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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: 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]