Week 5 - Yulia (article review)

Blasing’s (2010) research aims at identifying evidence of language acquisition through interaction and negotiation of meaning, examining questions of L2 identity choices and exploring the presence of TL culture in SL. Her study is based on the Russian language teaching to the American college students from Midwest, who participated in the project.

Before outlining the details of procedure (study design, data collection methods and participants’ profiles), Blasing (2010) provides an overview of the benefits using SL as an educational platform and associated challenges, and also explains what SL is. The latter suggests that she seems to be aware of the diverse readership that may not be familiar with this platform. I suppose the main idea in that part of the article is that SL should not be seen as a replacement of the traditional classroom (Blasing, 2010). She argues that it should rather be used as a complementary tool that may help language learners “develop particular skills by creating a more contextualized language use experience” (Blasing, 2010, p. 96).

The study consists of 2 major parts: pilot and case study. The pilot study enabled the researcher to draw a few lessons. The first lesson is the learners should possess strong typing skills in the TL. It is indeed a worthwhile consideration, because people’s typing skills may vary depending on a language. Russian is based on Cyrillic alphabet, and although students may have strong typing skills in English or any other language that is based on Latin alphabet, their typing speed and accuracy in Russian could be much lower and poorer than, for example, in English. Another lesson drawn from the pilot study is that the learners must be aware of the presence of social norms within online cultural communities. For instructors it is critical to explore and understand these norms and social culture of SL in general before recommending their students to visit various sites. And finally, instructors should be aware that interaction with native speakers is not the only possible use for SL. Blasing (2010) argues that “groups of learners can effectively interact with one another and practice their language skills in contextualised, content-rich environments even without native speakers” (Blasing, 2010, p. 104). These environments can be created by means of simulated literary tours. For example, learners can be given the task to trace Mikhail Raskol’nikov’s (the main character) journey in St Petersburg based on Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Student can also collect information on different locales, read or listen to excerpts from the novel, perform scenes from the novel in the virtual space, answer questions about theme, plot and characters in certain online forums (Blasing, 2010). In my view, it’s an excellent suggestion that could motivate language learners to read the TL literature and familiarize themselves with the TL culture.

The findings of the case study were quite insightful, too. Results indicated that typed chat in SL might help the learners develop lexicon, improve writing skills, and encourage focus on form, private speech and self-correction in learners (Blasing, 2010). When the author examined L2 anxiety among the learners, it was found that SL’s visual component actually “increases anxiety to a level that mimics face-to-face interaction in the target culture” (Blasing, 2010, p. 109). This contrasts with what other authors had reported (see e.g. Wang, Song, Xia & Yan 2009, also in Peterson, 2012).  Blasing (2010) inferred that the students had experienced a strong degree of social anxiety in their interactions with native speakers in SL. She suggested that students transferred their anxiety about meeting new people in real life into SL context and some of them felt an emotional pressure when operating in the target culture. With regards to the L2 identity, most participants used their non-native speaker status as a way of connecting on a comfortable level with the natives. Although there was one participant who had the highest proficiency of all chose to modify his national and sexual identity. He did it by means of choosing Russian first name and surname in order to seem Russian to others and presented himself a bisexual. Would he do this in his real life? I very much doubt it. But this suggests that SL gives language learners an opportunity to experiment with their imagination and thus challenge their language skills.

It wasn’t surprising that the findings concerning anxiety levels differed from the ones in previous articles that I had reviewed. Having learned both English and Spanish as foreign languages and being familiar with the Russian social culture, I can understand why people’s anxiety levels might vary both in SL and real classrooms. All three languages reflect different cultures and the learners’ cultural identities might either facilitate or hinder the process. For example, Americans and Russians have a long history of rivalry, which affected both people’s attitudes to each other’s cultures and languages. Furthermore, the American and Russian social cultures and the way people interact with each other differ substantially. Another reason for contrasting findings, as mentioned in the previous reviews, could be a small sample size and examination of different languages. The good thing about it is it leaves plenty of room for further investigation at a larger scale and comparative analysis between anxiety levels in learning, for example, Spanish and Russian in SL.

