Osmosis isn’t just for cells – it’s for language learners too! Soaking up target language simply by placing it in your everyday line of sight is one of the most effective strategies for fluency. From your instagram feed to cosy telly-watching, consolidation can be about throwing more of the things you love in your way.

Gaming is another entz stream that is really easy to target language-ify, since many titles have multiple language options. The Steam platform is a particular goldmine here – a huge multi-platform marketplace, with loads of free-to-play offerings. The trick is to find quite text-heavy games with dialogue and interactions, exposing you to as much content as possible in-play. There’s honestly something for everyone here, from word games to fully-fledged RPG.

This week, I chanced across a casual clicker on Steam that has been working its quiet way into the hearts of users since its inception in 2018. It’s Cell to Singularity, a game that simulates the blossoming of life on Earth, from eukaryotes, to jellyfish, to humans (and beyond). It’s the kind of game you can have running inconspicuously in the background while you work, slowly developing and growing like a bonsai that needs occasional tending. Very Zen.

As you can see from the screenshot, it’s also a great way to revise the building blocks of life. That’s the root educational application the game has been feted for, covering evolutionary biology in a fun, laddered way. Switching my interface to German gives me a ton of fun natural world vocab.

Beyond word level

But the game is also full of conversational exchanges you have with the ‘supercomputer’ running your life simulation, as well as Wikipedia-style descriptions of all your finds. In short, it supports word, sentence and text-level language skills in a rich, engaging environment. What more could you ask for?

The range of languages available right now is already impressive. Not only the ‘mainstream’ school ones, but also Korean, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese, amongst others.

Cell to Singularity currently has an 89% positive rating from thousands of Steam users. I wonder how many of them are playing to improve their target language? Hopefully I’ve enticed a few more of you to do just that!