Languagelab.com Blog

As I have said in previous posts, when we teach beginners we need to make use of visuals and interactive activities.
One of the first things that made it difficult for me to design a lesson in Second Life was my lack of knowledge of the kind of tools
I could use to teach in that environment. We know that in a Real Life classroom we can use overhead projectors, video players,
video beams, maps, whiteboards, among many others, and the tools labeled as web 2.0 have made the process of planning e-based
lessons very easy. However, I did not know what tools I could use in SL. To solve this problem, I started a search for
educational tools, and found many free tools as well as tools that can be bought from different designers. At the same time,
I learned that I could create simple objects adding textures, sound and ready-made scripts to make them interactive.
For more sophisticated tools, Languagelab has technicians who can create them for us. Nowadays, with this knowledge, planning
is easier but also a challenge to the imagination.

In order to have images and text shown on boards in SL, we have to upload textures (images) created in Power Point or any image editor
such as Photoshop, Paint Shop etc. Two excellent free solutions are Paint.NET (Windows only),
and Gimp, etc.
Sounds can be uploaded in Wav format. They cannot be longer that 10 seconds
which is a restriction for language teaching. However, you can use sounds from the web. The downside is that for every image and sound
we have to pay 10 Linden $

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This weeks English lesson was all about using the
‘if conditional’. Now I must admit it’s not usual to find ‘exciting’ and ‘if conditional’ in the same sentence but I have some
talented teacher colleagues here in Languagelab and this lesson was put together by the Captain
- Language Lab teacher Chris
(Captain Jay Bird Beck). Together with some very clever students, we all had a great (and very informative) lesson.

We began by reviewing 3 different kinds of sentences using ‘if’ in the sentence. These were called the 1st, 2nd and 3rd conditional.
We looked at the grammar structure of each sentence and what meaning each sentence had. When we were confident of how to use the sentences,
we then paired of into groups to play some great games. In one game, we had to use the sentences to open a treasure chest with a big prize.
In another game, we again had to use the sentences correctly to climb some stairs and reach the prize at the top.
It was very cool because we got to learn about the different kinds of sentences and then practice using the sentences with fun games.
If you want to practice some if conditionals, then click
target =”_blank”> here

By the way, the title ‘If I were a rich man’ is a song from a famous musical. Which musical?

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It’s fantastic having the opportunity to teach and/or participate in a lesson in a virtual world written by a qualified, experienced
teacher who has thought about how to really get the best out of a virtual world.
Paul Swindells wrote this week’s lesson. He’s also known by his online
avatar’s name of ‘Zakarias Trenchcoat’. You’ve probably
met him in class or hosting one of LanguageLab’s specially organised student
events.

The gallery was full of paintings that exemplified the
past 500 years of Western Art. There were loads of interesting activities designed to help students, not just to increase
vocabulary and practice talking about art but to be able to describe things in detail and express opinions about the meaning
and central themes of the paintings.

My favorite activity was studying a painting for one minute then turning our backs to it and trying to describe it to our
partners in as much detail as possible without looking at it. It was interesting to talk about the western art tradition and
I learned some fascinating things from hearing the students’ presentations. I hope we can come back soon to practice English
and discuss art from other cultures.

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Hello everyone,

after my post last week to get you thinking about vowel sounds in English, I promised you a joke related to pronunciation. Often it is hard to understand English jokes when you are learning English. Here are seven simple jokes related to pronunciation which all contain an interesting learning point.

1. What do you call a pig with three eyes?
2. What goes Oh, Oh, Oh?
3. Where do you find giant snails?
4. What starts with E, ends with E and only has one letter?
5. When does the (English) alphabet have only 25 letters?
6. What happens when “you” and “I” are gone?
7. What letter of the alphabet is an insect?

1. At Christmas time, because it is the time of Noel.
2. Only 24 letters are left
3. A piiig.
4. An envelope.
5. On the ends of their fingers.
6. B
7. Santa Claus walking backwards.

