James A. Backer, December 1997 

Krashen (1976, 1977), makes a key distinction between language acquisition and language learning. According to Krashen, language is “acquired” by actually using it in authentic situations. Students process comprehensible input (the language forms and content within their reach), test hypotheses about language (produce their own inter-language, often making mistakes) and modify their internal models of the target language. Thus, a student discovers from the environment how to correctly use grammatical structures, contextualized vocabulary, and elements of usage such as register. Krashen’s (1985) i+1 hypothesis suggests that students progress most successfully by stretching their previous linguistic knowledge ( the i ) just a little bit ( the plus 1) when the second language (L2, i.e. the new language) is encountered. Richard-Amato (1988) notes that Krashen is presenting the linguistic version of Vygotsky’s concept of the “zone of proximal development”, that area of new knowledge that a person can currently assimilate with the aid of a “care-taker” (Vygotsky, 1978). Many second language theorists have developed Krashen’s argument, focusing on the concepts of interaction and negotiation as the vehicles of comprehensible input (Gass, 1994; Long, 1983; Loschky, 1994; Pica and Doughty, 1987; Pica, Lincoln-Porter, Pininos, and Linnell, 1996; Schinke-Llano and Vicars, 1993). As a result of this negotiated interaction with the L2 (i.e., receiving comprehensible input), the student moves along what Selinker (1972) calls “the interlanguage continuum”, gradually acquiring the target language. According Krashen (1976, 1977) a student who has thus acquired the L2 can access it in real life situations.

For Krashen (1976, 1977), this is in contrast with traditional classroom language “learning” which often stresses decontextualized grammatical exercises, “skills” practice, and vocabulary lists. Students who succeed in the traditional classroom environment develop a “monitor” which evaluates structures and vocabulary retrieved from long-term memory. This monitor aids the student in reproducing language in controlled situations such as examinations, exercises, and required papers. In such situations, there usually is an abundance of time to retrieve and reformulate the structures and vocabulary. The traditional classroom’s heavy emphasis on accuracy inhibits the student’s willingness to take chances with language. As the student’s monitor develops, it reinforces the student’s affective filter to the L2. Thus, people who have successfully “learned” a language for many years in school often find themselves at a loss when confronted with real-life linguistic situations. (Krashen, 1977)

The Internet offers authentic English in a number of linguistic input modes. These include: the reading/writing of web-pages; the reading/writing of asynchronous email and newsgroup documents; and the reading/writing of synchronous IRC, MOO, and their multi-media successors. While an increasing number of publications and conference presentations have extolled web-pages and e-mail as sources of linguistic input (Backer, 1995a; Finnemann, 1995; Sela, 1997; Tillyer, 1995 and 1997; Warschauer, 1995), much less has been presented to ESL/EFL teachers about the synchronous possibilities over the Internet. (Although Warschauer (1996) reviews a number studies of synchronous computer mediated discussions within a classroom, using a LAN.) This probably reflects the fact that English classes still have a serious problems of access to computers and the Internet. Thus, the nascent awareness of the pedagogical potential of technology can not find realization in most schools today. Given traditional obstacles of time tables (access to the computer lab), budgets (not enough computers, maintenance, lab support, and teacher training), and the new obstacle of international time differences, asynchronous communications and semi-permanent web-pages are more manageable than synchronous communication. E-mail can be prepared off-line at the convenience of the writer, sent when a computer is available, and read at the convenience of the receiver (Backer, 1995a; Finnemann, 1995; Sela, 1997). Nevertheless, given the proper access to the Internet, synchronous communications are often more meaningful and authentic, in Krashen’s terms, than non-synchronous communications. Synchronous communications offer an isolated EFL student immediate and continuous contact with native English speakers and other ESL/EFL students from all over the world. This can be achieved in a convenient and low-cost way, as long as the student has access to the Internet.

