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Designing oral participation in Second Life – a comparative study of two language proficiency courses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Mats Deutschmann ,
Luisa Panichi  and
Judith Molka-Danielsen
Mats Deutschmann
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, Mid Sweden University, 871 88 Härnösand, Sweden (email: mats.deutschmann@miun.se)
Luisa Panichi
Affiliation:
Centro Linguistico Interdipartimentale, Università di Pisa, Via Santa Maria 36, 56126 Pisa, Italy (email: panichi@cli.unipi.it)
Judith Molka-Danielsen
Affiliation:
Molde University College, Postboks 2110, 6402 Molde, Norway (email: j.molka-danielsen@himolde.no)
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Abstract

The following paper presents two stages of an action research project involving two oral proficiency courses held in the virtual world Second Life. Course 1 was conducted during the Autumn of 2007. Based on the experiences of this course, we redesigned many aspects of it in order to improve student activity in terms of oral participation and gave the course again in Spring 2008. By analysing the recordings of four 90-minute sessions, two from each course, we were able to measure student participation based on floor space, turn lengths and turn-taking patterns, and in the study we discuss how different changes in design may have contributed to more favourable outcomes. Results seem to indicate that meaning focussed task design, which involves authenticity and collaborative elements, has a direct impact on learner participation and engagement. Furthermore, our results seem to suggest that technical and social initiations into a complex environment such as SL are important factors that have to be worked into the course design.

Keywords

Oral participationCMCSecond Lifetask designturn-taking
Type
Original Article
Information
ReCALL , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , May 2009 , pp. 206 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 2009

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