FINAL
PROJECT of LANGAUGE TEACHING TECHNOLOGY
THE
DEVELOPMENT OF VIRTUAL WORLD IN GAINING STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN LEARNING ENGLISH
AS THEIR SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 |
Swastika
Mahatmarani
22101410045
LTT
405-406
english department
faculty of languages and
arts
semarang state university
2013
1.
TOPIC
THE
DEVELOPMENT OF VIRTUAL WORLD IN GAINING STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN LEARNING ENGLISH
AS THEIR SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
2.
BACKGROUND
OF THE TOPIC
Virtual
world serves various types of online based learning in many aspects of
education and entertainment. Young learners nowadays demand for learning in
many subjects of school with fun activities yet encourage their curiosity.
Working system of virtual world is done by making scenarios in which students
visualized
This research will investigate students’
learning in English by playing the virtual world and their appreciation in
doing it. The goal of introducing virtual world is to invite students to be
active personal learning activity. The impacts students have are their ability
to make converse in the interaction using English.
The research needs to be done because in
English language learning, especially reading and listening. Virtual world
represents many texts that have its audios too, so that they can learn how to
spell the language very well. Second language learning is provided to build
students to be able to communicate in global era. Some lesson books does not
provide good role of the way to pronounce the texts well, so that virtual world
will be an effective way to gain students understanding in using English as
their second language acquisition.
3.
REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE
TOPIC
The use of virtual world as a media for educating
language is an interesting thing to analyze about. Virtual world really works
in making students all over the world connecting it. This is observable that
many of students in any stage of education are looking for more interesting way
to comprehend their material in school than conventionally reading the books,
writing homework in manual notebooks, etc. They find this boring as there
sometimes no feedback from the teachers and impracticality of the study method.
As the complexity of curriculum, the development of material, and the different
stage of difficulty to different students, virtual world becomes a “friend” in
studying while playing the games that students become critically think how to
solve the problem. Most schools require students to do writing a lot, and so
the performance of speaking do not play the role in subject of English.
In addition, we as the university level of students are
close to ICT world and its usage and its development very well, so that we are
going to give our argument about the importance of virtual world as one of the
effective way to improve students English learning.
4.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
The
problems I observed in this area of study is that many students who learn
English formally (in schools) are tend to be slower in learning English through
books than through the virtual world.
The
research questions are formulated as follows:
How can virtual world give
more impact in gaining students interest in learning English as their second
language acquisition?
5.
REVIEW OF THE RELATED
LITERATURE
In order to support the thesis I have
given, I would like to bring out the theory that support the idea and its
elaboration.
The role of ICT in virtual world for
English language learning for improving the quality English language learning
and for increasing the number of successful English language learners, emphasizes
that we are in the middle of multimedia and information and communication
technologies era. As has been said:
“Effective implementation will require
partnerships with public and private entities, common formats and
standardization, development of information resources, databases, knowledge,
and information infrastructures that are equally available for all countries
and regions.”
Beside the language aspect, the other
aspects like the way of life and culture may also internalized to the virtual
world’s users. Virtual world have a high possibility in introducing the cross
cultural knowledge all over the world to the students who learning it.
According to Dan E. Davidson and Maria D. Lekic:
“In the history of mankind, access to
information and knowledge has never been so straightforward at a local,
regional, national, or global level. Judicious deployment of ICTs can encourage
and sustain cultural and linguistic diversity in individuals and in society in
general. Facilitating access to other cultures and languages is the chief goal
of the language teaching profession, and using ICR resources effectively in
their teaching represents one of the chief challenges facing language teachers
today.”
ICT can expand to language programmes
and improve the quality of teaching and learning in general. World Wide Web
provides up-to-date materials of the target language, offering learners
material in different modes, bringing the foreign culture and language to life
and making it more tangible.
As teachers, we should realize that
technology in language plays the very important role through all over the world
in supporting education system. The Potential of ICT for Transforming Language
Education in Africa point out:
“Formal
education in Africa is one area that still seems to have benefites least from
the use of advanced technology, certainly because educational technology
requires precise organization, not only in itself, but also for its efficient
application within the education system.”
Let’s take a look at the one of the
impact of virtual world in gaining students’ ability in speaking. In
interactive speaking, a person starts communication to the other by doing
face-to-face conversation to meet its feedback. Confidence is one important
factor needed to be able to speak up. This skill is a rather complicated one;
it needs structures of building meanings, putting words together in correct
word order, and constructing sentences in the appropriate forms of grammar, more
than just pronouncing words, that is why people usually get worry of making
those mistakes. Knowing grammar is in fact important, but people are supposed
to try to speak English without having so much fear of making mistakes, so they
could to improve their confidence. People have started to speak a language
since they were a baby and then adapt their mother-tongue and imitate how the
society communicate, so that virtual world gives a perfect figure, examples of
how to speak English in native like.
6.
ANALYSIS
The use of virtual world as the
media of improving teaching and learning English language has some advantages
that may become the reasons why virtual world should be continuously developed
and remain in gaining its productivity and remaining its exist.
The writer analyzes the advantages
of virtual world as below:
·
Enhance learning in different locations and institutions of diverse
quality.
·
Present opportunities to students working at different rates and levels.
·
Virtual world allows students
to create individuated characters with unique identities as students own
identity or other characteristics that makes them feel comfortable and
“accepted” in this media to explore and get into the games and learning. By
acting through avatars, students are free in playing the role.
·
Virtual world allows students
to explore the environment and interact with other people and information that
cause them to communicate ideas.
·
Gives interesting, fancy and
colourful illustrations that gains
their interest and curiosity. Virtual world gives the best audio visualization
media.
Virtual World has also many disadvantages:
·
People lack face to face
communication skills. In another case, some students are having introvert type
of personality and also have different style of learning activity. Some of them
may have less interpersonal verbal communication, but they can emphasize more
in English language learning and improve skills of English like listening and
reading skill as the same as when they do socialize.
·
Loss of natural light. That
case may come from different era of technology. A long time ago people still
use computer with high radiation and low resolution monitor. Nowadays, the
computers and laptops provide low radiation and high resolution.
·
Being cooped with virtual world.
Because in fact virtual world gives a wider opportunity for students to learn
more and more with interesting method, and successful in gaining their
curiosity in learning English through virtual world. They are challenged and
challenged to solve the problem, and become more often check the dictionary of
the unknown words and vocabularies.
·
High technical requirements for
computer systems. It is now very practical. People only need laptop, or
i-phones or other gadgets to be connected with internet connection by modems or
search for the connection from hotspots. This is cheap actually.
·
Increasing electricity bills. People are now smart enough to minimize
electricity. Students don’t have to turn the electricity all the time, they can
charge their laptops in full battery, and then use them without in need of
electricity hub.
These are the illustration of virtual world:
Ameba pico virtual world
Coco Girl virtual world
Monster High virtual world
SUMMARY
Virtual world gives the flexibility in many
aspects of language learning. We analyzed virtual world as a positive impact of
language learning of English. We realize that this article may haven’t been
perfect and still need corrections from the reader in order to improve its
quality in giving readers information.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
·
Information and Communication Technologies in
the Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages; State-of-the-art, needs and
perspectives-UNESCO-ebook-Moscow:2004
