Rethinking Language Learning: Virtual Worlds as a Catalyst for Change

Abstract

Research on educationally designed game-based virtual learning environments and virtual worlds has begun to explore the affordances of 3D metaverses for engaging learners in ways that contrast with formal schooling. Applying constructs from ecological psychology, distributed cognition, and sociocultural perspectives, design-based longitudinal studies have shown the quality of learning taking place in technology-supported collaborative environments. But what are the affordances of virtual environments for second language learning? How can we design for a nonlinear experience of action and interaction that exploits these affordances? We explored current language teaching practices in Second Life and found that many educators simply apply their classroom approaches in the virtual space, treating the environment merely as input. Designing for optimal learning opportunities in virtual worlds requires that we rethink second language acquisition by grounding it in the ecological psychology concepts of perception-action, values-realizing, coaction, and languaging. We call for a rethinking of pedagogies based on input/output models that imply a linear progression from an initial to a goal state. Instead cognition is embodied and distributed, and avatars in 3D worlds allow us to experience virtual environments in embodied, dialogical ways. Language learning in virtual worlds calls for design that prioritizes opportunities for distributed meaning-making and coaction in values-realizing activities that go beyond task-based learning, autonomy, and construction of a second language identity.

Pre-Service Teachers’ Intention to Use MUVEs as Practitioners – A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

“…VR, as well as MUVEs, soon grasped the educators' attention; social interaction, peer feedback, collaboration between users, visual and audio stimuli are but a few of their advantages (Zheng & Newgarden, 2011). These advantages can be attributed to four MUVEs' key features: immersion, interaction, imagination, and interest (Cho et al, 2002):…”

VILLAGE—Virtual Immersive Language Learning and Gaming Environment: Immersion and presence

“…Practitioners and researchers such as Zheng, Zhao and Newgarden further explored current design practices in virtual worlds, and reported two challenges of using virtual worlds for language learning and teaching in terms of instructional design activities and approaches: (1) many virtual worlds were designed as places where 3D contextual objects and buildings did not invite meaningful participation and interaction (Zheng & Zhao, ); and (2) “activities and approaches (in virtual worlds)—for example, task‐based activities, role‐play, vocabulary and grammar games—resembled those used in real world second language (L2) classrooms” (Zheng & Newgarden, , p. 14). Writing of their experiences of exploring educational islands in Second Life , these scholars were concerned with the untapped affordances of virtual worlds for language learning and teaching.…”

The Marginalisation of Finely Tuned Semiotic Practices and Misunderstandings in Relation to (Signed) Languages and Deafness

“…As exemplified in Section "'The historic misunderstandings' in relation to (signed) languages, deafness, and disability", research on signing communities raises interesting points on reading and embodied emergences of English. Such findings may offer a lens through which to discuss further the different ways we can see the relationship between spoken and written English, in other words, removing the taken-forgranted link between speech and writing, as well as contributing to discussions on speech vs writing and languaging as embodied action (Kravchenko 2009;Zheng and Newgarden 2012, see also Davis 1995 for contemplation on reading as a "deafened moment").…”

“…Put simply, language or languaging is now seen as activity with semiotic resources (visual, auditory, kinaes-thetic), and language learning as participation or interaction with the environment and its affordances. In other words, learning is activity with an environment that itself is a dynamic and temporally unfolding process (Firth and Wagner 1997;Kramsch 2002a;van Lier 2004;Lemke 2002;Zheng and Newgarden 2012). The wider, multimodal view on languaging takes into account multiple modes, media, and sensory channels.…”