This paper will compare and contrast various Internet applications which could be used in ESL/EFL instruction. The key features of these applications are that they are low-cost, synchronous, multi-user programs (text-only or multi-media) and are directly supported by the Internet with no need for special equipment such as head sets or datagloves. The paper will deal with some of the technical underpinnings of the applications, the nature of the applications themselves, and the pedagogical advantages and problems associated with each application. In addition, the paper will offer a plan for the implementation of the most promising of these applications in one particular school.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one of the most popular programs of the Internet. Everyday thousands of people from all over the world meet in numerous IRC channels to “chat”, that is to say to write their messages to each other. IRC’s success and popularity have led to many other forms of chat facilities, most of them looking very much like the original IRC application.

History And Technical Elements Of IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was programmed by Oikarinen in Finland in 1988. Since UNIX-like commands were used in his program, it would be reasto assume that IRC was created as an improvement of the UNIX “talk” program. IRC is an independentclient-server application as opposed to being a function of the UNIX shell which runs “talk”. Users install IRC client programs in their local computers and then connect, via the Internet, to an IRC server (Hahn, 1996). In the opinion of McElhaney, some of the best IRC client programs are: mIRC or Pirch (WINDOWS), ircii (UNIX), and Ircle (Mac). IRC can run on a single server, or can function in a network of servers. Thus, user A communicating to server A can send messages that will reach user B connected to server B, if the two servers are connected (McElhaney, 1997).

IRC was first implemented on one server at the University of Oulu and a handful of clients. The IRC experiment was soon installed in a small network of three servers in Southern Finland. The Finnish national network (FUNET) then implemented the program in its servers and offered it as a service to all schools in country. The regional network, NORDUNET, was quick to follow with implementation. Within a year of its creation, IRC had rapidly spread throughout the Internet (Reid, 1991).

In 1990 the IRC administrators around the world split into two groups. The first wanted to use centralized servers located in North America, Europe, and the other continents. In North America eris.berkeley.edu was to be the central IRC server. The other group wanted to create a decentralized and distributed system of servers. This second group had the server at eris.berkeley.edu “q-lined” (i.e. banished from the network). The first group then set up an alternative IRC network, called A-net (Anarchy network), with a central server at eris.berkeley.edu. While many IRC servers migrated to A-net, the original network survived and became known as the “Eris-Free Network” (i.e. free from eris.berkeley.edu) or “EFNet” for short. By 1996, the EFNet had over 100 servers while the A-net had withered and died. Now there are dozens of IRC networks. After the EFNet, the second largest network is the Undernet, with over 30 servers. The name Undernet refers the underworld and implies that its service was hidden from the main IRC network. Despite its name, the Undernet is considered a more orderly network than the front-runner EFNet (Hahn, 1996).

As a multi-user application, IRC had to solve the problem of the chaos inherent in having a large number of people trying to communicate at the same time. This problem had not existed in the UNIX program “talk”, in which only two users communicated at one time. Oikarinen’s solution was to create channels to isolate small groups of users. A channel is created by a user issuing a /join command (the / symbol must precede all commands) and specifying a #channel-name (the # symbol must precede the name) that does not yet exist. The initiator can chose any name, but traditionally, the name somewhat reflects the content of the conversations in that channel. Other users can participate by invoking a /join #channel-name command. Usually, all the users who join a particular channel can see what every one else on the channel types on the keyboard. The initiator of the channel becomes its first “chanop” or “op” (channel operator), whose privileges are discussed later in this paper. IRC keeps track of who is currently on which channels and can provide a user with this list. IRC can support an unlimited number of these channels. (Reid, 1991)

Some other commands that allow a person to use the IRC are:

/query their-nick to begin a “query session” (a private chat session), where “their-nick” is the other person’s current nickname

/query to end a query session

/part #channel-name to leave a particular channel

/quit to log off

Once on a channel, the actual chatting is done by typing one’s words and pressing ENTER. These words are then sent from the user’s client to the server and echoed to all other participants currently on that channel. There are also commands (/msg and /query) that send private messages to IRC participants in the current or other channels.

