Shiv on Learning

Increased student engagement and participation directly correlate to faster student learning. Having to maintain the persona of a teacher places certain limits on the level of engagement you can achieve with your students. While employing role-play can mitigate these limits, playing a fully developed character can bypass those limits altogether.

Over the past two years Languagelab has created vivid, living characters for its virtual English practice environment, English City.  CELTA and DELTA trained teachers (with previous experience in the classroom) along with business, legal, and medical professionals have played these characters to surprising success. Initially, we were focused on the functional aspects of the characters. For example, in English City we had a character playing a waitress. She focused on the specific tasks of a waitress: order taking and delivering food. Later, we developed her character to have a specific back-story and specific motivations. For example, instead of being a generic waitress she became a struggling actress with bills to pay and auditions to go to. This fleshed out character, we discovered, drew out the students in more realistic conversations. Eventually, the students became attached to the character and came back to speak with her and follow her evolving story. The end result is language lessons levels of engagement comparable to soap operas, with students returning to unravel the plot and using relevant language to do so.


More details to come, an article outlining how we achieve this can be found in the summer 2009 Call review.