Warcraft Teaches Spanish, Part 1

This is the first in a series of articles about my experience playing World of Warcraft to learn Spanish. This is the continuation of my thinking with Ravi Purushotma at MIT about how to use commercial off the shelf games as language learning tools (see our GDC 2006 presentation video and Ravi's thesis). The basic premise with all of this work is that commercial games are already localized into many languages and that language educators and game developers can use these resources to cheaply create entertaining learning experiences. Blogger Katelyn Olmstead, a co-conspirator in this experiment, has already begun her own series on playing WoW to learn Spanish. Her first article focuses on the technical challenges we faced getting the Spanish version set up in the US.

We picked World of Warcraft for several reasons. One, because it's an MMO, it's immersive and social and it elicits lots of playing time. Two, because it's WoW, it's popular and well known, with high production values. Three, because it has a highly customizable interface, and we saw potential for integrating translation and annotation features.

I play with a Spanish client (interface) on servers in Spain, so the other players all speak Spanish. Katelyn alternates between Spanish and English clients on the Spanish servers. Ravi plays with the German client on Spanish servers.

I have intermediate Spanish skill, so I can understand just about everything in the game if I read slowly and keep a computerized dictionary handy. There are a few ways that I expose myself to Spanish while playing the game. First, there are certain key words that come up over and over again which I learn easily. Second, every quest has a couple of paragraphs of the story text. Third, chatting with other players through text or reading their chat transcripts in real-time exposes me to natural, imperfect language production (natural in the context of the game, at least). I'll examine each of these learning situations in more depth now.

Some keywords in the game show up over and over again, and I learn them easily. These words relate to my character's primary actions, like resting, hitting, taking damage, and casting spells. I also learned all of my character's traits, like strength, stamina, and intelligence. I learn all of the parts of my character's body which can be protected with armor, such as head, chest, shoulders, legs, and feet. I learn the names of all of the creatures I encounter in the world, both real and fictional, including boars, wolves, bears, and crabs as well as Troggs and Murlocs. Fortunately for me, as a game designer, even these game-specific, fantasy names are relevant to my vocabulary. I learn all of the different professions players can adopt in the game, including tailoring, leatherworking, mining, fishing, cooking, and herbalism. I learn the names of the fantasy races, like orcs, elves, humans, and dwarves. Again, all of these words I learn easily without any extra effort on my part. It would be difficult to play with the Spanish interface and not learn these words.

Quests offer players opportunities to practice reading Spanish, but they are easily skipped. Each quest comes with a few paragraphs of story and instructions, where a computer-controlled character (NPC) in the game world requests that the player's character perform some services. Reading this text slows down play significantly. When playing in groups, other group members may become impatient and ask a player who is reading slowly to hurry up. If the player reads quickly enough or is sufficiently motivated to learn the language, these brief stories provide entertaining, grammatically-correct interludes with a fairly wide vocabulary. I read the text for every quest I do, frequently two or three times. I read it once when I get the quest, once when I begin the quest (which could be hours or days later), and once when I finish the quest. While reading, I switch back and forth between WoW and computer translator Ultralingua (ALT-TAB on Windows), typing in words I don't understand to see translations. I think this functionality could be built into the game's interface as a tool-tip pop-up, eliminating the need to type the unknown word. Because of my skill level with Spanish and because of the similarity between Spanish and English, I only need to look up a handful of words for each quest. Ravi, who plays with the German interface, struggles more, since German and English vocabularies differ more. Katelyn also struggles with the vocabulary and different grammatical forms, and generally forgoes reading the quest text entirely.

Chatting with other players in Spanish is perhaps the most compelling way to become more comfortable with the language. Unfortunately, I have spent the least time with this activity so far. Partly, this is because Katelyn, Ravi, our friend Lori, and I all play together, so we rarely require the skills and services of other players. We are too self-sufficient as a unit. However, the few interactions I have had with Spanish speakers have felt the most meaningful and have given me the biggest rush, in terms of language learning. So far, I have only communicated via text, but I hope to set up a guild which incorporates voice chat as well (probably via Skype or Teamspeak). I hope to write more about this in the future.

My initial impressions of WoW as a language learning tool are mixed. On the one hand, there is a high percentage of time spent in the game not learning the language. For this reason (and many others), use of a game like this would probably not find its way into classrooms. On the other hand, the game does encourage a long-term commitment to language learning. For some, slow and steady may be better than nothing at all. Players who enjoy the game and language will find play an easy, fun, and rewarding way to learn as a complement to other learning activities. Chiefly, the game includes very little spoken word (unless using voice chat with a group), so players may need to look elsewhere for ear training.

Cross posted from CrossGamer.com.