The class I have conducted last week

Last week I have conducted a class in SL. I played the role as a teacher to teach my two students English. Although the net speed was not very well, it did not effect a lot, we could still talk with the voice function. It was a quite good experience for both of us. They told me they had never experienced virtual lessons before and it seemed that learning in the virtual environment was interest of them. 
 
Yanlin

Cypris Chat: Halloween

Kimiko

English Cafe： Halloween

Kimiko

Qian's Week 12

Hello Everyone,

 

 

I have attended an art gallery in SL which was held by an American artist. It is so interesting to see so many amazing works showing in SL. You click on them, you can look at in different angels. Most importantly, you dont need to wait a long line to buy tickets. After that exhibition, I have chatted with that artist. Surprisely, he said that his orignial thoughts of his series works called 'Chen Yu Luo Yan' came from an classical Chinese romantic story. After heard that, I suddently remembered that my Chinese characters (CC) notecards for group trial lesson were sitting in my inventory. The idea is if he can get some inspriations from Chinese literature, he might also them from Chinese language. Then I dragged those notecards to him. He is quite interested in my way of showing Chinese characters, especially the evolutionary developments of Chinese characters. I promised him that I am going to made more notecards like that for him, also for my teaching.

 

With sending him the notecards, I was also sending him a pronouciation link to him. He can click that link to hear the correct pronouciation of that CC. He expressed that he really loved this way to learn CC. I also think I really like his way to show people his works.

 

This experience reminds me some improvements for my project, such as some the pronouciation links should be added on the notecards. The students can learn it without speaker or teachers' voice assistant. 2nd, a pre-test and a post-test will be better for learners to enhance their learning memories, also good for teachers to collect the teaching results. 3rd, more visual assistants will be great loved by CC learners, such as images plus illustrations, or images plus handing drawing evolutionary texts.

 

Sorry for the delaying post, I was sick last weekend.

 

Good luck

 

Qian

Some interesting landmarks

I have found some interesting landmarks where people teach and learn English. They are all built in Second Life. Interestingly, they are recommanded in an Asia International TEFL Conference. TEFL refers to Teaching English as a Foreign Langage. This conference focused on Collaboraton and Creativity in English Teaching and Learning in Asia. "The use of IT in Lnaguage Teaching" was a part of the contents in the conference, and it talked about teaching and learing in SL. I put these on the bolg in case you are interested in them.
 
Avatar Languages
British Council Isle
Cypris Village-English Learning Community
Education UK Island
Edunation
English Conversation
English Language School
English Village
ESL-Learn English-Language Lab
International Schools Islands
Second Life English
TESOL, TOEFL, ESL & EFL (English) Resources! Learn English!
Voice 3D English
 
 
 
Reference:
http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/Cebu-Video.php
 
 
Yanlin

Report my attendance of English teaching classes 5

Although I continue to attend the other classes, I observed the pronunciation class at 3D English CHACHAT, and I could talk with the guide and students after the class.

The guide seems to grasp the detailed situation about English teaching schools or chat-groups in SL, and says that the area of English teaching in SL is not so wide. For example, the assistant of ‘Cypris Chat’ owner was his co-worker, but she was headhunted by ‘Cypris Chat’ about 2 years and a half ago.

The guide says that there is little possibility to attend the other English teaching classes for me, even if it is not free. That is because most of those kinds of schools were already closed, although they were well attended at first.

So, I will give up finding out the other classrooms, and focus on the classrooms which I could found out until now.

Kimiko

Ethical Considerations

This week, I will be focusing on the ethical conundrums that we have been facing in the past few weeks. Initially I 

was just focusing on our problems but I came across some interesting news that I thought I must share with you. 

