Vicious Rhetoric: the Game
Let’s go back to Magic: the Gathering (MtG) for a second. When I came back to the States from Japan, I took a job as an ESL teacher for a for-profit Intensive English Program. Instead of low-risk English practice with children at a tutoring school, I was preparing adults (mostly in their very early twenties) for university in the US. They needed high fluency and had very little time to get it. Let’s face it, many of my students also were not the most interested in learning English or getting a degree. Most were there because their parents made them go. So, the engagement was not as self-supportive as they needed in order to learn complex language fast. Many struggled with the fundamentals and internalizing the rules, and thusly, they could not get out of the lower proficiency levels. Many of those who struggled ended up repeating their level in perpetuity until they were forced to go home.
That was when I began thinking about how best to trigger engagement and internalize grammar/vocabulary rules without the student self-discipline. After high school and into college, I took a minor hiatus from playing MtG. I wasn’t around my old friends as much, and finding new people to play was difficult with busy schedules. But then, my sister came back from Costa Rica with a partner. His English was decent, but he had a very hard time with vocabulary, reading, and more complex language skills. On a whim, and since he was around, I taught him how to play MtG. He latched on to it right away. The same elements that I had found so addictive, he did as well. And as we played, the fun mixed with the requirement that he understand the rules and what the cards did, helped his English to flourish. Obviously, playing MtG wasn’t the only reason his English became as good as it was (he has lived in the U.S. 20 at this point), but he himself has stated that learning the game helped him better internalize the language and vocabulary, and it helped expand his ability to express himself.
So, I applied that strategy for my classes. Many of my students were the same as my brother-in-law: loved video games, was young and impulsive, and didn’t feel engagement in the classroom. For these students, I developed a trading card game, like MtG called Vicious Rhetoric (VR). VR uses trading-card-game mechanics to build sentences and “argue” with the opponent until their points total goes from 20 to 0. The better your sentences, the more points you can subtract from your opponent’s “resolve.” I played the game with my at-risk students during their free lab time in lieu of standard tutoring (which had not been helpful in the past).
Anecdotally, the game worked pretty well. Those students who played the game regularly passed their levels consistently where before they would repeat more than once. Had I more time and more students, I could have produced better data. Though they did not show an interest in playing the game outside of study class time, they spent the class engaged in playing even after I stopped overseeing their games, where before it was impossible to keep them focused on self-study.
This alone gave me optimism that designing English games could be helpful for so many people trying to learn the language. Though Vicious Rhetoric is much more labor intensive, I am hoping that as Gramatic! Takes off and I some profits (and publicity...?) I might be able to start funding the real development of this game so that more people can enjoy “arguing” with their friends on a regular basis. Hooray for goals!