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Learning a Foreign Language with The Sims
JavaTHut writes "The Journal Language Learning and Technology has a new article describing how The Sims can be modified to teach a foreign language. With this and other efforts at U.S.C. and M.I.T., could simulated immersion within video games become an effective way of acquiring a foreign language? Also of interest in the article are suggestions for using spatialized translation layers in foreign language songs and a Firefox extension for learning foreign vocabulary words."
How lazy have we become that if it doesn't come from the TV or from a video game it just isn't worth doing?
dig dig.
I re-installed the original Sims probably 5 times before I realized that they were speaking their own language and not some german/spanish mix. I kept turning it up real loud trying to figure out what the fork they were saying.
..within video games become an effective way of acquiring a foreign language?
No.
How about foreign language sites on the Internet as well? Any recommendations?
There are also some excellent travel language sites that can get you started like travellang.com (I think).
For anyone who would prefer to listen to the article, there's an audio version availible at:
http://www.langwidge.com/llt/not_studying.mp3
The story is from the "no-habla-espaniol" department. That should be the "No-hablo-español" departamento.
Please fix.
Today's Sim gaming experience brought to you by the number ocho.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I'll admit that I am intrigued. This problem does suffer the flaw that, if it is played like normal, the player doesn't really need to know what is said, and will therefore probably ignore it. I believe the whole point of immersion is to make the person *need* to know it, and to provide an environment in which they can do so. If they can make it work, I'll pay for it. I'm going to wait and see how this develops.
Have computers gotten better at analyzing grammar? I remember this being a bit of a sticking point, but that was ten years ago. If so, this sounds like an excellent idea.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I unknowingly prepared myself to learn English by watching American cartoons.
When they started teaching us English as a second language in primary school, I was way ahead of every other kid, and the English teacher got me to help out the other kids.
Actual immersion within a foreign babe? (or within a foreign culture if your tastes does not run to babes). Most enjoyable learning experience you could ever have.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This probably wouldn't work too well with languages with different character sets where you couldn't even begin to guess how to pronounce the words, but English -> Spanish worked quite well.
But they would have to change the content of the Sims to make it useful. There's only so much I can do in a foreign country when all I can say is "take out the garbage", "Go to work", and "Eat some food". The game play would have to be changed to allow me to actually do something aside from mundane chores over, and over and over again.
In theory, I think this could work. Remember the Speak and Spell from back in the 80's? I had one, and loved playing with it and making it say bad words (when my mom wasn't watching) while I was doing the exercises that came with the thing. Foreign language video games seems a logical progression from the days of old.
OK, how many folks initially thought this article was about learning Simlish?
So were all of the people who downloaded early release copies of Halo 2 in French actually learning instead of just stealing? Sacre blu!!
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
Tulema!!!!
In small European countries which don't benefit from having games translated into the local language, the children play them in English, and as a result, pick up quite a bit of written language. I've seen this in the Czech Republic, and found it amazing that a ten year old could understand so much. That said, it does little for spoken language.
Never pet a burning dog.
I've heard a lot of people say that the pseudo language in The Sims sounds a lot like Portugese. Is that right in any respect?
Can't wait for "Grand Theft Auto" in German....
How do you think most people from countries with a "small language" can speak multiple languages (read northern European countries). Because you had to read either German or English magazines on computers (or for watching tv aswell, as dubbing was too expensive, so everything needed to be subtitled). And it was the earlier games as pizza tycoon, civilization that made me grab for the dictionary constantly and could speak English before it was taught at school.
But this language-mod is great, it looks like a more fun learning tool than an expensive (but excellent) official learning tool like rosetta stone (though that was a fun as I know of them)
Learn English from Beatles songs.
Learn French from Asterix comics.
Learn Italian from music scores.
Learn Japanese from Arcade games.
Learn German from pr0n videos.
Seriously though, I think people will get bored because of all the repetition it will say. Imagine hearing "KT-UTLAH' SHO'K!!" every two minutes... I would get crazy after a few hours! Not to mention everyone living in the house hearing that.
