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.

Social and Cognitive Collaboration

In "Future Foreign Language Teachers' Social and Cognitive Collaboration in an Online Environment" by Arnold, N. and Ducate, L. (2006) research was done to gain more insight on how computer mediated communication is a viable means in which to teach students. As opposed to the conventional method of teaching in a classroom, the effects and results of teaching in a virtual environment is still disputable. The research involving student discussions in groups showed that out of the 5 groups, there were two groups that are able to reach the expected cognitive level of processing in the research. The results, however, were below expectations as one group failed to reach the level of cognitive process while two groups arrived at an resolution only once. The research is showing how teacher facilitation is not necessary, as students are capable of reaching resolutions by themselves with teacher involvement and peer feedback.

However, the research was done in a controlled environment. The students chosen for the research were all capable students, with the research methodology stating that the students all passed the TOEFL test with atleast a score of 250. Therefore this research cannot represent students on a global scale. There are age differences, and student motivation to consider. Age plays a role as it limits experience, and the motivation of students in an online environment is crucial. It is easy for students to multitask or even sidetrack from the task in an online environment as there exists many resources on computers to be used. When this occurs it becomes difficult for the students to continue in discussions and come to a resolution. Without motivation, students become less willing to participate in the group discussion.

The research can be expanded to include other social/age groups in order to come to a result which can be used as a reference for learning in online environments.

Negotiation of Meaning in Online Chats

In "Negotiation of meaning and codeswitching in online tandems" by Kotter (2003), it was stated that during research students from the US were asked to interact with students from Germany on MOO. They communicated in both German and English and responded to a questionaire which evaluated their actions during their interaction, such as when they failed to understand their partners during the communication on MOO.

When students failed to understand the meaning of their partners, German students tend to ask for a reiteration of the sentence or a paraphrase in which they try to discern the meaning. American students on the other hand, tend to ask for a translation, and often times ignore the sentences they do not understand. By trying to guess the meaning or ignoring the sentence, it shows that the American students' proficiency is not up to par with their partners in this online discourse. However, since these students are learning German as a second language the lack in proficiency is inherent.

Since the research is done in a controlled enviornment, there are many variables which are eliminated and thus the online chat between the German and American students cannot represent the online chat of people from different parts of the world. The students negotiate meaning because they are conscious of the activity in which they are participating. This causes them to have a goal, or aim. Unlike the chats which occur more often in the online gaming community, which often times the participants have no particularly strong incentive to learn and negotiate meaning in a second language, requests for repetition and paraphrase becomes less common while the American students' approach of ignoring the sentence and changing the subjects become more common.

A common reaction by individuals to others speaking a foreign language is to ignore them completely, and therefore there exists no negotiation of meaning. Therefore the results from the research in negotiation of meaning is limited to only parts of the online community and cannot be applied to all instances of online chatting.