Urszula Świerczyńska-Kaczor
The role of virtual worlds and social networks sites in foreign language teaching

Users of virtual worlds and social networks sites not only look for strengthening social ties, but now have also access to a wide variety of extra tools associated with their site. Of significant interest is the application of e-education. The article focuses on virtual worlds (Second Life) and social networks sites (Facebook, MySpace, Moja Generacja) and their uses in teaching foreign languages and on how such e-education changes the relationships between the teacher and student, the other students, new technology and traditional technology.
The following topics are discussed:

• what kind of 'real-world' educational institutions and 'purely-virtual' schools exist in Second Life?
• what does the educational environment look like in a virtual world?
• how can social networks be implemented as a teaching and promotional tool?,
• the pros and cons of using virtual worlds and social networks sites in teaching language,
• the prospects of e-education in virtual worlds and social networks in the nearest future.

Although education in virtual worlds and social networks differ from both traditional schools and traditional e-learning, in the new e-environment there are many factors helping students to achieve their educational goals e.g. anonymity of users, students' co-creation of educational content and students' cooperation within group. Virtual worlds allow teacher to communicate using voice connection, chat, instant messaging, e-mails, slide presentations or on-line streaming video. At social networks sites the education is mostly based on text communication, but the teacher can also use podcasts or widgets. In assessing the efficiency of new virtual education, advantages are balanced with potential problems such as the doubts about didactic experience of virtual teachers, necessity of learning new educational tools and problems with access to high speed broadband and suitable hardware to run programs efficiently.