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
I already know all the 'leet-speak I'm interested in.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
not being a native English speaker various computer games and other applications have been a big help in learning English, already as a kid. At that time there were no interesting applications in my native language (Finnish)
I got an incredible boost of interesting words by playing Hobbit etc on Sinclair Spectrum in the early 1980's. How else would I have learnt such useful words as "goblin", "bulbous" etc. Learning those in an English class would have been so much more boring.
IMHO, currently people are relying on computer technology for their learnings and entertainment too much. As for learning a foreign language, isn't going to that country and talking to the 3-dimentional people the best way to learn? I know some people would maintain that not everyone has the opportunity to travel, but my point is that people shouldn't automatically resort to computers when it comes to learning and entertainment. There are other better options.
Großartiges Diebstahl-Automobil
Come on! I don't want my browser to do stupid things like teaching me some words. Not everything has to run in your browser. If you need a vocabtrainer make it a full program not just an extension to something else.
Heck imagine an extension for these M$ Office clients that let's them pop up on occasion and nag you until you give the correct translation
See pictures of tits
I don't think the Sims could provide a sufficient language portion that would allow anyone to get by. Most Sims events occur within the house, when any foreign language use would be required mostly outside of it in public places, which the Sims wouldn't cover.
In addition to that, the Sims would not really provide any kind of advancement since the progression in the storyline does not imply progression in the complexity of the language. As a result the gamer would dive right into the same language level as he will be playing from that point on. Language is difficult to learn when there is no sense of accomplishment and progression which can't exist in a paceless learning.
Lastly, the Sims is quite an addictive game (speaking from experience) and encouraging that from an educational standpoint is kind of like encouraging smoking because its cool while disregarding its health implications (a slight exageration but you get the point).
I've always wanted to learn a second language and I've tried when I was younger. However, growing up in a small town in the mid-west, I'd have to travel hundreds of miles to find someone who spoke the language natively. So sure, I could memorize words, syntax, etc., but, without the ability to use that knowledge on a regular basis, the memory fades.
.
To me, this sounds like a way to make it possible for people that don't have regular opportunities to use the language they are trying to learn a new way to get there from here.
The only caveat I can think of is that relative anonymity seems to bring out the a-hole in a lot of us. That is to say, there might be a lot of jerks entering the sim that would try to ruin it for the rest of us just for the amusement of doing so. I guess the sim-world will probably need a cover charge to keep out the riff-raff.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Get the Rosetta Stone program... it works. !snap
"Yeah, a shrink ray! Just like that time on Muppet Babies!"
If a particular sound does not exist in an adult's native language, then that person probably can't even recognize the sound let alone reproduce it correctly. This is why speakers of Chinese languages have such a dreadful time with English. I remember one engineer who sounded illiterate. I wondered why we hired him until I saw his written work. The guy was obviously a genius and had zero problem with written English (just don't try to talk to him.)
Apparently, the best native language to have is Russian because it has most of the sounds of most of the other languages.
I suspect that teaching some languages might be better handled using some of the techniques used to teach the deaf to talk. If anyone knows of work being done to deal with learning the sounds of a language, I'm all ears.
The best was to learn German is from good old fashion PORN and Metal music..,
Go download some Ramstein for German., http://www.rammstein.com/or BoneDust for Swiss-German...,
I have a Swiss friend and that's how she though me. A fun and easy way to learn any language.., I'm learning Japanese now from Hellsing http://www.witch-hunter.net/arucard/
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"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
I had a bootleg Japanese version of Gran Turismo for the PSX long before the US release and I got nothing out of that.
There is a game in old style RPG out there which will teach you to read japanese. It's actually very effective.
Slimeforest: http://lrnj.com/
Oh and it's free while in developement.
For us living in countries where games (or movies) are not translated from english, this is how it has been for ages. Here in Norway almost all games are in english, and lots of small children play them. (Though I guess you could find a better english teacher for your ten year old than GTA)
> If anyone knows of work being done to deal with
> learning the sounds of a language, I'm all ears.
