PlaneShift
Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Bantam on December 07, 2014, 09:00:54 pm
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Hello, everybody. I hope I found the right spot to post this:
The question: Do you or someone you know need to improve their English conversation and might like doing so while playing on PlaneShift?
I am the player of Bantam, and I would like to start a voice chat group which meets online in Yliakum. Studies have shown that language classes conducted in virtual realities can be both fun and efficient, and -- being a language instructor in RL -- I would like to move this approach from academia into the real world. Language practice of this sort could be of help for those who can't afford the substantial expenses of time and money to attend brick and mortar evening schools or hire an in-home tutor. It could help those whose RL shyness prevents them from engaging in conversation in RL, and those who are already so overworked they need to get in some R&R time (voice chat while gaming would combine English practice and R&R). I think this idea has real potential, but finding the first participants is hard.
This could also bring new players to PlaneShift which seems it could use a few more. So, everybody would win. O--)
So, if you are -- or if you know -- someone who could benefit from this, contact me in-game, or by answering this post, or send your non-playing friend to this little contact site I slapped together on Weebly: http://virtual-immersion-english.weebly.com/
Thanks, everybody. :)
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It sounds like a good idea and free language practice in a setting you already use is valuable. :thumbup:
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But I already speak English.
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It sounds like somebody has made an account just to advertise their product.
Do you really want people with no interest in the game joining just so they can learn English?
RolePlayer: You there! Did you see which way the bar wench ran?
Noob: ^V
Noob: ^C^V
Noob: putain!
Noob:
""Hello fellow gamer. I don't role play or grind or anything, I'm just here to learn^M English. I prefer to speak with native English speakers only." "Do you mind if we^M voice chat so you can correct my English and help me to speak without an accent?^M""
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I agree with Rigwyn. This advertisement was this person's first post. It might be different if it was someone who was more known and experienced in the PS world and forum. It's a good idea and all, but I wouldn't do it unless I knew that this was an actually PS player trying to help others rather than someone who's doing this to advertise their service rather than RP. Also, as Rigwyn said, it would bring in people who don't have any interest in RP and just want to learn English, which completely defeats the purpose of PS. Besides, I'm a native English speaker, so I don't need it.
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I am not a native english speaker. But while roleplaying in PlaneShift, I already learned a lot about common and casual English. Even without voices in my head...
Typing may be slower, but written English is a very important part of learning it correctly, spoken English is not always sufficient to distinguish similar sounding words. Even though pronouncing requires listening to a good speaker, I believe you can't learn a language by listening only. You may know issues like "could of" instead of "could have" (and I find it amusing that "native speakers" possibly make this kind of mistake more often than foreigners).
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It sounds like somebody has made an account just to advertise their product.
For the sake of truth, I have to say I have seen quite often a character named Bantam playing in the last few months. I remember once to have seen him at a dev meeting.
I remember him because bantam is a (very light) weight category in some martial arts and if I'm not wrong the character was a Kran.
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Still, this could cause people to join PS for the sake of learning English, which isn't exactly what it's for, and it wouldn't help with encouraging RP. I'm sorry for sounding rude, but I'm not the biggest fan of this idea. This isn't the right environment for learning English, in my opinion, or at least not for joining just to learn it.
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I'm sure there are plenty of people already playing who can type in english but not necessarily converse in it.
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I understand that, but if PS becomes a game for people play for the purpose of learning English, then it might get in the way of RP.
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Not likely to be any worse than the people who come to grind and not RP. And the people who are there talking won't be filling up main with OOC conversations as the English learning has to involve speaking and hearing. As long as it stays between people willing to participate in teaching others it shouldn't be a problem. And I've seen bantam running around for some time now so I doubt he's trying to take anything from the game.
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A lot of people have used Planeshift to better their English skills. A post on this forum does not strike me as much of an advertising opportunity as it is an extremely niche market. How is this thread particularly different than previous posts trying to get teamspeak and other voice or video chat users to connect?
Does anyone remember Janner? He used PS to improve his English and went on to become a GM. I am sure others from the team didn't let their unfamiliarity with the language stop them from contributing and gained proficiency in English on the way.
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Does anyone remember Janner? He used PS to improve his English and went on to become a GM. I am sure others from the team didn't let their unfamiliarity with the language stop them from contributing and gained proficiency in English on the way.
Learning English isn't the issue. It's great that we have members who speak various languages and a community that is warm and welcoming to those who are learning. I just don't think that promoting planeshift as a language learning tool is such a good idea.
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/me started in Janners Way...
