I'm not a native English speaker. I could throw in that the best thing regarding learning I did (in addition to buying a home computer) was to get J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (which came with the adventure game) which in turn led me to read LOTR and then other books in English, and generally become much more fluent.
Later on, wasting time reading NNTP news at the uni was also actually a good investment for learning the language in a way that is useful at work.
For my kids, the games have again been the same thing, along with Harry Potter books.
That's interesting. Whenever my dad wants to become more comfortable with a new language, he reads the translated editions of Harry Potter, too! He's read "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in Dutch, French, Arabic, Mandarin, and Spanish, lol.
Later on, wasting time reading NNTP news at the uni was also actually a good investment for learning the language in a way that is useful at work.
For my kids, the games have again been the same thing, along with Harry Potter books.