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tmp011007
Diglot
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Congo
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 Message 1 of 16
13 November 2011 at 1:46am | IP Logged 
want better X lang skills? start gaming :P


Code:
Finnish high school boys are pulling down better grades in English nowadays than girls. A new study suggests that computer gaming is giving boys' language skills a boost, with time spent gaming directly translating into high marks in English.

High school seniors Samuli Kytömäki and Lauri Salminen spend several hours a day playing video games. The ones packing action and strategy are a clear favourite. The boys say everyday exposure to English helps the language stick.

"If you hear English every day, it's just a matter of time before you learn it," says Kytömäki.

This link is now backed up by scientific proof. A study by the University of Helsinki compared the gaming habits and English grades of 500 high schoolers.

Grafiikka (YLE Uutisgrafiikka) Results showed that gaming directly correlates to high marks in English. Those manipulating a game console for 15 or more hours a week scored average grades close to 9 out of 10.

Dialogue-heavy games such as the role-playing game World of Warcraft are proving to be good English teachers.

Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, an English professor at the University of Helsinki, says role playing mimics regular verbal communication.

“The link between gaming and grades in this case is undisputable,” says Tanskanen.

In Finland, boys are more into gaming than girls -- which may help explain their easy mastery of the English language.

“School English doesn’t really teach me anything new at this point,” adds Salminen.


YLE                    
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ember
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 Message 2 of 16
13 November 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged 
That's true, and not only in Finland. My younger brother learnt English almost entirely
from gaming )))
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fomalhaut
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 Message 3 of 16
13 November 2011 at 2:44pm | IP Logged 
yeah, as an English native speaker seeing the huge advantage everyone else has in learning my language makes me not surprised they're all so skilled.   It's a HUGE disadvantage for me though, as I can't do the same thing for other languages (most games get pathetic excuses for localizations)
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Cainntear
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 Message 4 of 16
13 November 2011 at 4:14pm | IP Logged 
Typical press hyperbole...
Quote:
Dialogue-heavy games such as the role-playing game World of Warcraft are proving to be good English teachers.

Nope, they're proving to be good English practice. The quotes don't seem to suggest that the school was unimportant, but the article overstates the case.
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Ari
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 Message 5 of 16
13 November 2011 at 4:59pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
Nope, they're proving to be good English practice. The quotes don't seem to suggest that the school was unimportant, but the article overstates the case.

If Finland is anything like Sweden (and I'm pretty sure it is), exposure to English starts well before English education in school. In fact, it starts in ages where you're still in the "learn languages really fast without instruction" stage. I think for a lot of
people (but not everyone, of course), school English really is quite unimportant, because by the time they start formal study of English, they've already acquired a basic framework, and they're busy picking up new vocabulary through context. I
know this is really hard to judge for myself, and I might be very wrong here, but I honestly don't think my English instruction in school affected my learning of the language to a large degree. It's hard to imagine for native English speakers just how
omnipresent English is over here.
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Cavesa
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 Message 6 of 16
14 November 2011 at 4:09am | IP Logged 
Guess where I learnt most of my English. (a text based multiplayer RPG)

It was much more than "just practice". Sure, having some grammar base helped but that's quite all. I got a lot of exposure. I've had great motivation and lots of opportunities to write either longer texts or my part of dialogue in real time. I learnt a lot of vocabulary (not only I can name more medieval weapons in English than in Czech but tons of useful vocabulary as well) and to use grammar (even though I make stupid mistakes from time to time), idioms, common phrases and some informal language as well. School taught me perhaps one tenth of my English but that could have been acquired in shorter time (and with less stress, anger and even tears) with a good textbbok and grammar book instead of classes. And most importantly, I have learnt to think in the language. For listening practice, there were mostly films and tv series with subtitles (text games have some limits in this area :-) )

The game had taught me approximately 80% of what I used in my CAE exam. So, if you know about something like that in my other target languages, please tell me. I have Age of Empires in French (perhaps could switch to Spanish or German as well) but that is not sufficient. Free, multiplayer, rpg games are the best in my opinion. But those are only in English, I'm afraid.
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tmp011007
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 Message 7 of 16
14 November 2011 at 6:37pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
Free, multiplayer, rpg games are the best in my opinion. But those are only in English, I'm afraid.

english, japanese, korean and chinese (mandarin I guess)
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Serpent
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 Message 8 of 16
20 November 2011 at 4:22pm | IP Logged 
My cousin's English hasn't improved yet through games... But he plays with his Russian friends, and omg they pronounce so many words incorrectly. It might help his passive skills but I doubt he'd be able to use any of the words in English. But of course the movies are dubbed here, and he's not exactly motivated to learn English (even though we've been to Finland several times and English is no longer such an abstract thing for him.)


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