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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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..

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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

(more…)