References:

Blasing, M.T. (2010). Second language in Second Life: Exploring interaction, identity and pedagogical practice in a virtual world. Slavic and East European Journal, 54(1), 96-117

Peterson, M. (2012). EFL learner collaborative interaction in second life. ReCALL: The Journal of EUROCALL, 24(1), 20-39. doi: 10.1017/S0958344011000279

Wang, C., Song, H., Xia, F. & Yan, Q. (2009). Integrating Second Life into an EFL

program: Students' perspectives. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange, 2(1), 1-16

photoblog week 3 - wendy

I wonder what Chinese places look like in SL, so I type in "chinese" to search for.Then I teleport myself to a land called "The Great Wall". After arriving, I find that there is no great wall and it looks like I was in the south of China: the paddy field, farm cattle and cottage rooms. 

The sunset is very beautiful, especially seeing the dynamic diagram. I stay here for a moment and enjoy the peace the scene gives to me.

The I move on to a house built on the water, but because of the narrow path, I fail to go into it but just look around in the water... The house's structure and decoration are not Chinese style, which makes me suspicious.

I see a picture on the pillar when going through a bridge, there are two samurai in it, which makes me pretty sure that I have come into a Japanese world.

Cross the bridge, I move to a bigger place. There are several seats, drums and deadmen, so I guess this is a traditional drill ground. However, it makes me a little confused that I cannot see any weapon.

After walking out the gate and seeing the posters, I realize I'm wrong. This place really has a long history, but not for fight. People get together in old days to enjoy the kabuki here.

Then I find another traditional Japanese thing. I see it many times in Japanese cartoons. This is a watering place, people use the spindly tool to drink. I wonder why it appears, but after a while I know the answer.

The reason is I come to a traditional Japanese indoor hot spring! From the pictures, you can see kimono, drapes, clogs, futon and Wooden Casks. I jump into the water and try to image how comfortable if I really in such a place: sit in the pool, drink the saki, talk with my friend at times and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

At last, I arrive at a large courtyard. I guess this must be a rich family in ancient. Once inside, there is an entire column of bungalows. After checking, I'm sure it's the stable, although there is only one horse there... The main building's decoration is very exquisite. The wall painting describes the scenes of ancient wars and only the Chinese calligraphy will cost thousands of dollars, let alone the golden fan and bonsai. The katana (samurai sword) in another room makes me think of the film "The last samurai". I appreciate their spirit for persistence and bravery.

Week 6 - Danny's Photoblog

Today, I tried to download Debabbler, the Machine Translator, through the page in Delicious. I followed the instruction, went to the destination, and got access to the link by touching the object. But the link was proved invalid and there was no other means to download Debabbler. So I searched Google and found another SL translator called “Ferd’s free translator”.

The translator, which was based on Google translation, worked well when translating English texts into Chinese. It could meet the basic need of inter-language communication as long as the typing of texts was in complete and strict form (shown in tips below). Some slangs and colloquial words in common use such as “awesome”, “cool” could be perfectly translated into Chinese. 

Yet there were still several disturbing errors. For instance, it translated the sentence “I am a kiwi.” into “I am a kiwifruit.” in Chinese, for the probable reason that it had not included into its database the idiomatic word “kiwi” to indicate “New Zealand native”. Besides, unnecessary attention was paid to trifles. Some abbreviation like “IBM” remained its English form while being translated (which conformed to Chinese convention on foreign expressions), but was attached label to elaborate the detailed information of the company. The software seemed to lack of recognition of daily abbreviations such as “C U tmr.” or “R U alright?” which reduced the translating efficiency and hindered the popularization of this MT software.

I mean, the label to IBM seems redundant as over 99% of Chinese people who log on Internet know what it represents while the lack of recognition of daily abbreviations is indeed a barrier for communication. My suggestion is that more efforts should be made to better off the recognition of daily abbreviations and buzzwords so that language barriers can be lessened.

