I was once asked “What is the easiest type of online game to adapt for language learning?” I thought about it for a bit and then answered, “Any online game with a walkthrough.” This inevitably led to the next question, “What’s a walkthrough?” So, I showed them what they were, where to find them and how to use them as access to the internet was conveniently at hand. For present intents and purposes I find wikipedia’s definition of a walkthrough quite succinct:

“a walkthrough is a document or video showing a player how to win a game”

Back to the question I was first asked and a longer answer would be that one secret to designing a language activity around a video game is essentially to unearth the text within the game. Of course, there are cases of games where an overt use of language occurs within the game. For instance, any written or spoken text that is produced by the in game characters doesn’t need unearthing. This kind of language content may be good for the language learning gamers’ receptive skills but the majority of online adventure and point-and-click games rely more on their challenging puzzles rather than text. They just don’t use it extensively. A walkthrough is an easy way to find text and language that is relevant to the gamer and the gaming experience.

What is a walkthrough?

The wikipedia quote alludes to a walkthrough being both a document or a video. At this moment I’d like to look just at the document kind. More specifically a written walkthrough. Typically this type of walkthrough is quite simplistic and can, at times, read like an instruction manual. ‘Click here and this will happen’. Neither are they there to be read lineally from start to finish. Many walkthroughs are used more as reference guides to help the gamer overcome a difficult stage they have reached in a game. Players use them when they are stuck and find that repeated attempts to ‘move on’ are less of a challenge but more of a frustration. The gamer wants to then get past this part of the game as quickly as possible but the game mechanics prevent this. You need to find, combine or use the right object or you are just not going to be able to continue. Enter the walkthrough.

How can such texts be adapted for language learning?

Of course, you have to adapt them. Adapting existing walkthroughs or generating new walkthroughs with a focus on language elements can be an eye-opening experience for teachers. Why? Well, let’s look at a specific example. Take the game MOTAS (‘Mystery Of Time And Space). It’s a classic ‘Escape the room’ game‘. It’s called an ‘escape the room game because . . . well, the clue is in the genre’s title. You have to find objects, solve puzzles and find a key to escape from the locked room you find yourself in at the beginning of each level. Here’s a screenshot from the beginning of the game:

There’s the door you have to walk through. It’s straight ahead. You have to find the key to open it though so you start exploring the room looking for objects. Notice how the cursor (shown as a small white hand on the bed) produces annotated vocabulary items, in this case the word ‘pillow’. A detail that’s not present in all games but it’s a nice touch here especially in a language learning context. Now, let’s say I’m stuck. I going to take a peek at the walkthrough. The first two sentences in the MOTAS walkthrough are in fact:

Click on the pillow. Get the key.

I now know that when I click on the pillow I’ll get a key – it’s hidden under it. The language of ‘Click’ on this item and ‘get’ this object and this ‘happens’ is a recurring theme throughout all game walkthroughs. That is, there’s an action and a response when you click in the right place. A nice opportunity to adapt the walkthrough using a 1^st conditional:

If you look under the pillow, you will find a key. Unfortunately, if you use this key on the door you won’t be able to get out.

That’s right! The key you’ve found doesn’t open the door. This key will open something else though, so you need to keep on looking. Further game play, exploration and puzzle solving is needed. In fact, the walkthrough to escape this room continues:

However, the key you have found does work on one of the lockers, which is on the opposite side of the room to the bed. You open the locker and inside you can see there is a box. Inside the box there is a screwdriver that you can use to get a screw from off the elephant picture hanging on the wall above the bed. If you’ve clicked on the keyhole to the door you want to open then you’ll have found out that the key is in the door but on the other side. So what you do is get the poster, which shows a girl in a red swimming costume, off the wall and slide it under the door. You then use the screw on the keyhole to push the key out. The key then falls onto the poster which you pull back towards you. There’s the key to open the door. Pick it up and use it to unlock and open the door.

In each version of the walkthrough you can see that the language has increased in range and complexity and by the third become more narrative in style. Look how rich the language is compared to the previous versions. In the last one there is a range of tenses for starters. There are also dependent prepositions, relative clauses, phrasal verbs, linkers and more. Of course I’ve cheated a little and added extra information along the way but the point is this is how a walkthrough works.

What about teaching?

Once you have written text you can begin to think about the strategy by which you want your learners to engage with it. We have in fact just completed a possible task. We took a very basic ‘click’ and ‘get’ walkthrough and turned it into a first conditional sentence. We also expanded on this to produce a more complete walkthrough. Why not get your learners to write something similar for a different game? You could even take their walkthrough, pass it on to other learners, who then read it and play the game?

Alternatively you can read a walkthrough out to a class and use it in a similar way to the procedure for a dictation.  Learners listen and play.  What kind of dictation could be more fun?  This is a great task and very much teaching language at the point of need for learners . I’ve found that if a learner doesn’t understand part of my dictation then they are not only more likely to ask about it but also remember it. They seem driven to speak by their game playing. Also, because of the strong visual element of gaming it’s very easy for a teacher to cast an eye over the screens and check whether learners are playing at the same stage. Any natural gamers can be spotted and even asked to pause their game playing to help others. As long as there is kudos in this there is keenness.

Once  it’s ‘game over’ the written walkthrough can be used to focus on language and to raise learners’ awareness of the target language.  The meaning of the language has been covered to a degree while playing the game.  In fact, you can apply a task based learning approach to playing video games with a Presentation (of the walkthrough), Practice (or playing the game) and Production (of language elements within the walkthrough).  Production tasks can include getting learners to write a walkthrough for a from scratch or expanding on an existing on sourced online.

Video walkthroughs

A video walkthrough is a gamer’s screen captured record of completing a game that has then been uploaded onto the internet. Hundreds of these video walkthroughs can be found on a host of video sharing websites. They can range in duration from a few minutes to almost half an hour so be careful to use one that fits your needs.

I always see a video walkthrough as a form of tired teacher’s walkthrough. At least, on occasion I’ve been known to walk into a computer room with a class and ask them to find an online game I’m familiar with. I’ve then divided them into pairs with one playing the game and the other relaying the information needed to complete the game from a video walkthrough. The advantage of this is that the learners grade the language and my role is reduced to monitoring and answering any questions about language. The time saving element in a video walkthrough is that there is no written text that needs adapting. Learners produce the text themselves when speaking.

For ideas on how to use a video walkthrough in class I tend to find inspiration from teacher’s who have used video in the classroom.  This goes to show that although using video games in teaching might seem like a new idea, much of the methodology behind it has in fact been tried and tested.  Why not take a look online and read how teachers such as Mark Mckinnon are teaching english using video or a video tutorial by Jamie Keddie on using video in ELT.

Whatever type of walkthrough you use, written or video, I hope you get to discover how wonderful they can be. It won’t make teaching a walk over but it’ll certainly engage your learners in a new way.