When I told my Mother that I still play Pokémon well into my 20's, she told me this story about my childhood.
As a kid between the ages of 4 and 5 years of age, I had a really hard time comprehending written word. In school I used to struggle to string together words on paper, and my teacher began to stop asking me to read out loud when she realised I was way behind the rest of the class. I found it really tough at that age, I didn't really understand why I couldn't read as quickly as the other kids.
One Christmas day, I was given a purple GameBoy Color and a copy of Pokémon: Blue. I was over the moon, as a five year old, seeing your first proper game console is one of the most bewildering and exciting moments in your life. Looking at the game, having no idea what it was. All I knew was "that blue giant with cannons on his back is a badass." I began to play it every day after school, I really took my time when playing too. I used to talk to everyone, read every description of every Pokémon I ever caught. That game became a large part of life out of nowhere.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I'm in school again. We're all back from Christmas holidays for about a fortnight now, and on comes the next book we read as a class. Reading, writing, all that stuff I really struggled with were coming back and all of a sudden. I dreaded it. I was asked to read again, for the first time in months. It didn't take long, but my teacher had discovered that my reading and writing had become more fluent. I was able to read whatever Roald Dahl incarnation we were prescribed, I was able to write and keep up with the others. My teacher was baffled, and didn't quite understand why, so she spoke to my Mother one day to try and make sense of it.
My Mother realised some time later that it had been since I started playing Pokémon: Blue that I had started to have more confidence. She came to the conclusion that after all the struggle I had gone through in literary comprehension; Pokémon had taught me to read.
As a kid between the ages of 4 and 5 years of age, I had a really hard time comprehending written word. In school I used to struggle to string together words on paper, and my teacher began to stop asking me to read out loud when she realised I was way behind the rest of the class. I found it really tough at that age, I didn't really understand why I couldn't read as quickly as the other kids.
One Christmas day, I was given a purple GameBoy Color and a copy of Pokémon: Blue. I was over the moon, as a five year old, seeing your first proper game console is one of the most bewildering and exciting moments in your life. Looking at the game, having no idea what it was. All I knew was "that blue giant with cannons on his back is a badass." I began to play it every day after school, I really took my time when playing too. I used to talk to everyone, read every description of every Pokémon I ever caught. That game became a large part of life out of nowhere.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I'm in school again. We're all back from Christmas holidays for about a fortnight now, and on comes the next book we read as a class. Reading, writing, all that stuff I really struggled with were coming back and all of a sudden. I dreaded it. I was asked to read again, for the first time in months. It didn't take long, but my teacher had discovered that my reading and writing had become more fluent. I was able to read whatever Roald Dahl incarnation we were prescribed, I was able to write and keep up with the others. My teacher was baffled, and didn't quite understand why, so she spoke to my Mother one day to try and make sense of it.
My Mother realised some time later that it had been since I started playing Pokémon: Blue that I had started to have more confidence. She came to the conclusion that after all the struggle I had gone through in literary comprehension; Pokémon had taught me to read.