Foreign Language Instruction in a Virtual Environment: - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 318

Advantage
At this stage of learning German, the Accusative
Case was introduced. As this is a concept difficult
to grasp for English native speakers, its explanation
and practice in German are challenging. For the
purpose of the activity, the students were asked
to use the verb “ sehen ” (to see), which requires
the use of the accusative case in the sentence. The
labels, however, were in the Nominative form, so
students needed to transform the Nominative form
to the Accusative form each time they produced a
question or an answer for their partners.

of an action (Skinner, 1953). In this case,
students were rewarded with Linden Dollars
for finding the most differences. The more
negotiation of meaning took place in their
conversation, the better chance there was for
them to find more differences. Receiving the
reward made the students feel appreciated for
their efforts and made it more likely that in
the future they would put similar or greater
effort into the activity.

Activity #7: Word Race

Limitations
Even though the locations of the two apartments
were distant, in Second Life it is not that difficult
to move or teleport from one place to another.
For students that were impatient to see the other
location, it could be tempting to do so, although
this would defeat the purpose of the exercise.

Material practiced: any previously introduced
vocabulary or grammatical concepts.

Description
The activity started with the teacher asking stu-
dents to teleport to a relevant location. For ex-
ample, for a word race covering sports vocabulary,
students were asked to teleport to a soccer field.
Then, for a word race covering vocabulary about
animals, the students were asked to teleport to a
virtual zoo, etc. [Th1]
Next, the teacher asked the students to open
their IM boxes. Then in an IM to all students the
teacher would type a question in German, for
example, “ Wie geht's ” (“How are you?”). This
question would be seen by all students.
Students would answer the question by typ-
ing an IM back to the teacher. After the students
would type their answers, the teacher would either
provide immediate feedback by saying what pos-
sible answers there could be for this question, or
she would follow with the next question and save
feedback for later.[Th2] [Th3]
After the word race was over, the teacher could
access the logged answers sent by the students
[Th4]. Further, she could proceed by underlining
the errors to indicate their occurrence so that stu-
dents could have a chance to correct themselves.
As an alternative, the same activity can be
done in Local Chat [Th5] or through voice chat.
Also, if the teacher was present in the same room

Theoretical Underpinnings: Activity #6

[Th1] Information Gap. The motivation behind this
activity was to take advantage of students
being placed in an “information gap” setting.
An information gap activity is an exercise
where one learner has information that the
other learner does not have. Therefore, the
“negotiation of meaning” is the learners'
task to find out from the other student the
information that they did not have prior to
the exercise. This kind of activity was in-
tended to increase interest and motivation
in the search for the unknown.
[Th2] Interaction . The possibilities of interaction
between avatars (not only with other avatars,
but also with the objects in the virtual world)
cause them to experience emotional involve-
ment, and increase interest and engagement
in the activity (Sherry, 1996; Swan, 2002).
[Th3] Reinforcement. According to behavioral
theory, a system of given rewards (reinforc-
ers) increases the possibility of reoccurrence