How Video Games Can Improve Your Language Skills

For many people — children and adults alike — it can be easy to find yourself tempted away from focusing on important work in favor of goofing off with something easy and enjoyable, especially during the socially distant conditions imposed by the pandemic. Maybe instead of writing that paper or doing your laundry, you want to binge-watch a season of your favorite TV show or kick back with a good book — or maybe you want to spend a few hours playing video games. And, believe it or not: this may not always be a bad thing, especially for your language skills.

Video games, whether we’re talking about a quick-paced action game, a long-form narrative game, or a game of another genre (or even an amalgamation of genres), can be an enthralling way to lose a few hours. There’s something about video games that makes it easy to turn them on and become so engrossed that you blink your eyes only to realize that half the day has passed you by. 

While many parents have despaired over their children choosing to play video games instead of doing their work, there is also something to be said for the value that they can hold in people’s lives. There’s the positive effect that gaming can have on mental health, for starters. But perhaps one of the most interesting and promising uses of video games — and this is even setting aside games that are designed to serve an educational purpose — is a tool for developing language skills.

The Positive Effects Of Gaming

The potential language benefits of video games may not be any real surprise to those aware of the other positive effects that video games can have on their players. One study has shown, for instance, that action games like first-person-shooter (FPS) games and driving games can improve visuomotor control (( Li, et al. “Playing Action Video Games Improves Visuomotor Control.” Association For Psychological Science. 8 July 2016. )).

Likewise, evidence exists that video games — namely strategic games — can help with the development of problem-solving skills, with a press release by the American Psychological Association noting that “the more adolescents reported playing strategic video games, such as role-playing games, the more they improved in problem-solving and school grades the following year” (( “Video Games Play May Provide Learning, Health, Social Benefits, Review Finds.” American Psychological Association. 2013. )).

In many ways, these benefits do make an inherent sort of sense. They may be for fun, but just like reading for pleasure can expand your vocabulary — simply by requiring that you exercise your linguistic skills and infer things such as definition and meaning from context — video games also demand certain skills from their players depending on the type of game in question. Action games, for instance, require that players react quickly. Players must know their abilities in-game and learn how to apply them to the challenges that the game presents, often requiring a quick response time.

Meanwhile, strategic games and role-playing games require critical thought from their players. “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” for instance, requires that players solve puzzles in shrines to acquire spirit orbs that aid in story progression. The “Fire Emblem” series asks that players position and equip characters correctly so that they might win battles. These tasks, and others like them, require that players experiment with different possible solutions to problems and continue to try new tactics in the face of failure, all while being mindful of their choices’ long-term effects.

That is to say that different types of gameplay require that players utilize and practice different skillsets, and this includes skills that we may not always think about, like reading, writing, and other language skills. Many video games either overtly require that their players exercise language skills or expose players to narrative or functional elements that can help improve language capabilities.

Gaming As Language Practice

Just as many FPS and action games with a strong emphasis on combat and player reflexes may help improve players’ motor control, there are many other types of games — many of them narrative or story-based — that can subtly or overtly encourage the growth of language skills. For instance, many video games, like “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” and the most recent release by Supergiant Games, “Hades,” are now largely or even fully voice acted.

“Fire Emblem: Three Houses,” for instance, is a turn-based strategy game. However, the franchise has long been known for holding the threat of permanent character death over the heads of its players (though opting out of permadeath has recently become an option). One way that “Fire Emblem” makes this threat cognizable is by fleshing out the personalities of their characters through “support conversations,” in which players can get to know the backgrounds of their characters. In “Three Houses,” these supports are fully voiced, making them more accessible to players who may struggle with or dislike reading.

And in “Hades,” the player assumes control of Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to fight his way out of the underworld. It’s a game that could have skated by with relatively little dialogue and writing, much less voice acting, but “Hades” not only has an extensive and vast array of character dialogue and conversations — it is also fully written-out and voice acted. 

We may not think twice about this sort of thing, even as we’re playing, but the truth is that this is a helpful thing to include for players, whether they are fluent in a language or still learning. It provides them with a framework to expand their vocabularies, and games that are voice acted can particularly help with pronunciation. And even when these effects do not feel overt, the truth is that the very exposure to the language matters. As with reading and speaking, simply accruing the experience and practice can have a positive effect.

In line with this, we should not neglect to mention that video games with a social aspect, like “Jackbox Games” or the ghost-hunting game “Phasmophobia,” can help facilitate language skills by encouraging players to speak and interact. These games in which players write and talk amongst themselves can be a boon for the socially awkward by having their players practice language skills like writing or talking in a relatively low-stakes situation.

Lastly, video games provide a unique motivation to practice language skills. Someone studying in class may be focused on getting a grade — they are focused on learning language because they must learn the language. One line of thought suggests that students learning to “‘tick a box’ needed for graduation… may only be motivated to study just enough to pass. On the other hand, if success in the language classroom is aligned with success in a gaming space, then harnessing this drive may be a powerful way to foster continued interest in language learning and developing language skills” (( McGuirk, Christopher. “Can you learn a language playing video games? What the research says.” The Conversation. 8 May 2019. )). Learning for the sake of learning or for a grade isn’t always easy, and it can make self-motivating difficult. But whether it’s alone or in a group, learning while doing something fun is — for many people — a much more palatable endeavor.

Gaming And Personal Growth

To be clear, while there may be those rare lucky few who can learn a language from scratch through video games, for the majority of us, video games probably shouldn’t be viewed as a substitute for studying — whether it be in a classroom or by yourself. It’s not like we should kick back and justify playing on our PS5 for six hours by saying that it helps us master our language skills. 

But gone should be the days of pretending like video games are nothing but a vapid form of entertainment. Just like they can be a forum for incredible storytelling (something which carries a lot of value just on its own), so too can they exercise the mind. Whether it’s helping our mental health, improving our visuomotor acuity, or helping us develop our language skills, video games can be a learning tool. They can teach us things, and they enrich our lives, and that gives them value.