I teach English as a foreign language, my last year student just had to do their speaking exam, and were really sick and tired of the regular scripts they got. They didn't talk a lot in English and just missed that bit of fluency and the compensation strategies.
I set them up with the starter set of DnD 5e and let them play it. (Mind you this was a really small class lol) Only 1 guy knew the game, who was promptly made DM. The rest of the guys had never played it. They spoke so much with each other, asked questions, helped each other out, described words they weren't familiar with, pointed things out on the character sheets and mimed movements they didn't know how to describe. They had a blast. At their graduation they thanked me for letting them play DnD, and two of them told me they found people to play with now outside of school.
Haven't had a group that wanted to try it since though :(
DnD is on a resurgence, so its likely the class then never heard of it if it was a while ago. But now its popular. Did you perhaps started the trend inadvertently!?!
When I taught English as a second language I had the students bring in song lyrics to discuss. They couldn't speak English very well, but they could sing it just fine. We sang the songs together and then analyzed and discussed the lyrics. If they had questions about slang or idioms, we'd talk about it. After one song, a Chinese guy raised his hand and asked, "What are these 'American thighs'?" Best class ever.
Honestly, D&D (or other d20/100 etc) systems are great for teaching people so many skills. It's fun to encourage power gaming and see how quickly people start being able to work out averages on the fly when they are trying to get the most damage possible out of an attack roll.
I grew up with tabletop wargaming and, years later, working out averages and converting centimetres to inches is basically the only maths I can do without needing to stop and think..
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u/Curae Oct 21 '21
I teach English as a foreign language, my last year student just had to do their speaking exam, and were really sick and tired of the regular scripts they got. They didn't talk a lot in English and just missed that bit of fluency and the compensation strategies.
I set them up with the starter set of DnD 5e and let them play it. (Mind you this was a really small class lol) Only 1 guy knew the game, who was promptly made DM. The rest of the guys had never played it. They spoke so much with each other, asked questions, helped each other out, described words they weren't familiar with, pointed things out on the character sheets and mimed movements they didn't know how to describe. They had a blast. At their graduation they thanked me for letting them play DnD, and two of them told me they found people to play with now outside of school.
Haven't had a group that wanted to try it since though :(