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I would think any kind of promotion would be a good thing at this point.
But, not wanting people that come to learn English kinda ends up sounding more like, "we don't want anyone else to come if they might not be here for the *exact* same thing we are." There isn't any real reason for this to impact the game play of people who aren't participating in this, and, truth be told, many players join the game having no intent on RPing anyway, but they end up becoming RPers after time. It's what happened to me.
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How odd, I just got a spam message trying to phish me into supplying my email/pass to a weebly address. Not related to this thread but a curious coincidence.
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I understand the concerns expressed here by some, and I hesitated to place a post like this for fear it might be misunderstood. I posted it only after encouragement from fellow players. I know that forums like these are often targeted by spammers, and RP communities have reason to fear a dilution of their RP minded player base. So, maybe I should say a little more about myself and what I am doing, trying to do, or not trying to do:
1.) I did not make a character "just to offer services". Firstly, there are no services yet, and I created Bantam months ago as part of a 2-year long search for an MMORPG in which the RPG part of the acronym is more than purely cosmetic. As Bantam, I currently have 144 quests completed, and I RP a lot (and would RP more if there were more opportunities such as via more dedicated role players in our playerbase than there currently seem to be, especially at the times I can be on). I am a long time role player from long before PlaneShift existed who has spent many years playing AD&D and MERP (i.e. the pen & paper origin of games like PS), online text-based MUDs (including one from which PS could learn how to improve the RP), and more recently some MMORPGs in which I didn't find much scope for RP at all. I consider RPGs not only entertaining and a great escape for those among us for whom RL is not enough, but - as an educator - I see them as powerful educational experiences whose potential has not yet been tapped.
2.) Two years ago, while working in a private school where parents and faculty were in an uproar over the widespread gaming of many students some of whom regularly skipped classes to play World of Warcraft (WOW) cooperatively while voice chatting (it's faster than typing and frees up your hands), I decided to join the students on Azeroth (WOW's virtual world) to see what this popular fad was all about. While RP was mostly missing (since WOW's code does little to support it) I quickly discovered that these students were training a lot of useful skills while gaming, and the idea was born (for me) to incorporate such gaming in education. I have since read about academic studies and isolated school experiments done in this direction, but there really isn't much out there, yet. I believe there exists a niche for people, young and old, for whom this would be perfect. So, I want to do my part in making more of this happen. And I posted here to ask others to help.
3.) This is my first post on this forum simply because (A) I prefer in-game activity over off-game forums, (B) I discovered PS only a few months ago, (C) the many off-game PS related sites out there take quite some time finding and exploring, and (D) in order to succeed I must hurry to start this pilot before other RL endeavors assume priority to the possible exclusion of all other projects. Weebly also being used by actual spammers would be no surprise since Weebly offers free hosting. If the website I whipped up looks commercial, it's because I made it for "advertisement" or "marketing" purposes. I completely stink at marketing and may be doing it all wrong, but I have to try my best or nothing will ever happen from my end for sure. I would really appreciate if anybody here who knows somebody for whom online voice chat (especially while gaming) would be an educational boon would let them know about this possibility. I am just asking nicely. You obviously don't have to if you don't want to.
4.) Yes, people can practice languages in games without voice chat (and I myself am perfectly happy playing without voice chat), but there are a lot of English learners out there who are taught reading and writing but no talking and who keep failing miserably at the latter even as their current or future jobs may require it. Some of them spend excessive amounts of time and money on evening classes or tutoring sessions which are less effective (and less entertaining) as my proposed idea could be.
5.) Improving the public image and understanding of RPGs, bringing the "RPG" back into the MMORPG market (which IMHO has lost its way), and realizing the educational potential of RPGs are dreams of mine. I think there is nothing ominous or nefarious about those dreams, and I value PlaneShift too much that I would do anything to endanger it. Should I ever be so lucky that my classes would outgrow PS, there are plenty of MMORPGs out there whose huge player base could easily absorb them. For now, I simply hope to start a small pilot voice chat group which tries out meeting on PlaneShift (and possibly other virtual places as well, but for now I prefer PlaneShift because this is where I myself like to play nowadays, and because its slow pace, the (mostly) friendly playerbase, and even its many bugs and rough edges would seem to make for a better virtual classroom than the frenzied and often antisocial environments of games like WOW). If this were to gain PS a handful of new role players, that would be a good thing, I think. I believe this is an experiment worth to try and worthy of support by other players on Yliakum.
I hope this clears things up a little and calms those fears that an invasion of RP-averse noobs is imminent. ;)