Learning English through Visual Story: Episode

Everyone knows English is important in this century. People may choose to join tutorial lessons, watch TV dramas or movies the most for improving the language. For me, my first method to learn English is playing interactive story games on phone. 

There are lots of interactive story games (or visual stories) online applications such as Episode, Choices, Romance Club etc. Most of them are free to download but if you want more special choices/scenes to unlock it surely takes some real cash to achieve. Personally I am a fan of reading visual story so I am here to introduce the game and to give my experience in it :)

'Episode- Choose your story' is the first app I tried to use 3 years ago. It is the app created by Pocket Gem. It is the creative free app as you can be a writer and a reader at the same time. People can create their own stories through the app writing system to create whatever stories they like and then share to users. 

 

                                                                                                        

 

The design in the story display had changed few years ago. Compared to the old design (right picture), the appearances and movements of characters are more delicate and smoother. Also there are way more choices of hair and clothes was added to the new version. 

Stories created by general people are mostly free for reading and picking choices along with the reading slow. However, after new version pop up, gem (diamond) story books are now available. It means if you want good endings or special scenes included you gotta pay (use gems). Those stories are high quality as which are written by official staffs from Episode (called 'An Episode Original Story') or writers approved by Episode.  

 

 

Pros 

• Various types of  free stories

 

            It is a platform gathering people around the world to brainstorm stories

            for readers to enjoy the fun of free reading and learning English. 

            Basically, there are including 7 types (romance, fantasy, thriller etc) and

            in some special occasions such as Christmas, Halloween etc the Episode 

            would release/select some relevant stories for users.

 

• English based stories

 

          So far there is only one medium of instruction: English for this app. If 

           English learners find hard to improve English through school lessons,

           news etc this story app provides another platform for learning. With 

           bunch of story types, interesting plots and fine animation, You will 

           definitely find your cup of tea, which motivates you to learn the 

           language and improve your reading skill.

 

• Well functions 

           Most of the stories there is a part of designing your character(s)

           like hair style, skin tone, dressing etc which effectively increases 

           users' interests. Also, choice options are provided during story 

           play. They may affect the plots or endings that keep the people's

           motivation to play for knowing the ending they make.

 

• Writing skill improving 

          This is the biggest part of the app which stands out. Promoting everyone 

           to be an online writer, And yes you can. Just download the app and create

           your own profile then you are able to write and customize your own    

           story and let people see your masterpiece. It is a good way for people

           to improve English writing outside work and school. Also you may 

           get comments from your readers for correction/praises.

                     

Cons

• English typo/grammar mistakes

           As I mentioned above, anyone can write their stories and upload.

          That mean non-native English speakers can also create stories. The 

           more you play the more you discover there are some minor English    

           mistakes. It won't affect much meaning of the story but if your English

           level is in the beginning it is a high risk that would affect your English

           learning. But don't worry much as other readers would let messages

           for telling writers they made mistakes. And some writers are honest

            that would tell you their English is not very good before you start 

            the story.

 

• Money spending

         If you expect good quality stories with good endings, spending some

         real money for better stories is a MUST without any wrong spelling 

         or other problems. Personally the deal of gems isn't attractive as you 

         can see that $78 HKD only have 125 gems and each gem option costs

         around 15-40 in average or even more so it is 3-5 choices or so. 
 

• Unfinished stories

         There is no time limited or policy that monitor if the free stories are 

          finished or not so that writers can take unlimited break away from 

          writing stories. Sometimes if they find writing stories are taking 

          much more time than they think, they would tend to disappear 

          and left the unfinished stories behind. 

 

Hopefully you would find out what is the best way for learning 😊