ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is designed to provide language students (at all levels) with state-of-the-art web-based speech technology, and language teachers with a way of managing and presenting multimedia tasks which facilitate meaningful foreign language practice.

Our plan is not a new one in the Internet age of education and second language learning. We hope to leverage the power of the web (connecting communities of speakers locally and at a distance) to provide language practice opportunities for US and overseas students. Modern social networks provide some of the inspiration; modern theories of language acquisition provide the theoretical basis.

While the program is just getting started, we have made substantial headway. 

For the first version of ANVILL they include: a voiceboard (asynchronous communication), a real time audio-video group chat environment (synchronous communication), and a media-based assessment tool (SQM). These tools are wrapped in a web-based content management system built with Drupal.

One goal for the current year is to give the speech tools a unified environment, much like the language lab console of old. Teachers can assign and collect speech-based work; students can track their progress with learning portfolios and other tools for reflection and commentary. Audio and video (either links or teacher-produced) are easy to add.

An even bigger goal is to make all of this interesting and fun to use. We hope that by providing teachers with a "premium" level of support and mentoring that their efforts to master these tools and make them part of their regular teaching will be successful. We feel like we're off to a good start.

ANVILL is funded by two centers at the University of Oregon: the Center for Applied Second Languages' (CASLS) and the Yamada Language Center (YLC). Our core tools are speech-based applications developed by duber dot com and/or in-house at the Yamada Language Center. Outreach services are provided by CASLS' professional development program, the Western Initiative for Language Leadership (WILL). Contact us if you'd like more information.

Jeff Magoto, Norman Kerr, and Ginny White
Yamada Language Center, University of Oregon

Jim Duber
duber dot com