New Media

In addition to organizing syllabi, developing lesson plans and assessments, how to incorporate and effectively use tools in the classroom is a question educators ponder routinely. Accoutrements go beyond the use of DVDs, animation, images, Youtube videos, peer review, group work, PowerPoint presentations, discussion boards and the like.

Second language acquisition (SLA) presents additional challenges in that students strive to engage and learn in a different language. Considering language-learning theories of Lev Vygotsky, Noam Chomsky and Stephen Krashen, the level of student interaction contributes to the success of the experience.

For example, Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD) proposes that social interaction, that can be inferred as a level of immersion, affects how language learning progresses and evolves. Noam Chomsky, whose talks about universal grammar continue to inspire discussion and argument, posits that individuals share a predisposition to language learning that is genetically endowed. Consequently, one could deduce that placed in a non-native language learning situation, learning is inherently possible. Lastly, Stephen Krashen's multi-pronged SLA theory combines naturalistic and classroom activity approaches to learning and acquisition.

Given these concepts, an environment that could offer students all of these provisions could, arguably, positively affect second language learning. Second Life , a 3D virtual environment on the Internet, could be considered for this task. As participants, students would have access to uniquely integrated social and instructional networking opportunities in the second language they could practice as they learn.

An opportunity worth exploring -- n'est-ce pas?
...For the moment...

aSalas