Oldal 13 [13]
OCR
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 human 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 statements. 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 +
