Using English with Games: The Real Deal

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As the years pass, time becomes a rarer commodity, so finding fun ways of sharing and developing our family's minority language (English) becomes a bigger challenge.  Games are an excellent way of diversifying language skills - from reading the instructions, understanding and explaining the game to each other, reading parts of the game through to finally playing (not to mention arguing about the correct way to play...).  The actual playing then carries with it a whole new range of interactive vocabulary - and the inevitable banter that goes with it (so you think you're going to win, eh?).

When it comes to card games, we've stumbled upon a game that is now our number one family favourite: Monopoly Deal.  I've never been much of a Monopoly fan (unlike Mr R) and I probably only played a couple of times in my life, so I was a bit wary of this.  But I was looking for a card game that would be a step up from Uno, something portable, in English with enough of a challenge to keep all of us entertained.  With 146 reviews on Amazon and an average of 5 stars, this seemed like a safe bet.

A more straightforward version of the board game, luck and strategy mean that we all have a chance of winning - if we play our cards right.  The level of difficulty is just right for a family - not too hard for the seven year old, not a walkover for the 38 year old.  A game lasts about 15 minutes and provided you have a table (or floor) to spread the cards on, it can be played anywhere - the deck of cards is no bigger than a deck of standard playing cards (I'm getting heartily fed up of opening up a new game to find that it's 60% packaging, designed and constructed to justify the price - we're running out of space in our "compact and bijou" flat!).

Mr R and Puce are already working on new strategy variations, so this is a game that is likely to be with us for a while!  Probably the best £7 I've spent in a long while...