The IRC Community And Enforcement Of Accepted Norms

Reid (1991), Rheingold (1993), and others posit that the population of frequent IRC users make up a community. As any community, this virtual community has a series of norms, or “netiquette”, that create social cohesion among its members. Many of the norms are enforced by public pressure, while others are enforced by a hierarchy of IRC officials. At the lowest level, there are the “chanops” or “ops” (the channel operators), who can ban someone from a channel. A chanop can appoint another person in the channel as the next chanop. Above the chanops are the “IRCops” (the server operators) who have wide technical powers. They can ban someone from both a server and the network that the server belongs to. Finally, at the top of the hierarchy are the “admins” (the server administrators), who maintain the servers (McElhaney, 1997).

Multi-User Domains (MUDs)

Another form of group communication over the Internet is the family of MUDs (originally “multi-user dungeons”, now “multi-user domains” or “multi-user dimensions”). A MUD is a textual program that offers a stable geography, with rooms and open areas, in which people can meet, chat (i.e., type messages), and interact with the fantasy world of the particular MUD site. A MOO (Multi-User Domain, Object Oriented) is a type of MUD that is often maintained by university computer departments and used for educational purposes. In a MOO, people can build new geographical areas and objects, and then interact with their creations. Other participants in the MOO may also be able to interact with these extensions to the MOO site, even when their owners are not actively in the MOO site.

History And Technical Elements Of MUDs

In the early 1970’s, Crowther, of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), developed a text-based computer game with a hero searching for treasure in an interlocking series of caves. The player was given descriptions of each cave and a choice of options: where to go or what to do. Crowther later joined Woods, who had previously been involved with the creation of the graphical “Spacewar” game at MIT, to create “ADVENT”. In this game the hero moved through a Tolkienesque landscape, killed dragons and other enemies, overcame all sorts of obstacles, and finally found treasure. ADVENT was totally text-based and was probably the first computerized virtual reality game. The players were not bound to a specific action as in “PACMAN” (eat dots and catch ghosts) or “Space Invaders” (shoot down spaceships). Instead the players did as they pleased, allowing their imaginations to run free within the fantasy world of each location. This was a unique form of escapism, creativity, and entertainment that had not existed in computer games before. (Reid, 1994)

In 1977, the concepts of ADVENT (and its immediate successors) actively meshed with the concepts of networking and interactivity. Guyton programmed “Mazewar”, the first networked multi-user game. This was a rather simple game in which various players wandered around a maze trying to shoot each other. Mazewar led to “WIZARD”, a more sophisticated game in which players had to roam around a fantasy world killing dragons and monsters while searching for gold. For the first time, the players could form teams, communicating and sharing information, to further their particular goals. This multi-participant fantasy adventure, which allowed social interaction and cooperation, was copied by a number of programmers. One such programmer, Trubshaw, a student at the University of Essex in England created what he called a “Multi-User Dungeon” or “MUD”. Bartle worked with Trubshaw to improve MUD. Once again, players were allowed to interact, cooperate or kill each other, in their search for treasure. In early versions of MUD, players could add scenes to the fantasy world, but Bartle soon took this option out. On a technical level, the computer could not supply the resources needed to abuilding new scenes. On a esthetic level, Bartle believed that the energy put into building additional scenes would detract from the game’s central purpose: the mortal competition among the players to survive, kill drand monsters, kill each other; and find treasure. (Reid, 1994)

A major change in MUD came in 1989 when Aspnes, of Carnegie-Mellon University, programmed “TinyMUD”, the first of the social MUDs. Instead of competition and mortal combat, Aspnes created a multi-user textual fantasy stressing communication, cooperation, and world building. Because Aspnes programmed TinyMUD for the UNIX, a platform that was becoming extremely popular, the game gained widespread exposure and popularity. From this point on, a new branch of the MUD genre began to develop. While many of the fantasy worlds of MUDs and TinyMUDs continued to be Tolkienesque or science fiction, other were based on specific historical periods and/or geographical locations, such as Moscow, the ante-bellum South, the Wild West, the prehistoric era, and medieval villages. (Hahn, 1996; Reid, 1994)

The appearance of social MUDs also changed the meaning of the original acronym from Multi-User Dungeons to “Multi-User Domains” or “Multi-User Dimensions”. In addition, from 1990, other acronyms appeared: COOLMUDs, ColdMUDs, DikuMUDs, DUMs, LP-MUDs, MAGEs, MOOs, MUCKs, MUSEs, MUSHes, TeenyMUDs, UberMUDs, UnterMUDs, UriMUDs and YAMUDs . While the exact meaning of each acronym is not significant, what is notable is the proliferation of the types of MUDs (Hahn, 1996; Reid, 1994).

