The Dungeons and Dragons dashboard helped me learn English
First, I’ll tell you a little about Dungeons & Dragons to all those who first hear about this game. In short, this is a desktop that has become the progenitor of many computer games in the RPG genre.
Elves, dwarves, gnomes, epic adventures and the opportunity to become a hero yourself and get complete freedom of action in the fantasy world. In general, a little imagination, and you are already a half-orc barbarian who destroys enemies with his two-handed ax. And in another game, you are an elf who professionally opens locks and shoots accurately.
D&D really offers characters almost complete freedom of action within the module (the so-called story game). You can act as you like, you just need to remember that any actions will have consequences.
If you have never heard of D&D before, the TED had a very interesting and understandable presentation of what it is. Take a look:
Role-playing players with experience can immediately move on.
How I got to D&D
I’ve been playing Dungeon and Dragons for four years now. And today I already understand that the first master, with whom I was lucky to play, was an oversight in terms of rules. He had books of rules in English, and a character sheet was also needed in English.
Well, at least the game process itself was conducted in Russian. In the first few sessions, when I was just sorting out the basics, it was unusual to hear something like:
– I make a chromatic orb, I spend one sorseri point to split the spell.
– Do attack rolls.
– 16. Got it?
– Yes, drop the damage.
Now I understand why the master did this – the existing translations of the D&D rule books are very, very imperfect, so it was much easier to use such crutches.
The then knowledge of English allowed me to more or less understand what was going on, and more experienced players helped. It was unusual, but nothing more.
That evening I found on the internet a fully translated into Russian and professionally made up version of PCBs (Player’s handbook – Player’s book). He asked: why then do we play in English, if there is already a normal translation?
In general, he showed me one page in Russian. I laughed. Here she is:
The state “Prone”, which basically means “lying” or “knocked down,” the translators adapted as “flattened”. And indeed the entire state table is translated differently and out of place. Here’s how to use “flattened” in the game? Have you slipped and are now flattened? Flattened?
And what is this general explanation: “A sprawled creature can only move crawling until it stands up, thereby ending the state”? Even my, in principle, imperfect knowledge of English was enough to understand – the phrase was simply translated from English literally.
In later fan localizations it was already a little better. Not “flattened,” but “knocked down,” but the Russian “bawdy ”’s confidence was undermined. In the future, I myself tried to tinker with it and found ambiguities in it in the wording of the rules, which greatly complicated the interpretation of the actions of the players. From time to time I had to climb into the English kornik and check the information there.
How it brought me to play with the British
After about six months, our master moved to another city. It became corny no one to play with – there were no D&D clubs in the city. Then I began to search for online modules and got to the site roll20.net.
In short, this is the largest platform for holding online board game sessions. But there is a minus – almost all games are played in it in English. There are, of course, Russian modules, but there are very few of them. In addition, for the most part they are “for their own”, that is, they do not take players from the side there.
I already had an advantage – I already knew English terminology. In general, I had English at the Intermediate level, but here the colloquial part is approximately “are you dumb?”
As a result, I registered and submitted an application to the “for beginners” module. I talked with the master, talked about my meager knowledge of the language, but he was not embarrassed.
The first online module for me personally was a failure. Most of the time I tried to understand what the master and the players said there, because two of them had terrible accents. Then he frantically tried to somehow describe the actions of his character. It turned out, frankly, bad. Mumbled, forgot words, stupid – in general, felt like a dog who understands everything, but can not say anything.
Surprisingly, after such a performance, the master suggested that I play in a longer module, designed for 5-6 sessions. I agreed. And what I did not expect at all was that by the last fifth session of the module I would be quite tolerably aware of both the master and the other players. Yes, there were still problems with expressing my thoughts and describing actions, but I could already properly control my character with speech.
To summarize, the games on roll20 gave me something that classical classes could not give:
Normal language practice in real life. In fact, I worked out the same scenarios that the textbooks suggested – going to the store, bargaining with the customer and discussing the assignment, trying to ask the guard for directions, a description of items and clothing details. But everything in that setting where I enjoyed it. I remember that in preparation for the next session I spent about an hour to find and remember the name of all the harness elements for the horse.
