Article review, Farid W1

Benefits and challenges of using Second Life in English teaching: Experts’ opinions

source:  Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences   158  ( 2014 )  326 – 330


Second Life is one of the most popular virtual worlds. The interest has been increasing in virtual and blended learning environments; in such environment the second language is assembled and experienced via mutual communication. It became as a phenomenon in the area of education. As result, learners explore the language while learning (Sounders ,2008). So learners will not suffer from stress and anxiety.
The most important subject according to the result of a meta-analysis of publications were teacher education and language education. In addition, Second Life has become an area to improve various educational aspects. Many studies in this field talk about the importance of Second Life to foreign and second language teaching purposes ( Wang and Burton, 2013) and (Hilsop, 2008). Thus, Second Life allows learners to create an environment of familiarity and conversation beside sharing cultural experiences.
because of the importance of Second Life, many universities have started to create virtual or blended learning environments by using Second Life Campuses.

Aim of the study:

the purpose of this research study is to describe the evaluation of using Second Life in English language teaching at the tertiary level through data collected from professionals who have applied this virtual environment as instructors and experienced it in a comprehensive way.

Methods of the study:

  The researcher picked up five different experts from different universities located in Turkey as participants for the study. In the research,  the qualitative data from the experts have been collected and analysed with code and theme identification (Procedia, 2014).


Main finding:

The participants declared that speaking and listening skills improved through Second Life related applications. Two experts indicated that Second Life contributes to the teaching of writing as it is optional to speak or write in Second Life in order to communicate with other users. One expert highlighted that Second Life contributes to problem solving skills as well (Procedia,2014).