To spell the words of a foreign language is not an easy task but it’s crucial in order to learn the language. Mingoville has developed different English spelling games where the kids through pictures, clues, sound and movement learn to spell English words by playing with them.

Lately, I have been writing about the different games and their educational purpose in Mingoville Virtual World. Some of you have commented that you find it hard to create an overview of the learning possibilities because the virtual world is not linearly structured and it has many maps (areas). However, it is fun for the kids to discover the different maps and what to do on these maps which is why we do not make an overview of where to find what. It takes too much of the fun away. Instead, I have written a short description of each game to give at least an overview of what games to find. In the end, after the last game post, the idea is to gather all games in one place and in that way try to give you an overview of the educational content in the virtual world.

So far I have covered SuperStar where the kids learn English singing, recording songs and giving concerts, QuizTalk where the kids practice English pronunciation and listening, and the Boat Races where the kids practice to recognize different words in a fun setting. Spelling is an important part of all language learning and we have of course also developed spelling games.

In the LetterGame, the kids see different images of words that he/she needs to spell by clicking on the image and listening to the pronunciation of the word. After the word has been  pronounced, the child begins to chase the letters to compose the word in writing. The letters have to be put together in a string to form the word. The letters have to be dragged around the board to put the word together. If the letter is wrong the string will turn red and break.

In the other spelling game, Word Search, the kids need to recognize words either horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The words are shown in images in the green sidebar to the right. When mousing over the picture, the word appears and the student is ready to find it in the puzzle. I personally like this game a lot, I can spend hours in there.

Both games develop the student’s ability to create an overview of complex content. In both games, the student has to detect specific words by resorting to the use of images. As in all the other games, the students earns coins based on how many words are spelled and the time it takes to spell them. After each game the score list will appear and the student can see his or her position on the different score lists, e.g. by country, the world, today, weekly, monthly or all times. The score lists make it possible to set up competitions based on, for instance, Country and Today to encourage students to improve their spelling skills.

As always we welcome comments and suggestions.

That is a good question but nevertheless it’s possible. All games in Mingoville Virtual World are educational and developed to teach kids English. That goes for the Boat Races as well. Prior to this blog post, I described the learning possibilities in the social MMO games; Quiz Talk and SuperStar which are based on interaction and content produced by the students themselves in the form of songs or recorded words from the interactive dictionary.
The Boat Races are competition games. The students race against one another on time.

Multitasking Games

There are three types of Boat Races; 1-player, 2-player and 4-player races.

All Boat Races are built upon speed and English word recognition. The boat is controlled using the arrows on the keyboard. The students’ ability to recognize the words have been build up in the theme based missions, where the students spell, read, listen and practice the pronunciation and meaning of the word in different contexts. In the Boat Race, the students have to quickly recognize the words, collect the right items and still maintain speed around the corners of the racing track, which will strengthen their coordination and multitasking skills as well as the ability to recognize the words they learned in the missions.

The Game Racing on time, the student needs to collect the right items. He or she receives points based on the numbers of “collected” items as well as time spent in total. In all games, the points are converted to coins that the student can spend in Mingoville drinking coffee or renting a fishing rod.

After the games, the score list will appear and the student can check his or her position on different parameters, e.g. Today among all the users of Mingoville, or this Week among the kids of his or her own country, or perhaps All Time for the whole world.

The Boat Races are popular games because it’s always fun to compete against your friends. Besides, the games are based on basic English words which make them ideal games for the beginners. In some of the other games, the student is required to have some understanding of English in order to play or at least to win the games.

A way of using the Boat Races actively in the classroom or at home is to challenge the students for a race against their teacher or parent. I have to give you a warning. If you are not a regular gamer, it’s not easy to navigate the boat – I’m not a hardcore gamer and I have a hard time controlling the direction of the boat. I get beaten by youngster all the time. I really have to practice my navigation skills to keep up with the kids. However, it’s fun and it boosts the kids’ self confidence when they beat you. In the name of fun and positive learning, we dare you to challenge your students or your child.