Read down near the end of the article where it discusses problems with trying to learn a language out of a textbook and discusses audio solutions like the Pimsleur series.
I'm trying to learn Japanese, and I'm doing something similar to what this guy describes in the second half of the article. After learning the kana (Japan's phonetic "alphabets"), I switched my iPod into Japanese.
:) Unfortunately it doesn't give me much more than phonetic reading practice, since most of the words used on the iPod are actually on loan from English. Example: "purei-risuto" (Japanese fudges out the U's, making it sort of "pray-rist"). HMM, I wonder what that could possibly be....
Of course I can get around most menus without reading at all, since I knew where everything was by heart. However if I go into Browse or Settings, I have to translate.
Setting my computer's main language to Japanese could be next... but I think that will be a way bigger challenge.
Indicentally, I am also using the Pimsleur course this guy recommends. I'm on level 1 lesson 21, and so far it has been great. My friends' eyes bug out when I start speaking Japanese to them. Now if only I had some Japanese friends to practice on...:P
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Dhat iz hov I lernd to spek English!
Second, and related to reading, have you ever noticed in games like the Sims that you really don't read the whole thing...you skim over it to find out what you are supposed to do. If the game itself were good, you're not going to be paying enough attention to the language; and if the game were bad, well, you're not going to play it.
lately game technology is being used for other uses. for example, on discover channel or is it TLC, they are using game engines to illustrate historic wars. It's effective and much cheaper than paying 100K extras to march around. seems like a natural progression to me.
While this "concept" might be new to alot of Americans, alot of Europeans, Asians and whoever have used this to aqcuire English and maybe another language.
For instance, every child in Belgium is accostumed to read subtitles with some cartoons. (lately it seems they started dubbing cartoons for the younger children though. I remember being 8 watching He-man or Ji-Joe with subs.) Cause we don't "dub" (I personally find it really annoying in German dubbed movies, it just doesn't feel right.) And think about all the "imported" series, games, movies, and what not. They are all subtitled or even aren't (games and such). So teens overhere have a very good understanding about English (unless they are just into RAP and R&B music :P) cause they pick it up while being entertained.
My German knowledge mostly came from watching German childrens programs, and later German books or even comics as well.
I think it's super to be educated while playing, without ruining the fun of the game; Pick something up while you're entertaining yourself, it's not like you were going to pick up a book and study a language instead. But it seems supercool to go into a foreign country, and notice you actually understand some things and eventually will be able to communicate in a language not your own, as a result of playing a game you like which was going to be "dead time" anyhow.
They could expand this further, beyond just "language".
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I tried to learn chinese. Took some classes, but gave up. There needs to be romanized ( pinyin ) books to practice with so that westerners can learn the language BEFORE they learn to write it. Chinese children know how to speak chinese before they know characters - westerners would benefit from this too. And for those westerners without the budget to fly to/spend time in a foreign speaking area books are the only way to practice. If I'd spent the effort i spent trying to learn chinese trying to learn any other language that has an alphabet, I'd be able to speak/read/function in that language. Oh well. I can only pick out a word or two here and there when I hear chinese nowadays.
Whenever installing a game I try to install it in a foreign language that I've studied (if I have the option). That way I am completely immersed in the gaming environment.
Of course Neverwinter Nights in German was very annoying but it was worth a shot (I didn't know what the hell was going on and the baddies were A LOT more intimidating). I even use ATMs in foreign languages when the opportunity presents itself. Don't think I'm a snob though, because I actually don't have the self-discipline to study languages on a consistent basis anymore. In fact when I go to a foreign country I wind up clinging to the english-speakers over there (basically I don't leave my hotel).
Have you ever asked yourself, Is It Normal?.
At last everyone can learn Swedish and I don't have to speak and type English/American.
Äntligen kan alla lära sig svenska och jag behöver inte prata och skriva engelska/amerikanska.
.....:::[Svante]:::.....
They already tried it before:
"All your base are belong to us"
Based on that, I don't think it worked very well.
