Situated Language Practice through Global Simulation In Virtual Worlds (original) (raw)
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Second Language Teaching in Virtual Worlds
Practical Approaches to Teaching in Virtual Worlds, 2011
This project is a proposal for a case study that aims to describe and understand communicative and pedagogical processes involved in Second Life ® (SL™) in a context of second language learning, by modelling in-world lessons of Portuguese as a second language for ERASMUS students 1 arriving in Portugal. The purpose is to provide examples of situated e-learning driven activities and perceive how an immersive context stimulates learning by involving students in a virtual reality situation, where real life language context situations are provoked and where 'not possible in real life' learning routines happen. This will allow experiencing the advantages of this platform compared to physical life teaching and learning contexts, through the inherent characteristics of this medium, such as the synchronous and simultaneous use of voice and text.
Integrating the Real and Virtual World for Academic Language Education in Second Life
Incorporating Advancements
This chapter focuses on a Second Language Acquisition (SLA) study conducted in virtual worlds that could help teachers in terms of knowledge about acquisition processes, in which technology is integration between formal and non formal education. The research comprises of two studies strongly focused on the development of Italian oral language proficiency. It was held within Second Life ® (SL™) 1 in order to explore the affordances of public spaces to enhance Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) 2 and to stimulate the oral production through learner's engagement. Since 2007, a new pilot project, Café Italia, was developed by Carmela Dell'Aria (aka Misy Ferraris) in Second Life ®. Starting from theory and research (SLA and Linguistics) the project leads to effective language learning practice. As matter of fact, the research moves to analyze learners' needs, to give a focus for instruction, to adapt technology to their needs through experimentation, and to evaluate the results.
Springer Nature, 2021
This discourse provides an overview of the levels of immersion that immersive media educational tools provide in terms of interactivity and immersion, ranging from 2D displays on a flat screen to Highly Immersive Interactive (HII) experiences rendered in a Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display (HMD). These immersive media provide a range of affordances for learning, such as the feeling of physical presence in remote locations, social learning, experiential learning through replicable simulations, and social interactions. The article maps the levels of immersion to learning objectives associated with language learning. Keywords Virtual reality • Learning technology • Immersive media • 360°video • Language learning • Second language acquisition • Affordances 4.1 Introduction: Immersing Students to Increase Learning Many in the global academic community anticipate that immersive media such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), 360°videos, and other media tools will transform education by improving student learning outcomes, engagement, and general satisfaction with the learning process (Fidopiastis et al., 2009; Fonseca & Krauss, 2016; Dede et al., 1996; Hayes et al., 2013). One of the biggest challenges of language learning is finding opportunities to practice a language in real-world scenarios (Soto et al., 2020). Several theorists have proposed that
"Research on educationally designed game-based virtual learning environments and virtual worlds has begun to explore the affordances of 3Dmetaverses for engaging learners in ways that contrast with formal schooling. Applying constructs from ecological psychology, distributed cognition, and sociocultural perspectives, design-based longitudinal studies have shown the quality of learning taking place in technology-supported collaborative environments. But what are the affordances of virtual environments for second language learning? How can we design for a nonlinear experience of action and interaction that exploits these affordances? We explored current language teaching practices in Second Life and found that many educators simply apply their classroom approaches in the virtual space, treating the environment merely as input. Designing for optimal learning opportunities in virtual worlds requires that we rethink second language acquisition by grounding it in the ecological psychology concepts of perception-action, values-realizing, coaction, and languaging.We call for a rethinking of pedagogies based on input/outputmodels that imply a linear progression from an initial to a goal state. Instead cognition is embodied and distributed, and avatars in 3D worlds allow us to experience virtual environments in embodied, dialogical ways. Language learning in virtual worlds calls for design that prioritizes opportunities for distributedmeaning-making and coaction in values-realizing activities that go beyond task-based learning, autonomy, and construction of a second language identity."
Routledge, 2022
This insightful book offers language teachers and teachers in training the opportunity to delve into 3D virtual worlds and see the benefits they provide for effective language teaching. Based on a decade of experience teaching and researching in Second Life (SL), Chen demystifies the dos and don’ts of SL teaching and research, whilst vividly walking readers through each step of the journey. Written in an accessible, jargon-free, and personalised tone, the book is divided into three parts. Part I builds the foundation in SL research, task-based language teaching (TBLT), and understanding fundamental skills for SL teaching. Part II showcases the author’s SL teaching blog that generously unveils their task-based, SL-enabled lessons, participant observations, critical reflections, and lessons learned from each SL session. Part III is complete with the highlights of the author’s SL research and hands-on resources and tips for readers. Each chapter also features a "Checkpoint" section to gauge reader understanding of chapter content, followed by a "Your Task" section to promote learning by doing in SL. Teachers and curriculum designers will find the well-detailed and guided lesson planning useful when starting their first SL class. Graduate students and novice researchers will also find the systematically recorded data collection helpful for their SL research.
Multi-user virtual environments for the classroom: practical approaches to teaching in virtual worlds, 2011
This project is a proposal for a case study that aims to describe and understand communicative and pedagogical processes involved in Second Life® (SL™) in a context of second language learning, by modelling in-world lessons of Portuguese as a second language for ERASMUS students arriving in Portugal. The purpose is to provide examples of situated e-learning driven activities and perceive how an immersive context stimulates learning by involving students in a virtual reality situation, where real life language context situations are provoked and where ‘not possible in real life’ learning routines happen. This will allow experiencing the advantages of this platform compared to physical life teaching and learning contexts, through the inherent characteristics of this medium, such as the synchronous and simultaneous use of voice and text.
CALL and complexity – short papers from EUROCALL 2019
Immersion through Virtual Reality (VR) gives the subjective impression that the learner has a realistic experience (Dede, 2009). The pedagogical potential of VR provides the means of enabling constructivist places of contextualised learning. This paper aims to examine the potential the VR application Mondly may have to maximise interactivity and aid learners in proactively experiencing empirical conversations that emulate authentic contexts. The research took place in an undergraduate course Italian I (A1, Common European Framework of Reference for languages), offered by the Cyprus University of Technology. The present study adopts a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of Mondly on Italian learning. Digital material is incorporated into the lesson to promote contextualised learning. An experimental group is subjected to learning through Mondly whereas a control group is subjected to conventional lectures utilising the same material as the experimental group.
Foreign Language Instruction in a Virtual Environment
Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments
The chapter conveys the experiences of using the virtual world Second Life (SL) to supplement classroom-based instruction of an introductory foreign language class. With attention given to the needs of educators and instructional designers, as well as students, the author presents selected activities, along with detailed practical plans and theoretical justifications for those activities. She follows by discussing the technological characteristics of SL (communication features, logging features, and features used to ease activity preparation) that the author found to be of particular pedagogical value in her instruction. The importance of situated cognition, cultural relevance, self-pacing, students’ autonomy, and interactivity with diminished inhibition is examined as well.