A Japanese dad has come up with a way of harnessing the allure of online games like Fortnite with teaching English.
During Japan’s Covid-linked closures, many schools were shut for up to three months at a time. Start-up Gecipe Inc’s CEO Takuya Manabe, who has an elementary-aged son, was concerned at the amount of time his child spent playing games online. He wondered if there was a way of using this activity as a productive learning experience and came up with the idea of offering 80-minute, coach-led sessions where teams play online games, such as Fortnite, and use English to communicate with each other and their coach. The coaches are bilingual in Japanese and English, and might be based anywhere in the world, including Australia, the USA and Malaysia. Lesson sessions are live and since there’s now a waiting list to join them, Gecipe is recruiting and training more coaches. Looks like it’s game on.
- In a similar vein, English Adventures with Cambridge, from Cambridge Assessment English, has come up with Minecraft: Education Edition. In this version, children can practise English at level A1 and above in a safe environment, created by language-learning and assessment experts.
