Why I decided to teach in Second Life?

Language teachers are always on the outlook for ways of motivating their students and helping them to learn faster and retain more. Naturally, I wanted to find out what that hype over Second Life was all about. A 3D immersive virtual world sounded just like the right thing to engage students and provide a safe environment for practising languages. So, as I mentioned in Second Life experiments, it was out of curiosity that I signed up for Second Life. I even felt a bit guilty because what I had heard about online 3D games had been rather negative.

Potential of Second Life

Now, that I know more about Second Life, I see its potential for language education. It is …

• Immersive: 
  • Opportunities to speak to native speakers or non-native speakers in real situations
  • Role-plays can take place in the actual setting: If they are learning shopping language, they can actually go shopping, practise ordering food in a restaurant, go on field trips to places where the target language is spoken.
• Collaborative: Work with others to complete tasks (e.g. project work)
• Provides a safe environment to try out the language
• Caters to the needs of different learner types (visual, kinaesthetic, auditory) and intelligences (Gardner’s MI theory).
• Helps shy students to overcome their shyness step-by step by first using text chat and then voice. It makes it easier to speak as it is their avatar and not themselves doing this. Nobody sees them blush.
• For those who can only attend distance learning classes, SL gives participants a feeling of really being present and experience a “real” class atmosphere.

Formal versus informal learning

The question is: “Should learning in SL be formal or informal?” Some say it is, after all, a game and teachers should not mess with it. Learning should be entirely informal (e.g. practising speaking with native speakers).

As in Real Life and as I know from my own experience of learning foreign languages, I think the combination of formal and informal learning works best for optimal results (e.g. attending classes in a language school in the morning and immersing oneself into the language outside class by going shopping, meeting people, going to the cinema) In Second Life, we give students the safe environment and provide them with language input and controlled practice to make sure they have the language and use it correctly. This  gives them the courage to go out into the open SL world and seek opportunities to practise it. Lessons should include field trips to places where it is easy to contact and speak with other residents to give students an idea where to go in their own time. Teachers could also visit events together with their students after preparing them to participate in discussions. This should give students enough self-confidence to go out by themselves and practise their language skills further without needing a safety net and any formal instructions any longer.

Limitations and strengths

SL has limitations when teaching (e.g. limited gestures, facial expressions which result in more teacher talk- though there are first steps like lyp synching), no whiteboard to write or draw on quickly. On the other hand, there are possibilities that you do not have in RL (e.g. going on field trips, teleporting to places, making and copying objects indefinitely to name a few). So, I think when planning and conducting a lesson, it is crucial to keep these in mind. What happens often is that we try to replicate Real Life. I wonder why? Are we so used to thinking in boxes? Is it too much freedom? I’m sure with time we will see much more innovative SL-ways of teaching and maybe these will even influence our Real Life teaching in a positive way.

Reservations?

Yes. It won’t suit everybody. Some will feel uncomfortable due to the double challenge of getting to grips with the language and the technology. When students pay for the course they will be unhappy when things don’t function properly or things take long due to lag, etc. I also sometimes feel responsible for students that I bring into Second Life. What if they get addicted, visit inappropriate mature locations or fall prey to residents whose intentions are not good? This is why I prefer to teach those who are already in SL and even if I bring students there from outside, they are adults and responsible for themselves. 

Conclusion

Despite the challenges of teaching in Second Life and the technical issues like instability and lag, I see the potential of SL for teaching languages and prefer to be part of finding out how best to teach in SL instead of waiting for researh results. 

Finally, Second Life is fascinating but it is, after all, only a tool. And tools are only then helpful in reaching your goals when you choose them appropriately taking students needs and wants into consideration and not deciding based on your personal love affair with a tool.