My free 10-day trail of World of Warcraft (WOW) ended recently, however I have not yet settled on an answer as to its’ educational uses. I did however come across a blog posting suggesting it for use in the learning a foreign language, which has me intrigued. As an intermediate speaker of Spanish with the desire to improve my proficiency, I have begun to think about ways in which I could learn Spanish were I to connect to one of the game servers in Spain and using the Spanish language patch for my gaming client…
There are several things within WOW that I have noticed that would help with learning a language:
Repetition - there are words and phrases that are seen (text) repeatedly when moving through the game, for instance I have encountered approximately 4 different “types” of Wolves;
Context – the context drives the language used by the game itself. Quests provide opportunities for reading and understanding the idea of what is being “stated” so that someone who is not fluent in the language would be able to form their understanding of unfamiliar words via the context in which they are used;
Socialization – while there is no voice directly through WOW, the opportunities to use what you know of a language is offered via chatting with other players.
But can these aspects of the game really provide a venue for learning a foreign language?
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