Social MUDs gained academic respectability when Bruckman, at MIT, used the MediaMOO for serious research and discussion about media. MediaMoo was followed by the establishment of other serious international virtual academic meeting places including PMCMOO (for literary and cultural theorists), BioMOO, (for biologists), and others (Reid, 1994; see also Hahn, 1996). Some of the educational MOO sites actually present an academic campus in which scholars and students can interact with the program and with each other. There are classrooms, lecture halls, blackboards, newspapers, documents, and MOOmail to facilitate communication among the members of the academic community. Teachers are free to use these tools to afford their students experiences not readily available in the normal classroom. In particular, the MOO environment can turn static information into experiential learning. The textual nature of the MOO environment allows full freedom for the imagination. Almost any topic in school could be transformed into an experiential learning event by building rooms with appropriate descriptions and objects that interact with the students. MOO environments are even more powerful when the students create the rooms, descriptions, and objects for themselves and their peers. For example, one Italian literature class built a model of hell, with all its levels, after reading Dante’s Inferno. (Bruckman, 1994; Turbee 1996a and 1997)

Despite its potential as a radical educational environment, Fanderclai (1995) has noted that some teachers have used the MOO environment in traditional pedagogical paradigms, creating an electronic version of traditional classroom. Students enter a MOO site and find themselves locked in virtual classrooms, sitting at desks, reading long lectures given by the instructor. There are electronic means to gag the students if they bother the instructors.

Educational MOOs, regardless of their pedagogical nature, are only a small part of the MUD family. The majority of MUDs exist for purely entertainment. In fact, most MOO sites are not strictly educational, but are merely descendants of the TinyMUD tradition. The adventure MUDs, on the other hand, are direct descendants of the program created by Bartle and Trubshaw. Normal players can only interact with each other and the MUD environment as given. While they can kill monsters, communicate with or kill each other, solve puzzles, and find treasures; they cannot build new objects or scenes in the MUD (Reid, 1994).

In a MOO site (academic or not), everything is an “object”, hence the name “Multi-User domain Object Oriented program”. Geographical locations, entrances and exits, descriptions, things, actions, and even the players’ avatars are objects. In most MOO sites, even novice players are encouraged to build new geographic areas and other types of objects. When examined, these objects display the description their creators have given them. In addition, objects respond to stimuli, even when their owners are not present. For example, imagine Tom enters a room and reads:

Thus; creation, cooperation, and communication (instead of killing) are both the medium of play and the very goal of that play (Falsetti, 1995; Reid, 1994).

While the terms “adventure” and “social” differentiate the MUDs from the point of view of the user, there is a basic technological division between LPMuds, DikuMuds, and TinyMuds. LPMuds are named for Lars Pensjo, who programmed the first LPMud in 1989. Pensjo used the programming language LPC which is easily mastered by people who understand general programming concepts. Thus, LPMud programs are easily extended. DikuMuds are complex adventure MUDs named after the Datalogisk Institut Kobenhavns Universitet. Using the C programming language, a team including Nyboe, Madsen, Staerfeldt, Seifert and Hammer created the first DikuMud in 1990. Since the C language is much more difficult than LPC, much less extending is done after a program is finished. TinyMud was the name Aspnes chose for his first social MUDs in 1989. He called it “tiny” because it was much smaller than existing MUD programs. TinyMuds are not really programmed in a true language, rather they are generated from databases. Once the TinyMud designer configures the database, the participants in the TinyMud, even novices, can use that database to extend the MUD. As noted above, MOO grew out of the TinyMud tradition, LamdaMOO being the first. (Hahn, 1996; also see Creedy, 1996)

While MOO sites are usually accessed via telnet, often at port 8888, there are now technical developments to access many of them via web-browsers. While this presents the geography of the MOO site and its descriptions, the web-pages lack the level of interactivity of the telnet based versions.

