Immersive English (on Steam) is an application that helps you learn English while playing video games.

With Immersive English, you can pause the game at any time and look up words that appear in games with online dictionaries. The words you look up will be collected in a wordbook. You can also record game videos for learning.

System Requirements

The recommended hardware for running Immersive English with the translation extension is:

• OS: Windows 10 / 11 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-8700K / AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (8-core)
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 470
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Storage: 12 GB available space

The translation extension offers a new approach for learning English. You can first translate the entire sentence, infer the meaning of unfamiliar words based on the translation, and then look up the words you wish to remember.

The translation is handled on your local computer and it consumes pretty much memory.

• The medium model requires 3.6 GB of extra memory
• The small model requires 2.3 GB of extra memory
• The tiny model requires 500 MB of extra memory

The recommended hardware for running Immersive English without the translation extension is:

• Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (6-core)
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Storage: 5 GB available space

If video capture is enabled, approximately 80-100 MB of disk space will be used per minute for video buffer.

If video capture is not enabled, Immersive English requires very little storage (less than 1 GB).

Choose the Game

When talking about immersive gaming experience, role-playing games (RPGs) are always the top recommendation.

Whether it is a futuristic world of advanced technology or a medieval world of magic and fantastical creatures, players can easily become immersed in it. Almost all RPGs offer English voice acting and subtitles, which can help you learn English. Sometimes, the dialogue contains a wide range of vocabulary and advanced expressions. However, once you get used to it and keep up with the conversation, your English vocabulary will improve significantly.

Turn-based strategy games (TBS) are also suitable for learning English.

In strategy games, players develop strategies and tactics, managing units and limited resources to achieve a final goal. Some strategy games also incorporate elements of economics, diplomacy, and exploration. Perhaps the most famous example of this genre is Sid Meier's Civilization series. Compared to the vast vocabulary required for English dialogue in RPGs, strategy games typically involve a more limited vocabulary. Furthermore, the turn-based nature of these games makes it easy and natural to pause and learn new words.

There are many other types of games that are also suitable for learning English. Feel free to share your experiences in the Steam community.

Start the Game

The first step is to start the game process.

It's important to understand several concepts in PC games: Exclusive Input Mode, Exclusive Fullscreen Mode, Windowed Mode, and Borderless Windowed Mode.

• Exclusive Input Mode gives your game total access to your input devices, including mouse, keyboard or joystick. It is a method widely used by games released before 2010. When active, no other application can receive input from that device, ensuring that input goes only to the game currently holding the lock.
• Exclusive Fullscreen Mode makes your game take over the entire display. This usually delivers the best display performance, since the game can directly control your graphics card. The downside is that switching to other programs can introduce a black screen for 1-2 seconds.
• Windowed Mode keeps the game inside a regular window with borders and a title bar.
• Borderless Windowed Mode lets your game run in a window that covers the whole screen but without borders or title bars. It is rarely used with exclusive mode. You can easily switch between your game and other programs, and there's no delay when using Alt+Tab.

Exclusive Fullscreen Mode typically works together with Exclusive Input Mode, and Windowed Mode typically works without exclusive input. However, there are some special cases as well:

• Some old games run in windowed and exclusive input mode, in which case you will find it difficult to move the mouse outside the window.
• Some modern games run in exclusive fullscreen mode without exclusive input, in which case the Windows key will introduce a black screen for 1-2 seconds before returning to desktop.

All these modes mentioned above are supported by Immersive English.

Borderless windowed mode is recommended for most modern games.

Start Immersive English

1. The Welcome Page

Start Immersive English from your Steam library. Click next when you see the startup wizard.

2. Select Game Process

On this page, you will need to select which game you want to play while learning English.

Visible windows with icons in the taskbar will be listed, and you need to choose which one is the game process.

When the game process is selected, its icon and executable file name will appear on the left.