1 – c, 2 – g, 3 – e, 4 – d, 5- a, 6 – b, 7 – f

Explanation

• Q: What do you call a pig with three eyes?
  A: A piiig. It doesn’t have three ‘eyes’ but three ‘i’s!
• Q: What goes Oh, Oh, Oh?
  A: Santa Claus walking backwards. … Because he is a happy guy he is normally laughing “Ho, ho, ho”
• Q: Where do you find giant snails?
  A: On the ends of their fingers. … This depends on a feature of English pronunciation where it is difficult to say where
  the sound of the 1st word ends and the sound of the 2nd word begins so is it
  “giant
  snails”
  or “giants’ nails“?
• Q: What starts with E, ends with E and only has one letter?
  A: An envelope…. The word ‘envelope’ begins and ends with the letter ‘e’ and an envelope is what you use to post a letter
• Q: When does the (English) alphabet have only 25 letters?
  A: At Christmas time, because it is the time of Noel. …The synonym in English (and many languages) Christmas is Noel which sounds like “no ‘L’”
• Q: What happens when “you” and “I” are gone?
  A: Only 24 letters are left. … Similar to the previous one. you=the letter “u” and I the letter “i”.)
• Q: What letter of the alphabet is an insect?
  A: B. … the letter ‘B’ is pronounced like the word ‘bee‘

These jokes and some others can be found at this site for EFL teachers The Internet TESL journal.
More jokes here.
Languagelab is not responsible for the content of outside sites.

That’s all for now. Next week is grammar. Yummy!

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Look, see,
watch, peep,
peer, stare,
glance, gaze,
behold…

When students first come to Languagelab, I realised that poor camera control was an obstacle for learning effectively.
It is important to be able to read information and look at objects provided by the teacher. You need to look at signs, vocabulary
items or pictures and be able to change quickly so you are looking again at the people in the class or someone you are talking to.
This really helps you be present in the class. And because it is Second Life it also means that you can look round corners, up in
the sky and even through walls! How do we do this?

• If you hold down the ‘ALT’ key at right of your keyboard you’ll see that your mouse arrow becomes a cross.
  Now you can focus on different objects by clicking on them and holding down the ‘ALT’ key. You can zoom in or out
  with the mouse wheel. This is great for reading anything in class, even writing that is very small.
• For even more control, hold down ‘CTRL’ and ‘ALT’ as well as your left mouse button. This will lock onto an object. As you move your mouse around, you can see it from any angle,
• Just move your avatar with the arrow keys to get back to a normal view.

• Click in the ‘advanced’ menu at the top of your screen and then click ‘Disable Camera Constraints’. Using the ALT and CTRL buttons while holding your left mouse key should let you zoom in on objects far away.

Now you can … Zoom in .. Zoom out .. Zoom in .. Zoom out.

Next week, I will be looking at how to use sound for learning English. Talk to you then.

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I am teaching Spanish to beginners in Languagelab. I have taught beginners of all ages in RL, but this is my first experience in a virtual world, and I am enjoying it. We have just finished delivering a course of Spanish for Travel where 95% of the language used was Spanish.
In order to cope with the lack of facial expressions and body language in general, certain elements need to be included to make sure students don’t get lost.
These are some of the aspects that characterized the Spanish for Travel course:

1. Team teaching: In order to model the language, pronunciation, dialogues, etc., the class is team-taught, a teacher and a helper.
2. Whole language approach: the four skills of the language (reading, writing, speaking and listening) are integrated in each lesson.
3. Eclectic use of teaching methods and approaches: In order to cater to different learning styles, and to the content being taught, we use different teaching methods and approaches (TPR (Total Physical Response), notional-functional situational, task-based, among others), to achieve our main aim: communicate in the target language.
4. Use of 3D objects: Lots of materials are needed for beginners, in order to introduce new vocabulary and concepts. Materials should be colorful and well-designed (layout – font sizes – combination of colors – size of images). Objects interactivity is highly appreciated by students.
5. Varied activities and locations: Changing activities and places is fundamental to make the class varied and to keep students attention.

I will expand on these aspects in future entries.

Meanwhile njoy these images from one of our Spanish classes:

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I distinctly remember my art lessons at school They were not very exciting. Mostly, we would try to remember pictures and artists and every 2 weeks, we would go outside and draw trees! You can only guess how enthusiastic I was about art! I say “was” because last week we went to Language Lab’s art gallery in Second Life…

We began the lesson by taking a quick tour of all the exhibits. They were mostly three dimensional art like sculptures but they were incredibly detailed and very imaginative! We used camera controls to look around and inside the objects. We could even click on some objects to see inside or to give us more information. After the tour, we decided on a favorite piece of art and then we began to look at how to make a presentation.

We had to describe the object and then try to describe how we feel about the art and what it means to us. We also had to use language to try to get people involved in the presentation (“can you see..? If you click here, you will see.., can you guess what..?”) The presentations were brilliant and everybody had a great time. The expression “to get into something, usually means to begin to like something. Only this time, we really got into things! Art appreciation and learning vocabulary in 3D

Thanks to all the advanced English students for making this lesson memorable and for helping me to ‘get into’ art again.

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