The Antimoon Method is a great, fun way to learn English very well in a few years. But it’s not for everyone. Before you start, ask yourself the following questions:

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Since I started Antimoon in 2001, I’ve been promoting the idea of learning English with adventure games. I believe adventure games are a great way to learn English, especially for younger learners.

Why do I believe in adventure games so strongly? Because I know that people learn languages most effectively when:

• they are surrounded by foreign-language sentences (input); and
• understanding those sentences is personally important to them (it enables them to understand something, or someone, they care about)

Adventure games meet both conditions, as they provide both input (in the form of dialogue) and motivation to understand it. When you’re playing an adventure game, you really want to make progress in it, sometimes to the exclusion of other needs like eating or sleeping. Since solving a puzzle typically requires understanding subtle hints dropped by characters in the game, the player finds himself in a situation where their very well-being depends on how well they understand English vocabulary and grammar. If this is not an ideal learning situation, then I don’t know what is.

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As many of you know, in my 2009 review of English dictionaries for learners, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) won in every content category. No other dictionary I tested has more example sentences, friendlier definitions, more accurate pronunciations, better coverage of American English or better-quality recordings.

But the dictionary has a fatal flaw: the software is awful. I had to write a cathartic rant about it just to keep myself from sending a mail bomb to the Pearson Longman headquarters. If you think I’m some kind of grouch with unrealistic expectations… well, yes, maybe I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Let me just list the most important problems: the 10-second start-up time, lack of mousewheel or trackpad support, slow and buggy scrolling, and pointless clicking required to do anything. In many ways, LDOCE feels like a university – lots of valuable knowledge, but hopelessly inefficient and full of pointless hurdles.

Enter Taku Fukada, an English learner from Japan. Like many other people, he read my dictionary review, decided to buy the LDOCE, and discovered that he hated using it. But, instead of whining about it like I did, he did what ninjas do: he silently solved the problem.

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If you’re an English learner living in a non-English-speaking country, your English input will be different from the input of someone who lives in, say, America. A learner in America (assuming he interacts with people on an everyday basis) will get most of his input by listening to everyday, informal conversations between people. A learner in Germany or Brazil will get most of his input from “content” – books, movies, videogames, songs, Web articles, discussion forums, TV shows, podcasts, etc. – things that are printed, recorded and published somewhere.

It’s hard to imagine learning English well without access to English-language content. Reading a book or watching a movie in English is an incredibly motivating and powerful experience that can produce a dramatic growth in the number of words, phrases and grammar structures that you can use.

However, there is a small catch. Relying on content can create a gap in your knowledge of “everyday English”. You can read dozens of books, watch hundreds of movies and read thousands of Web pages, and still not know what to say when you’re handing something to someone (There you go), how to say that your favorite show will be on TV at 5 pm (It’s coming on at 5.), or how to use phrases like Looks like it, Fat chance or Dibs on the cake.

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In my brand-new article, I offer some advice and tips on practicing English pronunciation. I hope you find it useful.