Butterbusch and Talab (2009) explain various unethical scenarios in a very reader-friendly manner. They talk

about how a female avatar, who is new to SL is taken advantage of by a creature. The creature brings her to 

different lands, including the "seedy" side of SL. This was taken even further when the creature persuades the

female avatar to get a furry avatar of her own. What is interesting is that these furry creatures have their own 

social rules, values and practices. They have immersed themselves so completely into this identity that they have

forgotten what its like to have a simple human avatar and that it comes with its own identity. What proceeded

was that the female avatar was harassed and it was only when the female avatar changed back into her human 

form that the abuse stopped. Now, all of the above seems obviously unethical. However, apparently, even

choosing not to disclose your real life identity is unethical in Virtual Worlds. Dr. Alex Gordon, who conducted 

research on identity in Second Life revealed that 80% of female avatars were actually male and 75% of male 

avatars were actually female!! It is shocking to find how many people actually want to escape the realities of life 

by going to the extent of changing their identity. What makes the unethical aspect of this even worse is that there 

are scripts that allows the abuser to control his/her victim's avatar. Eg. Knees detached from the body, shoes on 

top of the head, etc. The icing on top of the cake is when SL users get punished in real life for crimes committed 

in SL. True stories include, a woman in Tokyo who kills her husband's avatar and is consequently sent to

prison and a woman in Delaware plotting to abduct her SL boyfriend. 

Coming to ethical issues that concern us more. Many researchers feel that it is alright to simply stand in the 

background and collect the data trail that people leave behind. However, as long as they are 'lurking', it is 

unacceptable.

Devi

References: 

Butterbusch, H. R., & Talab, R. S. (2009). Copyright and You Ethical Issues in Second Life [Journal]. TechTrends, 53(1), 6.

 Nairn, A. (2009). Research ethics in the virtual world [Journal]. International Journal of Market Research, 51(2).

About my final project

I have been invited to attend a class conducted by ESL (English as a second language) that I mentioned couple weeks ago this coming Saturday. The class will be focuing on pronunciation, vocabulary, scripted conversation. I will share my experience with all of you after I try the class.

The reason why I want to attend the class is realted to my final project. I will be role-playing as a teacher to conduct a lesson and teach English to some students drawing on my experience of learing in ESL. There might be two or three students who are showing their interest in learning English in SL.

Then, I will carry on exploring the idea of oral communication as well as the feasibility of teaching English in SL in China. In my final project, first, I will give a brief description of the role-playing group attending the class (number of people, content of class, etc). Second section includes the theory of teaching English in SL. Language teachers use SL to provide simulation of real life contexts and encourage students to improve their language skills in a more creative and realistic way (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik and Williams, 2009).Third, I will talk about the positive and negative aspects of the feasibility of teaching English in SL in China basing on the experiences of me and my "students". Final part will be the conclusion part.

 

It is just a brief idea of my fianl project. There might be a possibility of changing a little bit in it.

 

Reference:

Chang. V., Gual, C., Kopeinik. S, & Williams, R. (2009). Evaluation of Collaborative Learning Settings in 3D Virtual Worlds. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET).4 (7).

About my project

What you are doing/intending to do for the project assessment.
Analysis of English language teaching classes in Second Life

1) to briefly identify the aspect of second life that you are engaging in for your project work (e.g. what you are doing)
I am attending some English language teaching classes in Second Life.
At the same time, I will try three methodologies, which I identified for my project, in my teaching session in my group of this paper (Albert, Betty, Devi and me), which was proposed by Albert, on this coming Tuesday.
I would like to get some insights from this trial.

2) provide a very brief overview (referenced) of some of the concepts discussed in this area (this might just involve a cut and paste from your slide show).
I am planning to focus on the analysis of the following three teaching
methodologies:
1. Original Communicative Approach
(do not explain about grammar)
2. Task-Based Language Teaching Type 1
(explain about grammar before practice)
3. Task-Based Language Teaching Type 2
(explain about grammar after practice)

Kimiko

Applied Dual Coding Theory on Chinese characters teaching in Second Life

Dual Coding Theory (DCT) emphasises the theoretical perspective on learning and teaching sight vocabulary. It relates two specific areas on language cognition; they are verbal encoding and non-verbal encoding, such as imagery (Sadoski, 2005). Compared to English language, Chinese vocabulary was constructed with morphological aspects and represented more meaningful (Norman, 1988). The learning process require the students, especial the foreign language learners, have a good understanding on the meaning of certain Chinese characters. Based on this requirement, the teaching aids on Chinese characters should pay more attention on helping the students to know the words by verbal assistant, and to understand the meaning by using imagery (Shen, 2010).

