The impact of Chinese language lessons in a virtual world on university students' self-efficacy beliefs

Abstract

It was found in the two-year study reported in this article that a single collaborative language lesson using Second Life can result in a statistically significant increase in student self-efficacy beliefs across a range of specific and general language skills. However, students with different 'real life' prior experience varied in the durability of their language performance beliefs over time. A between-group analysis revealed differences in the pre-and post-tests, which is explained by the specificity of the curriculum -that is, the curriculum within the Second Life environment, and not just the environment itself, has a significant impact on student beliefs. This helps to dispel some critics' concerns about the pedagogical value of these environments. However, a within-group analysis revealed that students with infrequent experience of the 'real life' language context increased in their beliefs, while students with frequent experiences had similar initial responses to the other students, but were more varied in their responses over time. It is proposed that these variations over time are a result of an interaction between the domain specificity of the curriculum and authenticity, or in other words, salience of the enactive mastery experiences in Second Life with that of 'real life'.

Practising teaching using virtual classroom role plays

“…Approaches to addressing these problems in teacher education will therefore have the potential for wider application in other disciplines. As well as being of increasing interest to the teacher education community, role plays housed within a virtual world have been used in a range of other disciplines, including health and medical education (Boulos, Hetherington, & Wheeler, 2007), nursing (Kilmon, Brown, Ghosh, & Mikitiuk, 2010), languages (Henderson, Huang, Grant, & Henderson, 2012), physics (Wegener, McIntyre, McGrath, Savage, & Williamson, 2012), history (Wakefield, Warren, Rankin, Mills, & Gratch, 2012) and religious studies (Farley, 2010). As a consequence, the findings reported in this article are likely to be of interest to practitioners and researchers in these other professional disciplines.…”

Examining the relationship between English language learners’ online self-regulation and their self-efficacy

“…Technology-enhanced language learning practices can not only engage EFL students in self-regulated learning (Lai & Gu, 2011;Kondo et al, 2012), but also produce a positive impact on their self-efficacy (Henderson, Huang, Grant, & Henderson, 2012;Kissau, 2012;Wu & Yang, 2016). In web-based learning settings, students who can employ self-regulatory strategies became more challengeable and more confident in understanding course materials or participating in learning activities (Chang, 2005).…”

How do virtual world experiences bring about learning? A critical review of theories

“…The following is an example of enactive experiences in a virtual world: in a virtual Chinese restaurant, language students are tasked to order food in Mandarin (Henderson, Huang, Grant, & Henderson, 2012). This virtual experience is expected to raise their self-efficacy in ordering food in the real world, as would a first-hand experience in a real Chinese restaurant.…”