🧩 Escaping class

Online classes

I've had Sofiia as my teacher since last year — in the first six week summer school, in digital private lessons since then, and again as my teacher this year. As I experienced last week, I've definitely made progress and hit the next difficulty level. But my progress hasn't been smooth — it's definitely been in fits and starts (horten en stoten).

The downside of digital lessons, no matter how good they are, is that they become habit. And while learning languages seems like a good habit, habits have the side-effect that attention drops. You do them without thinking. That seems a problem for language learning.

Escape Simulator

One of the things we tried, which I really enjoyed, is doing a digital escape room together: Escape Simulator. We tried the "Among Us" themed escape room over two classes; Among Us was another game we both knew.

Escape Simulator on Steam

First-person puzzler you can play solo or in an online co-op. Explore a set of highly interactive escape rooms. Move furniture, pick up and examine everything, smash pots and break locks! Play thousands of community-made rooms through the level editor.

STEAM

The risk of playing games together is that it is easy to solo, especially if you feel obsessively focused on the objective. I suppose there was a bit of this going on, but overall I have to say I really enjoy using the Ukrainian language to explain possible solutions with each other or to coordinate actions in this game. I really want to do this again (or perhaps even an actual escape room in Lviv!).

Buying a game

I wanted to buy Cluedo, because I thought that might be a good game to play with a group. Sofiia told me there was a game store on some street, so on a free afternoon I went to that street to find the store.

Initially, I didn't find the store, so I stopped on the sidewalk to ask some shop employees who were fixing their shop exterior's decorations for help. In my best Ukrainian, I explained I was looking for a game store and asked if they knew where it was.

As I was uttering these words, other pedestrians stopped dead in their tracks, staring at me. I felt a bit like I was supposed to then pull a rabbit from a hat or something — the audience to my plight was both humbling and encouraging.

The response from one of the shop employees was very simple. I heard "Так" (Yes), then a whole bunch of Ukrainian that was too quick for me but I picked up "говорити англійською" (to speak English) at the end. Yes, please. Whatever you said exactly, let's indeed hovoryty angliiskoyu.

I arrived at the game shop, which was literally just three shops further than where I asked. This game shop lady was also hard to understand, but I did hear I was a "handsome kozak" thanks to my beard and earrings.

It must be that compliments are just easier to understand. Because they are so recognisable and intuitively understandable, you know? So, I think I need to ask my teacher to just package everything in a compliment. For pedagogical reasons.

Anyhow, I bought a Cluedo-like game called "13 Підказок" (13 clues).

Playing a game

Teachers Sofiia, Danylo and I met up in another shop in Lviv (a game cafe-shop) on a Saturday to play-test the game I bought, to see if it was any fun and/or suitable to play in class.

Well, the fun part was that I won the first round almost immediately. I'd say this was luck, though, because the second round was a lot harder.

It also turns out there's a serious misprint on the game (two crucial words being interchanged), which we didn't realise until late, but it caused a lot of headaches. Now we know, we can deal with it, but it's a pity.

Another challenge with this game is that the questions you ask each other are repetitive and the thinking is hard — not ideal for a language class. There may be something possible with this game, but it probably requires adaptation.

We ended our gaming session with some rounds of Alias — a game involving describing (and guessing) words. We played it in English and I lost! That works in my favour, though — I now know that my teachers will understand me, even if I don't understand myself.