Cambridge and the University of Nottingham have collaborated on language research for many years. The latest research project, led by ELT teacher, researcher and PhD candidate Andrew Moffat, explores the use of online communication by English language learners and the implications for ELT materials.
How many different ways do you use the internet to communicate? You’re reading this blog post online, that’s one. Perhaps you might leave a comment at the bottom? That’s two. Do you write letters on paper any more, or have they been replaced in your life by email? Do you use any social media platforms? In the USA, 70% of adults use at least one, with Facebook being easily the most popular. What about instant messaging (IM)? Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Snapchat, LINE, QQ. Whether on desktop or smartphone, more and more people are using these convenient communication tools. Then there are community forums, chat rooms, online dating sites, gaming environments. The list is enormous and continues to grow. As more and more aspects of our lives are represented online, our repertoire of online discourse types must expand. For example, many large companies now would prefer that contact them via the ‘live (text) chat’ app embedded on their website rather than by phone.
Text versus spoken online communication
One of the many fascinating aspects of this growth of digital communication is that text-based platforms are still as popular as ever. This is despite the fact that there are far more technologically-advanced options like voice and video chat easily available. You would think, if our priority was getting as close as possible to face-to-face conversation so as to exchange information efficiently, that we would have abandoned IM apps for video alternatives such as Skype years ago. And yet text-based mobile instant messaging is the fastest growing form of digital communication. Some researchers have pointed to the inherently playful nature of text-based media, and suggested that they remain popular simply because we take pleasure in using them to communicate. ‘Communication’ in such a context is more to do with relationship maintenance than information exchange.
Online communication and ELT course materials
In these digital times English learners are going to be using their target language in a wide variety of online contexts. In fact, taking advantage of the communicative possibilities of the internet is a fantastic way for learners to engage in authentic communicative encounters that go beyond simply ‘practising your English’. In my teaching experience, however, the various forms of online discourse and their linguistic peculiarities are under-represented in ELT materials. An understanding of the types of online contexts that English learners find themselves in; the kinds of language they need to employ in those contexts; and the kinds of problems they encounter, could help to inform the design of ELT materials. Prioritising digital communication, and tackling it head-on, would help to equip learners with the language skills to, say, keep up with rapid, overlapping conversations in a chat room, or to manage expectations of an instant response on WhatsApp!
The research project
Current research being undertaken at the Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham, and in partnership with the ELT Research and Teacher Development team at Cambridge University Press, is seeking to investigate just those questions. The project aims to talk to English language learners about their experience of online communication, bringing together four or five participants at a time. During the hour-long chat, participants will be asked to talk about the different forms of digital communication they use, which they like or dislike, find easier or more difficult, and to share any stories of problems they’ve encountered online.
Interested in taking part in this study or know someone who might be? Please visit Andrew’s blog for all the details.