Looking for an advice – using PC games as a way to teach English

Humongous Entertainment games.
Zoombinis.

Hidden object games are great for younger kids. Besides those, nothing else comes to mind. If I think of something I'll add it to my post.

Alphabear, maybe? (https://store.steampowered.com/app/644080/Alphabear_Hardcover_Edition/) there's a free version in the Google Play store, so if you have a phone that runs on Android you can try it out first to see if it's appropriate.

that's all i can honestly think of right now, sorry. what you're doing for these kids is really cool though! sounds like they have a lot of fun while learning :D

Games are generally a great way to learn English. I used to teach English and French at a high school but didn't have the means to use games for that so I can't testify if that could work or not, but the idea seems interesting to me. Not sure what games to use besides those you named youself. I learned a lot of my English from old RPGs like Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate etc, but those probably won't work in school environment. Maybe, dunno, as a summer break task or something like that. :)

When I was a kid, Lucas Arts adventure games were what helped me with English vocabulary, though I did miss a fair share of jokes. Loom would probably be a good pick for more advanced students, and has little focus on humor, so no need to explain jokes. :P For the typical LA humor fare, Secret of Monkey Island is a good classic.

The only thing I can think of that hasn't been mentioned yet is maybe Doodle god games to teach some vocabulary?

I'd say it's a bad idea to put a game (generally speaking people usually recommend games with a ton of text, like RPG and such) and say "hey, this game is great to learn english".

I'm not a pedagogue but I don't know if it's a good idea that the first experience with english is a dense RPG based on statistics, traits and story/quests based in a language you don't understand. Unless you are extremely into it or highly motivated I don't know how that can work.
It's alsy pretty normal to talk about our past experiences in a very romantic and highly way, sometimes havin't nothing to do with reality.

I would say something "slow", maybe per turns would be a good idea. Something that can show vocabulary, terms, strange words... but you can have the time to look up on a dictionary on the internet.

I would say:

• Monster Slayers
• Costume Quest 1 and 2
• Some of the telltale games
• Some Point and Click adventure games
• Civilization
• Games designed to increase vocabulary or language. This site recommends some games, but I don't know if Fallout 3 or Bioshock are good picks. It does recommend Fable, which being pretty much for kids could help:

list 1

GTA SA xD

Couple comes mind that might fit bill. They are:
Monster Loves You!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/226740/Monster_Loves_You/
Influent
https://store.steampowered.com/app/274980/Influent/

As I said above in one of the comments, be careful with HOs for kids and vet them first. Maybe look at ones that are aimed more toward kids and developed in the USA. Then at least, you're almost guaranteed that the English will be perfect.

"Word on the Street: Junior" teaches English Vocabulary in a fun way, so that they don't realise that they're learning. It's a physical board game though. You have to be quick, and the first team to get 8 letters off the board wins. There is an adult version of this game that would be more suitable for 12-13 year olds. Can be good to have physical games as an option for kids who learn differently.

Duolingo mobile app is fantastic too. I had been learning the Irish language since I was 6 years old, until I was 19, yet, I cannot speak it fluently. My first language is English, my parents speak English only, so I was never immersed in it to actually learn it properly. I started using this app and realised that I knew far more than I thought. If you haven't recommended this app to your kids, you probably should. It encourages you to test yourself everyday for 10 minutes in whatever language that you're learning. You get points for logging in over consecutive days.

Not every child is going to necessarily enjoy video games, so it's good to have some other options as well for them to fall back to. Good luck.

This guy started learning English as a teenager by playing adventure games: http://www.antimoon.com/how/advgames.htm

And of course, by studying. His story is really interesting: http://www.antimoon.com/learners/tomasz_szynalski.htm

First off, I just wanna point out how awesome you are for doing this and that I honestly think that open minded teachers like you are our best bet for educational improvement. My girlfriend is studying to become a teacher and she often experimented with... errrm, experimental teaching methods herself and I know how interesting some of these can be. If only they were a thing in my time... :)

As for the actual opinion and reply:
To be fair, I've played video games since I was like 4 and early Playstation titles were among my first games ever. I had no idea what I was playing and what I was supposed to do. Games like Resident Evil, Soul Reaver and Silent Hill didn't made much sense so I kind of made my own story by piecing together what I thought I understood. Btw, definitely don't let them play these :D

Surprisingly, by the time I was introduced to proper English education in my elementary school, I was pretty much on the same level as my teacher and able to effortlessly skim through all of the lessons. Not to brag but I most definitely had better pronunciation than my teacher had :P

So yeah, based on my personal experience, I would say that playing video games most definitely helps kids learn foreign languages among other things like problem solving and all that.

If I ever decide to have a child of my own, I think I'll most definitely let it play Minecraft.
I think it is great for learning basic terms with the benefits of visual aid. Also, the game is heavily relying on creativity which is something we should encourage in children as much as possible.

I think most point'n'click or hog are good ... simple actions and most objects are common (well ... words to learn)
Sadly text adventures are dead (great for comprehention).

well, i learned what i know that way, also movies

RuneScape learned me many English words and learned me how to make full English sentences.

Back in the day, I learned English by playing classic LucasArts' and Sierra's point-and-click adventure games like Monkey Island, Space Quest, Gabriel Knight, etc. While they are, probably, too hard and some of those have more "adult" sense of humour, the relatively recently re-released Humongous Entertainment games will hopefully be just the right thing. Check those out: https://store.steampowered.com/sub/42723/

very good, especially old games. i learned a very big amount of English when i was a child even before i first time went to basic (first) school, in my case it was at first Amiga not pc.

AntVentor can be a nice game for kids.

Old cartoons in my childhood helped me learn english, not games. Typing of the Dead Overkill seems like a perfect fit.

I would say that a good portion of my more advanced vocabulary came from video games, to be honest. I played a lot of RPG games and they were in English, and as RPG games tend to go, there were a lot of words so I ended up picking up a lot of words, especially medieval-era related.
In terms of actual advice suitable for a school environment, I'm not sure, have never paid too much attention.

Here in school, we used freerice.com which isn't as much a game as just a quiz, but it was relatively well-received cause people got really competitive over who would get most points.

Anyhow, good luck, hope this works out. As someone that tutors in their spare time, I respect teachers that experiment around with stuff like this.

Sadly the most games I've played are a bit off from what would best work with kids, but I can try give two options...

Perhaps a bit challenging for kids, but it might be a great way to teach 14+ guys in both English and computers, Hacknet: https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/

No-one-has-to-die is quite nice for its heavy amount of conversation, and simple non-distracting gameplay, the only drawback is that it's very short, but that might be good for using one day at class: http://www.kongregate.com/games/stustuthebloo/no-one-has-to-die

I would suggest giving a tour through Kongregate and Newgrounds, it's full of short games and some of them might work with you.

I've learnt a lot of English while playing online (mostly due to Teamspeak and stuff that is surely not suitable for kids at school), and I love that teachers are starting to think in videogames as a way of teaching useful stuff. Keep working on that!

I wish I had English lessons with games :)
Influent was mentioned. Check Elegy for a Dead World
Games with a lot of text improve English a lot of course, but in point&click you are wondering what to do next most of the times then actually reading.
Maybe good visual novels for teens exist, but I not aware of it :|
As for myself — I wanted to try Teddy Floppy Ear with my 7 y.o. brother