Tldr; running a mini campaign intended to introduce language learners to the game and its benefit as a learning aid. Looking for suggestions and/or advice.
Good morning/afternoon/evening to you all. So, I'm an English teacher for students who speak a variety of other languages at a language school in the UK. I've also been dming for about 2 years so not completely new to the game. Using 5e as well.
Part of my responsibilities require me to present a lecture (very loose term in this context). This lecture is coming up in about 4 weeks.
I've decided to do the presentation on the "benefits of role play for fluency as a language learner" because...well it's true.
The game is incredibly well suited to help language learners develop fluency in a relaxed and fun manner.
I'm hoping anyone here can give suggestions or talk from experience about running a mini game in this setting.
There will be up to 30 students in the lecture hall...
My early thoughts are telling me that I absolutely need to place my students into groups that control a single character. This is not only to deal with the high amount of players but also to help the students who are weaker follow what is happening and to generally create a supportive atmosphere for all involved.
I will also have access to (I hope) two projectors so of course, one will be projecting on to a whiteboard that I'll place on the floor for use as a battle map as well as one pointing at the regular board for use as a "scene setter"(images of locations to provide visual clues when I'm narrating their current locations).
I think I'll run lost mines of phandelver for simplicity and its something I've run recently so am familiar with it in its entirety.
I'll need to provide a custom character sheet to each group that removes a lot of the fluff and makes it simple.
I suppose what I'm looking for here is critique of these ideas and suggestions on how to streamline the process as well as any other suggestions anyone can think of.
Bear in mind, this is intended to introduce the students to the game and time will be limited. Character creation will unfortunately not really be viable and the fact they will not be able to completely run through the campaign is actually fine. I'm pushing for the school to let me start a D&D club for these students so generating a situation where they are actively asking for more is a fantastic outcome for me.
Will try and reply to all comments as quickly as possible
This is prompted by a discussion on a translation of an English book into German.
A favorite truism online is that English does not "just borrow words; on occasion, [it pursues] other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary", as if it is something unique to our tongue. I've also seen many statements that on pure word count, ours is one of, if not the largest vocabularies in the world.
As a Germanic language with heavy influence from Greek, Latin, and French, I know English has a diverse vocabulary, with a lot of nuance between very similar words. For example, huge, giant, titanic, colossal, and enormous all mean large but definitely have different contextual meanings, as do pleased, contented, satisfied, elated, cheerful, and ecstatic.
In the discussion I was reading, the example that prompted this question was that, in German, the word for both "hound" and "dog" is "Hund", requiring the name of The Hound from A Game of Thrones to be changed to Bluthund for contextual story reasons (he is called Dog derogatorily by another character) and that grew into a larger conversation on the subtleties of synonyms across languages and now this thread, where I'm looking for more of a learned answer.
Is English particularly expressive?
Hi, i think one of the best way to learn another language is to talk with a native speaker, I am an iOS engineer, 28 years old man and wana find some one to talk about subjects in common and help each other, even maybe you're not interested learning persian then i can help you in programming and developing.
So, I'm from the US and I speak English natively. While English was different here 100 years ago, I could probably understand what was being said if I were transported there. Same with 200 years ago. Maybe even 300 years.
But if I were transported to England 500 years ago, could I understand what was being said? 1000 years ago? At what point was English/Old English so distinct from Modern English that it would be incomprehensible to my ears?
How does that number compare to that of modern Spanish, or modern French, or modern Arabic, or modern Mandarin, or modern Hindi? etc.
(For this thought experiment, the time traveler can be sent anywhere on Earth. If I could understand Medieval German better than Medieval English, that counts).
Thanks!
Hiring foreign subject teachers is becoming increasingly common. I often position for teaching maths, science, drama and history. My major, and the subjects I'm most passionate about are philosophy, ethics and by extension general critical thinking. I'm wondering if anyone has has any success teaching philosophy or critical thinking to high school and university students? If so, I would love to chat with you!
