S IMULATOR OF L INGUISTIC A WARENESS A N O VERVIEW

A system to raise awareness of the real language and cultural values

Imagine that you are in 2050, the way we learn a language will have been a huge difference from what we were now: through language and culture simulator. This essay aims to provide not a DREAM, but also a PERSPECTIVE, a VISION and above all a HOPE for future REVOLUTION in teaching and learning both a language and its culture. Welcome to the virtual world of the reality.

Phan Anh DIP12B05 Group 2 5/28/2013

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

SIMULATOR OF LINGUISTIC AWARENESS AN OVERVIEW

A system to raise awareness of the real language and cultural values

It is now 2050 and the PA Simulators of Linguistic Awareness (SLA) have been introduced and successfully applied for more than twenty cities all over Vietnam since 2045. Through these simulators, learners can experience English as well as its culture to a certain level of fluency in such authentic situation, thus, they can be more confident and qualified for their fluency, accuracy, appropriacy and automacy. More and more Vietnamese learners approve the effectiveness of those simulators in assisting them in constructing their own world of concept of English, so-called Simulated Linguistic Awareness. The success of the SLA have led to its rationale and inner construction together with the advantages and drawbacks of its mechanism. It has been wondered so far what the Simulator of Linguistic Awareness is and what people can do with it. To keep it short, SLA is a complex system of simulation. The main part of SLA is a large area for simulation with ventilation systems that create the wanted-climate of the target area in the USA or UK. Learners have to wear "tactics" suits with goggles that present the real view of the scene. Thanks for the technological advances, learners can see, feel, hear and do whatever they want as if they were in the real world. All the devices that learners carry are directly connected to the control center which is a high, wide tower that can overlook the whole simulated area. The control center is actually a powerful central processing unit (CPU) that program and simulate the virtual world that all the learners are interacting with. It creates and records everything that happens at the actual time of simulation. Moreover, each learners is facilitated with a special personal CPU that is directly connected with the control center. This mini CPU allows learners to record everything they want to note down. It tracks learners history of interaction, records learners performance, provides learners with real sensation as it control the tiny activators of the suit

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

that create such feeling of pain, itch, tickle as well as the goggles and the headphones that gives learners the true sight and hearing. Those are just the basic settings of SLA, however, there is more about it in order to help learners acquire the language naturally.

Control Center

Simulated Area The Illustration of the original model of SLA The idea of simulation and virtual world are not new, in fact, before 2030, the world had come to know Facebook and Google World as the two largest social networks that attracted billions of people to participate and learn about the other cultures. However, there are no real communication. Even though people can see, talk and hear each other well; they do not actually exchange the daily conversation to each other, what they do - and they think they do - is exchanging a number of affected, unusual conversations that favor their interests in a minority of particular situations. In that case, SLA appeared to be more communicative and academic based on its effort to bring life to the virtual world. To a small extent, SLA is an English classroom for Vietnamese people to learn English culture and language; to a larger extent, SLA can be connected to other SLA over the world to create a simulated virtual network that learners can live and exchange with each other in real time environment. In order to take a closer look at the inner mechanism of SLA, some major critical aspects of SLA will be discussed below.

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

SLA is organized to bring the liveliest, most genuine parts of foreign life to Vietnamese learners. The setting of SLA is varied from purposes to purposes, from situation to situation and from level to level. To keep it straight, there are three factors that contribute to such environment. First, due to linguistic advances in anthropology especially in the culture aspect with the discovery of the culture map (which refers to all the cultural values, norms, beliefs of a nation, this map is similar to the human gene map that was discovered in 2025), a board of assessment between the two nations (e.g. Vietnam and the U.S.) is founded in order to plan a particular rigorous curriculum for target language & culture learners. The board will decide which situation should be implemented into the tutorial and simulation sessions. Also, it is entitled to issue learners with cultural and language certificate of proficiency that is applicable for all English speaking country (for instance). This certificate is a part of a larger certificate of CGFR (Common Global Framework Reference) which defines the ability of learners in using and living with the target language and culture (English for example). Furthermore, in order to foster cultural and mutual understanding between to country, at the state-city level, a city of Vietnam will be in brotherhood with other one of American. For instance, Ho Chi Minh City has been in mutual relationship and exchange with New York City for over 50 years, that is the reason why most of the models of the SLA in Saigon are imported from New York scene and its people. This helps the certification more applicable and practical since at least a city has already accepted the successful learners of the course. Second, the development within a simulation session is the strongest advantage of SLA. Learners wearing tactic suits actually live in the new world. As soon as they put on the suits, the boundary between the two worlds disappears. There is no more classroom, no more walls, there are only a new city in front of them with a mission every day that they have to accomplish. To illustrate this, let take a particular day of learners at intermediate level.

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

It has been a good day in New York (the simulation scene), and the city is filled with breezes and lovely sunshine. The weather is cool as it is autumn now. Our mission today is to buy some milk. Usually after each mission, we are paid 2,000 virtual dollars to buy or pay for anything that we like in this world. We have to buy some milk, but where? We decide to ask for direction, the citizen here are somehow friendly but prompt. They show us the way to the supermarket. We take the bus for ten minutes before we arrive there. In the supermarket, there are a lot of things we do not know. To learn a new vocabulary, we just double touch on it and there comes the definition and the example in a box that appear over the item. If we want to listen to pronounce again, we just touch the speaker icon on the dialogue including the definition. Then we repeat the word, the personal CPU will record and compare it with the original sounds and tell us how many percent we speak correctly and naturally. After a great tour in the supermarket, we learned a lot of new words and witness a lot of cool things, such as we found out that we have to get in the line in order to buy something even if there were only two people. We have chosen our milk and it is time for paying. We stand in line and observe the other customers pay for their goods. We take notes of the process of paying and receiving change. Then we practice it with the cashier. The amazing thing is the cashier is not actually human. It is a simulation bot (computer) that is programmed with the enormous functions and ways to solve the problems based on the real cashier in real life. We are amazed to know that there is such a gigantic data base of which every occupation is recorded and synthesized and evaluated into digital data. After we finish our job, we are now free to discover the city, we go around, play any sports we like with other people. You will hardly recognize which is your mate and which is a bot because they genuinely blend in the environment. It may sound creepy but every bot has a unique characteristic that we can learn a lot about. By the end of our simulation session, the teacher gather us together to analyze our process, it is good to know that your certificate is based upon your effort to learn and live in the language not just on some final 4