 

MUD Communities And Enforcement Of Accepted Norms

Even more than IRC, MUDs facilitate the formation of strong virtual communities. Bruckman (1997) stresses that by calling a software system “a place”, the expectations of the users are radically different than with other types of software. By giving it the physical and social description of “a place”, users will perceive it differently than other software. Because of the cultural connotations of “a place”, there will be a tendency to do what is done in “a place”: meet people and interact. Turbee (1997) posits that the relative stability of MUD sites; the probability of meeting the same people in the same locations, relating to the same geographical surroundings and objects; strengthens the sense of community. Turkle, of M.I.T,. notes that many people have the sense of actually living in these computerized communities (Bollier, 1995). One could hypothesize that such strong feelings of membership in a community are accompanied by the sense of identification and ownership, just as people feel identification with and ownershiof “their” school, “their” country, “their” city. In addition, the act of building personal space and possessions in MOOs (as opposed to other MUDs) increases the participant’s sense of identification and ownership (Bruckman, 1997). This is treven though players can hide behind the anonymity of an avatar whose outward appearance may have no correlation to its owner’s real life appearance. One may change height, build, age, and even gender in a MUD site. In fact, some observers of MUD posit that the continued attempt to maintain such chosen fictions adds to the cohesive nature of the virtual community. In short, players tend to identify with their own avatars and accept the avatars of others at face value, unless given good reason not to. (Hahn, 1996; Reid, 1994; Rheingold, 1993; Turbee, 1997). Finally, the sense of community is further heightened when the participants have a common interest in real life. Creedy (1996, p.2) writes of a “virtual community of professionals”. Keenan (1996, p. 2) posits that her freshman composition students at Penn State formed “a community of writers”. And Harris (1995, p. 8), analyzing the dynamics of composition students at the University of Wyoming, holds that “MOO discussions strengthen this sense of community and reinforce the feelings of existing in a shared potential space.” Harris called this space “Rhetland” as a parallel to Papert’s (1980) “Mathland”.

Adventure MUDs tend to have more pronounced hierarchies than social MUDs. Only extremely successful players in adventure MUDs, those who gain enough points, can achieve the rank of “wizard”, gaining some control over building new objects and places in the environment. The wizards have less creative power than the MUD “god”, the programmer who ultimately controls the software and the server that support the MUD site. While social MUDs do not involve overt competition and gaining points, thus creating less hierarchy; charismatic participants may gain more social respect than others. More experienced participants may become programmers and finally wizards, but the tone of social MUDs is much more egalitarian than in adventure MUDs. As in IRC, there are social norms (netiquette) common to all MUD sites and/or special norms for particular sites. As in IRC, public opinion is a strong guardian of these social norms. Those who violate the prevailing netiquette risk being publicly “flamed” (verbally abused by other players). When public opinion fails, the wizards and/or the MUD god are asked to solve controversies. Wizards have access to the identity of the players and, in extreme cases, can ban players them from the MUD site. Wizards may take a more positive leadership role by encouraging programmers to structure the site in particular ways and by communicating to the players about matters of common interest. (Hahn, 1996; Reid, 1994; Rheingold, 1993; Turbee, 1997).

One administrative issue in extendable MUDs (TinyMUDs and their successors) is the allocation of scarce resources. MUDs take up a finite amount of computer memory. The first TinyMUDs allowed building without limits, but this became a problem as memory ran out. Then coins were scattered around the MUD and finding the coins would result in more building rights. This meant that those who spent more time in the MUD would probably be able to build more. An alternate system, that has become the norm, is to grant every participant a quota. When the quota is used up, a request is made to the Wizards, who may or may not grant more building rights. One can see the potential for single individuals to impose egalitarian or arbitrary quota systems that would eventually effect the nature of the MOO site (Bruckman, 1997).