I realized that I could tap into a whole new audience for my beats by having tags in multiple languages. Since instrumentals are like a "universal language" it wouldn't matter if I used non-English tags, and it would definitely give me an edge over other YouTubers. I'm just worried that if I use something like Google Translate it won't give me an accurate translation (seeing as "beat" and "instrumental" have multiple meanings in English already). I want to cover all the most-spoken languages, especially Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Javanese, Tagalog, etc. If anyone could help I'd really appreciate it, thanks!
*monolingual native English speakers
My students, from various parts of the world, are generally hung up on grammar even though there are multiple studies that show that is not the best way to learn English.
I was speaking with a Russian friend about how native English speakers don't know the order of adjectives but can tell if they're spoken out of order (such as, 'The green large dragon' rather than the correct, 'The large green dragon'.) She rather haughtily told me that she would be able to tell this type of thing in her native Russian and cite the rule for it, too.
That got me thinking.... Is it just with English that we are ignorant of grammar rules? Or is it that, maybe, there are just too many grammar rules and too many irregularities to keep track.
A bit of further context: most of my university education is in English (though primarily in social sciences and philosophy rather than history).
Optionally, feel free to address the broader question of translations in general. I'm sure more than me are considering reading primary sources written in languages we don't speak and knowing what to look for or avoid could be helpful.
- truthful
- upfront
- unreserved
- candid
- blunt
- honest
- upfront
- forthright
- straightforward
Thanks!
You can always learn a language by book, but speaking is the best way to learn. Is there any place I can find a Russian student aiming to learn more English, that I can offer in exchange for Russian?
Or will it be afterward? I haven't heard the devs at all mention other languages except for programming languages.
I obviously speak English, but I hope for people who don't can play Hytale as well.
I work for a large MNE (multi-national enterprise/company) and I'm based in the US. I have daily meetings with my local team that include a number of team members from Mexico via telepresence. I know basic Spanish, but never really speak it to my international peers. My question is how would you feel if I included basic pleasantries in Spanish at the beginning/end of meetings? i.e. "Good morning; buenas dias" or "Thanks everyone, have a good one; gracias, tengas un buen dia"
My concerns are 1. I'm worried this might seem as patronizing to my Spanish speaking coworkers And 2. I don't want to misspeak by misconjugatng a word, or not applying the proper word gender on accident
Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
EDIT: This really blew up! Thanks so much everyone for the fascinating answers. I'll comb through the comments when I get a chance!
So i saw this short video my bestfriend shared a while back on a local livestream, there's this (i'm assuming american) girl who makes fun of asians for speaking broken english and random english words on products and establishments, stream turns slightly racist by her mocking their accent. Said that she can speak fluent french since high school so "having poor grammar isn't remotely acceptable" Chat challenged her to speak french throughout the whole stream. She fucks it up big time by saying gibberish, unintelligible words (the very thing she mocks), whole chat riots like into hell and she shuts it down. it was fuckin r/AbruptChaos material lol
Don't be that person obviously! we all try our best to be cunning linguists at some point in our lives. Don't judge. Don't discourage. And play Raid Shadow Legends
Inner French (in French) https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCI4xp8qHD1MDErkqxb1dPbA/videos
Français Authentique (in French) https://m.youtube.com/user/francaisauthentique/videos
Comme Une Française (mainly in English) https://m.youtube.com/user/CommeUneFrancaiseTV/videos
The perfect French with Dylane (in English) https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCBpW2RaZJ8sIRZIISpR7DIw/videos
Search engine to find YouTube videos with French subtitles. Not always reliable though https://www.zerotohero.ca/#/en/fr/youtube/
I’d like to see if someone here is willing to help out a beginner in Ukrainian. I live in the North American continent, so it’ll be tough trying to regulate time zone differences if you live in the Ukraine/Russian areas, but if you’re willing to stay up late, or adjust your schedule otherwise, that would be much appreciated.
If you’re willing to help out a beginner, please reply with your Telegram link or your Discord name and tag number so I may get in touch and start chatting.
Thank you to those who are willing to help me out!
