Game Section

[deyvion]

Maybe there could be game sections connected to each language? Word games are commonly used in language teaching, so why not here also?

[linguaholic]

This is an interesting suggestion. Could you please provide an example for such a game?

kind regards

Marcel

[deyvion]

I was more thinking of having a category under each language where the members can start their own games - like I saw on another forum, the 'five letter word' game seemed very fun. =)

[linguaholic]

yea, I see. but could you please provide an example for that kind of game?

regards

[Topcho]

Mmm, I don't know the rules about this 5 word game, but how about a guessing game?

Like

"It rhymes with a table but is not one of Aesop's works"

To this the next player can answer with stable, or label or cable (I bet there are many others) and ask the next one. Rhyming is not necessary, I just used it here like a clue. You can point other things too to navigate the answer, like number of letters, if it is verb, noun, etc.  I liked this game because sometimes you can see right, yet unexpected answers  :grin:

[linguaholic]

I think we can start this kind of game under the general language discussion thread as "an experiment" and see how it goes. If it is good fun, I can think about implementing a new subforum for that kind of thing. Would you be so kind and start a thread then ? (topcha or deyvion) :grin:

[Topcho]

I just started it  :laugh:http://linguaholic.com/general-discussion/experimental-game-d/

I hope my clues are good, because I'm getting pretty sleepy right now and kept thinking about book and movie references XD I was even tempted to describe the word like "it's not one of Harry's best friends".

[deyvion]

The five letter word game goes like this:

My word is WRITE.

The next person needs to give a five letter word that starts with E (the last letter in my word), and so on.

It is a good way to learn new vocabulary, and if someone gives a word that another user does not know, then a definition could be requested.

[Topcho]

This game sounds fun as well. I played something similar, but without the 5 letter rule. But I would like to try myself in this one as well!

Another game we used to play  was this:

First player gives a word - for example PAINT

The second player gives words, starting with each letter from the previous word - like: Pear, anchor, ice, nails, treasure.

The next one picks one of the words and so on.

More challenging version of the game was when you had to build a sentence containing words starting with the letters. Like, from PAINT - Peaches and Apples on the Island could Not be sold To strangers.

For mildly hard level you could mess the order of the letters, but for extra hard you have to follow the right order. This game has resulted in some crazy sentenses!

[deyvion]

The one with building a sentence sounds very fun, challenging and especially educational! I'd really like to try that one! =D

This was what I meant about the game sections. The members could create games like these in every language (there would be a game section for each language). It is fun and educational at the same time.

[sayitwell]

What kind of games do you mean?  Like words with friends?  How about a scrabble game or something like a crossword puzzle or live hangman?  That would be cool.

[cinderr]

What about a game similar to hang-man but with words of another language, one you are attempting to learn? It would be easy and hang-man is always fun!

[Alfonso]

I agree, some word learning games would be awesome. I think a simple multiple choice kind of game, where you can chose the proper word or phrase to complete a given sentence, would be a good resource for learning or refining a language. You can also have different difficulty levels, beginner, novice, intermediate, expert, etc.

[sayitwell]

What about a game similar to hang-man but with words of another language, one you are attempting to learn? It would be easy and hang-man is always fun!

that's a fantastic idea.  i like your creative thinking.  i would also favor a game that is similar to mad libs.  i always enjoyed playing mad libs.  is anyone else interested in hangman or mad libs at all?

[Miya]

^I would be interested.

I think it'd be fun to have a games section where everyone can participate. And maybe once in a while we can have contests and the winner will win something like a medal by their name.

I would love to have a thread to play Shiritori in 

[JoeDirt]

When I saw this thread I thought someone is asking for a normal game section to talk about videos games in different languages or something. This is a great and an interesting idea. Umm, I have an idea but I'm not sure it'll work. Crossword puzzle, but I'm not sure how :confused: I was thinking uploading an image but nah  :bored:

[Alfonso]

that's a fantastic idea.  i like your creative thinking.  i would also favor a game that is similar to mad libs.  i always enjoyed playing mad libs.  is anyone else interested in hangman or mad libs at all?

I second this! A hangman language learning game would be awesome. I remember playing some mad libs when I was young too. 

[SpiralArchitect]

What about a game similar to hang-man but with words of another language, one you are attempting to learn? It would be easy and hang-man is always fun!

Sounds like a great idea but how does one incorporate something like that in a forum. I think the thread with this game will become a bit cluttered. If someone has a way of making this one work, it can be a great idea.

[Miya]

I think a whole new subforum would be created for this type of stuff. For example, we can call this section "Relax & Make Friends" section. In this section, everyone can come together regardless of what language they're interested in. We can move the introduction there and also add a few others subcategories.

