Avatar Languages Blog

I intended to write this blog as a follow up to the one on students writing for Wikipedia – and I checked back to see when it was written – almost exactly a year ago. Since then quite a few articles have been written by our students for Wikipedia. And now we are looking at other wiki sites, such as Wikitravel…

Language learners often travel and so they have plenty of travel experiences to write about. Even those students who aren’t travelling much can write about where they live or another place they know well.

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SLanguages 2009 will take place on 8 & 9 May. I will be giving a presentation together with Pierre Moussy, a student at Avatar Languages. Pierre will be presenting his experiences with practicing his English in Second Life, whereas I will focus on how language educators can best guide language learners with using virtual worlds to practice their languages. Here is the abstract…

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SLanguages 2009 will take place on 8 & 9 May.  I will be giving a presentation about the Dogme ELT movement and how its approach to language teaching has a lot to offer language educators using virtual worlds.  Here is the abstract…

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A clear and simple guide to using Second Life…

Jeremy Harmer, author of many ELT books, will be talking in Second Life on Sunday 3 May at 18.00 (GMT), which is 11.00 PST.

Jeremy Harmer gave a presentation last year in Second Life (as part of the EduCation@EduNation series) about how teachers perceive their work and their teaching practice. It will be interesting to see his thoughts about Second Life language education in this interview with Nik Peachey..

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Scott Thornbury, co-founder of the Dogme ELT movement along with Luke Meddings, will be talking in Second Life on Sunday 26 April at 18.00 (GMT), which is 11.00 PST.

Dogme and Second Life are a very interesting combination and have a lot to offer each other. It will be extremely interesting to listen to Scott Thornbury’s comments on virtual worlds.

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Virtual worlds such as Second Life can be easily added to classroom-based or online language lessons. Virtual worlds offer a 3D immersive experience to be included as an optional extra.

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