This article by Jannie Roed throws light on behavior of second language learners in a virtual environment. He says that a virtual learning environment provides a more relaxed and stress free environment than a classroom. Students who might not speak-up because of being mocked at by others could be highly active when communicating online, which has been supported by the research that was undertaken by the author.
The research aimed at investigating the behavior of language learners communicating through computers. In this study, students have to interview each other to find out the identities of fellow students who were given identities of famous persons. The task was kept linguistically simple so that majority of students could communicate easily and freely. The findings of the research report that students who were rather shy during classroom discussions showed full control over the online communication.
Personally, I have also observed similar kinds of differences in learners’ behaviors when they are working with internet. Among my P3 students, I have seen that when I take my students to any online game, the faces of shy ones lighten up with excitement. They begin to show more interest in online activity than any text-book oriented activity. So we can say that integration of online communication in English language teaching could serve as a springboard for language learners who hesitate to open-up otherwise.
Contrary to it, I still have a doubt if online communication can help students overcome the fear of speaking in front of an audience. I think online communications are still written communication though the register is oral and shy students who may write online posts freely, would still be unable to present their viewpoints in oral negotiations.
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To a child a computer is fascinating and a text book is *boring*. I had students in Bangkok who refused to read a text book but they would happily read a text based computer game !
ReplyDeleteThanks for this thoughtful post. There is, of course, no substitute for practising face-to-face. It's interesting to see the affordances that the new media offer though.
ReplyDeleteI quite agree with you! After all, the virtual environment is still the virtual and invisible one. The students may behave unusually. The introvert students may have the courage to speak here, but there is no evidence that can prove if they can still speak a lot in real world or not. But I think communication in virtual environment is nevertheless a good idea for learners to practice.
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