Learning enhanced by experience

One of the language teaching skills is to enhance learning by letting students experience the real thing that a language refers to. A friend of mine who is teaching ESL to refugee kids tries to let her students experience English physically. For example, when she is teaching vocabulary of vegetables she will bring into the classroom vegetables and the whole class will make soup out of it (during which I guess the kids also learn the vocabulary of seasonings).

But sometimes we, as teachers, may notice that certain experience is hard to bring into the classroom, the cultural settings of the target language, for instance. When I was performing a teaching demo last semester, I was trying to simulate a food market, which is very typical in China. The activity went on well in general; I showed pictures of a food market; I set the tables in a way that vendor spots were arranged in a food market; people seemed to be happy playing the roles of vendors and customers. But the classroom still looked like a classroom. I felt if I could bring my students into a real Chinese market it would be much greater and a lot more fun.

Now with such tools as Second Life a 3D simulated environment is possible. I'm looking forward to using it in simulation.