Escapeling

Escapeling is a Telegram-based game that is created for intermediate English learners. Follow the exciting space-themed storyline together with your teammates and solve language tasks to escape from the aliens!

You need to use the Telegram messaging application to interact with the Escapeling bot. You can do so both with your computer and your smartphone. Once you have created a Telegram account (or if you already have one), you can search for @Escapeling_Bot on Telegram or access it via this link]

Ideally, yes! The exercises are designed for you to practice important English language skills in a relaxed environment with your friends. The team behind Escapeling is a group of students, so we are constantly looking to improve the efficacy of Escapeling's methods. However, this app is meant to be a bonus to classwork, so it cannot be used as the only source of learning and improving your language skills. A basic understanding of English is assumed.

Yes, you need an internet connection in order to use Escapeling.

To provide the best user experience, we collect your telegram username, the name you choose during the game, and your performance in the different tasks. Your performance is used to change the game difficulty according to your language level. This information helps us create a fun and user-specific game experience! Escapeling is a project that was created and is led entirely by university students. We have no interest in collecting, selling or using your data for anything other than playing this game. Please be aware that even though we do not collect this information, we are able to see your chat history while playing the game. Therefore we kindly ask you not to write any personal information in any chats with the bot.

To start a session you need to access the bot (look for @Escapeling_Bot on Telegram or navigate to this link]. Afterwards, simply type /start in the chat with the bot.

You need a minimum of 3 people to play, and a maximum of 4.

We encourage you to play with your friends and classmates! As of now, we don't have a feature that lets you team up with random users.

Escapeling is a team-based language practice game. Currently, we do not offer single player tasks.

While playing Escapeling, you will need a Telegram username and a game-level name. You don't necessarily need a username to use Telegram, but you need one to play Escapeling. If you haven't set one yet, you can go to Settings, click on your profile, then click on username, and create one. This is unique to you out of all Telegram users. Additionally, in the personal chat with the Escapeling bot, you will be asked to enter your name. This will be required only once during the game and it is different from your Telegram username.

In this task you focus on finding grammatical mistakes. You will each get a sentence and the goal is to determine whether it is grammatically correct or incorrect. If the sentence is incorrect, you should find the mistake and provide a correct alternative for it. There is always only one word that needs to be corrected. Importantly, you are allowed to discuss the given sentence in the group chat. However, only you are responsible for giving a final answer if it's your turn. Everyone will get a turn.

This task is designed to enhance vocabulary knowledge. During the task, each user is given a word, and the goal is to describe its meaning without using the word itself. The goal of the other people in the group is to guess it. In case a person doesn’t know the meaning of the word given to them, there is an option to choose an alternative word. There is a time limit on each word guess. The turn ends if the word was guessed correctly or when the time runs out.

The goal of the discussion task is to practice language production and writing skills. For this reason, you are given a short text. The topic of the text should start and guide a discussion between group members. After the text, you will receive some discussion questions. There are three questions in total, and you will have a time limit to discuss each of them. Your task is to share your opinions about the given topic in the group chat. Try to write and interact as much as possible.

The listening task is aimed at helping you train your comprehension of spoken English. Our team has collected a variety of audios on interesting issues and everyday topics, suitable for every language level. During the task, each member will be given an opportunity to listen to one of the tracks from our library, and then will be asked to respond to several multiple-choice questions about the content of the monologue or the conversation they just heard.

In designing the existing tasks, we focused on trusted sources, such as datasets and language corpora. However, there is always a possibility that there are multiple correct answers to a question. Our materials have been revised to accomodate this possibility, but there might still be some issues. If you are certain that your answer is correct, please report it using the following link.

This is a known issue and we are working on fixing it. As a workaround, you can try restarting the bot from within the groupchat: type /stop and then /start. If this doesn't fix the issue, unfortunately the only way to continue playing is to create a whole new escape mission. This means going back to your chat with the Escapeling bot, typing /start, and either creating or joining a new group. You can invite the same people to join you again, but you will lose the progress you had made in the previous session.

This is a known issue and we are working on fixing it. As a workaround, you can try restarting the bot from within the groupchat: type /stop and then /start. If this doesn't fix the issue, unfortunately the only way to continue playing is to create a whole new escape mission. This means going back to your chat with the Escapeling bot, typing /start, and either creating or joining a new group. You can invite the same people to join you again, but you will lose the progress you had made in the previous session.

This is a known issue and we are working on fixing it. As a workaround, you can try restarting the bot from within the groupchat: type /stop and then /start. If this doesn't fix the issue, unfortunately the only way to continue playing is to create a whole new escape mission. This means going back to your chat with the Escapeling bot, typing /start, and either creating or joining a new group. You can invite the same people to join you again, but you will lose the progress you had made in the previous session.

You can try restarting the session by typing /stop and then /start. If this doesn't fix the issue, we encourage you to create a different escape mission with the same group members and re-start your escape.

Please double-check that you entered the password correctly. Furthermore, make sure that you did not include any spaces or punctuation in between or at the end of the password. Please also check that the player who is typing the password sends a message that contains ONLY the password.

We are happy to receive your feedback via this survey: https://forms.gle/dRTdutMRV4i4wy6d6