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

examination. You cannot scram for a test for language and culture, so the best way is to relax and enjoy the live in this virtual world Third, it has been a robust debate whether the teacher is actually needed. More than 5 years of operation, SLA has proved that the role of teacher is still of obvious and overriding importance. Besides the supportive team managing the overall simulation process in the control center, the teachers are superior administration of the system and they can interfere to any process in order to aid learners or keep them away from trouble. The role of the teacher is not controller but facilitator, indicators, supporters, involvers, observers, inspirers, analyzer, assessors in this virtual-authentic environment. The teacher does not actually teach, but help learners to realize their own mistakes; moreover, all the rules, norms, culture values are implicit, the teacher rarely explain anything because he/she does not want to impose his/her idea on the students; under some particular circumstances does the teacher interfere with the acquisition of learners by explaining and demonstrating the correct way (this usually occurs at the beginner level). Similarly, the role of the bot is in ideological dispute whether bots can revolutionize themselves to pose a potential impending serious danger toward human. As the matter of fact, someday the machines can give us the answer to all of our questions but they cannot make one. Besides, the main role of the bots should be considered as the facilitator, grader, information collector and partner. Together with the real-simulated graders who are English native speakers that are integrated into the simulation progress in order to track and determine the appropriacy and automacy of learners in specific given situations, bots are a crucial parts of the system that helps the teacher and grader to have other perspectives of learner progress. Last but not least, the bots collect information of the source culture that help the SLA developers to update the model of SLA in other country. In the case of Ho Chi Minh City SLA, the bots will collect information of Vietnamese learners and record the data of how they behave, act and say in specific information. The information will be encoded and built into a model of Vietnamese people in SLA center of New York which helps the New Yorkers to learn more about Vietnamese culture. 5

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

So far the major aspects of SLA have been discussed; furthermore, the underlying theory that serves as the stepping stones for SLA will be thoroughly reviewed in this section. As the trend of Constructivism has become more and more popular in the first half of the 21st century, SLA is not an exception. As A. Einstein initiated, "reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." We are confused by the persistence of the reality. Obviously from Anas Nins perspective, we dont see things as they are, we see things as we are. We create our own world brought to us in senses and all the things that we perceive is actually within our mind. As many opposed as no matter how we perceive the world, the world is still constant of our mind. However, the concept of the world we used to know has changed from ages to ages with great revolution from the primitive times till the modern times. If we used to see the Earth is the center of the Solar System, then later we were proven wrong by scientists and other convincing facts. Living in such a world of chaos and inconsistency, our minds cannot be match. The universe we live in is made of stories that we create, not from the atoms that we defines, even atoms is a long story of science (Muriel Rukeyser). So, the possible way to blend in another culture and language is to change the way you look at things, to think differently, to observe and to imitate, then the things we look at change (Max Planck). The SLA mechanism is simply applicable as it simulates the real condition and bodily sensation for learners to dive in the other language and culture, to expose themselves under the shed of cultural situation that reflect the critical thinking and the ways of thought that can hardly expressed explicitly. It is strongly believed that when you totally keep great attention to what you live Living in such a world of chaos and and how you behave in inconsistency, our minds cannot be match. The universe we live in is order to blend in the made of stories that we create, not environment, gradually from the atoms that we defines, even you can acquire the atoms is a long story of science language along with its (Muriel Rukeyser). culture. That is what SLA aims to, integrate and corporate language and 6

Intercultural Fluency - Principles for Independence Instructor: Professor Dr. Andrew Lian

5/28/2013

culture into the system in the form of intuitive and explicit linguistic awareness and then promote it till it gradually turns into unconscious competence in language and culture. As the matter of fact, for the last few years, learners of SLA have proven to be more successful and confident and self-awareness towards both English and its culture. Obviously, SLA creates such potential authentic environment that learners feel motivated and secure enough to discover the language and themselves. As far as we discussed, the benefits of SLA is considerably enormous on the one hand. On the other hand, there have been several concern over the bots and computer programs used in the system. Albeit a majority of researchers and scientists validate the safety and security of the system environment, there has been a small number of report cases about the intelligent and skillful behaviors of the bots that panic learners as learners themselves cannot distinguish between their mates and the bots. This is also a reminder for human beings not to play tricks too much on the human brains as it can cause complete confusion between virtual world and reality. In the worst case, there will be considerable loss of digital materials and human life as in the 2010 movie Inception (in which a man can alter a persons concept by implant a change in his dream in the deepest unconscious part of the human brain and this results in the loss of his wife who committed suicide in her real life because she thought it was the only way to liberate her from the dream-life). In brief, the impact of the merging of the two life real and simulated can be dangerous if the learners fail to see who they really are. That is the role of teachers and team supporters who must always be alert to anticipate and handle the worst situation. To sum up, SLA is a complex system that create an artificial but authentic environment in which learners can expose themselves in a variety of situations and critical ways of thinking to solve the given challenges of planned communicative topics and registers so that they can practice to respond to the same problems unconsciously and automatically with the cultural, communicative and linguistic competence.