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Did video games help you learn to read?

M

Mellahan

Concerned about dinosaur erection.
I'm an elementary school teacher. At the start of the school year a 7-year-old kiddo was not where he should be in terms of literacy. We engaged him in a reading program for support, but it wasn't enough. He wasn't motivated to read; didn't see the need for it. Then along came Pokemon Sun/Moon.

I saw him playing it after-school at latchkey (i.e extended school hours for students with know parent/guardian at home). He was struggling to progress beyond the first our or so of the game - didn't know what to do because he couldn't read well. So I sat down with him for a bit and we played and read together. The next few days his attitude towards learning to read was different. He was motivated because he wanted to play Pokemon. Seven months later, he's reading at grade level and he's at the Elite Four. His party isn't the greatest but point is, he made it there by himself - he owned his learning. It was awesome.

tl;dr was this you? Did video games have some affect on your ability to read as a child?
 
P

pizzacat

Banned
yes i learned japanese by playing persona games, now i get all my japanese games uncensored before any americans
 
BasilZero

BasilZero

Member
Yes

I was in ESL for majority of my grade school time.

When I got into more RPGs , my English speaking wise and reading wise improved.

Edit: Oh just for the record, Pokemon Yellow was the first RPG I played so ya that helped (alongside Gold/Silver/Red/Blue/Crystal.
 
E

E_Darkness

Member
Yes. I remember playing Pokemon Yellow when I was younger and it helped me read.

Actually pretty much the OP, but with first gen.
 
R

Roldan

Member
Video games teached me the a lot of the foundations for learning english, since it's not my native language. I guess that counts?
 
1

13ruce

Banned
Yes and learned me how to speak and write/type English my typing is not perfect yet but i can speak it fluently irl.
 
G

Grigorie

Neo Member
Most definitely. Japanese was my first language, and video games, combined with ESL classes, made me into one of the best readers in elementary school and onward in English! It was awesome. I very much so have video games to thank for my reading abilities.
 
K

Khrno

Member
They helped me to learn to read English, but not so much to read since the games I played 30 years ago they weren't text heavy.
 
S

Septimus Prime

Member
Yes. I already learned the basics at school, but Final Fantasy really stepped me up to the next level. Like, when school was teaching basic phonics, I already knew that an iguana was a huge lizard because that shit killed my ass in FF.
 
Freshmaker

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
No. I kinda just... Started obsessively reading once I was given the mental toolset to do so.

Don't recall any external motivation other than wanting to read stuff.

Though most of the games I had access to at the time were Infocom games so reading was kinda vital to play those at all.

Arcade games like Pac Man certainly didn't require any.
 
L

LeleSocho

Banned
I know English partially thanks to Pokémon.
First i had Pokémon Red in Italian and it was all good and stuff because it was my native language, then i got Yellow in English and thanks to the knowledge of Red i extrapolated the meanings of the English words of all the attacks and learned a lot of words.
Same happened with gen 2 but in the opposite order, first got English version of Silver and then Italian version of Crystal.
 
SolVanderlyn

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Yep! I distinctly remember playing them before I knew how to read, too. I had to have my father read the text of Mega Man X to me, haha. They were a definite part of the learning process for me, and I was really proud of myself when I could finally read them on my own.
 
Ceallach

Ceallach

Smells like fresh rosebuds
Video games helped me learn Japanese in a way, inspired me to learn the language and the immersion helped a lot...but also kind of caused me to hit a brick wall and taught me some bad grammatical habits that were hard to break from bad anime style voice acting.
 
N

Namegoes_Here

Member
I've played games in Japanese and it hasn't helped me too much outside of gaming. I can recognize certain words like options, control, inverted, but taken out of this controlled environment where I know what I'm looking for, I would probably gloss right over them.
 
R

RRockman

Banned
I learned to read solely to read the Bloody Roar 2 manual and to learn how to do special moves when I was younger. I learned from my mom later that I did well on my school's reading test but they forced me in pre-k anyway because they didn't want someone my age in regular kindergarten. I was like 4 at the time but like I turned 5 right after the test date.
 
Acrylic7

Acrylic7

Member
Pokemon cards and Pokemon Blue/Red taught me.
By the time I was 9yrs old I could read at college level. I was terrible at reading too. Like the worst.
 
F

Fracas

#fuckonami
I didn't learn to read from games but yeah, I probably picked up on some things. I grew up on RPGs so there was a lot of text.
 
E

EctoPrime

Member
I thought about learning japanese to play imports but it turned out the Ps1 games I wanted to play happened to be more than 90% in English. Seems really weird that games released in Japan would require somebody to understand english.
 
H

HKA6A7

Member
The Legacy of Kain series, since english isn't my native language, I used them to learn both writing/reading and speaking.

Helped me alot, I still think it has one of the best voice acting in the industry.
 
S

Stopdoor

Member
To be honest I can't even remember playing video games before being able to read. Like I played Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Smash Bros. at around 6-8 years old, obviously they're not super wordy, but I could understand the menus and individual words pretty well as far as I could remember. Weird.
 
G

Golden_Pigeon

Banned
I learned english only by playing (imported) game earlier as a child. Then with MMO. Basically for survival.
My english is forever broken though, the only rule of grammar i know is about "a/an", and even there i have doubt.
 
G

GreenMonkey

Member
I lovved reading as a kid.

But my daughter was struggling in 1/2 grade, our younger daughter in a grade lower was outreading her handily.

Then they got addicted to Animal Crossing, it helped out a ton.
 
V

Vital Tundra

Member
Yup Pokemon Red had me actually reading and comprehending what I read by the end of it. I was about 4 and while it took me ages to beat the game, I could read faaaar more than I ever had. Only problem was pronunciation.
 
E

Eblo

Member
My family played a handful of text-heavy games, so naturally I ended up learning how to read before starting school.
 
J

Joey Fox

Self-Actualized Member
Possibly. There was also Sesame Street. Video games are probably a good tool for reading if you don't have adequate parental guardian supervision.

This was a good question worth exploring. I would just want to learn how to transition kids to read more books, to learn useful things beyond the entertainment they might now be addicted to.
 
K

KO Traveling Hobo

Member
I was always at the head of the class in vocab and reading as a kid, and I don't doubt it was partly because of all those JRPGs I played. I think it's inevitable after spending hundreds of hours reading text, even if it's questionably translated from Japanese.
 
K

KillLaCam

Banned
Playing things like Yakuza helped me with my Japanese. So I guess. But you have to already know a large amount of Japanese to play those
 
R

Raiden

Banned
Yes my country is split into Dutch and French. But Ocarina of Time learned me to read it first and Xbox Live taught me to speak it. Which gave me a huge boost in English class during highschool.


Forgot some grammar stuff but its still decent enough i hope.
 
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