Why are you learning French in Skyrim?

Well...it's a long story. I am English and I live in Spain, and was happy to buy the game in Spanish when it first came out, so I went to my local games store and bought the game for the PS3. When I started playing, the opening credits came up in French. I tried changing this, but it soon became obvious that the only language on the disc was French, so I returned it and asked for it to be exchanged. I went home again, put the disc back in the PS3 and the same thing happened. This time I went back to the shop, explained that it had happened again and the owner of the shop refused to exchange the game again or to refund my money. He said I would have to get in touch with Sony directly and they would change the game. After arguing with him for ten minutes, I stormed out of the shop and back home again.

I pondered whether to return the game and wait for it to arrive in Spanish and then changed my mind. As an English teacher interested in how computer games can be used to help learn languages, I thought I could turn what was initially an error into an interesting experiment.

I would play in French and see if it would help improve my (very basic) grasp of the language.

After playing a couple of times and getting lost, both in the geography of the game and in the language (Skyrim is very rich in language - you have to do a lot of reading if you want to follow the story), I decided to shelve the game until I had more time on my hands - until the summer.

And that brings us to now...

I have decided that it will also help me if I document my progress playing the game on a blog. Not only will this help me learn more French, but I can also use it to reflect on the language I'm learning as I go along.

Let the adventure begin...