Here are the tips for using Ferd’s free translator:

Machine translation has stricter rules than the general language. Machine translation requires you to write texts that are easily comprehensible. It is an undeniable fact: Texts that are easily comprehensible are also easily translatable. Machine translation systems produce much better results if you  write carefully.   This is a list of ten rules to get the best results from your translator.  Write sentences that are short and direct.       The translator asks Google to detect the language of the text.     The translator displays the quality score of the translation.     The translator sends the text to the Google Translate engine.     The translator displays the translated text. Do not write:     The translator will ask Google to detect the language, then it will graph it, translate it, and print the result.  Write sentences that express only one idea.     Writing a sentence for easy comprehension simplifies the translation process.  This enables machine translation systems to produce better results. Do not write:     Better result are made by writing in a easy to comprehend style, that enables machine translation to produce better results.  Write the same sentence if you want to express the same content.     Type /1 to translator a private IM to you.     Type /2 to translate a private IM to others. Do not write:     Type /1 and /2 to translate text to and from other people.  Write sentences that are grammatically complete      Do you wish to continue into the main grid of Second Life? Do not write:      Want to go now?  Write sentences that have a simple grammatical structure.     Show that you can organize your thoughts by using a simple sentence structure in your texts. Do not write:     You, in your texts, to show that you can organize your thoughts, should use a simple sentence structure.  Write sentences in the active form     I will send a list of questions to the staff. Do not write:     A list of questions will be sent to the staff.  Write sentences that repeat the noun instead of using a pronoun.  Avoid 'it'.     You must check the spelling of your text before you press the enter key. Do not write:     You must check the spelling of your text before sending it.  Write sentences that use articles to identify nouns.     We need to test the translator. Do not write:     Test translation.  Write sentences that use words from a general dictionary.     Avoid ambiguity. Do not write:     Eschew obfuscation.  Write sentences that use only words with correct spelling.     Texts that contain spelling mistakes complicate the translation process. Do not write:     Texts that contein speling misstakes complicate the translation procces.   

I also tried the voice interpreter Ferd’s chat to speech but failed to work it out. I could hear the instruction through my headset yet could not get my voice translated. I was wondering whether it was the glitch of microphone or that of software setting. I am to try the software again on Tuesday afternoon! Wish there will be some luck for me!

Serenity - Week 6 Reading Summary

A Semiotic Approach to Online Communities

Through the use of linguistic and semiotic methods, this article by Tardini and Cantoni discusses the semiotics underlying the communities of both websites and videogames. They divide these communities into two types: paradigmatic communities, where the users share similar interests, and syntagmatic communities, where the users form connections through social interactions. They also identify three main critical areas related to online communications, which are belonging, identity, and interest.

For websites, they argue that the community is created by the use of tools embedded within the webpage itself, such as a counter that lists how many other people are online at the same time, or a message that welcomes the user back every time they access the main page. They also conclude that the design of a website effects the type of community it fosters. For example, a webpage that seems closed off to newcomers and is restrictive in what can be altered will often have a more closely knit and homogenous community. For videogames, this creation is much more complex, and has much to do with the identities of the those who use it. Tardini and Cantoni claim that there are three types of identity: the real person, the virtual character, and the projective character, which is the bridge between the player and the character they present within the game.

As Second Life utilises both a 'video game style' of interface as well as a website based community, I felt that this article would be highly relevant. Unfortunately, there was no real depth of analysis, particularly in the area of semiotics, though the title claimed otherwise. Interestingly, the authors make the statement “Online identities have an ultimate linguistic nature...” (p. 374) with which I disagree. Even on forums, where communication between individuals is mostly undertaken through text, the use of avatars and signatures containing visual media give other users other queues from which to draw conclusions about the person to whom they are talking to.

Reference
Tardini, S., & Cantoni, L. (2005). A semiotic approach to online communities: Belonging, interest and identity in websites’ and videogames’ communities. In P. Isaı´as, P. Kommers, & M. McPherson (Eds.) Proceedings of the IADIS Social Semiotics 101 International Conference e-Society 2005 (pp. 371-37 8). Qwara, Malta: IADIS Press.

