Foreign Language Instruction in a Virtual Environment: - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 308

PRACTICAL AND THeOReTICAL
exPLORATION OF FOReIgN
LANgUAge INSTRUCTION
IN A VIRTUAL WORLD

opted for investing in a private virtual island. All
students in the class had access to the island at
any time during the semesters.

Activities

This portion of the chapter presents a case study
of the activities implemented in a German class
in which instruction included a virtual component
utilizing Second Life . The author begins with a
brief description of the class, followed by an ex-
ploration of the activities making up the virtual
environment component of the course. This explo-
ration examines both the practical considerations
involved in teaching within a virtual environment,
as well as the theoretical underpinnings of virtual
instruction. Finally, the author concludes with a
discussion of the aspects of these activities that
can be generalized to educational material other
than foreign languages.

The following section showcases seven selected
activities that took place during the virtual world
component of our class. Each showcase begins
with a brief statement of what material the activ-
ity was intended to practice. After the statement,
the author provides a description of the activity,
followed by examination of potential advantages
and limitations of the particular activity. Last, the
author presents an annotated section describing
the theoretical underpinnings that explain the
rationale for the pedagogical approaches of the
activity. These “Theory” explanations are refer-
enced by [Th i ], and refer to the corresponding
explanations given at the end of the showcase
in the “Theoretical Underpinnings” sub-section. Description of the Course

Activity #1: Fashion Show The course was an introductory class of German

that extended over the span of two semesters.
While the first semester was mostly experimen-
tal, with several pilot activities in SL, the second
semester implemented SL activities on a regular
basis. Instruction in SL ranged from one hour to
two hours per week (out of four hours of total
class time per week).
This blended-learning class was composed of
18 American college students (mostly Caucasian
males). Each semester consisted of 15 weeks of
classes, while each week students met four times
for 50-minute-sessions of class. Roughly two units
per week were devoted to instruction in SL, which
made 60 units in each of the two semesters spent
in a virtual world.
The class took place in a dedicated language
computer lab where each student had access to
a personal computer with a high-speed internet
connection. Each computer had SL installed and
regularly updated. Due to the issue of undesirable
and inappropriate content in SL, the instructors

Material practiced: Vocabulary for clothing,
colors, accusative case, grammatical gender.

Description
Students were asked to explore three different
color-coded Hugo Boss [Th1] fashion rooms:
a blue one, a pink one, and a green one [Th2].
Displays were placed in those fashion rooms,
textured with items of clothing according to their
grammatical gender. The displays were labeled
in German. During the exploration, the students
were directed to concentrate on the names of the
clothing in German as well as to try to associate
particular clothes and their gender with the colors
of the rooms.
After the exploration, students were asked
to prepare for a fashion show by choosing and
wearing their favorite clothes [Th3] [Th4]. For
the students' convenience and to avoid issues of
nudity, changing rooms were provided.