession, the Modern Language Association's journal about modern languages and literatures, a Saint Louis University professor discusses how he uses video games to teach Italian, allowing his students to master two semesters worth of language acquisition through one intensive class for students new to the Italian language.
[...] Though [Simone] Bregni has used Final Fantasy, Trivial Pursuit, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Heavy Rain and Rise of the Tomb Raider in his classrooms, one of the most useful games to teach Italian is Assassin's Creed II.
"In my Italian Renaissance literature course, for example, students explore Florence as it flourished under the Medici by playing Assassin's Creed II," Bregni says in the paper. "My 21st-century American students partake in the life of Ezio Auditore, a 20-something man from an affluent family, by wandering around a cultural and historical re-creation of 1476 Florence."
[...] In a class called Intensive Italian for Gamers, all students made progress equal to two semesters of Italian over the course of a single fall semester. By the final, students were 3 to 5 points ahead of students in a traditional Italian course.
Source: https://www.slu.edu/news/2018/april/learning-italian-through-gaming.php
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:42AM (2 children)
Enough proof that violent video games affect the mental state of players :)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 24 2018, @05:39PM (1 child)
Learning another language affects the mental state of said people? Perhaps, it's just knowledge, that said person can now use to do what they want. Violent video games are typically played for entertainment, just like watching violent movies. We have a much wider pool of people to test effects of violent television shows with. Either there's a ton of psychopaths out there, because of violent movies that have been watched for entertainment. Or there's not. You start talking about how kids shouldn't be playing violent video games like Call of Duty and we can start to have a real conversation. The ESRB was setup to help parents know what would and wouldn't be appropriate for an age range. Parents are the ones at fault for letting their kids play Call of Duty, Fear, Fallout, Skyrim, etc. Violent video games aren't a problem for someone who's of sound mind. Kids and teenagers definitely aren't of sound mind.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday April 24 2018, @06:58PM
Perhaps the darker, more sinister truth could be that movie violence over the decades has subtly and gradually desensitized its viewing populations to guns and military action. Even the censors seem to tolerate more graphic violence nowadays than say, 30 years ago for a given rating. If I don my tinfoil hat I could say maybe it's by design. How far it actually works to influence people's politics is another question. I'm not sure how that could even be tested. How would you find a good control group? All viewers who claim to avoid violent media? But then how do you show cause and effect? They could all be born lifelong pacifists.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by lgsoynews on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:09AM (4 children)
I'm french. I learned english (and spanish) at school (80s and 90s). But as you probably all know, learning in a school environment is very limiting: to really learn a foreign language nothing beats being immersed or at least having some "real world" practice...
The reason I got good in english (but not in spanish) was that I read a few books (and RPGs like D&D) and played quite a lot of games that were in english. The best games of course were the text adventure games -or interactive fiction as it's called nowadays- like Zork. Having a real incentive to practice helped tremendously! The interactive part helps a lot, and adventure games require a lot of vocabulary...
In my opinion, text adventures are the best way to learn a foreign language: they are engaging, use a lot of text -by definition- and force you to write as well as read, something that other types of games don't provide (you can only read).
Too bad they have mostly disappeared except for a small set of amateurs as you can see with the IFComp (https://ifcomp.org/).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:22AM
#Me too. I really liked the old 1980s Sierra adventures games where you typed in commands to make the player do things before they went point and click. School all the way to university had precious little to teach me afterwards.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday April 24 2018, @01:35PM (1 child)
Can you recommend any french text games?
(Score: 3, Informative) by lgsoynews on Tuesday April 24 2018, @02:33PM
I only played a few in french, back in the day. I prefered the english ones, by far, and the french ones were rare.
Because of the english language barrier, some french companies produced a few especially on personal computers (but the number does not compare to the english based production).
For instance on ZX Spectrum you can find a few (usually VERY basic), like « l'île maudite » (I tried it again a couple of months ago, it was HARD, and annoyingly SLOW, LOL) or the famous « EUREKA » (neat but hard, and slightly buggy in the french version). You can also find some on the Amstrad CPC like «La chose de Grotemburg », and on the Apple II, Oric or Atari ST.
Playing on the ZX Spectrum is quite easy, there are plenty of emulators, including on Android. The other emulators are a bit more difficult in my experience (at least on Linux).
I would have recommended EUREKA, but it's difficult to use it because the game starts with an annoyingly long arcade game before going to the adventure game... Back in the day, I really liked it.
More recently, you'll find games written by amateurs (Z-code and the like), sometimes for competitions. I've never played any, so I can't say if they are interesting.
You'll find some lists here :
Here is a link to a video for the game «La chose de Grotemburg », so you can see what it looks like (one of the best attempts -technically- in my opinion). Be warned that the game is hard, I tried it a few years ago, but the visuals and the overall presentation are great (for the time).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm3WuJqVOA [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @02:02PM
And some countries don't dub all their TV shows.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @01:46PM
And I learnt japanese from playing lots of JRPGs in japanese. Downside is a lot of my vocabulary is skewed to such environments rather than everyday use for example.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 24 2018, @05:44PM
I learned touch typing from computer games. I also learned using Math and Alphabet games. Games are great teaching tools. It's a lot easier to teach someone who's interested in what they are doing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday April 24 2018, @06:30PM
I got this idea from how Star Trek shields works a couple of years ago: The spell damage mechanics in D&D style P&P RPGs could be made into a mathematical skill test using a chess clock. So, progression could be basic spells requiring you to memorize common polar and rectangular conversions. Magic shield resistances working through waveforms and requiring basic identities (basically simplified EE). And the most advance spells doing stuff at the digital design differential equations level. Through in extra rules for converting single target to area attacks using integrals...
Anywho, you'd still have warriors and some weapon based spell casting doing basic dice rolls. But the efficiency (dps) will prod those kids towards at least getting a level or two in a magic based classes and memorizing some cheat table.
Honestly, I wouldn't have thought this is possible a few years ago but current MMOs require so much game knowledge and grinding that I can really see this sort of mechanics working well if you can get the progression done right without people having to open math text books. After all, they're already browsing wikis for tips so even if they cheat with tables and calcs, over time they'll still get better just like they don't need to look up every little detail in the wiki after a while. No?
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:14PM (3 children)
I played that game years ago. The only Italian words I recall learning from it are merde and cazzo.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:08PM
You'll be able to tell if someone is trying to hire you for a contract killing, but you still can't ask where the bathroom is!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:21AM
I've never played it. Is it Italian with subtitles, or a mixed up Engtalian?
(Score: 2) by lgsoynews on Thursday April 26 2018, @09:50AM
"Merde" is french, not italian... (I'm french) :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:44PM
Finalmente si può scrivere un commento in italiano su un sito americano :)
Welcome to the italian-learning overlords :)