Second Life provides an ideal platform for both Chinese learners and teachers. It offers an environment where you can re-build some ancient Chinese buildings and living conditions. Students’ imagery ability will be inspired specifically by it. It also gives the users to communicate with each other by speakers.

By listing those benefits, the trial project in SL will be constructed by two parts. In the first part, the teacher will introduce several concrete new vocabularies verbally. The assistant teaching tool in SL will be sending note cards. In the next part, the teacher will ask the students to find those corresponding things in words which have introduced by the teacher at the 1st part. For instance, the Chinese character ‘门’ means ‘door or gate’ in English. The teacher will teach this word ‘门’ first, and then she will ask the students to find a Chinese door in SL. The purpose is to show the students that the Chinese character ‘门’ came from real door in ancient China. With this learning, the students will get an imagery understanding on the word ‘门’. The whole project is based on DCT, and combined by verbal teaching and non-verbal (imagery) learning.



References
Norman, J. (1988). Chinese. Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press.
Sadoski, M. (2005). A dual coding view of vocabulary learning. Journal of Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21, 221-238. doi: 10.1080/10573560590949359.
Shen, H. H. (2010). Imagery and verbal coding approaches in Chinese vocabulary instruction. Journal of Language Teaching Research, 14(4), 485-499. doi: 10.1177/1362168810375370.

About Theories of Effective Tasks

As I mentioned in my power-point, according to Hampel (2006), there are two theories for effective tasks. One is the second language acquisition theory by Ellis and the features of effective tasks in this theory are as follows (Ellis, 2000, p.200):

• Two-way information gap
• Closed outcome
• Non-familiar task
• Human/ethical topic (vs. objective/spatial topic)
• Narrative discourse (vs. description/expository)
• Context-free
• Involving detailed information

The other theory is the sociocultural theory by Meskill and the features of effective tasks in this theory are as follows (Meskill, 1999, p.146):

• Provide ample opportunities for differing perspectives and opinions, for controversy, disagreement, resolution, and consensus building.
• Motivate active participation and interaction by having no one single answer or process to employ in accomplishing them.
• Offer some form problem-solving (something for which computers are particularly well suited).
• Designate roles for individual learners and teams to take on as they engage in these processes, helping situate learners within a community of participants.
• Include a motivated awareness of the forms and functions of language used.

I thought that the comparison of these theories and the features of actual observed classroom activities seemed to help with understanding the language teaching methodologies in Second Life. However, these are too complex, so I thought that I would like to adopt a similar approach to Shinagawa’s (2001), which exams the relationship between task types and the effects on language acquisition using following classification criterion of task types (Shinagawa, 2001, p.104):

1. Form of activities:
Production (participants produce new information based on given information)
or reception (participants receive given information and understand it)
2. Way of negotiation:
Two-way exchange or one-way exchange
3. Way of implication of information:
Sharing information or monopolizing information

However, it seems that tasks are hardly used in English language classes in Second Life. Therefore I would like to analyze them from only the theoretical aspect of methodologies.


References

Ellis, R. (2000). Task-based research and language pedagogy. Language Teaching Research, 4(3), 193-220.

Hampel, R. (2006). Rethinking task design for the digital age: A framework for
language teaching and learning in a synchronous online environment. ReCALL,
18(1), 105-121.

Meskill, C. (1999). Computers as tools for sociocollaborative language learning. In K. Cameron (Eds.), CALL: Media, design and applications (pp. 141-162). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.

Shinagawa, N. (2001). 日本語教育におけるゲームに対する教師の意識と使用実態. 日本語教育, 110, 101-109.　

Devi's Project

Devi

This is what I'm planning to do for my final project. I will be role-playing as a student and attending a Chinese lesson conducted by Betty. I will then observe my thoughts based on my identity. I will then analyse my experience with the theories that I touched on in the first assignment. Once I have established this, I will then record a video discussing my thoughts and views which will then, hopefully, be uploaded to YouTube.

Hope this is alright.

Report my attendance of English teaching classes 4

I attended a beginner English language teaching class on Saturday from 4:00 to 5:30 SL time at Cypris Chat. The teacher could come to the class at this time.

