CAN WE USE SECOND LIFE FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION?

Over the last few years there has been an increased interest in Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs), or virtual worlds, by instructional designers and developers. One of these MUVEs is a very well known world, Second Life (SL). There are many instructional activities taking place in Second Life and language learning, English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learning is just one of them. Gartner Inc. (2007) says that 80 percent of active internet users will have a “Second Life” in the virtual world by the end of 2011. In this paper, the researches and use of SL in language instruction is examined and some suggestions are offered to both instructors and designers on how they can leverage of SL especially in higher education settings.