Edith Paillat and Betsy Quero: Higher Ed Language Immersion in 3D

[Heike Philp]

Recording (40min): http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/p6kh1ww7keo/

How effective are 3d Virtual environments for language learning at tertiary level? Come and listen to a project report the French, Spanish and Italian departments at Victoria University conducted on Second Life in 2012 and continue late 2013. The intend of this project is to gauge the level of engagement and motivation of language students when immersed in 3D virtual environments and to provide opportunities to interact naturally with and in the language they are learning in class.

I will be presenting the 3 different programmes elaborated for each language as well the wiki used by tutors to report on their experience as facilitators during the project.

Edith Paillat aka Cyber Placebo is the language technology specialist at Victoria University of Wellington. Her role is to find solutions for the integration of technology in the teaching of 12 languages taught at Victoria. She provides support and hands-on training to teaching staff and students using the computer language labs she implemented in 2005 and 2008 consecutively. She is an experienced teacher and teacher of French as a foreign language. She has taught in Vietnam, England, Japan and New Zealand before she took up her current role in 2002.

Betsy Quero has been a teacher of English and Spanish as foreign languages for over fifteen years. She has taught in England, New Zealand, and Venezuela. She is currently a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics and a Spanish tutor at Victoria University of Wellington . Her research interests  include language learning strategies,  learner autonomy, ICT in foreign language learning and teaching,  ESP vocabulary pedagogy, and vocabulary testing.