Some suggestions for the subcategories:

• Off-topic- self-explanatory, all off-topic and random topics go in here
  
• Creative Corner - I'm thinking that people can post their works here. They can post art, stories they've written, poems, songs, etc. Limit to one thread per user... so you would have to post all your work in one topic.
  
• Game corner- a place for members to play games (in any language). Since we will probably be playing word games and it will probably be one word responses, posts in this thread should not count towards our post count.
  
• Travel & Photography - Post pictures of your country or places you have traveled to. You would need to say a little about the pictures too, not just post a picture. One thread per user.
  

I think those subcategories all have a little bit to do with language learning (other than off-topic, ofc). In the creative corner, people can proofread and take note of other people's style of work. And we get to see places around the world in the travel thread.

I don't know, these are just some suggestions to make the forum more active. We don't have to use them if we don't want, lol XD

[rgaz83]

I love the idea of having a place to play word games. There are so many that can be played on a forum! I've seen some forum word games (not for language learning) where the thread goes on for MONTHS. They're addicting!

[linguaholic]

I think a whole new subforum would be created for this type of stuff. For example, we can call this section "Relax & Make Friends" section. In this section, everyone can come together regardless of what language they're interested in. We can move the introduction there and also add a few others subcategories.

Some suggestions for the subcategories:

• Off-topic- self-explanatory, all off-topic and random topics go in here
  
• Creative Corner - I'm thinking that people can post their works here. They can post art, stories they've written, poems, songs, etc. Limit to one thread per user... so you would have to post all your work in one topic.
  
• Game corner- a place for members to play games (in any language). Since we will probably be playing word games and it will probably be one word responses, posts in this thread should not count towards our post count.
  
• Travel & Photography - Post pictures of your country or places you have traveled to. You would need to say a little about the pictures too, not just post a picture. One thread per user.
  

I think those subcategories all have a little bit to do with language learning (other than off-topic, ofc). In the creative corner, people can proofread and take note of other people's style of work. And we get to see places around the world in the travel thread.

I don't know, these are just some suggestions to make the forum more active. We don't have to use them if we don't want, lol XD

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking your time to think about on how we can improve this forum.! There are some really nice suggestions in your post. Up to now, there have been several requests for a "language game section". I have been thinking about this but could not yet make a decision. Let's first talk about the other suggestions.

Travel & Photography, Creative Corner

Traveling and photography are without any doubt very interesting topics; however, please keep in mind that this forum is above all a language forum. Of course, in some cases, you can combine traveling and language (learning)in a nice way, still it is in most cases a completely different subjects with a completely different kind of posts. This does not mean that you could not start a post like : "Learning languages while traveling the world". This, indeed, could be even a very interesting topic. However, I do not think that we will need a whole new sub forum for that. The main focus of this forum has to remain on language learning and everything (more or less directly) related to languages. By implementing new sub forums like travel & photography and "a creative corner", I am honestly a bit scared that quite some focus will be taken away from the essential aim/purpose/goal of linguaholic.com. Moreover, if you scan the internet for forums, you will see that there are 1000's of forums out there for almost anything. Therefore, in my opinion, it is crucial to focus on just one thing (and languages as a topic seems HUGE enough).

I would like to add that a considerable number of people find this forum while searching for specific keywords on google, those keywords obviously being language-related. If we start to talk about all kind of different things in many new sub forums, people will also get on this page with keywords that are not related to languages. This is something that I would like to avoid (of course this will happen anyway from time to time but much less) if we keep 99 % of the forums language-related.

I can see that implementing this kind of sub forums could bring us more users and traffic, however it is not the way to go for linguaholic.com, as the only thing that is important here is that we can "build up" a nice community with members that are, above all, passionate about languages and language learning. You should also not forget that this forum is ONLY three month old and we are currently counting 5700 posts / 700 threads / 250 members. I am very happy about those statistics and there is a very constant increase of posts / members and threads. Therefore, I think we do not have to worry too much about the future of this forum and we can expect this place to become much more popular in the near future already(6-12 months).

Please give me some time to think about the language game sections. I might start a poll for this as well later on, so you could give your vote either FOR or AGAINST language game sections.

[Miya]

Oh okay, I see what you mean. I do agree that we should focus on language learning and I failed to realize that my suggestions would bring in more people who are not passionate about languages.

As for the game section (if you do decide to start it), we would be able to play games in all languages right?

[JoanMcWench]

I like the suggestions thus far. Would it be too much work to have a section of the site exclusive to flash style games that use images in association with words? Much like Rosetta Stone? Or am I asking for far far too much work to be done?