A moment of self-education from the EnglishDom online school of English:
Reins – reins
saddle – saddle
horsecloth – blanket (yes, literally “horse clothes”)
bar bit – bit
blinders – blinders
girth – cinch
bridle – bridle
breeching – harnessTo learn English words much easier than I did, download Ed Words app. By the way, as a gift, catch premium access to it for a month. Enter promotional code dnd5e here or directly in the application
Listening to a living language. Although everything was fine with the perception of “student English”, I was not ready for a living language at first. I still had enough of the American accent, but among the players there were still a Pole and a German. Wonderful English with a Polish and German accent – he ate my brain, because of which my almost did not communicate with their characters. By the end of the module, it became easier, but the experience was not easy.
Pumping vocabulary. I had to seriously work with vocabulary. The plot itself was tied to events in the city and in the forest, so I had to hurriedly study the most diverse names: trees and herbs, artisans and shops, the ranks of aristocrats. In total, I learned about 100 words in a fairly small module. And most interestingly, they were given quite easily – because they had to be used immediately in the game world. If something was not clear during the game, I asked for the spelling and looked in the multi-screen, and then threw the word into my dictionary.
Yes, I knew in advance the main names of actions and spells in English, which helped me a lot to get comfortable. But there was a lot of new. I spent about an hour and a half before the next session to go through the vocabulary and features of the character, repeat something or see what new things can be brought in.
Motivation. Honestly, I did not see D&D at all as a way to learn English – I just wanted to play. English in this case became a tool that helped me resume my gaming experience.
You do not perceive it as an end in itself, it simply goes as an instrument. If you want to communicate normally with the players and win back your character – pull up the materiel. Yes, in large cities there are D&D clubs, but my city did not have them, so I had to get out. In any case, the experience was interesting. I still play roll20, but now it’s easier to communicate in English.
Now I understand that my experience is a great example of the gamification of learning. When you learn something, not because you need it, but because you are so damn interested.
In fact, even during the very first module, when I learned about 100 words in 5 sessions, it was easy for me. Because I taught them with a specific purpose – to tell something through the mouth of my character, to help the party members in the development of the plot, to solve a riddle myself.
More than three years have passed since my first online module, but I can still tell the structure of the horse harness and the names of each of its elements in English. Because I learned not from under a stick, but from interest.
Gamification is widely used in training. For example, in EnglishDom online classes the process of learning a language is also similar to a role. You are assigned tasks, you complete them and gain experience, upgrade specific skills, increase their level and even receive rewards.
I believe that such should be the training – unobtrusive and bringing a lot of pleasure.
I will not say that my good English is the merit of only Dungeons and Dragons, no. Because in order to improve the language, I later took courses and studied with the teacher. But it was this role-playing game that pushed me to learn the language and laid the interest for further work with it. I still perceive English solely as a tool – I need it for work and leisure. I am not trying to read Shakespeare in the original and translate his sonnets, no. Nevertheless, it was D&D and role-playing that were able to what the school and the university could not – arouse interest in him.
Yes, this method is not suitable for everyone. But who knows, maybe some D&D fans will be interested and go to roll20 to play there, and at the same time swing their English a little.
If not, there are more well-known and familiar ways of learning a language. The main thing is that the process itself is interesting and enjoyable.
EnglishDom.com online school – inspire you to learn English through technology and human care
Only for readers of Habr first lesson with a teacher on Skype for free! And when you purchase classes, get up to 3 lessons as a gift!
Get it a whole month of premium subscription to the ED Words app for free.
Enter promotional code dnd5e on this page or right in the ED Words application. The promotional code is valid until 01/27/2021.
Our products:
Learn English words in the ED Words mobile app
Learn English A to Z in the ED Courses Mobile App
Learn English in a game form in the online simulator
Build conversation skills and make friends in conversation clubs
Watch the English life hack video on the EnglishDom YouTube channel