This class basically only uses a voice function, but if there are some troubles, such as participants cannot catch a speaker’s pronunciation, the speaker is allowed using a key board function.

There were many new participants in this time, so we introduced selves, and talked about similar events to Halloween in our countries which was an proposed topic by the teacher.

The teacher imposes us that the topic for a next session is folk stories of participants’ countries, so we have to prepare to talk about at least an outline of one folk story of our countries until next session.

As I could solved my problem about my flat's server, I also re-scheduled my observation of the pronunciation class at 3D Englsih CHACHAT.

Kimiko

How successful is Second Life for the development of communicative competence in a second language?

I will be participating in a teaching session in SL and reflecting on how successful SL is for the development of communicative competence in a second language. The outline of my teaching session is as follow:

Topic: Meeting & Greeting

Pre-Reading Activity: Group Discussion
How business people greet each other in different countries? (Speaking)

Reading Activity: Matching Information
Reading comprehension (Reading)

Post-Reading Activity: Group Discussion
Describe your own experiences (Speaking)

Outcome:
Students are made aware of the culturally appropriate ways in greeting people from different cultures through the means of practicing their speaking and reading skills in the target language, English.

My lesson is construed based on the framework of the 'Language Socialization Theory' - second language learners are socialized both to the language forms and through language, to the values, behaviours and practices of the culture of the target language. In other words, it involves “socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language” (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986, as cited in Ellis, 2008).

Moreover, I will also try to identify some of the theoretical issues discussed in previous works of literature about teaching in SL, for example, the technology readiness of both the teacher and the students (Wang et al., 2009); the design of meaningful and authentic tasks (Rifin, 2005, as cited in Blasing, 2010, p. 101); the settings of the physical and virtual learning environments (Wang eta al., 2009).

References

Blasing, M. T. (2010). Second language in Second Life: Exploring interaction, identity and pedagogical practice in a virtual world. Salvic and East European Journal 54(1), 96-117. Retrieved from AUT University Library database.

Ellis, R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition (2nd ed). Oxford, UK: Oxfrod University Press.

Schiller, S. Z. (2009). Practicing learner-centered teaching: Pedagogical design and assessment of a Second Life project. Journal of Information System Education 20(3), 369-381. Retreived from AUT University Library database.

Wang, C. X., Song, H., Xia, F., & Yan, Q. (2009). Integrating Second Life into an EFL program: Students’ perspectives. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange 2(1), 1-16. doi: 10.1007/s11528-009-0337-z


Albert

Report my attendance of English teaching classes 3

I attended a regular English language learning class on Thursday at ALC’s English café, which was a free English language school in Second Life, from 2:00am to 3:00am New Zealand time on Wednesday and Thursday (they said that the timetable would be changed from next week).

There were an Australian teacher, one assistant teacher, and five learners at that time. They only chatted with a keyboard function, and did not use a voice function. When I asked, they said that it was the usual style of this school.


Kimiko

About Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)

My purpose in this project is a comparison of Communicative Approach (CA) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), so I would like to describe about theories of TBLT, too.

Willis’ (1996, p.38) components of TBLT framework is as follows:
1. Pre-task
Introduction to topic and task
Teacher explores the topic with the class, highlights useful words and phrases, helps students understand task instructions and prepare. Students may hear a recording of others doing a similar task.
2. Task cycle
2-1. Task
Students do the task, in pairs or small groups. Teacher monitors from a distance.
2-2. Planning
Students prepare to report to the whole class (orally or in writing) how they did the task, what they decided or discovered.
2-3. Report
Some groups present their reports to the class, or exchange written reports, and compare results.
Students may now hear a recording of others doing a similar task and compare how they all did it.
3. Language focus
3-1. Analysis
Students examine and discuss specific features of the text or transcript of the record.
3-2. Practice
Teacher conducts practice of new words, phrases and patterns occurring in the data, either during or after the analysis.