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
Remember the controversy of when Microsoft didnt double check their spanish and released a spanish language version of XP that asked if the user was a Male or a Bitch ?
I was not born in America. I moved here when I was around 10. My uncle bought me a computer (386sx) that had a few games on it. I remember playing Police Quest 1, fliping thru dictionaries to help me get through the puzzles. Kings quest 3, Rise of the Dragon, all these games required reading, and they helped me learn.
Then I got into RPGS. Land of Lore, Elder Scrolls: Dagger Fall (I had a better computer when I got this game, no way a 386sx can run this baby).
So yeah, games helped me learn English!
So that is why I got beat up... :)
He's got a throbber replacement to display flash cards while you surf. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make a toolbar double height in Firefox.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
I'm trying to learn Spanish at the old age of 42. Its incredibly hard as I realized lately I lost alot of brain cells when I was in my 20's. I'm using "Total Immersion Spanish" right now, and I am making glacial progress.
As a teaching tool to break up the monotony of textbooks and recorded audio, it sounds pretty good. A good teacher should give a sense of accomplishment and progression, not a computer program. The problem this addresses is how to practice language skills, in which case repetition and consistancy is a feature, not a bug.
i wonder what it is they're normally speaking, because i learned a lot of that, whatever it is-
zuma zumma su sah?
munna munna zu zah?
sa sa mananu zah!
ha ha ha ha ha!
unfortunately, i have a speech impediment- i haven't been able to summon little floaty bubbles with icons in them next to my head...
Grab the Pimsleur materials mentioned in the article off any fileshare network ... they blow away instant immersion.
try for example to write vietnamese without accent and you will end up completely incomprehensible. letters with accent may be a completely different letter/meaning.
More amusing to me was the example I once ran into in a Japanese tutorial book mentioning that the words for "escalator" and "handcuffs" are the same, only differing in which syllable you put stress on. Although I'm sure there's some word in English that behaves in a similar manner, althogh I can't currently think of one off the top of my head.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
"He was a good friend of mine! I couldn't understand a single word he said, but he served a mighty good wine." On a more serious note, learning a foreign language from the bible always sounded like a good idea to me. Its ubiquitous, usually cheap, and often you can get versions in colloquial dialects as well as formal/ old-fashioned language, and many elaborate software packages exist for studying. OT rambling, maybe, but the above /. poster referenced the Good Book, and I'm still trying to deal. If its not sci/tech, please stick to pop-culture references ouch, my head.
I've always used web based translation tools to learn languages. I especially like Google's "Translate this page" feature.
In all honesty, I think it would be easier to learn a languange in a regular chat room than playing this game. One of the key aspects of immersion is being exposed to different situations and different vocabulary - and interacting with people is the best way of doing so. The caveat is that you need to at least know a little bit of the given language before you start logging into any foreign chat room. Otherwise, people will not have the patience to talk to you.
I told a colleague at work that I was planning on learning French. He ERUPTED at me and told me how useless anything French was...
While the number of people speaking French as a primary language aren't really all that huge, I understand that the number of people speaking French as a second language is second only to those speaking English as a second language. If this is true (I've had it quoted at me a few times, but I've never found a cite), I suspect it's a lingering effect from the days when French was the language for the royal and the intellectual elite in Europe. From my experience travelling through Russia, almost everyone I met either spoke English or French, so I was able to get by without an extensive Russian vocabulary.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Well, considering that lunix does not have multi-language support, I'd say it does not affect you in any way.
Too bad this guy will probably be hauled off to jail for violating DMCA laws.
...but the real question is can it teach me to understand this headline?
Most of the people that I know that are learning Japanese draw great benefits from things like manga, anime, and Japanese video games (all in original Japanese language of course). One of the best tools I had when learning Japanese was Final Fantasy XI, in fact.
Teachers should evaluate the game translation before using it to teach. I have worked as a localization tester for a video game (English->Spanish). There were several occasions when my correction to the translation was overridden/ignored due to time crunches or bureaucracy. At times our supervisor only paid attention to the loc testers if we found something actually offensive in the text. They simply let go a lot of stupid errors that were caused by misunderstandings between the translators and loc testers (the translators had not even played the game before they started working on the text!)