Serenity - Week 5 Reading Summary

The Presentation of Avatars in Second Life: Self and Interaction in Social Virtual Spaces

This piece of research by Simon Gottschalk looks at how people portray themselves through their avatars in Second Life, and to what extent this effects their communications with others. Through these observations, he claims, “When people define the virtual as real, it is real in its consequences.” (p.501)

One of the main findings was that the user's avatars (not including those in specialist areas of interest, such as furries) most commonly take the form of an idealised version of themselves, even though there is no law forcing this to be the case. This also carried across to the types of gestures which the avatar uses, which were often chosen with the intent of being similar to those used by the real person. He claims that that all of these factors create a closer connection with the avatar, which adds to the amount in which experiences in Second Life become a part of our real world reality. In regards to interaction, he notes that the camera controls in Second Life allow the user to view themselves from the perspective of those that they are conversing with, giving the ability to practice ones responses and gestures before using them in communication. This potential for self-reflection has an effect on the real world, where people are able to use the techniques they learned from communicating using their avatars.

Firstly, one quote in particular really stood out to me in this reading, so I will post it here: “Dahlia told me that she was once looking for a dress she wanted to wear at a party when she suddenly realized that the dress in question belonged to her avatar’s wardrobe.” (p. 513) This shows how strongly people can take this virtual world and accept it as their own, even blurring the lines between what they experience in each. Therefore, I believe that this research lends strength to the idea of Second Life as a academic tool, as if the potential for total immersion is so strong, then people will easily be able to use tools such as the maternity ward in order to learn just as effectively as they do in real life. This also gives validity to research looking at presentations of the environments themselves, as if people put so much of themselves into their avatar, then it can be assumed that the world they build will also be an accurate portrayal of their ideas and values.
 
Reference

Gottschalk, S. (2010). The presentation of avatars in second life: Self and interaction in social virtual spaces. Symbolic Interaction, 33(4), 501-525. doi: 10.1525/si.2010.33.4.501

Week 6 article review - wendy

No matter living on-line or offline, we cannot avoid making connections with people,so relationship is a significant topic to talk about. Carter (2005) used cybercity to investigate the human relationships in virtual world. According to the research, Carter(2005) revealed "the complex interaction between trust, intimacy, disclosure and time" (p.149). She referred to the notion of pure relationships, which "is not anchored in the social and economic conditions but is ‘free-floating’ " (Carter, 2005, p. 156). Freedom, commitment and intimacy are the three core elements in a pure friendship. People are voluntary to make a friend, under this premise they establish an active trust on each other after a period of interaction. This kind of trust "brings about disclosure and disclosure is the basic condition of intimacy" (Giddens, 1991, p. 61).

It seems that making friends is much easier than that in real life. First, the gender, age and even nationality don't matter. The avatars people see are not the controllers really look like in real world, so they begin to know each other from inside, which works better to bring people close. However, the process of making friends in reality is from outside to inside, the appearance plays an important role, no matter people recognize or not. Second, people feel more open and safe with on-line friends because of the distance. They can easily share a secret with a friend in virtual world and do not need to worry if he or she will leak. These acts of disclosure make the friendship on-line stable. Third, the residents in cybercity regard everyone sharing the same social space as a potential friend. For instance, if two avatars go into a shop at the same time, the probability of communicating is higher than that in real world.

Moreover, the data shows that most people think these on-line friendships can move into offline life but the preconditions are truth, time and effort. As far as I'm concerned, I will never meet them in the real world. Because if I do so, they will become same as the friends in my life and I cannot feel safe and be open with them any more. On the other hand, I believe the friendships on-line are true. I want to be friends with you, not because of your look, your money or your position, but only the real one inside your body, such as the same thoughts, hobbies or experiences. It's difficult to establish pure friendships in reality, I think this is one of the reasons why people choose to socialize in virtual world.

References
Carter, D. (2005), Living in virtual communities: an ethnography of human relationships in cyberspace. Information, Communication & Society, 8(2), 148-167.

Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern
Age, Polity Press, London.

Week 6 - Danny's Article Review

“Lost in Translation”: cross-lingual communication, and virtual academic communities

This paper displays the communication problems in virtual worlds caused by language barriers, provides a general definition of translation, and describes the status quo of Machine Translation (MT) as well as its problems. Some MT problems vital to virtual communities in academia are discussed and the potentiality of MT is also suggested.

Nowadays, many scholars throughout the world work in a collaborative way. They “share similar goals and interests. In pursuit of these goals and interests, they employ common practices, work with the same tools and express themselves in a common language. Through such common activity, they come to hold similar beliefs and value systems.” (Lave and Wagner, 1991) Their communication relies heavily on English which plays a predominant role in this age as Latin did in Middle Ages.

