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The World Wide Web
and Foreign Language Teaching
by Michael D. Finnemann, Augustana College, Rock Island, IL
The Internet and its more recent offspring, the World Wide
Web (the Web or WWW), probably represent the most highly
publicized and captivating technological innovation of recent
times. The international scope of the technology alone instantly
appeals to language teachers, who are showing a rapidly
growing interest in exploring its pedagogical possibilities. This
article examines the Web as a resource for foreign language
teaching from two perspectives: as a teacher-centered source of
information and as a student-centered medium of language
instruction.
WHAT IS THE WORLD WIDE WEB?
The Web is but one component of the Internet, a set of
communication resources (such as e-mail) accessible over
telephone lines. It is an interlinked mesh of "pages" or "sites"
created by private individuals or organizations. The text of a
Web page--which is simply a word-processed file--contains
invisible codes (HyperText Mark-up Language, or HTML) that
are readable by any computer and that help standardize Web
page formatting. HTML permits authors to easily insert
mouse-clickable "links" to e-mail forms, to other points on the
page, to other files in a directory, or to other Web pages. It
also allows embedding of graphics, sound, and video into a Web
page. These capabilities produce non-linear and multimedia
HyperText. HTML permits special programming (called "forms" and
"scripts") for enabling authors to collect and process
information entered by visitors to their Web site. Newer Web page
technology includes the "frames" format (multiple
scrollable windows on the same page) and Java, a scripting
language supporting animation and other applications.
Users access the Web through the Internet via software
called a "Web browser" (such as Netscape). The browser screen has
space for entering the address, or URL (Universal Resource
Locator), of the site to visit. A Web URL is a string of
characters beginning with http:// followed by directory path
information. (For sake of brevity, the initial string http:// is
deleted from the Web references given below.) Searching for a Web
site is facilitated by directories and search engines;
"directories" are hierarchical tables of contents to the Web, and
"search engines" hunt the Web by means of "keyword" queries.
Yahoo! [www.yahoo. com], a universally hailed search site,
provides both a directory and keyword search of its large
quality-controlled index.
THE WEB AS A TEACHER-CENTERED RESOURCE
For a language teacher with individual (but not classroom)
access, the Web is a vast, searchable library of information
exploitable for classroom as well as personal or professional
use. The Web offers several types of content of immediate
interest to language teachers.
News and Media
News and magazine articles have always been useful in
language instruction as a source of authentic reading and
up-to-date regional and cultural information. Traditionally,
teachers have been limited by the cost and availability of print
media sources. However, large numbers of periodicals have now
gone online, and many offer some or all of their content to the
reader without requiring a subscription fee. For example, U.S.
Robotics operates a site in Australia [www.intercom.com.au],
offering access to numerous online newspapers and magazines from
around the world. The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Foreign Language News and Magazine page
[nimrod.mit.edu/depts/humanities/internet_resources/ForLang
Lit/flnews/news.html] offers an extensive list of online
newspapers and magazines for some of the more commonly
taught languages. Links to other international media are
available at World Television Web Links [www.
webovision.com/media/sd/tv.html] or World Radio Web Links
[www.webovision.com/media/sd/radio.html].
A useful resource for learners and teachers of Spanish is
TECLA [www.bbk.ac.uk/Departments/Spanish/TeclaHome.ht
ml], a weekly magazine produced during the British academic
year.
Regional Information
Regional information is available by simply entering the
region or country as a keyword in a search engine or by
browsing the menu choices of a directory for subtopics like
"regions," "countries," "cultures," "travel," and so forth.
Geographically organized directories provide excellent points of
departure. The clickable Virtual Tourist World Map
[wings.buffalo.edu/world] connects to The World Wide Web
Consortium [www.w3.org], a listing of registered Web servers
organized alphabetically by continent, country, and U.S. state.
Virtual Tourist II [wings.buffalo.edu/world/vt2], another
clickable map, accesses City.Net [www.city.net], a very popular
site providing links to information on about 100 countries and
1100 world cities with categories like travel, entertainment,
local business, and government and community services.
Pedagogical Information
The Foreign Language Teaching Forum (FLTEACH)
[www.cortland.edu/www_root/flteach/flteach.html] is the FL
teacher's flagship for information and discussion on methods as
well as for access to specific teaching materials (handouts,
activities, lesson plans, syllabi, software, CALL, etc.) and
other resources. FLTEACH is actually a complex of services
including an index to FL resources on the Internet and a listserv
(Internet discussion forum). The FLTEACH homepage gives
information on subscribing to the listserv.
The six federally funded National Foreign Language
Resource Centers maintain very informative, mutually linked Web
pages for language teachers. The K–12 NFLRC at Iowa
State University [www.educ.iastate.edu/nflrc]
is one entry point to the resource centers.
