Foreign Language Instruction in a Virtual Environment: - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 309

Once the students' avatars were dressed up,
they were invited to take part in the fashion show.
They were called one-by-one to a catwalk where
each avatar could walk, gesture and show what
s/he was wearing. Meanwhile, the other avatars
played the roles of fashion judges [Th3]. Through
instant messaging (IM) they reported in German to
the main judge (in this case, the instructor) about
what items of clothing each model was wearing and
how many points were to be given to the models
for their presentations. All this took place with
German techno music in the background [Th5].
After the class finished, the students were
able to access the logged IM for self-monitoring
purposes [Th6]. The instructor was also able to
access the logged IM transcripts of students'
descriptions of the fashion show. Further, the in-
structor underlined problematic areas from these
transcripts and returned the printouts of them to
the students so that they would follow-up with
self-correction.

was beneficial. The main walls of the fashion
rooms had textures with Hugo Boss logos
and advertisements. Making students aware
of the cultural aspects of the language they
are learning helps them relate to the culture
in a more relevant way (Gardner, 2007).
[Th2] Color-coding. The rationale for color-coding
is that, according to dual coding theory
(Paivio, 1986), different types of information
are stored in different locations in the brain.
For example, sounds and words are stored
in the left hemisphere, while images are
stored in the right hemisphere. Therefore, a
combination of both words and pictures will
be stored in multiple locations, resulting in a
greater chance that content in at least one of
the locations will be available for retrieval
should the need arise.

English learners, of German in particular,
are likely to find that remembering grammatical
gender is unusually difficult and non-intuitive.
Therefore, it is important to find a way to facilitate
retention of the gender of nouns. We suggest that
color-coding is a potentially helpful method to
associate the gender with the nouns.
German has three grammatical genders: femi-
nine, masculine, and neuter. Due to the fact that
in American and German cultures the feminine
gender is commonly associated with pink while
the masculine gender is associated with blue,
we took advantage of these cultural associa-
tions while designing the activity. Even though
it may be technically possible to paint the wall
of a traditional classroom in different colors and
place items of clothing there in order to perform
a similar activity, Second Life made such a setting
far more feasible due to the speed, low cost, and
flexibility available in a virtual world.

Advantages
While in a real classroom this activity could work,
some students might be too inhibited to perform,
particularly if the wearing of different clothes were
involved. Having this activity in a virtual world,
however, removed the potential issue of inhibition.

Limitations
Some students, especially male ones, might not
be enthusiastic about participating in a fashion
show. Most students in our class were male, so we
thought of the fashion show as a potentially risky
activity. We were nicely surprised to find that all
the students eagerly participated and engaged in
this activity.

Theoretical Underpinnings: Activity #1

[Th1] Cultural Connection. Hugo Boss is a fash-
ion designer who originated in Germany.
Because the students were learning German,
making a connection with German culture

[Th3] Role Playing . Role playing is a type of
modeling, which is a core constituent of
social cognitive theory. Providing students
with opportunities for role-playing allows