Multi-Media, Multi-User Communication Programs

The text-only nature of IRC and MOOs may be problematic for some students and teachers who have basically visual and/or aural learning styles. The general technological migration towards multi-media applications may offer a solution. Bruckman (1997) notes that some learners just do not like text-only media and that the general development of graphical entertainment may lead to the creation of many such graphical multi-user communications programs.

There are various graphical communities, both using 2-D or 3-D graphics and sound. Some of the most well known are “The Palace” (a Time Warner product), “CUChat” (a Netdive product), “WorldsAway” (a Fujitsu product), and “Alpha World” (a Worlds Inc. product). The first is a 2-D virtual world supported by an independent program in the internet. Participants can build visual rooms and populate them with visual, but static, avatars. These avatars are bitmaps that can take any form the participant chooses, including his/her own real life image. The Palace emphasizes socialization through chat rather than actions. The central metaphor is the printed cartoon in which avatars express themselves via speech and thought balloons. Technically, one room in The Palace can link with another room on the same server, or another Palace-like server. There are Palace clients for Macs or on PCs using WINDOWS 3.x or WINDOWS 95. The Palace program is rather simple and usually does not require long response times for Avatars to respond to user input. Nevertheless, the response time required to move from room to room or server to server is well beyond the 2 second limit that Stallings and Van Slyke (1997) set as reasonable for the normal user. (It could be argued that even this 2 second limit is much too high for students who are used to decisecond response times in video games.) Conceptually, The Palace combines elements of IRC and MOO: socialization through chat rather than activity on the one hand, and the existence of a relatively stable visual area linked to similar visual areas on the other hand. (Chiefet, 1996; also see Turbee, 1996).

CUChat is a Java based chat environment that can be easily imported to normal webpages (textual, 2D, or 3D). The chatters choose avatars that can navigate around (actually float on top of) the webpage, but have neither animated qualities of their own nor direct interaction with the webpage. Communication is achieved by typing text which appears in speech balloons or sending prepared audio clips. In a TV broadcast of “Computer Chronicles”, Ansari, of the Netdive Company, predicts that direct audio communication via CUChat will be possible in the near future. Thus, webpages will be able to provide a visual context to personal interaction, both in textual and audio modes. (Chiefet, 1997)

WorldsAway is a two-and-a-half dimensional world. One of the strong points of this program is its wide range of body language that the avatars can portray. This, according to Bruckman (1997) makes it more popular than its 3-D competitors.

In a TV broadcast of MSNBC’s “UserGroup”, Gobel, of Worlds Inc., describes Alpha World as “an infinitely extensible consensual hallucination”. Thus, it can be considered a conceptual 3-D successor to MOOs. Participants can build 3-D virtual reality areas and objects, chat (in written form), or play. In this “play”, the avatars actually move and perform activities with the objects found in the various areas. Teleports serve as hyperlinks to web-pages to other Alpha World servers via a visual, 3-D switching station called “the telepark”. Alpha World requires a Pentium with at least 16 Mbytes of RAM, WINDOWS 95, and Active-X software. While the minimum modem requirement is 9600 Baud, the application works better at higher bandwidths due to the complex nature of the program requiring long periods of time to download all the files each time the participant moves to an new area (Chiefet, 1996).

“EnReality” (a product of On-line Environs, Inc.) also brings the MUD concept into a 3-D mode. Participants choose 3-D avatars, move around 3-D virtual reality space, can experience 3-D audio, and meet with other participants from all over the world. Communications between/among participants are implemented by the use of a traditional chat box (Chiefet, 1996).

