In Metozade AB Terim ve Kavramlar ngilizce Mtercim-Tercmanlk Arif Serhat akr 121008029

Virtually Abroad (The Vabroad.com Project)

The current era is called information or technology era as most of things we have both in our daily and professional life includes computer systems and internet. As the basic subject we deal with, languages are affected very much by these systems and technologies. Linguistics and language learning are at top of those which are using technology systems in their appliances. For those who want to learn a language without going abroad, language learning software is a must. Computer-assisted language learning is defined as the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning by Levy1. There are numerous software and web pages for language learning. However most of them are not enough to attract people as they do not address their interests and pleasures or they are just not good. This paper is going to give you a brief description of a new language learning software/webpage project which is highly different from others. Vabroad or Virtually Abroad- is a web page and software project which includes a virtual world. The aim of the project is to let the members of the site to virtually go abroad in order to experience the opportunity of going abroad for foreign language learning. This is going to help to those who do not have the time and finance for visiting another country. In a small inquiry about foreign language learning among preparatory students in Marmara University, they think that if they had the time and money to go abroad for language learning, it would have been better. These students are active computer and internet users. According to my survey with 58 preparatory students which are learning English, all of them want to visit the USA and Britain for enhancing their second languages. Only 4 of them went abroad at least two weeks and these 4 students want to visit again. 52 of them are daily computer and internet users and they spent at least four hours in average on internet. I asked them if they do anything on internet for their language learning and just a couple of them gave answers that include any language learning software and web sites. Before describing my project, I want to mention about the most popular services on the internet that people spend a lot of time. Undoubtedly, Facebook is the most popular of all. As you know, it is a social network with more than 500 million members on which people can interact with their real life friends and others. Some people also use it to connect foreign

users. Other platforms that include interaction with foreign people are Livemocha, Chat Roulette and virtual world role-playing games like Second Life. Livemocha is the worlds largest online language learning community, offering free and paid online language courses in 35 languages to more than 9 million members from 195 countries around the world.2 It is just a simple book-like interface on which there are visual and auditory courses and exercises. Apart from the exercises, the user may record an audio for other members to criticize the pronunciation. On Livemocha, people interact with each other while learning a foreign language.

Livemocha.com / User Profile

Chat Roulette also lets people interact with each other randomly via webcams. Seeing each other on the site, users can interact via text or audio. Pushing the Next button each time, a stranger user show up the chat begins.

ChatRoulette.com / Interaction

Second Life is an online virtual world that enables users, called residents, to each other through avatars. Residents can explore the virtual world, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another. It has more than 20 million registered user accounts.3

An example of socializing on the virtual world of Second Life

Particularly focusing on only language learners, teachers and language institutions, the Vabroad project combines the social network of Facebook, the language learning and teaching system of Live Mocha, the visual interaction system of Chat Roulette and the virtual world system of Second Life in order to create a social, effective and virtual environment for foreign language learners. The most important feature of the Vabroad is giving users the opportunity to visit other cities and countries virtually with their characters on the network. As known, travelling abroad really helps acquiring a foreign language and the Vabroad is the best option to experience the travelling abroad sense virtually and free. Vabroad is just like simulation software that are used for driving licence courses. It is the Facebook for language learners. Also it has a plus; a virtual world. A virtual world is a genre of online community that often takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment, through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. Virtual worlds are intended for its users to inhabit and interact, and the term today has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of avatars visible to others graphically. These avatars are usually depicted as textual, twodimensional, or three-dimensional graphical representations, although other forms are possible (auditory and touch sensations for example). 4

Interface for the Vabroad Project

The Virtually Abroad, with its domain name Vabroad.com interface consists mainly three basic sections: Profile, Socialverse and Vabroad. The profile section is like a social network profile of a user. Similar to the Facebook, users visit one anothers profile pages. Members are expected to use their real name. A membership can be obtained by a Facebook account. So the profiles on both sites would be synchronized. The Socialverse section includes the news feed for the virtual world. It is both a newspaper for the Vabroad world and news feed for the social environment of the avatars of the users. The word Socialverse is made up of the words social and universe. Socialverse is very typical to the Facebooks News Feed section. The main section of the project, Vabroad is the virtual world section. The logo of Vabroad is simple font-typed including an earth image in the middle space of the letter a.

The logo of the Vabroad

The virtual world of the project consists of the biggest cities of the actual world. For example Ankara, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Copenhagen, Delhi, Istanbul, Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai,

Nashville, New York, Osaka, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Stockholm, Shanghai, Toronto, and Tokyo. Each member has an avatar and a hometown. The interface is used with the mother tongue of the user at first. After deciding a language to learn, the user chooses it on the site and starts to attend virtual courses. Being successful in the starter courses, the user is available to visit the cities that the chosen language is spoken and the language of the interface goes to the chosen language. While visiting a city, the member interacts with others and takes some cultural tours around. The learning process is not finished yet. The avatar can take language courses in the visited virtual city. It is possible to add the users that are interacted as friends. For the developing of the Vabroad there are some requirements; A subject specialist (also known as a content provider) - usually a language teacher who is responsible for providing the content and pedagogical input. A programmer who is familiar with the chosen programming language or authoring tool. A graphic designer, to produce pictures and icons, and to advise on fonts, colour, screen layout, etc. A professional photographer. A sound engineer and a video technician. An instructional designer. Developing software is more than just putting a text book into a computer. An instructional designer will probably have a background in cognitive psychology and media technology, and will be able to advise the subject specialists in the team on the appropriate use of the chosen technology (Gimeno & Davies 2010).5 The European Union is very interested in language learning-teaching and exchange projects. They provide sources for these kinds of projects and one of the main targets of the Vabroad project is to be able to be a project that the EU supports. As a student of translation and thus, linguistics, I would like the Vabroad to help people interact positively with each other and learn foreign languages. The Vabroad would add a lot for Turkeys EU membership. Resources: 1. Levy M. (1997) CALL: context and conceptualisation, Oxford University Press. 2. http://www.livemocha.com/pages/about 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life 4. Bishop, J. (2009). Enhancing the understanding of genres of web-based communities: The role of the ecological cognition framework. International Journal of WebBased Communities, 5(1), 4-17. 5. Gimeno-Sanz A. & Davies G. (2010) CALL software design and implementation. Module 3.2 in Davies G. (ed.) Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers (ICT4LT), Slough, Thames Valley University.