Ah, The Delightful Quirks Of Learning

I’m the author of this story, and I’ve been living in Japan and teaching English for over eight years now.

For several reasons, I have a strict no-children policy when it comes to my students, but occasionally, I can be persuaded to waive it — perks of being a private tutor! In one case, I end up teaching a Japanese boy, beginning when he is eleven. 

I have very little faith in English-language textbooks since they’re either riddled with mistakes or far too stilted to be “natural” English. Instead, I make my own materials or use flashcards, and my lessons tend to be less structured than in a classroom. For example, if a student asks me to explain a grammar point, I’ll happily spend most of the lesson on that instead of sticking to the plan.

The parents of this particular boy are absolutely wonderful; they pay very well, they provide me with a drink when I come to their home for the lesson, and best of all, they stay out of my way and let me get on with teaching how I like. 

That said, I’m at a bit of a loss when it comes to teaching this boy, as all my students and materials are adult-based. He adores video games, however, so I hit upon a brainwave: the family has a laptop, I have a Steam account, and I also have a collection of old 1990s LucasArts games on there. 

Bingo! I talk to his parents and explain that although the learning curve is going to be very steep, their son will learn natural English in a fun way. They’re all for it, so I get their permission to install Steam and download “The Secret Of Monkey Island” — think “Pirates Of The Caribbean”, to the point that many game fans believe that the movie was inspired by this game series — and off we go! 

And it works brilliantly. For those not in the know, LucasArts has a series of point-and-click adventure games such as the “Monkey Island” series where you click on a verb — “Open”, “Close”, “Pick Up”, “Talk To”, etc. — and then on the object you want to interact with. Not only does this give my student nine useful verbs right from the get-go, but it also gets him into building simple sentences — “Pick Up Mug”, “Give X to Y”, and so on. If I use the old-style version of the games, I can also pause when the subtitles are on the screen so we can discuss the grammar, and later games in the series feature voice-acting, which helps build his listening skills.

Given it’s aimed at a native-speaking market, I’m willing to translate most of the English into Japanese for him, but only after he makes an attempt to do so himself. He’s invested in the game, so he’s keen to do so, but he obviously struggles in the beginning.

One segment of the game involves sword-fighting with pirates. Basically, this involves fighting a lot of pirates so you can learn insults and then use those insults on other pirates so they can teach you the correct response. The insults themselves obviously aren’t worth remembering, but they use a lot of excellent grammar points, so I do insist upon [Student] translating them. For example, “I’m glad to hear you attended your family reunion” teaches “glad to [verb]”, “happy to [verb]”, “sorry to [verb]”, etc. 

At the end of one lesson, we’ve run a little over the usual hour, which I don’t charge extra for, since I’m having a blast revisiting my childhood. [Student]’s having a problem with the translation of one particular in-game insult, and I’ve already made up my mind that this will be the last sword fight of the lesson.

Me: “Okay. So, you know ‘handkerchief’.”

Student: “Yes… but not this word.”

Me: “That’s okay. You can look it up in your dictionary.”

Normally, I discourage his use of the dictionary, as I want to encourage him to think and expand his vocabulary by using other words that mean the same thing, but I’m honestly not sure how to get this word across considering his English is still rather limited at this point.

[Student] begins eagerly searching in his electronic dictionary, and [Student]’s mom enters the room. She always does so very quietly and never disturbs the lesson but just goes right to work doing something in the kitchen.

I speak quietly in Japanese to [Student]’s mom.

Me: “Hi. It’s okay; we’re just finishing up.”

Two seconds later, [Student] finds the word and puzzles over the translation for a few moments, and then his whole face lights up in pure delight.

Student: *Loudly, in very excited Japanese* “Sensei, I’ve got it! I understand! The word was ‘blood’, so the sentence is, ‘My handkerchief will mop up your blood!’”

[Student]’s mom never commented or raised so much as an eyebrow, but I couldn’t help wondering what she must have thought of that particular lesson!

For the curious among you, I kept using this teaching technique until we’d completed the first three games in the series. By the end of “Monkey Island 3”, [Student] understood 80% to 90% of what was being said and could speak reasonably fluently with the native teachers in English class, along with being able to follow English-language news programs on TV.

However, at that point, he’d had enough of video games, so we moved on to “Asterix” (a comic book series, which was a dismal failure; I really should have known better) followed by “Tintin”, which turned out to be such a roaring success that his mother actually bought the albums from me so [Student] could reread them!

Related:
Ah, The Delightful Quirks Of Gender
Ah, The Delightful Quirks Of Language