This article explores the development of a course for teaching a language in a virtual world. In particular we evaluate the course entitled, “Social English for Doctoral Students” that is in progress in the fall semester of 2007. This course will activate learners and educators using a variety of support media including Marratech conferencing system and Second Life virtual world platform. The pilot course part of a one year project sponsored by The Norwegian University program (NUV) is entitled, “A Virtual Platform for Life Long Learning”. In addition to the development of this course, we contribute with the development of an evaluation framework that may be applied to other courses taught in Second Life as well.