Second Life, Second Language

I must begin with a confession. I constantly mocked the idea of going onto Second Life, that is until I explored the program and lost many hours of my Real Life. I must admit that I've become quite the fan of Second Life.

Music (playing and appreciating) has always been a large part of my (real) life, so I decided to explore some of the locations geared towards music. I am now in a couple of 'groups' on Second Life and am informed of Second Life 'events' in the Mod/Soul music scene. (New Wavers, Shoegazers, and Brit-Poppers...you're next!)

Aside from music, teaching ESL has become a central part of my life. I can see how Second Life (SL) could be useful for music fans and second language learners/instructors alike (ESL and otherwise). As an instructor, I believe that language learning is easier when it is contextualized around topics of interest to the learners. On Second Life, a language learner can visit different 'locations' that they find interesting and practice the four skills of speaking and listening (with voice chatting) and reading and writing (with typed chatting). Instructors and students can 'meet' on Second Life and explore places together (e.g. museums, tourist sites, etc.) and talk about them over voice-chat and use the typed-chat feature for clarification of spelling, etc.

Some students may not be comfortable with the idea of being seen over a webcam. This issue is resolved by the fact that, on Second Life, you have an avatar in place of your actual appearance. The anonymity could help in lowering affect, although one's facial expressions and gestures would not be visible (i.e. unless the Second Life participant is quite savvy with the 'gesture' feature). In addition, some students just may not be interested in this kind of format for language learning or have access to a computer that is powerful enough to deal with the program.

With lowered affect AND contextualization around any topic of interest, I think that Second Life is a win/win. However, I would encourage SL participants to set an alarm clock. One's Second Life may take over one's Real Life very easily. Consider yourself forewarned.

Question(s):
How would you use Second Life in language instruction?

Signing off,
Ladybird SecretSpy

Video Conference in the ESL Classroom

Until this week, I had never used a webcam. I can definitely see how they can be used in an ESL classroom (i.e. if students have access to computers and the Internet).

Now that I am somewhat acquainted with Tokbox and Meebo, I think that such tools would be useful for one-on-one ESL lessons, as well as for extra practice for students outside of the classroom setting. This would be great in an EFL context, where students may be limited in the types of authentic practice environments that are available to them.

One of the advantages of video-conferencing over just voice-chatting is the ability to see gestures and facial expressions. In my own experience as a language instructor and a language learner, it seems that telephone skills are diffucult due to the absence of inputs that can be made available via video-chatting.

E-journaling

In their article "A Web-Based Approach to Strategic Learning of Speech Acts," Cohen and Ishihara have documented their study of students' practice of and reflection upon speech acts that they had produced in Japanese. Students were able to practice different types of speech acts with web-based, self-access materials and provide feedback (via e-journaling) on the usefulness of the the materials and some of the challenges presented by the technology itself.

According to the article, a content analysis of the e-journaling entries indicated that a majority of the learners had found the curriculum to facilitate the learning of cultural/pragmatic contexts of speech acts (p. 15). A majority of the learners found the provided examples of speech and explanations of cultural aspects to be useful (p. 15). However, only 17% of the students found that the materials cleared up confusion about language and culture (p.16). About half of the students had no issues with the technology, and others generally had only minor issues (p.18).

I think that e-journaling could be useful in an ESL class. One possible use of e-journaling could be to create a student-generated electronic depository of vocabulary items. Students could compile a daily or weekly list new or interesting vocabulary items. For some of the days/weeks, the instructor could provide a topic and have students write all related words that come to mind (e.g. travel words).