How did I learn English?

Look at the title.
Okay, you're good. Now, look here.

'How did you learn English?' is one of the most boring and frequent questions that I have faced since I went to States. That is actually numero dos in being the most boring and frequent question. The most boring and frequent question is, "How do you know about ACU?"

Nope, I will not answer that for you. Pfff, inquisitive.

So, people...
During welcome week, people asked me how I learned English.
During classes.
And even during break.

(Oh yes, I had shrimp bowl with the Stovalls and one of the uncle asked me about how I learned English. Well, I didn't mind telling him that. He's an elder after all. Talking with an elder makes me feel...honored. Anyway, back to topic.)

Yes. How did I learn English...?

My most common answer is 'Oh, so y'kno outside of States, in the other sides of this huge huge Earth (which some Americans rarely think about), people learn English in school, as part of the curriculum. They memorize this silly list of vocabularies every single night, so that they can get great grades. They rewrite these words and sentences every single night, until they bleed on their pencils. They listened to these old cassettes of English-native speakers, so they can speak English fluently. Some of them are so frustrated that they stop learning English. I am those people who bleed on their pencils trying to memorize these silly vocabularies that y'all found that came from Old, Middle and High German and some Old, Middle and High French. Those are not even your vocabularies in the first place...blaa blaaa blaaa...'

Nope, that's not my common answer, obviously. That's an exaggeration.

My answer is mostly something like this, "So, I learned English at school, then my mom put me into English classes outside the school. And voila, I speak English."

Anyway, that's not the reason I wrote this blog post.

My Korean friend, Seungeun, really likes to ask me about how I learned some cultural stuffs and some fancy words in English. I said some not plenty. My English proficiency is limited, duh. Most of the time, I answered her with old same answer, "Read wikipedia. Read a lot. Read a bunch. Watch movies. Watch videos in YouTube. And voila, you know some parts of the culture."

Well, lately, I've been thinking that maybe, I should just say that I'm pretty sure about this, my experiences with playing all of the video games helped me to learn English.

I'm not talking about silly video games like...saving Barbie from the grip of evil. I don't even like Barbie in the first place. Pff, Barbie.
I'm talking about games, like...Final Fantasy, Warcraft, Starcraft, Pokemon, Age of Empires, etc. Well, those are games that I played...during elementary school.

So if I made a timeline of it...it shall be something like...

Second grade - Age of Empires II, Starcraft (I)

That's AoE II

I prefer Protoss to Terran though :/

Third / Fourth grade - Pokemon (Yellow, Red, Card, Pinball)

(note: Who doesn't love Pokemon Yellow? You can get all of those amazing pokemons...unlike Red/Blue or silly Silver/Gold pffff.)

Fifth grade - Final Fantasy VIII

Oh yes, my favorite childhood game, ever.

Words like 'Impudent'? I found it in FF8. HAHAHAHA

Sixth grade - Warcraft III (and the extension packs)

Who doesn't know Warcraft III?

The list doesn't include...those games that I played in middle school, stuffs like...visual gameboy advance or such.

So, these games.
I gotta say that when I was in second grade, I couldn't play the games well.
The reasons are simple: the English level is too high (when I was 8, yes) - thus I didn't really know what the objectives are and kids usually can't think about the tactics that advanced.

But, Pokemon and the others are games that I played in English, while English is not my first language. And yes, I prefer to play Pokemon in English than Japanese. I'm not nuts.

Games like this, I should say, developed my vocabularies and understanding about English (You gotta believe this).
So, well if Sengeun asked me again next time, I will just say...'Well, when I was young, I played video games, tons of video games, all in English. That should explain a lil bit of why I know some bad stuffs. hahaha.'

ps. oh well, I forgot to mention tons of manga - japanese comics- that I read online...all in English.