As a Latino living in America, keeping my kids in touch with their culture was something I often worried about. Luckily, I found a way to balance cultural education with an activity my kids love, gaming.
Despite what you might think, gaming is not just a way to entertain yourself. It can also be a great tool to connect your children with their culture.
How? By helping them learn Spanish, for example.
In this article, I’ll give you a couple of reasons that might just convince you to game with your kids and connect them with their language and identity. I’ll even throw in some games to help you get started.
Interactive Learning Environment
Not to undermine the value of books, but you’ll probably have to provide your kids with an isolated environment to learn the language through reading, which can get a bit boring. But with gaming, whether it’s you gaming with your kids, or them gaming with other players, there is a social and vocal element to it.
This social element can create an interactive environment, which in turn can help reinforce the concepts they’ve picked up through dialogue with other players or with you.
Especially in multiplayer games, where you all have to communicate, strategize, and team up to achieve a set of mutual goals, using language can enable your children to use it in other parts of life as well.
Fast Paced Response Development
A lot of games offer an online multiplayer mode, where you have to communicate a lot with other players in real time, and in as short a time as possible.
A second’s delay could mean you lose the battle. This fast-paced communication can help develop your children’s fluency, comprehension, and response time with the Spanish language.
What I love most about this part is that, unlike those forced and formal real-time conversations with language partners on apps like Tandem or HelloTalk, gaming allows you to keep it entertaining. Those conversations are dedicated to learning and can feel unnatural, whereas gaming keeps it fun and casual.
Familiarizing With Slang
Gaming is not just about playing a game against other players, it’s also about interacting with different types of gamers and communities.
And each of these communities has its own lingo. By interacting with these communities, your children can pick up on a lot of other Hispanic cultural elements beyond just the language.
Some of these include culturally relevant Hispanic jokes, memes, idioms, and even a style of communication. All this can help your children pick up useful knowledge that I can bet won’t be taught in a classroom, but can help them further on in life.
Now, to the best part, games you can play with your kids to help them in learning the language. I think 5 should get you off to a good start, no?
5 Games to Refine Your Spanish
The games I’m about to share here are kind of like a full-on language course if you think about it. They’re all fully Spanish-translated, quite long, and have tons of ways to reinforce and practice ideas. You might need an internet connection to access features like multiplayer for some of them though.
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Now, let’s take a quick look at some of the games you might want to start with.
Uncharted 4 – A Thief’s End
If your kids are into action and adventure, this one might be a good fit for them. You’ll have to travel around the world to find treasure as Nathan Drake, the main character. The game is widely recognized as one of the best Spanish-translated games ever.
Assassin’s Creed Series
The game is yet another action-adventure classic with over 42 games under its umbrella. All are perfectly dubbed in Spanish, so you have a lot of options here. Plus, the series also touches a bit on history, so you have another educational element to it.
Spider-Man 2
I think both adults and children love Spidey. I know my kids and I do. Staying true to his personality, this game also blends comedy into its gameplay. It’s dubbed in clear and understandable Spanish. The game also uses a more modern version of the Spanish language, which might appeal to your kids.
Detroit: Become Human
This one will teach your children much more than just the language. The game is an action-adventure themed game set in 2038 Detroit. It progresses based on the decisions you make, which can improve your children’s critical thinking skills.
Stardew Valley
One of the most famous indie games to ever have been created, Stardew Valley is a simulator-style game where you have to create your own farm. You’ll have to manage resources, buy tools in village stores, sow, cultivate, raise animals, and more, all of which can sharpen management skills in your children.
Gaming – Connecting Hispanic Kids With Their Roots
Based on personal experience, it always helps to use activities kids enjoy, to teach them literally anything you want to. And let’s be honest, kids love gaming, and what’s more important than our culture, right?
These reasons and the games I’ve shared should help you easily navigate the process of gaming as a learning tool, your kids learn and you might just find a new favorite hobby, a win-win scenario for both.