Now my Sim can piss his pants and pass out on the floor in German or Spanish!
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Let's get real. If this worked, my girlfriend would be speaking fluent simlish. As it is, she only knows enough to say "My crayon is large and red."
How do you change your language on windows XP? I don't see an option for it. (XP Home)
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
I'll be able to say "Killing Spree!" in French in no time!
You can also learn Swedish from pr0n. Remember John Candy in Splash?
see http://www.mail-archive.com/mt-list@eamt.org/msg00 756.html
Grab the Pimsleur materials mentioned in the article off any fileshare network
Or legally purchase them.
I recently came across this article at Kuro5hin about a guy (the author) that took to learning to read, write, and speak French fluently in one year. The author has a background in computer programming, and so his perspectives are probably easy to understand for a lot of Slashdot readers. While there's a good deal of the article that focuses on French in particular, a lot of his techniques can be applied to any language. I'd like to use them to learn Spanish, myself. I recommend this read if you're interested in learning a foreign language. There's a lot of great tips and motivation in there.
The best teaching method to learn a new language is to throw yourself into a situation where you have to communicate with others to survive, in other words move to where the language you want to speak is prevelant. I have looked into teaching ESL classes before, the most common method is to put a bunch of people in a room and make them talk to each other. I have seen this work on more people than fail.
Now, just to further my education of course, where's the download link for this learning software?
I was hoping for fresh work on the understanding of how people hear phonemes.
I have a couple of reasons I care about this. One is some of the adult students I have had. They live in a totally English environment, they have taken several English courses but they are still hopeless. It hurts to tell someone that they stand no chance in our Electronics program because their spoken English is so bad. The particular student I am thinking about had been a college teacher in China. He was not dumb nor was he lazy but after first semester it was obvious that he wasn't going to make it in our program because he couldn't understand what people were saying.
Anyway, I wonder if there is something out there that uses some kind of bio-feedback to help people learn the sounds of a language. The old joke about Chinese people mixing up their Rs and Ls has a basis in fact. They can't hear the difference because they didn't learn those sounds as children.
Immersion is fine for some people. My eastern European students (Polish, Serbian, etc.) have no trouble learning English. My Chinese students do. They obviously need something extra.
These kinds of activities have been part of multimedia language courses for a long time. Some commercial computer-based language courses even include speech recognition and give you feedback.
However, while language learning by interacting in a game world may be more fun and keep students more motivated, it is unproven that it is actually faster than structured exercises. In fact, experience with existing language learning techniques suggests that it may well take more time to learn a language through interaction than through exercises.
It's like exercise machines vs. participating in a sport: the exercise machines will give you a more efficient and effective workout, but participating in a sport is more fun.
Anyone can understand English so long as you speak loudly and slowly enough. Time and time again, American tourists have proven this the world over.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I've been thinking of writing a 'zorkish' text based adventure in German for a long time. I learned a bit of German in college, but knew that I would need to practice it regularly if I wanted to improve or even retain the German that I know.
I figured a text adventure could work great, because you could start with a very limited vocabulary. The user would only need to know maybe 5 verbs, and 10-15 nouns to get into the game, then as they continue playing they are introduced to more verbs and nouns. A sufficiently lengthy game could contain maybe a few thousand different words that the user could use as input to the game. Different versions of the game could contain vocabulary that was geared towards particular areas. (i.e. a version for tourists, for students, for business travelers, etc.)
Output would be in German, but typing "Sprechen Sie English? (Do you speak english?)" would cause the same output to be repeated in English.
Also, a built in dictionary would allow the player to ask in German "what is [german-word] in english?" or vice-versa.
