Page 13 [13]
PREFACE
——o—
Widespread belief in past decades that leisure activities are a way to just pass
the time, especially for children, has recently given way to much criticism.
Now, discourse on these leisure activities — listening to music, watching films
and TV series, playing video games, and using social media, such as Instagram
or TikTok — seems to focus on their potential educational benefits, too. When
it comes to listening to music, people have come to perceive it as a way to
distance themselves from one another by putting on their headphones on
public transport and tuning out their surroundings. In the case of films and
TV series, “binge watching” has become popularly thought of as harming hu¬
man relationships, disconnecting and siloing people from shared entertainment.
Similarly, it is common to hear how video games turn children into aggressive
and anti-social young adults. In the starkest example of recent social backlash
to digital media, Instagram and TikTok have been dismissed as useless apps
that alienate people from one another and that create no social value other
than driving the gears of techno-capitalism. There is some truth in these state¬
ments. However, efforts to push back against the spread of digital and social
media have only seemed to speed up the pace at which it spreads. Therefore,
it is worth reading into how they can benefit us.
These leisure time activities are frequently pursued by an overwhelming
majority of “gen Z” and young adults. If such activities are done in English (or
any other foreign language), they may prove excellent resources for learning
English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The opinion that it is impossible to learn
English just from social media, TV series, and video games must be reexamined.
One source of inspiration for this research comes from my own childhood
when I learned many English words and phrases from playing video games
with my friends. We had no choice but to somehow understand the menu of
video games. In order to understand the gameplay and figure out what was
going on, it was essential to know the language in ways we could not learn
from entry-level textbooks. We had no idea even how to pronounce or use the
words correctly, but we had a lot of vocabulary stuck in our heads that I still
remember to this very day. Years later, I started learning English in secondary
school, and after finishing my secondary school studies, I ended up majoring
in English. I eventually became an English as a Foreign Language teacher and
I have been teaching English ever since.
+ ]1 +