Integrating the real and virtual world for academic language education in Second Life

This chapter focuses on a Second Language Acquisition (SLA) study conducted in virtual worlds that could help teachers in terms of knowledge about acquisition processes, in which technology is integration between formal and non formal education. The research comprises of two studies strongly focused on the development of Italian oral language proficiency. It was held within Second Life® (SL™)1 in order to explore the affordances of public spaces to enhance Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)2 and to stimulate the oral production through learner’s engagement. Since 2007, a new pilot project, Café Italia, was developed by Carmela Dell’Aria (aka Misy Ferraris) in Second Life®. Starting from theory and research (SLA and Linguistics) the project leads to effective language learning practice. As matter of fact, the research moves to analyze learners’ needs, to give a focus for instruction, to adapt technology to their needs through experimentation, and to evaluate the results.