Issues in the Design and Implementation of Web-Based Language Courses

2.3. The Internet
According to Pollacia and Simpson, the emergence of the Internet is one of the most dramatic trends in higher education since the Internet permits students interact with one another around the world cheaply and quickly. It also opens up the classroom to the real world, a phenomenon that had never been possible before. Because the Internet is such a powerful tool for information and communication, many people believe that there should be much more integration of computer work into language curricula. The Internet can be used as a source of expanded material for learning and teaching. It provides quick and convenient access to learning possibilities including audio and video communication in ways that have never been practical before.
The Internet has enormous potential in language learning, but its effectiveness in practice depends greatly on the way it is exploited by the teacher and the students. As with any kind of teaching tool, methodology plays a crucial role in language teaching through the Internet. Teachers who would like to incorporate the Internet into their teaching can take advantage of a number of tools for increasing interaction and bringing the real world into the classrooms. These tools include use of e-mail, electronic discussion lists, chat rooms and the WWW.
Globally, many people use e-mail (electronic mail) today, as a common way of communication. It is a way of sending messages to communicate with individuals from one computer to one or more computers around the world. Using e-mail is quite popular in web-based learning environments. Warschauer sees its use as “an excellent opportunity for real and natural communication”. Teachers also use it for exchanging ideas and collaboration all over the world. Students can communicate and share opinions and feelings with their teachers and other students from another part of the world. Beatty also mentions one of the greatest advantages of emailing, which is “the record of both one’s own messages and the messages one receives” Emailing, as an asynchronous way of communication, enables students to read what they have sent and received whenever they want as long as they save their emails. Asynchronous email lets the students take their time to think about their message and compose it accordingly, and the message can reach the person despite differences in time zones.
Another use of emailing is “keypals” or “Net pals.” This is an informal use of emailing as an email pen pal arrangement. This generally happens between someone who is learning a second or foreign language and a native speaker of the target language living in the target language culture. The native speaker models the authentic use of the language for the learner. Net pals function best when both participants have a common interest to share, otherwise communication could be frustrating for learners since they could think that their level of English isinsufficient.
Electronic discussion lists represents another type of internet access. Teachers and learners can pose a question and then receive hundreds of responses to their question in a short time. They can reach the information they need with the help of the lists. As Gear mentions, these lists, which she calls “a mass mailing”, are valuable since people can discuss issues, ask questions, and give and receive information. After the message is emailed to a certain address, people in the list send responses, essentially to people who share the same interests.
Another form of internet access is the Internet chat groups or as Beatty says “chatlines.” Beatty defines chatlines as follows:
A chatline refers to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and appears on- screen as a window that presents what the learner is writing in one pane while general discussion among other participants continues in another. Once the learner has completed a message and presses the send command, the message is queued and appears in the main pane as quickly as the modem and host computer allow (p. 64).
Internet services let people all around the world chat together synchronously. Chat groups can be used by teachers so that students can have realtime electronic discussions and question and answer sessions on the Internet.