Online text-based facility

http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/kotter/default.html

When playing a role in Second Life, I met a lot of people from the countries around the world. The common language we use to communicate is English. Some are native speakers of English but some are not. When we were in the conversation, I found that I tended to use those sentences “Do you mean…?” or “What do you mean by…?” These are kinds of negotiate of meaning. When there was something I don’t understand I would keep asking until I figure it out.
English is not the language we use in our daily life, thus it would generate some misunderstands during the conversations, both for native and non-native speakers. Text chat through the Internet is a good way for learner to improve the language and do the peer interaction when chatting with another. In these situations, the learners would work hard to figure out the real meanings so that he/she could avoid the misunderstandings due to the use of language.

However, a thing always gets two sides. When the learners are chatting online in the text chat room, the number of speakers is a big problem. People could not afford to talk to too many speakers at the same time. Indeed the effects would decrease when the numbers are over than someone could bear. According to the research, two to five is the average.

Despites text chat room, E-mail message is one of the text-based facilities. It is convenient to make the content more complete and the system would take the record for the learners. However there comes a big problem that I always get is that people would not make sure whether the receiver would get the mail or not.

Online text-based facilities now become a new good way for language learners to get resources online, because they would contact with many other learners, so that they would start to think what the correct answers is. Finding out the mistakes is find of learning itself.