Avatar Languages Blog

The challenge

A student recently expressed that he wanted greater structure for his Spanish lessons and also wanted to have a clearer sense of what he would be learning when.  He said that he wanted a textbook and practice exercises.  I am reluctant to head too far down the coursebook path for various reasons such as the likely greater focus on grammatical forms than on communicative competencies, the lack of individualization (and therefore relevance to students’ lives) and the limited amount of textbook-like resources for Spanish that are available online.

The solution

To address the student’s concerns, I have developed a kind of syllabus that gives greater structure to the classes and yet is naturally student focused.  This syllabus is based around situations that the student may well find himself in and themes that he is interested in.  There is a tendency for certain communicative skills to be foregrounded according to the situation, but neither specific linguistic skills nor grammatical forms are the driving force behind this syllabus. Instead, there is considerable flexibility with how the student and teacher jointly interpret the activities proposed by the syllabus.

Syllabus contents

The syllabus contains the following sections…

• Subjects for discussion: My World activities are suggested topics of conversation that focus on the students’ own lives.  There are also suggestions of how to ensure that these in-class conversations are pedagogically fruitful.
• Situations for role-play: Practical Simulation activities are unscripted role-plays that allow students to prepare for everyday scenarios that they anticipate encountering in the near future.
• Teacher’s guide to help teachers use the syllabus.  The guide includes support on preparing lessons and on how to teach using the syllabus.
• The student guide helps students understand what their role could and perhaps should be in the learning process.

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I have been focusing on working with phrases with my students (and also in my own Chinese learning), and in both cases I have realized that phrasebooks can offer some support with language learning.

The significance of phrases

Phrases are especially important in language learning because they increase fluency for both native speakers and language learners alike.  This is because there is a limit to the length of sentences we can create without using pre-constructed phrases as shortcuts; phrases reduce the cognitive load and so speed up our talking.  Personally, I find some peace of mind when using phrases in a foreign language, because I know that they will be grammatically correct without my needing to think about it.

Learners tend to gain new phrases through repeated use (presumably in real-life situations, but also in simulations/role-plays and any related class-work), just as native speakers do.   But how can learners find the right phrases when they need them?  Two classic solutions are the travel phrasebook and the business writing guide (book).  Both are kept to hand: in the traveler’s pocket or on the office desk; and both are organized according to themes or situations.  These reference books are very useful and with web and mobile phrasebooks appearing, they will become easier to use exactly when needed.

The need for a “personal” phrasebook

However, published phrasebooks are very general and will often not respond to the specific need of a particular learner.  When I went to the post office in China last month I found my travel phrasebook useful for considering initial requests, but preparation in lesson was what enabled me to have a more complete list of phrases for my exact situation.  I found that I needed my own Personal Phrasebook (PPB), tailored precisely to me and my needs.

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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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Talking with Graham Stanley last month and seeing Pierre Moussy’s G2 Android smartphone in action got me thinking more seriously about mobile learning for languages. Some of the G2 phone’s features make use of augmented reality, which seems to fundamentally change (indeed improve!) the possibilities of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL).

This blog post is an attempt to sketch out some initial thoughts on how Augmented Reality Language Learning (ARLL) could be used in a student centered way. Both Task-Based Learning (TBL) and Dogme approaches seem to offer guidance, as do the experiences with Virtual World Language Learning (VWLL). The focus here is very much on mobile access to geo-tagged Wikipedia (Wikitude) and location-based social networking (Google Latitude and BrightKite).

Avatar Languages has yet to develop ARLL lessons, so this blog post merely looks at what may well be possible.

What is Augmented Reality?
AR is the combination of real-world and computer-generated data so that computer generated objects are blended into real time projection of real life activities.

Wikitude – An Immersive Wikipedia
Wikitude is a program that overlays information in Wikipedia about physical places onto the camera screen of a mobile phone.

Wikitude places markers and summaries on the screen exactly where you can see the relevant building or location. These markers also link to the relevant Wikipedia article, which then opens up in the phone’s internet browser (via a 3G connection).

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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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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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