Second life is an online 3D virtual environment that has been used in some cases to teach language lessons in. The goal is to create real life scenarios that the students can interact with each other in the target language as well as with characters within the online game. In this video Scott Grant of Monash University speaks to his work of investigating the usefulness of using virtual worlds such as Second Life to teach languages. Having the 3D virtual world include gestures and cultural nuances of the target language was one of the focuses of Scott Grant’s work that at the time of this video, it was premature to indicate if the results were positive or not. Later on in 2012, Scott Grant along with Michael Henderson and Hui Huang published a study on The impact of Chinese language lessons in a virtual world on university students’ self-efficacy beliefs and concluded that a single collaborative language lesson using Second Life can result in a statistically significant increase in student self-efficacy beliefs across a range of specific and general language skills.
References
Henderson, M., Huang, H., Grant, S., & Henderson, L. (2012). The impact of Chinese language lessons in a virtual world on university students’ self-efficacy beliefs. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 28(3), 400-419. 10.14742/ajet.842