In Willis’ framework, learners accomplish a task without sticking to particular grammatical structures. Then after accomplishing the task, grammatical structures, which are thought to need reinforcement, are focused. Although this way can naturally integrate the part of focus on meaning through communication activity and explicit explanation of grammatical structures, there is no opportunity to use focused grammatical structures. Although Kudara (2010), who is one of promoters of Willis’ framework, also points out a necessity of the opportunity to use focused grammatical structures, there is an opposing theory to Willis that the explicit explanation has to precede activities such as Yates (2004).
Therefore frameworks under the name of TBLT can be typified by the following two types:

TBLT Theory Type 1
1. Pre-task
2. Task cycle
3. Language focus
TBLT Theory Type 2
1. Pre-task
2. Language focus
3. Task cycle


References

Kudara, M. (2010). タスク重視の教材開発―試案―. BATJ Journal, 11, 8-16.

Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-based learning. England: LONGMAN.

Yates, L. (2004). The ‘secret rules of language’: teaching pragmatics in the classroom. Prospect 19(1), 3-21.

About Cummunicative Approach (CA)

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been developed as one of the post Communicative Approaches (CAs). However, it can be hardly said that they are clearly defined, although the promoters emphasize the differences between TBLT and CA (Knight, 2000).

Firstly, therefore, I would like to describe about theory of CA.

CA is the language teaching methodology which originated from a criticism with audio-lingualism. It was developed based on outcomes and theoretical frameworks of discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, etc. These theoretical frameworks were generated spontaneously, and were developed through influence of a democratic education started from 1930s, social philosophy after the Second World War, and linguistic philosophy, anthropology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, etc., progressed in 1960s in the West (Aoki, 1991).

CA has been criticized because it dismisses grammatical structures based on an idea of the serious consideration of meaning for communication; and then, various language teaching methodologies has advocated and practiced as the post CAs. However, the theory of CA still occupies the center of foreign and second language teaching (Hashimoto et al. 1999).

Nowadays the tendency of dismissing grammatical structures is dwarfed. Then CA is interpreted various language teaching theories and methodologies to improve learners’ communication competence and strategies through teaching and activities which is contextualized by authentic materials. There is no stated methodology for CA, and it consists of various theories for the definition and actual practice based on the policies from meaning-centered to grammar-centered (Hashimoto et al. 1999).

References

Aoki, N. (1991). コミュニカティブ・アプローチの教育観. 日本語教育, 73, 12-21.

Hashimoto, Y., Hirata, M., & Tasaki, K. (1999). 「コミュニカティブ」な教室活動に対する学生の受けとめ方―COLTによる中国系・非中国系学生の比較―. 日本語教育, 103, 89-98.

Knight, P. (2000). The development of EFL methodology. In C. N. Candlin & N. Mercer
(Eds.), English language teaching in its social context: A reader (pp. 147-166). London:
Routledge.

Kimiko

Report my attendance of English teaching classes 2

I attended a beginner English language teaching class on Saturday at Cypris Chat. However, the teacher could not come to the class, because his/her voice function had a trouble. Therefore participants chatted about one hour with an owner’s assistant of Cypris Chat.

A server of my flat did not work from Sunday, so I could not attend the pronunciation class on Monday at Chachat. When the server is recovered, I'll ask my contact person the new schedule.

Kimiko

Bottleneck time in my Second Life

Hi All,

How is your last week? It seemed I was losing my enthusiam about Second Life. I tried to build some thing in it, but I did not complete. Some frustrated feelings 'fly' around me.

Last time, I was walking round in SL. I ended up my journey in a analog streetwar island. Many soldier played avatars are operating an analog streetwar in that island. One of them was a lady, she said she belonged to an army. There are two groups soildors on this island. That green group (which she belongs to) plays the 'attacking' one. That red group plays the 'enemy'. Once the war was on, they would analog the streetwar in real life, say attack each other. I almost screwed her 'life' by keeping asking her questions. One of her enemies found us and attacked us, I had to be logged off SL suddenly. I did not her final result. When I was back and tried to add her as my friend, I could not find them at all. Maybe they changed their battle to another island.

This unexpected experience made me think that SL might be an ideal tool for combaining online game and teaching or learning language together. Teacher can devide the students into two learning groups in SL. The teacher might also design some competitive games according to the learning needs.

Cheerio

Qian