Interestingly enough, the multi-media solutions offered by The Palace, Alpha World, enReality, ancurrently CUChat still rely on written chat boxes for linguistic communication. (Chiefet, 1996 and 1997) Thus, students with visual problems (dyslexics, blind students, etc.) and those who do not yet know how to decode printed words still do not have a solution in thesevirtual communities. Given the speed of technological development in general, and of digital transmission in specific, a voice operated multi-user program will not be far away. Already “CU-SeeMe” offers low cost, multi-user audio-visual conferencing among personal computers (Wiegler, 1997). In many ways, CU-SeeMe can be considered the next development in the IRC concept of chat without a fantasy world. “Moondo” (an product of Intel) offers a multi-media MUD environment with audio capabilities. The participants can move their avatars through rooms and examine the objects in those rooms as well as the other avatars. Communication is performed by written chat boxes and an audio channel. Thus, students who have visual and oral/aural learning styles can use a multi-media MUD, but to do so, sophisticated hardware is need. Almost by definition, the communication programs with audio capacity fall outside of the boundaries of this paper. The need for microphones and earphones (or speakers) increase the cost for a school. Fragile headsets are easily broken and demand constant repair or replacement. In addition, visual successors to MUDs require an abundance of patience as the program downloads the large graphics and or image files. (Turbee, 1996a)

In a discussion about the migration to graphical multi-user communications programs, Bruckman (1997) urges a needs analysis. Some goals are better achieved textually, some graphically. An adventure game may well be better served by a graphical interface, assuming the user’s hardware can support a reasonably fast data rate. An educational site, particularly focused on improving reading and writing, probably would be best be served by a textual virtual reality. Another factor is the hardware requirements for participating in the two types of virtual worlds. Graphical worlds require expensive equipment, not available to everyone. Textual worlds, on the other hand, are accessible to every computer connected to the Internet. Another aspect is the opportunity for imagination and creativity in text that is not available in graphical virtual worlds. Because of that, Bruckman (1997) and Rheingold (1993) foresee a continued popularity of textual worlds in the immediate future.

Multi-User Communications Programs And ESL/EFL Acquisition

“Cyber-English”

As posited above, the frequent users of synchronous multi-user communications programs make up a virtual community. As a community, they have developed a dialect of English that separates them from communities with other dialects of English. Of course, there are some IRC channels and MUDs that have dialects of French, Spanish, and other languages; but Cyber-English is the most commonly used dialect. (Creedy,1996; Frizler, 1995; Harris, 1995; Keenan, 1996; Reid, 1991 and 1994; Rheingold, 1993; Lundstrom, 1995; Turbee, 1996a and 1996b). While Cyber-English is also used in non-synchronous modes of Internet communication, such as e-mail, this paper will be concerned with its use only in synchronous modes.

Speed of communications is extremely important in synchronic communications, so grammatical and orthographic accuracy lose much of their importance. As a result, typographical errors are common and punctuation is minimal. These random errors aside, systematic spelling shortcuts have developed and have become commonly accepted. For example, to save keystrokes “cks” have usually been replaced by “x”. Another method to accelerate communication in Cyber-English is the use of acronyms and abbreviations (Hahn, 1996; Reid, 1991 and 1994; Turbee, 1996a and 1996b). Patrick McElhaney (1997) has compiled the following non-comprehensive list:
 

lol - "Laughing out loud" or "Laughing on line"

rofl - "Rolling on Floor Laughing"

brb - (I'll) be right back

bbl - (I'll) be back later

wb - Welcome back!

re - short for "re-hello" (hello again)

lo - hello

k - okay

oic - Oh, I see!

ppl - people

irl - in "real life"

btw - by the way

ne1 - anyone

otoh - on the other hand

As a purely written dialect, Cyber-English suffers from the lack of intonation that can increase the meaning of communication. Another problem, shared with every written language, is the lack of non-linguistic signals. Facial expressions, body language, and other non-linguistic signals may convey meaning that is critical for communication. To try to cope with these problems, users of Cyber-English have developed a set of “emoticons” or “smileys”, which represent facial expressions created from keyboard symbols. Emoticons must be viewed by tilting one’s head at a ninety degrees to the left. Hahn (1996) offers many examples, among which are:
 

:-) smiling

:-D laughing

:-( frowning

;-) winking

:-I showing indifference

:-X expressing “My lips are sealed.”

