I'm helping a doctorate student from Chile who is writing here thesis on using D&D to teach English as a Second Language (ESL). Great, right? Anyway, I wrote her a long message today answering a question she had about teaching D&D to an intermediate English level class - she has concerns about their ability to understand the English. She questioned me regarding when to use the native language to understand the game - either in class or afterwards through writing. I thought I would throw up these ideas here on the forums if anyone is interested. Long, boring, teacher-ESL talk. You might want to stay away....
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Re: what I do for my classes:
I teach a class either two or three times a week. Currently, all of these classes are D&D for about two months. Then for one month we stop D&D and instead prepare English grammar for their upcoming school tests. When the tests are finished, we go back to D&D.
What I will talk about below is what I do only during the D&D months:
During the week, there are two ways I give homework: vocabulary and writing.
During class, students keep an ongoing list of new words that I teach them through gameplay. I do not prepare specific vocabulary words - rather these are words that come up during normal gameplay. Often these words will come up again during play and students are then able to use the new words in a meaningful way rather than simply memorizing words without using them.
In Korea, there is a great emphasis on vocabulary memorization. Many students will "learn" 20~50 words EVERY DAY in private English schools. However, these students maybe remember 1~10% of these words after one year. They waste so much time memorizing but can not retain the words because they are not used. Once words become used, they will usually be remembered. This is one way that D&D really assists vocabulary memorization.
For example, these are words that one class learned just yesterday: "sacrifice, pit, reputation, mock". Only four words, yes. But they will likely be remembered and probably with no additional study. 4 words X 3 classes/week x 8 months = 400+ words a year. I sometimes give an impromptu quiz with these words or will use the word during D&D, and if the player doesn't know the word, I might have a small but immediate negative consequence in the game (but also hopefully funny negative karma). For example, if they are trying to convince somebody of something (diplomacy skill), instead I will say they accidentally fart and they fail their diplomacy.
This way of learning new words - through play and immediate usage along with occasional low pressure deterrents helps to reinforce enjoyment and progress of English. I believe a very understated problem with learning any foreign language is that it often is not fun.
Language is an art - it is a skill that is never perfected and only improves with great practice and time. Students who are forced to study will only improve gradually (and won't be happy doing so). If you made a student play the piano every day for 10 years, yes, they may be good at the end. They might be very good. But if they don't enjoy it, they will never be great -- and they will be frustrated for those 10 years. But if that student likes to play the piano, their learning and improvement will come more naturally and more enjoyably. It will take less effort and thus when they have particularly difficult problems, they will take the needed time to learn and solve them better.
I believe this is exactly the case with learning ESL as it is with learning the piano.
The other homework each class does each week is writing:
Homework is due early in the week. Usually it is either writing a paragraph, an essay, or some creative writing. For example, this week I've been focusing on improving students "topic sentences" for paragraphs. I gave them 8 topics and they must write the topic sentence for a paragraph (but not the paragraph) due next week.
At the beginning of class next week I will look over these topic sentences. I will teach as necessary about them. If they are not done well or I can tell the students didn't do their best, we will spend more time on them. We might spend 1/2 the class or all the class time on this. This means less or even no D&D. If they have done a good job, we will probably only spend 15 minutes on this and will go straight to playing D&D. This, of course, is great motivation for doing homework well.
Next week, I will look at the topic sentences and will chose the two most interesting sentences for each student and their homework will be to write paragraphs for those two topic sentences for the following week.
When I gave them topic sentences topics, two of the eight topics related to D&D. One was general "D&D", and the other was something specific in their game. This is usual. Writing homework is not usually about D&D but sometimes it is related. Occasionally themes that are occurring during the game (being hero, death, disappointment, success, stealing, helping, poverty, travel, etc) can generally be used as writing topics, and student will write about his or her life experience or personal opinions about this topic.
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On to your question about English level:
For me, it doesn't matter.
I believe that the key to learning ESL, and particularly using D&D as an ESL tool, is for students to be able to successfully communicate in the new language. Every ESL teacher I've met would say that the most difficult aspect of ESL communication classes is getting the students to talk enough. When you play D&D, that is not a problem!
It's as simple as that. I've taught a couple beginning level classes with D&D. It was very hard. I taught them for some time before we started D&D, but when we started, they were still very low level. The difficulty was for me to be able to communicate in such a way that matched their level of understanding. Yes, my story became less imaginative, more simple, and less complex. But that's OK. The students understood what was happening and I only used English. They only used English (occasionally, if a student asked me first, I allowed one student to explain the situation to another student in Korean).
Remember my learning piano example? Well, my students love D&D and love English class. Before I used D&D, many of my students were very shy to talk. They were fearful of making mistakes with their low level English. They didn't have any real incentive to use English - except from their parents telling them that it was important to their future. For a child, this is really not enough motivation at all.
But when we play D&D, they speak English. They don't worry about their mistakes, they often speak first without even thinking too long about the correct usage - speaking English becomes more natural to them rather than a formula that must be studied and learned (a major problem here in Korea where students study all night - rote learning - but can not use English in practice). Now, my kids are able to actually use their English. This means when they study, when they learn new words, they are able to use them. And every teacher of every subject knows that if a student uses something that they've learned, then they will remember it always. This is key.
So directly to answer your question: For me, I would play D&D in English only. That is the strength of using D&D. I would make it very simple and match the level of the students. If necessary (I don't do this, but I can see it being useful for some teachers and classes), I might talk in their native language for five minutes before class to remind the students of the situation and to maybe prepare them for some concepts / vocabulary they will encounter during that session's gameplay. And I might do the same after class to just recap the story so that everyone understands.
This generally works if you have one essential class dynamic: students who don't worry about mistakes but rather focus on communicating. Of course, when a student makes mistakes, I often correct them and they will repeat the sentence correctly. But we usually don't spend additional time on this and there are never negative consequences -- unless maybe they forgot one of the in-game vocabulary. Or for example I have one advanced student who still always drops the "s" on third person verbs ("he go"). Some days for him if he does this too much, I will give him minus 1 HP every time he does this.
Students don't feel pressure in my class, but they know that we are serious about English. They know I expect their best effort for writing. When we have the month of school test preparation, they know we will study hard.
But more than that, they feel that English is fun for them and they have their own incentive to learn. Not for the test, not for some very abstract future that their parents keep talking about, but because they want to use it several times a week to play their favorite game. It works!
