W4-Amanda Article review

Source: Teaching English with Technology,Vol. 17 No. 1

PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES IN USING SECOND LIFE FOR LEARNING AND TEACHING ENGLISH 

This article is focus on the female students who are prospective teachers in using second life. Second life is the most  and well-known virtural world platform of learning and teaching a foreign or second language. In this article I learn a new phrase which called" digital natives", and the author claimed that "digital native teacher"  who were born into digital world are becoming foreign language teacher nowadays also in the future.
  

Aim of study:

The aim of this study is to investigate prospective teachers’ experiences in utilizing Second Life for learning English, differentiating between personal use of the said virtual world for learning the English language and its potential use for teaching English in the future.

Methods:

Fifteen female second years students of English philology were asked to completed the questionnaire with six open-ends questions. All the answers were provided after they use Second Life to practice their English in their own time. And students should analysis the benefit and drawbacks of Second Life in English learning. The collected data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

Main Findings :

Benefits:

1. Second life is helpful in skill of writing and reading as well as the target language vocabulary;
2. Second Life made people more motivated and confident of using target language in communication;
3.Students more willing to learn other culture or languages;
4.The language in Virtual world helps to develop the awareness of its native side;
5.Students’ perceptions of what constitutes effective foreign language pedagogy are visible in a selection of their proposals of language activities to be performed in virtual worlds.

Drawbacks:
1.Not help with speaking and grammar as well as pronunciation;
2.Some Second Life users had rude or impolite behaviors and can not be avoided;
3.Students decided on the said areas of the target language based on their own experiences in this world and their own experiences as language learners;

4.Difficult to find someone in the similar English level or whether they are native speakers.