3. Select Video Encoder

On this page, you will need to decide whether video capture is to be enabled.

AAA role-playing games feature captivating stories, rich voice acting, and extensive dialogues, making them excellent resources for learning English. With Immersive English, you can export specified game video clips to your local disk for further study and practice.

Video capture can be disabled, if you just want to use this software as a lightweight game dictionary.

4. Set Pause Options

On this page, you can customize the hotkey and pause mode.

By default, when the Pause/Break key is pressed, Immersive English will try to grab focus, and the game process will pause itself. However, there are some special cases that need attention.

1. In some cases, when the game detects the Pause/Break key, it will display a pause screen obscuring the words being recognized. In this case, you can try a different hotkey such as Home, F11 or ScrollLock.
2. In some cases, regardless of whether a specific key is pressed, a pause screen will appear when the game window loses focus. In this case, you can try to freeze the game window before the pause screen is painted.
   Note: This approach only works for modern games running in non-exclusive mode.
3. In some cases, the game will continue to run even if the game window loses focus. In this case, you can also try to freeze the game process.

Technically speaking, when a process is "frozen", all of its threads are suspended by the Windows operating system, and it cannot process any user input.

You can check whether a process is suspended in the Windows Task Manager:

You can resume a process with the Windows Resource Monitor:

There is a utility program resume-process.exe shipped together with immersive-english.exe, which you can use to resume a process:

5. Set Dictionary

In Immersive English, you can configure multiple online dictionaries and quickly switch between them using a dropdown list when looking up words. The dictionary configured in the startup wizard is the default dictionary (the first item in the dropdown list).

6. The Ready Page

When everything is ready, you can close the startup wizard by clicking Next.

After the startup wizard is closed, a small widget window will appear, indicating that Immersive English is running in the background:

You can now switch back to the game window and start playing.

Pause the Game

When you see a word that you are not familiar with, press the hotkey (Pause/Break by default). The game will be paused, and recognized words will be marked.

You can look up a word with a click. This will open the dictionary panel of the main window.

There are three panels in the main window. By clicking the movie icon in the toolbar, you can open the video panel. If video capture is enabled, you will be able to view recorded game video.

Export Game Video

If you have just watched a long conversation with full audio and subtitles, and there are several words you are interested in, it's a good idea to save the video clip to your computer for learning.

Click the "Export Video" button in the toolbar, and the video export dialog will show up.

Set the export range, the optional video description, the optional word list, and then press "Export". The video clip will be saved to your local hard disk. It will also appear in the video list, below the "LIVE" video.

Resume the Game

After you have looked up the words you are interested in, you can resume the game by pressing the hotkey (Pause/Break by default) again.

You can pause and resume the game multiple times as you wish.

View Session Report

If the game process exits, Immersive English will stop the current session and show the session report automatically. You can also stop the current session by clicking the close button on the widget window.

The words looked up in this session will be grouped by part of speech by default.

If the default classification is not correct, you can edit a word's classification by dragging and dropping. You can also add words or delete words before saving the session report.

{
  "category": ["units", "buildings", "resources"],
  "rule": {
    "units": [
      "crossbow", "pike", "catapult", "horseman", "swordsman", "scout", "knight",
      "berserker", "infantry division", "infantry corps", "cavalry", "artillery", "cannon", "rifled canon"
    ],
    "buildings": [
      "armory", "barrack", "forge", "granary", "harbor", "monastery", "monument", "stable", "workshop",
      "arsenal", "army base", "navy yard", "motte-and-bailey castle"
    ],
    "resources": [
      "cattle", "lumber mill", "marsh", "pasture", "plantation", "trading post", "manufactory"
    ]
  }
}

Press "Save" and the session will be saved to your local hard disk.

Press "Export" if you want to save the session card on the left into a png file.

Review the Words Learned

The next time you start Immersive English, you will see saved sessions in the main window's session panel. You can use this panel to review the words you've learned in different games.