Virtual worlds as arenas for language learning

Traditionally, technology seems to have had a rather clear function in language learning: for example to practise grammar, provide information about target countries, make long-distance communication possible, bring in the outside world and access digital corpora. The computer can thus be seen as a versatile and widely applicable tool, and the learner could be described using Levi-Strauss’s concept of the bricoleur who ‘is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks’ (1966:17). This paradigm can be contrasted with a view of technology as an automaton (Skinner 1968), according to which technology plays an important role in giving feedback and reinforcing material that is taught. In language learning, drill-and-practice applications provide good examples of this latter way of using computers. Typically, these programs have a strong sense of what is right and wrong, which might not always correspond to how language is used in the real world, but they do of course, have a clear pedagogical function. In this chapter, we will be concerned with technology used in language learning, not primarily as a tool or an automat, but as an arena for constructivist learning (see Svensson and Ågren 1999). A three-year project, the Virtual Wedding Project (VW Project), carried out at the Department of Modern Languages and HUMlab at Umeå University will serve as a case study. In this recently finished project, advanced students of English constructed collaborative assignments in the target language, contexualised in a graphical virtual environment in which they acted as virtual construction workers, hypertext authors and community builders.