Language teachers can send information queries to
AskERIC, an electronic question-answering service maintained by
the ERIC system, and conduct or request a search of the
ERIC database at [ericir.syr.edu]. Another excellent site
maintained by the ERIC system can be found at
[www.accesseric.org]. Both sites provide links to individual
ERIC clearinghouses.
Language laboratories at educational institutions offer
excellent practical support to language teachers. The Midwest
Association of Language Learning
[www.siu.edu/departments/cola/dfll/mwall.html] has pointers to a
comprehensive list of language labs with Web sites. One of many
lab sites, Ohio University CALL Lab
[www.tcom.ohiou.edu/OU_Language] provides links to
language-related Web sites and resources for language teachers on
testing, technology and teaching, Web page development,
software, materials reviews, linguistics, and employment.
Another example of important information available to
language teachers is "The Guide to Learning Disabilities and
Foreign Language Learning" [www.fln.vcu.edu/ld/ld.html].
Academic Information (Language, Linguistics, Literature,
Culture)
Sites hosted by foreign language departments at colleges and
universities give well-organized direction to multilingual
academic content related to languages. Ohio University CALL
(cited above) provides pointers to several. To name just one site
with a comprehensive academic orientation, Washington & Lee
Language Studies
[liberty.uc.wlu.edu/~hblackme/newhome/langd.html] features
full on-line text of the journal, "Modern Language Notes," links
to the Summer Institute of Linguistics' comprehensive catalog of
information on languages and ethnic groups, Netlink Language and
Literature Resources, language articles from the Wiretap gopher,
listservs, and dictionary resources.
See Steve Thorne's "Foreign Language Resources on the
Web" [www.itp.berkeley.edu/~thorne/HumanResources.html]
for a quality index to good foreign language Web sites.
Professional Information
The ACTFL Home Page [www.infi.net/~actfl] is a first
stop, with information on proficiency testing and instruction,
annual meetings, publications, professional development
programs, National Standards, membership, and links to special
interest groups and related organizations (e.g., American
Association of Teachers of German, American Association of
Teachers of French). Foreign language publishers sponsor sites
offering professional information and opportunities. Agora
Marketplace [agoralang.com] has job information, a publisher's
directory, a calendar of professional events, and a keyword
search of its database. Another publisher, Oracom, Inc./Nobis,
sponsors "Lapsus Linguae" [www.nobis.com/ll], a new online,
refereed, multimedia journal soliciting articles on any topic
related to foreign language teaching.
THE WEB AS A STUDENT-CENTERED MEDIUM FOR LANGUAGE
LEARNING
An ever increasing number of sites promote use of the Web
for interactive language instruction. A review of a few such
sites suggests a variety of innovative Web applications focused
on both language content (grammar and vocabulary), skills
(listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and cultural
information.
Grammar and Vocabulary Practice
HTML as Authoring Language
HTML forms and scripting capabilities can be used like a
CALL authoring program to create fill-in-the-blank,
multiple-choice, and short-text response items. Student responses
are automatically evaluated or e-mailed to the instructor.
Prokop's Using the Web for Language Exercises and Readings of
Authentic Texts [www.ualberta.ca/~german/present.htm]
gives a detailed classification of response-feedback formats,
offers many links to examples of each application, and proposes
criteria for the design of Web-based language practice. Some
programming knowledge is required, but help is available.
Godwin-Jones's Language Interactive
[www.fln.vcu.edu/cgi/interact.html] introduces language
teachers to forms and scripting, offers a number of ready-made
forms, and discusses program linking (methods of connecting the
Web to other applications to increase programming flexibility).
Grammar/Vocabulary Searches
The keyword capabilities of search engines and the
"search/find" functions of Web browsers can be used to hunt the
Web and specific texts for examples of grammatical forms and
vocabulary that the student copies electronically and hands in
with an analysis of uses. The Web then becomes a ready-made
corpus of language data. See Ann Salzmann's The World Wide Web
as a Corpus for Grammar Exploration [deil.lang.uiuc.edu] for
details.
Listening Practice
Rosa-Chang Li's Learning Oral English Online
[granny.lang.uiuc.edu/r-li5/book] experiments with sound files;
students can click on words in texts and entire lines of dialogue
to hear pronunciation. Although sound files can be
large--consuming substantial memory and requiring time to
load--and the variety of formats may require more than one
sound application for listening to the audio files, technology
will improve. Radio stations like Deutsche Welle
[www-dw.gmd.de/index.html] and Paris-based France Info
[www.radio-france.fr/france-info] offer audio files, and their
players are available on site. Voice of America
[www.wrn.org/stations/voa.html] offers non-copyrighted,
digitized audio files of selected foreign language news
broadcasts in several formats.
