Raph’s Website » Zon: Chinese language learning MMO

Zon: Chinese language learning MMO

June 4th, 2008 (Visited 2119 times) Tags: academia, china, serious games, vw design

This is cool: an MMO devoted to language learning via full immersion.

Zon is an unique interactive massively multiplayer online role playing game for learning Mandarin Chinese.

By interacting in the Zon environment you will be exposed to Chinese language and cultural knowledge in a new and exciting way. Everything that you do in the game is another chance to learn new words, phrases and cultural info about China. Never before has learning Chinese been more fun.

Not at all the first time this has been tried, of course; at SOE we supported a few college campuses that were doing full-immersion language learning via EQ2, for example.

[?]
Type in a relevant tag, and click the button, and help organize this blog's information.
[More Help]

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

MMO Clerks » Zon: the MMO that teaches you to speak Chinese wrote on June 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm:

[...] learned of Zon through the blog of Areae president Raph Koster, who had an interesting anecdote to add. During his stint at SOE, [...]

Massively wrote on June 5th, 2008 at 3:00 am:

with other players to practice their language skills. As they progress through the system, they move up in rank from Tourist to Resident, and finally to Citizen — at which point they may create their own content for the world. We learned of Zonthrough the blogof Areae president Raph Koster, who had an interesting anecdote to add. During his stint at SOE, the company worked with college campuses to use EverQuest II for total immersion language education. So this is not a new idea — just a really cool one!

mmpow.com wrote on June 5th, 2008 at 8:30 am:

Zon: Chinese language learning MMO…

This is cool: an MMO devoted to language learning via full immersion.Welcome to Zon! | Enter ZonZon is an unique interactive massively multiplayer online role playing game for learning Mandarin Chinese.By interacting in the Zon environment you will be …

The Serious Games Blog wrote on June 5th, 2008 at 12:54 pm:

Articles of Interest - 05-Jun-2008 Sandra Day O’Connor: Game Designer - 05-Jun-2008Welcome to Zon! | Enter Zon - 04-Jun-2008 Microsoft’s XNA Manager: Games Can Be More Than Just ‘Fun’ - 04-Jun-2008 Serious Games: cuando los juegos tienen otras finalidades - 04-Jun-2008

Eolirin said on June 4th, 2008 at 8:33 pm:

Mm. I think they’re doing something interesting in that rather than just use the world as a method of immersion, there’s also an attempt to deliberately use it as a teaching tool as well. Using EQ2 as an immersion tool is interesting and all, but it’s not built for it, so it won’t have the necessary language tools out of the box. You still need the teachers and the textbooks so you can get enough of the language to be able to go from there. This seems like it could replace the need for the teacher and the textbook entirely.

Peter S. said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:41 pm:

Obligatory link to Penny Arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/5/12/