Internet as Glocal Discourse

In the article "The Internet as a Glocal Discourse Environment" it states how the articles of Lam and Bloch promotes an optimistic view of the internet in L2 learning, and how it offers considerable potential to the development of L2 for an individual. It also states that programs and processes like word processor, hypertext, and the internet show slight improvement in helping education. However it should be noted that the lack of improvement cannot be blamed on technology alone. The major factor contributing to the failure of vast improvements to education through the use of technology rests with the learners. It cannot be denied that the use of technology has greatly increased the amount of learning materials available to learners, as long as they are willing to search and use these materials. Researchers also must take into consideration poorer nations where learners have little access to the educational material available only through the use of the internet and related technologies.

Cyber Rhetoric

It is stated in the article "Second Language Cyber Rhetoric: A Study of Chinese L2 Writers in an Online Usenet Group" that writing on the internet liberates students from the constraint of the classroom. The internet liberates writers by the fact writers can write to express an assortment of opinions in which they will likely not be willing to express in written form in a classroom environment. Writing online also blurs the boundaries between different languages as in a classroom environment a student writing an assignment is expected to write in a certain form, without the freedom to switch between languages at will and combine the languages to form a writing style incorporating aspects of different languages. An example can be seen in the article by Lam in which two girls who emigrated from China interacted with other Chinese emigrants by typing in both English and a romanized version of Cantonese. This shows how the internet can effectively blur boundaries of languages and allow online writers to form a style consisting of elements from different languages.

The Importance of Ethnic Identity

In the article SecondLanguage Socialization in Bilingual Chat Room, it mentions how the two girls in the study who emigrated from China feels out of place in the US. This is caused by the difficulty of interacting with other English speakers. The differences in language and culture causes feelings of estrangement because without similar linguistic competence and knowledge on certain topics, such as when people gossip or talk about television shows, there is no way to make comments aside from listening. By communicating with others like themselves(emigrants from China) who speak Canto but write in English or romanized Chinese, the two girls are able to improve their English through discussions that are more relevant to them and more understandable. This is also the reason why in US schools the people of a same ethnicity tend to flock together more often, e.g. Asians are more often seen with Asians while Hispanics often times hang out with other Hispanics.