Conversation Practice
Real-time spoken communication is not yet practical via the
Web, but conversation of a sort is possible at foreign language
sites offering cafes or chat rooms, venues that
allow
students to dialogue through the keyboard. Many language
programs set up restricted cafes or chat rooms for their
students, but the public can look in at Godwin-Jones's
Kaffeeklatsch [www.fln.vcu.edu/gj/311/klatsch.html] to get
an idea. Web users can also visit WebChat sur QuebecNet
[www.quebec.net/chat] to participate in an open French chat
site.
Reading Practice
Focused Reading
An evident use of the Web is as a source of authentic texts
for students. One Web-based teacher strategy is to prepare a page
with a reading text and a series of questions using various HTML
"forms" to test student comprehension. Another common
activity we might call the "information hunt": the teacher
prepares a set of links with content questions, and the students
must search the links for relevant information and report back
their answers.
General Reading
One hopes that, as students enthusiastically explore the
Web, they read along the way. To guarantee reading in the target
language, online magazines are a particularly good resource for
students, given their variety and increasingly interactive
format.
Writing and Composition
Contribution to Student Publications
Student-oriented publications give language learners a
legitimate motive for writing: on-line publication.
KidNews [www.vsa.cape.com/~powens/Kidnews.html] is a Web-
based
newspaper for Grades K–12 that accepts well-edited contributions
in any foreign language. Exchange
[deil.lang.uiuc.edu/exchange] gives English-as-a-second-language
(ESL) students an outlet for their writing efforts.
Learner/Class Creates a Web-Page
Creating an interesting and readable Web page is the
ultimate in composition practice. Hyper-Text allows students to
add multimedia content to their composition, but they must
organize these components coherently and effectively: that is,
"compose." An e-mail link to the page allows feedback from the
world of readers. There are many on-line guides to Web-page
creation and HTML (see Ohio University CALL, above).
Cultural Information
The Teacher Page as a Presentation or Tour Guide
A teacher can create a Web page with an organized set of
links to guide students to content on the Web. The Web page can
become, in effect, a multimedia cultural presentation. In other
cases, the page serves students as a teacher-guided "trip" to
facilitate discovery of information related to regions or topics.
Putnam's Language Learning
[web1.ea.pvt.k12.pa.us/htm/depts/modlang/putnam] is an
outstanding example of teacher-guided Web use at the K–12
level.
Student Web Research and Follow-up Activity
Students investigate topics of interest on the Web and use
genuine, real-world information to make reports (oral or written)
or accomplish assigned tasks. Students might follow on-line news
in order to prepare simulated oral newscasts, or plan a "virtual"
trip using facts from City.Net; see Rosen's "Teaching with the
Web" [polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/teach.html] for details and
a comprehensive set of links to other Web applications to foreign
language.
Inter-Class Communication and Collaboration via the
Web
Interaction with students elsewhere adds purpose and
dimension to any learning activity. Language classes can join
existing collaborative Web projects or establish their own.
Classes can join MayaQuest
[www.mecc.com/ies/maya/maya.html], for example, to interact with
anthropologists investigating the Mayan culture on location. The
Global SchoolNet Foundation [www.gsn.org] has a registry of
active projects for K–12. Rosen & Bowers Language Learning Activities for the World Wide Web
[polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/nflrc.html] recommends
establishing "bilingual pages" for classes speaking each other's
target language. Classes visit each other's Web pages and
communicate via e-mail links on the pages. Mills's The World
Wide Web as a Project for Collaboration. [deil.lang.uiuc.edu]
and Corio's Interclass Projects on the Internet
[www.vcu.edu/cspweb/ron.html] make additional suggestions
related to college-level ESL projects but relevant to any foreign
language. For language teachers who wish to establish e-mail
communication between classes on the Internet, the Web offers
Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections
[www.stolaf.edu/network/iecc].
CONCLUSION
The sites listed above are just the tip of the proverbial
iceberg, and this limited discussion can only point to
representatives of some of the Web's more visible foreign
language applications. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Web
promises to be an important resource for language teachers. It
provides teachers with ready access to a world of information
enabling them to easily make classroom teaching more content
based; the content can be timely, authentic, culture rich, and,
consequently, more engaging for students. Though still in its
infancy as an effective medium for on-line language learning, the
Web has a number of capabilities that indicate it will play an
increasing role in providing interactive language practice
focused on both content and skills.
Newcomer Study
A new, four-year study of newcomer schools and programs for
secondary students has begun. Funded by the U.S.
Department of Education under the auspices of the National
Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence
(CREDE), this study will examine characteristics of newcomer
programs across the United States. Program design factors such as
the following will be documented and analyzed across sites:
goals; student identification, placement and exit; length of
program; language of instruction; curriculum; instructional and
assessment practices; teacher characteristics; and community
involvement. Researchers will also conduct case studies of
exemplary sites that successfully prepare newcomer students for
their home school programs.
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