Welcome to my blog. I hope everyone a nice day.
Today in my blog I want to talk to you about Virtual Reality and how can we benefit from it in language learning classes. Let’s start with learning what it is.
Virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created with certain programs (softwares) and presented to the users. It’s mostly designed so realistically that they believe and feel like this environment is real. It uses computers, phones , tablets , headsets or any other technological tool to put you in a real environment! The most popular one of these tools are hand-mounted display ones. When you put them on your head you feel yourself in a virtual environment with the help of screen that are so close and all around your eyes. From the earliest SENSORAMA, to Google Cardboards, Daydreams, Oculus Rifts, Sony Morpheus, HTC vine.. many models of this technology can be seen in the history. They’re used frequently by people for many purposes like entertainment, education etcetera. Today, surely , we’ll focus on the educational uses, more specifically, on how to apply Virtual Reality in language teaching and learning classes.
For language teaching and learning, we can use the head-mounted displays in our classrooms while benefiting from certain apps that are created for language learning. I can give you 2 examples of those. Firstly, House of Languages. In this app, you have 3 language options and these are English, German and Spanish. After choosing the language which are desired to learn, certain houses are seen representing vocabulary knowledge of different contexts like zoo, sports, hospital and so on... A student with the tool that s/he has on his/her head will choose and go into each of this rooms to learn the given words with a colorful, informative and both visual and audible virtual environment! The lovely teddy bear in the app wants from users to find certain objects and after they found it, it will pronounce it for you, in that way it can be very useful and effective to acquire some vocabulary knowledge with correct spellings thanks to this app! And what is more is that it’s free!
Secondly, the app Mondly about which I posted in my blog earlier there is a VR supported part in which learners can find themselves in environments to use, practice the language with realistic avatars in certain contexts like restaurants, shopping, transportation, accommodation... It provides you with these useful options and with around 30 languages within its system. Sometimes avatars may just talk and inform about a topic or sometimes you can communicate with them , choose from suggested responses , say it out loud and consequently have an almost real dialogue! Thus students may perfect/improve their communicative skills while pronouncing,using, thinking about the correct forms and then gradually acquire the language.
photo from: https://givingcompass.org/article/using-vr-to-bring-student-face-to-face-with-the-most-pressing-issues/
To sum up, VR tools especially, head-mounted display devices can be used in classroom environments to kind of embody the items that are learned while trying to acquire the language. You can go everwhere any time and reinforce your students’ learnings. Some of the brands like Google Cardboard are pretty affordable and there are also lots of free applications that works with these devices. As teachers, I think, we should involve them in our lessons for the sake of better teaching & learning atmosphere. In an appropriate order or together, students may use them to implement their knowledge in the virtual reality. For instance when they are learning about hospital context they may find themselves in such a place examining and repeating the needed vocabulary like certain tools( needle, stethoscope) or workers( doctors, nurse), actions etcetera and even talk, communicate in such a ambience. That was just one of the examples of your options to take advantage of Virtual Reality.
I hope in Schools this technology might be used more often...
Good bye everybody!
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