We’d love to hear the results. As always you are welcome to comment and make suggestion to new features.

Hello World,

Recently, we have received so many great comments about our Mingoville program. Thank you. You have no idea how exciting it is to hear your positive feedback. We are so happy you love using Mingoville to learn English.

We wanted to take this opportunity and share with you the exciting news we’ve kept a secret for the last couple of months. In the form of a virtual world, Mingoville is introducing a new English learning product for our young English learners – Mingoville Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Internally, we call it MMOngoville.

MMOngoville (Universe)

There are three goals we want to achieve with MMongoville. Those are:

1. It has to be based on English Learning (as ESL) – Even though Mingoville is fun and entertaining, we still want to focus a great deal on education. Inside the Universe, there will be captivating games the main purpose of which is to educate through entertainment i.e. edutainment.
2. It has to be built around Community – We will be highly rewarding collaboration and successful communication.
3. We want to make MMongoville Addictive – As opposed to pure entertainment games out there our goal is to make the Universe where kids do not realize that they actually learn a new language by playing addictive, yet educational, games. We believe that it will be even more encouraging to parents and teachers.

The Mingoville Universe offers, but not limited to, the following maps:

Shop, Disco, School (Scool), Beach, Sport, Hospital, Pier, Deserted Island, Lady Butter, Nature, Station, Café, Airport and Goose Will.

Here are a couple of earlier drawings of Mingoville avatar. Of course they look much livelier now

Mingoville Avatars

We are going to post new drawings and other exciting things as the MMO gets ready for the launch in May.

We are so excited about it!

Stephan Stephensen

Mingoville team

Hello Mingovillers,

If you are fond of Mingoville and of learning English in general then take your learning yet to another level – mobile phones.

At Mingoville, we’ve built a mobile phone English learning application based on the famous Sudoku game.

In the game, you will be playing and interacting with images from the Mingoville program as well as listening to the English pronunciation allowing you to improve your own comprehension skills. The game is designed to improve your English listening skills through the practice of listening and recognizing English words. The game has 3 levels and here are just few snapshots of the game in action.

All you need to do is download the application and install it onto your mobile phone. See the installation instructions in your mobile phone manual yourself or with your parents.

Download the Mingoville Sudoku Game HERE.

Note: you have to check whether or not flash games are compatible with your phone. The game requires Flash Lite 1.0 (minimum).

Have fun learning English with Mingoville.

Stephan Stephensen, CEO

Hello Mingovillers,

Just letting you know that 155 new words are being added to the Mingoville dictionary.

We are testing the new additions and they will be out for use next week. Here are some shots of the new words.

- Breakfast –

- Dragon -

- Honey -

Like in our current dictionary, it is still possible to listen to and record your own English pronunciation. However, this time we are adding a new feature, that is, an option to listen to both female and male voices. All you need to do is to select a preferred option at the top of the page to the left above an image (see below).

We hope you enjoy the new words and the new feature in the dictionary. Leave us your comments if you have any feedback or any other suggestions you may have.

Have fun while learning!

Stephan Stephensen, CEO

Hello Mingovillers,

We just wanted to share with you that we’ve been working very hard on our new and fresh look website that will be launched at the end of November.

On our blog here we want to share a quick insight into how the new website is going to look. See below one of the sub-pages.

In addition to the fresh look and feel, there is going to be tons of new features on the new website, one of which is the “Downloads” section (as shown above).

In “Downloads”, kids, parents and teachers will be able to take advantage of all Mingoville’s resources including images, videos, songs, wallpapers, games and many more including print materials for fun extracurricular activities at schools.

On the frontpage, we are going to have a couple of very cool features. We are certain that they will help us build even stronger bonds in the community.

One of the fancy features is that Mingovillers will now be able to see where new users are coming from. Just imagine, how cool it is when you know where your mates from different corners of the world are stemming from. It is a big sense of pride of being a part of the big community while playing and learning English by taking small steps.

Vladimir Chen (on behalf of the Mingoville team)