The major problem with this is that the grammar in text adventures is usually simplified. Grammar might have to be learned passively by the text the game outputs, because parsing complex grammar might be too complicated (certainly it would be if I were writing this game). Even if grammar was not conveyed to the user, certainly a larger vocabulary could be.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
this is a bit tangential but does anyone know if there are any wiki-like projects out there for an audio based international langauge learning dictionary? If not, why not? Somthing like this shouldnt suffer as badly from the same kinds of problems which wikis dealing with more rarified/uncommon knowledge are experiencing.
When i was 12 we got a computer at home, one of the games i used to play was "The Secret of Monkey Island". However it was in English (I'm Dutch), I basically learned English by playing that game. :)
lol
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
I mean, I'm absolutely positive the vast majority of viewers would appreciate the shift due to the preference of subs over dubs, but it would also help people start learning some Japanese. I know thats how I picked up a bunch, and it also helped supplement the books I was using because it let me hear how things were used in context, and learn some intonation.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
*grumble* That will teach me to post links without doing a preview...
Yes, there are homographs. But in all of your examples, they're pronounced differently. For that matter, there are words in English which are pronounced and spelled the same with different meanings such as "cleave" which can mean "cut apart" or "stick together" for an example of opposites and "fluke" meaning "a type of worm," "a chance occurence," or "a whale's tail" as an example of simply the same word meaning different things. What I'm looking for is a word which differs only in accentuation. The closest I can think of are Initial-stress-derived nouns but even those tend to seperate into the noun and the verbed noun.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Well, that paper was quite an eye-opener for me. I would never imagine that playing a game in another language can help you learn it... What next - watching foreign movies with subtitles can help learn a new language?
On a more serious note, we can only hope that these obvious ideas would reach the teachers and school administrators. Teaching language with the Sims game is a great idea. Add to that a few different games and you can teach the students most of the vocabulary they would ever need. Personally I learned a lot of English playing Civilization (and English games in general) and can vouch for the effectiveness of this method.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I picked up a lot of english words playing Fallout games. When you want to improve your language it's good to play games with a lot of dialogues, like RPGs. Playing games is a good motivation to look up words in a dictionary.
Allow me to introduce you to the most useful site you will ever find: http://www.rikai.com/ Plug in a Japanese web site URL and click "go". Mouse over any kanji and it will pop up a reading and translation of it.
It's by far the most useful thing I've found.
My other first post is car post.
Have you ever even been outside of the United States? In Greece my parents home country more Greeks watch American movies in the cinema than Greek movies. On Greek television, more American movies are shown than Greek movies. On Greek radio as well lots of English speaking movies are shown.
You cannot compete with this just with school. In the United States outside of Spanish, you cannot watch TV programming in a foreign language. If you have satellite you can pay for 4 Greek TV channels $30 a month, but that is a ripoff. But in Greece, on actual Greek TV stations most of the movies played are American. American culture has invaded the globe, business, etc. and brought English with it. Your comment about education in foreign languages shows you have never left the States, making it earlier will not change the fact that the States are still a monolingual land. Most of the people who know foreign language stateside, are speaking their mother tongue or their parent's mother tongue, which has remained their second language.
Subtitles are only helpful when you are more than semifluent already. Subtitles move so fast, when I watch a Foreign movie like Run Lola Run, Tu Mama Tambien, Seven Samaruai, it is hard enough to keep with the English text at the bottom at times. To learn a language like that is just stupid. It will only help to read subtitles when you have already established some fluency, or else you will just be frustrated and learn nothing.
They think knowing foreign computer jargon is learning a foreign language.
Does anyone have a screenshot of this? I would love to see it.
Sorry but I couldn't find any reference to a Firefox extension for language education. Can someone point me in the right direction?
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
You have no idea. The biggest grossing box offices are American movies not Greek, most movies shown on Greek TV are American, some radio stations play more American than Greek music, the Greek translation of the Davinci code used to be number one on the Greek bestseller list(this piece of trash historical mystery was bad enough in English, why oh why translate it), etc.
If this is not an invasion, what is! You are just being a pedant of diction. I went to Greece to see my parent's homeland and experience Greek culture. I found this near extinct Greek culture being replaced by McDonaldization.