A Virtual World for Teaching German

In this research, a virtual world of an Austrian town centre was created to teach German to first year students at the University of Calgary. While interacting with characters in the City of Salzburg, students were able to take control of their own learning, and at the same time were exposed to cultural and linguistic realia that are often not present in other types of language games. In playing the game, students reported an improvement in their listening skills, and they also noted that the experience was beneficial for vocabulary learning, pronunciation, general fluency, and improving reading skills. Surveys and direct observation of student game play offer insights into attitudes towards personal use of games, the value of educational games for teaching language and impact of different testing environments on the success of playing a game. Examining the recorded paths taken through this world by students during the game, space syntax research offers some interesting perspective insights into strategies game players employ when looking for the correct path through an urban space. In fact, isovist and axial maps may be helpful in predicting the first line of action taken by game players as they navigate through a virtual world with no verbal clues

Interview with Dr. Mary Grantham O’Brien: Looking at comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

In this interview, Dr. Mary Grantham O’Brien, from the University of Calgary, discusses the notion of comprehensibility as a dynamic—rather than static—dimension of L2 speech

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Multilingualism

This research topic stems from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Multilingualism" conference, which was hosted by the Language Research Centre at the University of Calgary. It was the first conference of its kind, which brought together the work of researchers, educators, and policy makers in the areas of first and second language acquisition from psycholinguistic and pedagogical perspectives. The goal was to provide an opportunity for participants to engage with the implications of multilingualism from a range of perspectives, including the effects of being bilingual from infancy to adulthood, the process and benefits of learning multiple languages, and the impact of multilingualism on society