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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CoTESOL has accepted my proposal to give a presentation at the annual convention in November; this is great news. I will be talking about how learners can be supported with their mobile learning, while the lessons themselves need not involve much (if any) technology.

Here is the brief description that is in the program…

How can teachers support mobile learning without using technology during class? The presentation explores how students can bring real-life, linguistic experiences into class and how teachers can help the students learn from these experiences. Through exploring case studies, you will gain both practical suggestions for activities and guiding pedagogical principles.

And here is the longer proposal…

This presentation demonstrates how students can use mobile devices to enhance their language learning without using technology during formal lessons.

The presenter reflects on his own language learning and his English teaching to show how mobile devices (cameras, MP3-players and cell-phones) can be used to record experiences beyond the classroom and then explore them linguistically in-class.

Students bring their everyday experiences to class, such as MP3 recordings of their real-life conversations, photos of menus/signs and videos/photos of everyday events. The lessons use language analysis to help students better understand these out-of-class experiences and simulations to prepare them for similar situations in the future.

This approach supports out-of-class (informal) learning and focuses on “just-in-time” learning. Students gain key skills such as ‘noticing’ new language and they become more autonomous learners.

The presentation focuses on real and practical activities for teachers to easily apply in their own lessons; yet it is also firmly grounded in pedagogy, including Dogme, dialogic learning, PhotoVoice, Task-based learning, and simulations.

The presentation demonstrates how technology can easily be used for language learning without the teacher or student needing to be familiar with any particular technology: the output, the dialogue and the learning take center stage.

My slot is at 1.30pm on Friday November 12 in the “West D” room (hotel plan at bottom of this PDF). The conference program is already online.

CoTESOL (The Colorado Affiliate of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) will hold its 34th Annual Fall Convention and Exhibition on November 12-13, 2010 at the Red Lion Hotel Denver Southeast, 3200 S Parker Rd, Aurora CO 80014.

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If you are going to be at CoTESOL, please do let me know. I am looking forward to getting to know other language educators in Colorado.

One of my students, Federico, uses a car navigation system to find his way around the streets of his own country in English.  Over the last few weeks he has been using the sat nav in English to help him improve his foreign language skills.  Sat navs are GPS controlled devices that read aloud navigational instructions to the driver.  The device references satellites to track where the car is and so is able to give directions according to the car’s exact location.  Some allow you to change the language and Federico has changed his to English even though he is using it in his native Italy.  Interestingly, he is able to recall the exact phrases he had learned, such as “bear right” and “take the third exit at the roundabout”.  Clearly this approach has worked well, so it is worth pondering on why using a sat nav system seems to help learn a foreign language.

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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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Language classes account for a relatively limited amount of the student’s learning – and much (perhaps most) of the learning is done informally, out-of-class.  So, how can we as teachers change what we do in lesson to better support what the learners are doing out-of-lesson?

This blog post is a set of notes of my thoughts about out-of-class learning and how it can be supported by in-class activities.  The video shows me explaining a mind-map of these ideas, which itself is available as a photo so that it is easier to read.

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Last Thursday I met with other language educators in Second Life to discuss Augmented Reality Language Learning and in particular the ideas and suggestions I presented in the “Augmented Reality Language Learning – virtual worlds meet m-learning” blog post last week.

Photo of Dennis’ Villa in Second Life (image by Sanja).

Carol Rainbow kindly recorded the audio of the meeting and you can listen to it on Blip.TV or download/play this mp3 recording of the discussion about Augmented Reality Language Learning in Second Life.

The event took place at Dennis’ villa on EduNation – so thank you Dennis for hosting the meeting. And thank you to all for attending and making it such a interesting conversation.

I think you can only hear 3 voices (most participated via text-chat within Second Life) and they are of Dennis Newson, Scott Thornbury and me.

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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