Foreign Language Instruction in a Virtual Environment: - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 315

conducted, please refer to Activity #3: Slideshow
quiz). Note that the difference between the treat-
ment of this activity and the activity “Slideshow
quiz” was that the students were not reviewing
vocabulary stored in their long-term memory
but rather practicing vocabulary stored in their
short-term memory.

In addition, virtual snow was falling [Th6]. While
at this location, the students were to write a post-
card to a friend describing their vacation in the
Alps. In their postcards they were directed to use
weather vocabulary practiced in the first part of
the class, weather expressions provided by the
teacher, as well as anything else they wished to
write about their vacation. These postcards were
sent via IM to the instructor.
After having “spent” a vacation in the Alps, the
students were to teleport to the German seaside.
The rest of the activity took place in a similar
manner as in virtual Alps.

Part 2: Writing postcards from the virtual Alps
and virtual German seaside using vocabulary
and phrases related to weather.
Having practiced the vocabulary, the students were
asked to proceed to a large map of Germany [Th5]
from which the next part of the activity was to
follow. Standing in front of the map, the students
were asked to teleport either to the virtual German
Alps (see Figure 3), or the virtual German seaside.
In order to go to the German Alps, students
had to click on the mountains in the south-eastern
part of the map of Germany. That action tele-
ported the students to a specially designed sim
(portion of virtual space) of a winter resort. The
resort had a ski cabin, sets of skis, a snowman, a
snow machine, and other items related to winter.

Limitations
The students had only two locations to choose
from. It would have been more interesting to have
a greater variety of places to teleport to.

Theoretical Underpinnings: Activity #4

[Th1] Cultural connections : In learning a lan-
guage, culturally relevant settings are es-
sential (Gardner, 2007). Setting this activity

Figure 3. Screenshot of a winter resort