However, the values of academic materials in languages other than English are belittled as they are scarcely translated. While the importance of high-quality translation is indisputable, good translators are scarce commodities.

Moreover, language barriers in virtual world are stumbling blocks to scholars as electronic documents are becoming increasingly popular given the growing importance of Internet technologies in scholarly communication. Not only technology expertise but also translation assistance is needed in academia. The benefits of MT are as following (Theologists, 1998):

1.      Improved quality due to greater terminological and phraseological consistency.

2.      Enhanced productivity in which no re-translation is needed owing to the advantage of software memory.

3.      Portability of transmitting by electronic means.

4.      Improved translation speed compared with human translators.

5.      Cost reduction for large quantities of texts.

6.      Consistency in a particular manner.

7.      Lack of bias with choice of wording by omitting, inserting or subtly changing the meaning of text.

8.      Availability as it meets the growing need of competent translators.

But the problems with MT are also obvious:

1.      No current operational machine translation systems can produce good quality output without either placing restrictions on input texts or involving human assistance before, during or after translation processes.

2.      Present machine translation systems make “simple” grammatical errors that no human translator would make.

3.      Machine translation cannot as yet deal with culturally-based ontological issues (Akahani et al., 2002), although this has been attempted (Hovy, 1998).

4.      Most of the current efforts in machine translation have not progressed much past the stage of providing low-quality translations based on ever-expanding vocabulary databases. “Most translations fell somewhere between impressive and nonsensical; in general they were surprisingly understandable, if odd and stilted” (Budiansky, 1998).

5.      Machine translation works quite well for translation predictable technical texts – texts that never go beyond the expected domain of discourse.

6.      Computers cannot translate like humans because they lack of agency: “the capacity to make real choice by exercising our will, ethical choices for which we are responsible… A computer has no real choice in what it will do next. Its next action is an unavoidable consequence of the machine language it is executing and the value of data presented to it… Without agency, information is meaningless. So a computer that is to handle language like a human must first be given agency.” (Melby, 1995).

It seems unlikely for MT to replace human translators in near future due to its inaccuracy. But MT can release the burden of large quantities of translations which require little in accuracy.

In my opinion, MT is a very huge and complicated interdisciplinary project which requires IT expertise, knowledge of linguistics, as well as techniques of translation and interpreting. Even after certain MT software is developed, great efforts must also be taken to update its database and improve its system. This work can be really trivial and overloading for MT programmers. But the outcome will be well-worth the perplexity. Take dictionaries or encyclopedias as an example: tens of years are spent on compiling these large books; once they are published, a great many scholars, writers, and ordinary people can be benefited; new entries are continually appended decades after their publishing. The same is true for the development of MT. Although the task looks like a mission impossible, it can be built up brick by brick through the efforts of all programmers and scholars. Besides, the update and revision of MT are more accessible nowadays than the age of hard-covers given the convenience of Internet Technology.

References:

Akahani, J., Hiramatsu, K. and Kogure, K. 2002. Approximate Ontology Translation and its Application to Regional Information Services. Unpublished poster delivered at the First International Semantic Web Conference, Sardinia, 9-12th June, 2002. [Online] Available WWW: http://iswc2002.semanticweb.org/posters/akahani_a4.pdf

Budiansky, S. 1998. Lost in Translation. The Atlantic 282(6). [Online] Available WWW: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/computer.htm

Hovy. E. 1998. Combining and standardizing large-scale, practical ontologies for machine translation and other uses. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC). Paris: The European Language Resources Association, pp. 535-542.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Melby, A. 1995. Why Can’t a Computer Translate More Like a Person? [Online] Available WWW: http://www.ttt.org/theory/barker.html

Theologitis, D. 1998. ...and the Profession? (The Impact of New Technology on the Translator). Terminologie & Traduction 98 (1):342-343.

