An application of distributed virtual environment to foreign language education

The new information technology called the distributed virtual environment or DVE is applied to English education for Japanese engineering students. The system is not a teaching tool for new knowledge of English but it provides computer augmented virtual places where students get together and work in cooperation in the target foreign language on some topical subjects in an appropriate atmosphere. DVE has proven to have a prominent potentiality to let students speak out aggressively in English. Details of the system and the experiences are presented in this paper