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.

Dr. Edd Schneider, 12-year veteran attendee of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and associate professor at the State University of New York at Potsdam, recently gave a speech at the GDC about a topic we often take for granted. The talk was titled "English Speaking Players as In-Game Content."

What Dr. Schneider basically wants is to introduce international servers in Blizzard's World of Warcraft and other games like it. It is common that people could only play WoW and other online games on their own localized servers. He believes that international servers would be better for game makers and gamers. He also stressed that non-English speakers could be enticed to learn English if they play an MMO with or against English speakers.

Dr.Schneider said that "a lot of online games have gotten bad press where you get a couple of idiots in a chat room or in a guild that will say, 'Only perfect English. If you don't speak perfect English then get out of here,' " he added that "they'll hassle players from other countries."

Last year, Dr. Schneider tested his theories by recruiting graduate students to play online games with students from Shanghai's Qi Bao High School. They noticed a significant improvement in the English skills of the Chinese students. Dr. Schneider even said that "They were going from, 'Oh my God, I'm afraid to talk, I'm just gonna type,' to, 'How's it going? I'm going to kick your butt this time in this game.' " Because of this, he's preparing a program this summer incorporating his theories. He's hoping to eventually turn the program into a summer camp.