Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment

I found that this paper is quite interesting and familiar. Why familiar? Coz I had this kinda experience before. I remember that when I chatted with an online friend and was waiting for the reply while others kept asking questions. The whole screen was full of questions and people just couldn't tolerant the lag. And I saw so many !!! ???? and angry expressions of people not answering questions.

"people feel less inhibited when communicating via computer than in a face-to-face situation"
I do feel this is quite true especially when someone is learning a new language, we are just sitting in front of the computer, practising the new language without seeing the other party. Sometimes people are shy when they want to practise their language especially when they have to spend with native speakers. I think communicating via computer can break down the barriers for those who are nervous at the beginning of practising a language.

I think it is a good idea to create a chatroom for my students so that they can practise their English, as I think that there are always some shy students who don't want to speak in the classroom but they want to speak to you outside classroom. And I agree that there is no one best method in teaching, so teachers always have to think of other methods to teach or communicate with students so that we can cater for students with different learning styles. However, I do have a concern that the language in chatroom is not grammatically written English, they look like spoken English but in written form. How could I avoid this from happening?

Assignment 1 -- Evaluation of web resources

On Feb 14 (Valentine's Day), our group will present ideas about an evaluation of a chosen web resource. My groupmates are Paul, Dora and Venus and the chosen web resources is BBC Bitesize Revision . We will focus on KS2 English part.

After discussion of what framework we should adopt when doing this evaluation, we finally decided to adopt Hubbard's framework for CALL Courseware evaluation. It includes three parts, which are operational description, teacher fit and learner fit. We will evaluate the web resource in light of these three criteria. And we have chosen an instruction writing part in the web resources to adopt our teaching.

Hope our presentation go well.