Sunya: Week 6

Pedagogy and Learning in the Virtual World of Second Life®

This article presents pedagogy and learning in the Virtual World of Second Life. It tells us what Second Life is about. For example, Second Life (SL) involves multiple users, called “avatars,” who create and interact in a spatially-organized ecology of virtual 3-D representations of people, space, time, motion, sound, objects, topography, and tools. The article also describes the transitional issues in Shifting Paradigm to 3-D Virtual World Environments that is online virtual worlds are still in their infancy in the early 1990s (Ward 2007). During this period, different perspectives on key issues have emerged that are specific to educational applications in Second Life and are concerned with how educational practitioners approach the 3-D virtual world.

The article concludes that there is a challenge to overcome. This is because there is a sustainable trend for users to continue investing their time and capital in SL, but it is still a concern of users accepting 3-D virtual world environments. The needs of the Educational users is that they want more stability in the software platform, faster functionality, lower or less expensive initial equipment requirements easy-to-learn scripting and building tools, increased ability to import ready-made objects from other programs, simpler ways to stream media, and more seamless integration of most other standard-use software products into SL virtual world.

The reason I pay attention to this article because it related to the use of Second Life for teaching and learning. It touches on the technical issue which I believe that is very important part of SL to overcome. If this problem remains, it will discourage people to use SL and he/she will miss out on its potential. In particular if one believes that SL is a game. Therefore, it is important to clarify that Second Life is not a game but games may be played and created in SL. According to Jarmon (2008) there are real classes, real peer-to-peer and team learning activities, and real collaborations among real individuals. This week I attended an English class at LanguageLab about Air Travel, I can experience situation like in real life visiting the airport, practicing English how to check in. In SL student can travel from classroom to the airport in less time and that may not be able to do in real life class situation. This can further be replicated with the help of virtual classrooms and SL in that the lessons take place in the virtual classroom (similar to face-to-face teaching as it involves a whiteboard, text readings, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation) and then SL can be used as the immersive environment for the equivalent of field trips. The real potential of SL is seen in taking the students to visit other places in their natural surroundings which make it a complete language learning experience.

 References

Jarmon, L. (2008). Pedagogy and Learning in the Virtual World of Second Life®. Encyclopedia of distance and online learning 2^nd edition.

Ward, M. (2007). A very real future for virtual worlds. BBC News. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7144511.stm

Sunya: Week 6

Sunya: Week 6

Week 4 - Yulia (article review)

In their article, Ishizuka and Akama (2012) come up with very useful and practical questions, such as:

1.    How can the structure of a communication task, a communicative interaction, and negotiation of meaning be designed in SL?

2.    How can the design be implemented using Linden Scripting Language (LSL)?

3.    Is the created learning space effective in language learning?

The article begins with a brief literature review, which allowed the authors to identify the gaps in previous studies. They found that the controllability of SL to utilise the functions had not been given much attention. Ishizuka and Akama (2002) note that SL has many functions available for language teaching, such as playing recorded sounds and creating objects which can perform human-like actions (for example, gestures). To enhance these functions, they argue that SL should be controlled by means of creating and allocating the appropriate objects to practice tasks, as well as programming the interaction structure.

Ishizuka and Akama (2002) designed and implemented an automatised interactive space, where the robotic agents would work as interlocutors of learners. Based on the review of SLA theories and analysis of the available functions in SL, they concluded that the design is best to be based on the two SLA theories: task-based language teaching and the interaction hypothesis.

After the automatised interactive space was created, Ishizuka and Akama (2002) carried out an empirical pilot study to investigate the usefulness and/or deficits of this space and examine the number of occurrences of negotiation of meaning. They recruited 10 students who were given the shopping task. The results of this pilot study showed that more than 70% participants had positive impressions with the system and they would like to continue their studies in the automatised space. 

It is somewhat hard to infer if this automatised space is effective, because the students' progress has not been measured. In fact, the issue of measurement of students' success is quite controversial. None of them articles on SL that I have read so far actually suggest how it can be done. It would be also interesting to see at least some of the transcripts to be able to analyse the discourse - how the meaning was negotiated and whether there were any hiccups from the agents' side. Nonetheless, this article raised one of the things that I was wondering about - how one can control the teaching process in SL in terms of communication and how SLA theories can be operationalised in SL.

Reference: Ishizuka, H. & Akama, K. (2012). Language learning in 3D virtual world: Using Second Life as a platform. E-learning and Education, 1(8).