Integrating Second Life into an EFL Program: Students’ Perspective
This paper aims to discover various facets of language learning within SL from the perspective of Chinese students in a provincial full-time university. It mainly focuses on EFL learning in SL in terms of users’ perceived technology readiness, their perceptions, and the EFL Program implementation. With the support of previous literature, SL can be regarded as an appropriate virtual platform for language learners to interact with native speakers of a target language. Through an evaluation research approach proposed by Krathwohl , McMillan & Schumacher, this paper describes the study’s context and its implementation procedures, and discusses the evaluation results and implications, sharing with the audience some considerations for integrating SL into EFL program(Krathwohl, 1998; McMillan & Schumacher, 1997). Finally, the readiness of Chinese students to use SL for EFL is proved sufficient; the enjoyment of SL as a language learning platform is acknowledged by the participants.
The most important point I got from this article is that the success in EFL learning of SL platform larges depends on the willingness and collaboration of both sides of native speakers and language learners, which indicates the potentialities of business operations in SL involving users willing to pay and hired language educators motivated by the pay. It inspires me of great interest in the construction of constraint mechanism, in ESL program on SL platform, of both sides of participants, or customers and service, in business practice rather than academic use. Moreover, I learnt that SL provides a great chance for language learners to engage in multiple literacy practices in a appealing, friendly, and contextual virtual space. SL breaks down these limitations in real world. I also realized that the technological skills are crucial for individual user in the success of EFL learning.
Reference
Wang, X., Song, H., Xia, F., and Yan, Q. (2009). Integrating Second Life into an EFL Program: Students’ Perspective. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange, 2 (1), 1-16
"indicates the potentialities of business operations in SL involving users willing to pay and hired language educators motivated by the pay" I wonder whether SL does in fact provide a good platform fo commercial operations?
ReplyDeleteIt requires my further engagement in SL to answer this question. Perhaps I should pay with my own credit card to evaluate whether SL is a good platform for commercial operations.
DeleteI have to say, your final point about users of SL needing to be technologically adept is one of the bigger issues that I have experienced with SL. Even as someone who is fairly skilled with computers, I have gotten frustrated with the interface of the SL viewer, and the amount of problems that it seems to have with no apparent cause. Because of this, I think many people must stop from continuing to use it after a first couple of tries, as particularly in the case of a paid service, such as a language class, a customer will expect everything to run easily. Therefore, until it receives a more user friendly viewer will not live up to its potential as a learning (or any other business) tool.
ReplyDeleteCan't agree more that SL is an error-packed software. I failed to log in with my own laptop and the help-page of SL didn't actually solve any problems! It just proveded some possible solutions in the cases of others. To some extent SL is much of a software in its beta testing rather than a mature commercial platform. It's good to hear critiques on SL since most of the literature available are focused on positive sides of SL. My latest article review also suggests that high expectations from teachers to students may hide the flaws of SL.
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