Cvetka's Blog

Giuliana Perco

When I told my students that I wanted them to interview native speakers in SL, I saw their eyes filling with horror. They were so shocked that they did not have the courage to say anything at all at first. When I explained  that I would find the native speakers myself , so that they did not have to stop random avatars in SL to chit chat with them, some of them relaxed a little bit, but I could tell that they all were quite worried.

Differently from the previous semester (Fall 2008), when Misy Ferraris very kindly invited me and offered hospitality to my students at her very well organized in-world Italian classes, this time my  students had not had the opportunity to meet or interact with any Italian native speaker in SL, or, really, with any other avatar, except their classmates, myself, and the school IT specialist, Amy. Chatting with a stranger, even in a virtual environment, can be tough, I knew it very well myself.

I didn’t want to add a burden of anxiety to my students’ already difficult task of speaking in Italian in SL with a native speaker, so I approached several Italians I had met in different occasions in SL. I tried to choose people who were close to my students because of their interests and/or their age.  Luckily, the people I picked were all incredibly nice and immediately accepted to be interviewed by my students. I am immensely grateful to all of them for their patience and availability. A heartfelt “thank you“ to  Anna Begonia, Tiziana  and Ideag.

What were the guidelines I gave to my students for this assignment? Well, this was an intermediate class, so finding out the name, age, or profession of the interviewees was not enough.  The interview had to last at least 30 minutes, the students had to ask engaging and “professional” questions, as if they were journalists, and they had to either turn in the printed chat-log of their conversation, or to write a summary of the interview in case they used voice chat.

I allowed them over two weeks of time in which students had to contact their interviewees, set an appointment, interview them and, in case, write a report. Of course, I also requested snapshots of the meeting.

Since I believe that SL assignments must always be somehow linked to what we do in RL classes and not detached from class activities, during this time we devoted some RL class time to prepare for the interviews. We first read one or two RL interviews about different topics. Then, students created sets of interview questions that one might ask to different kinds of people (a musician, an athlete, a businessman, etc.), so that they felt that they had some material to fall back to in case they felt lost during the interview.  All the questions were created by the students with minimal help from their instructor (me): I basically encouraged them to ask complex questions and suggested a couple of possible topics.

Isabella (centre) with Anna Begonia (upper left) and two of Anna’s friends

If my students were worried about this assignment, I was also a bit anxious.  I was afraid that this experience would turn them away from SL for good and that they would then hate me for having forced them to go through it.  I shouldn’t have worried too much, though, since this proved to be by far the most successful in-world task I had ever concocted.

To begin with, I was surprised and delighted that two students decided to use voice chat for their interviews (I had given them the choice to use text or voice chat). They both seemed to find it more immediate and less boring than typing: this is true, of course, but it also requires listening skills, it’s not easy to use voice chat in a foreign language!

Later, when I began receiving their post-interview reports, I noticed that the shortest interview had lasted about 3/4 hour (I had asked for 30 minutes) and that the longest one was over 1 hour and 1/4. The quality of their questions was also good and it resembled a real conversation that two people might have, rather than those sequences of dull questions and answers that students often produce in a language class.

I discovered that Isabella, who had to interview Anna, had also met two of Anna’s friends and had conversed with them as well (all in Italian, of course).

Finally, Karl, who, due to different time zones,  could not make an appointment with the person he was supposed to interview, went ahead and  found another Italian native speaker…he did so completely independently.

Gabi (right) and Elisa (left)  interviewing Tiziana (centre)

I felt very proud. I felt even better when, in the students’ blogs, I read how they thought that the interview was the best activity they had been assigned during the semester, how they enjoyed it and how they thought they had learned a lot while preparing it, doing it, and writing about it.

Of course, this is an activity that I will certainly reuse also in the future! How could I do otherwise? The only drawback is that I will have to find other native speakers willing to play the game…I cannot bother the same avatars over and over, I’m afraid…..