Avatar Languages Blog

At SLanguages 2009 I gave a presentation on Dogme language teaching and its relevance to virtual world language education. Here is the presentation as text…

I have been using virtual worlds such as Second Life for approximately two years and during this time I have done some interesting and engaging activities with students. However, I have also being looking for methodologies to draw upon to ensure that these activities are pedagogically sound and beneficial to the students’ learning. More recently I have taken a closer look at Dogme ELT as a pedagogy to guide these virtual world activities and Dogme has stood out as an approach that has much to offer virtual world language learning because of its focus on real life communication as the basis for developing language competencies.

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One of our students, Pierre Moussy, has been using the 3d virtual world, Second Life, to gain conversation practice. His presentation below was given at the SLanguages conference (for language education in virtual worlds); you can listen to Pierre’s presentation and follow his PowerPoint. Pierre’s talk is especially interesting because it gives us some insights into how languages learners actually use second life to talk with others in a foreign language. It also shows us how they benefit from such experiences and how language teachers can better guide their students so that they gain the most from virtual worlds.

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The previous blog post on Dogme 2.0 sketches out how the web is becoming increasingly a normal part of our lives as well as an enormous source of both language learning content and opportunities to interact with others as part of the learning process. However, it is really the questions of relevance, meaning and motivation that are the key links between Dogme ELT and web 2.0.

If we see learning as a process of constructing meaning, and therefore one where relevance is key to enabling the learner to both find and create meaning, then the actual medium (be it online or offline) is not necessarily so significant. What seems more pertinent is the ability to create excitement and engagement such that language learning opportunities surface in class.

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There is online conference coverage of the 43rd IATEFL Conference. Here is what the website says about it…

The Cardiff Online website is now live at: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009

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The Forbidden Palace in Beijing has been rebuilt as a 3D mini-virtual world by IBM and could be used not just for virtual tourism, but for language learning too.

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We are launching lessons in K’iche’, which is an indigenous language in Guatemala…

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Scribblar is a great addition to the range of online whiteboards that are now available.  Online whiteboards allow a student and teacher to simultaneously work together on the same surface and it means that each can see what the other is doing.

I would embed a video here to explain how Scribblar works, but amazingly there isn’t one!  So I’ve included a screenshot of my Scribblar whiteboard and you can access it using the button at the bottom of this post.

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