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 A few weeks ago, we first talked about Dr. Edd Schneider and his take on how World of Warcraft and other MMOs could serve as English teaching tools. English is of course the language of business and, with the wide scope of WoW and other MMOs, this idea could just work.
After that, not much has been said about it...until now. Gamasutra was able to interview Professor Schneider and learn more about bridging the language gap by using WoW and other MMOs. When he was asked what inspired him to start connecting American and Chinese players, he candidly replied that it was all about marketing at first. But then, he had a nagging thought...
games are supposed to let us play together, then for a lot of MMOs they split everyone up on servers. I think that's totally asinine. If you play WoW, wouldn't you like to play against the best players from China? Everyone would say "yes." What we're hoping people are going to do is say, 'Let's make an ESL-friendly server. Tell the Americans that not everyone is going to have perfect English, but they're going to want to learn."
So with that thought in mind, he proceeded with the project. He assigned one of his classes to teach some students of Chibuo High School in Shanghai by using any game. The students chose WoW, Scrabble, and other casual games. And that subject was a hit with the Chinese students. Now, they are planning on putting together a summer camp - Asian kids would be taught to learn English. He continued by saying:
We're also looking to connect high school students in America and China. That way they could develop long-term relationships. They could start in ninth grade and play in the same guild until they graduate. As for what games we'll use, we're still trying to decide. There are a lot of Korean games that are totally free so I think that's what we'll go with. That way it's not a money thing.
Let's just hope that game developers would find this appealing and would lend a hand with this project.
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