In IRC, an “action” is another way to transmit meaning. By typing the command /me followed by an action, the rest of the people in the channel read that the participant has done the action. For example, when Tom types:

/me jumps for joy.

the rest of the IRC participants in the channel see:

Tom jumps for joy. (Hahn, 1996)

The corresponding action in a MOO environment is obtained by typing a colon and then the action. If Tom types:

: jumps for joy.

the rest of the participants in the room in the MOO where Tom currently is see:

Tom jumps for joy. (Hahn, 1996)

An additional method of adding meaning, both in IRC and MOO, is the emphasis that can be placed on a word or phrase by the following notation:

_word_ (word emphasized)

*word* (word emphasized)

^word^ (word emphasized)

While some of the newer IRC clients support bold type and italics, older IRC clients still in use do not support these font variations. Another way to emphasize is capitalization of an entire word or phrase, but this is known as “yelling” and is considered quite rude. (McElhaney, 1997)

Comparing IRC And Moo In ESL/EFL Acquisition

Certain aspects, common to both IRC and MOO tend to facilitate ESL/EFL. Both forms of synchronous communication present meaning-oriented use of language in authentic, communicative, and negotiated interactive situations. Krashen (1976 and 1985), Long (1983), and Pica (1987 and 1996) say this will lead to L2 acquisition. From Warschuauer’s (1996) literature review and empirical work comparing face-to-face and electronic discussions, it may be assumed that MOO and IRC offer students who are less active in class discussions a greater opportunity to practice the L2, while not impeding the more active students. However, IRC and MOO conversations present students with a tremendous amount of input, not all of it comprehensible. Through negotiation strategies with their partners, the students can turn some of the incomprehensible input into what Krashen’s calls the “ i + 1”, stretching their current linguistic abilities to deal with input that is just a bit harder than normal. Here the stronger partners act as Vygotsky’s “care-takers” and help the weaker students into their “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, cited in Amato, 1988). Being hidden behind an anonymous IRC “nick” (nickname) or MOO avatar may well weaken the students’ affective filter and allow them the psychological safety to test out new hypotheses about the L2 that stem from internalizing the comprehensible input. Lozanov’s work in non-computerized “Suggestopedia” indicates that such assumed identities indeed lower anxieties and the affective filter. (Bancroft, 1978; Stevick, 1980) Through sustained interaction with “care-takers”, negotiating comprehensible input, and testing hypotheses, the weaker students will progress through the inter-language continuum toward the target language. (Krashen 1976 and 1985; Lo, 1983; Loschky, 1994; Richard-Amato, 1988). Of course, the stronger conversation partners also profit by the practice of language, assuming that the gap between them and the weaker students is not a very great.

There is much anecdotal evidence that students from all over the world have discovered these applications, particularly IRC, and have been intrigued by the ability to converse with people in other locations and from other cultures. Many of these students, in fact, have learned the techniques of openmultiple IRC channels and Multi-MOOing, maintaining a number of simultaneous conversations in the L2 (Backer and Kratter, 1997; Hahn, 1996; Turbee, 1977).

Yet one could hypothesize that, despite all of its potential, the average IRC channel and average MUD/MOO site is not the best possible language acquisition environment for most ESL/EFL students. Reid (1991, 1994) notes the importance of speed of communication and wit that characterize the conversations in these virtual communities. Typical language students would find themselves at a loss in such an environment. It often takes longer to formulate sentences in the L2, even if the student are not translating. This is particularly true if the student’s first language (L1, i.e. the mother language) does not use the same orthographic symbols, creating arduous work at a Latin character keyboard. The fact that many of the elements of Cyber-English vary from the English learned in the classroom also would confuse some ESL/EFL students. Finally, the wit which is so highly prized in on-line communities, is often culturally based, once again putting the ESL/EFL students at a disadvantage. The normal participants in the normal IRC channel or normal MOO site may not be very tolerant toward people who cannot function in the virtual environment.

Indeed, there is a fundamental disagreement about the friendliness of the Internet culture. While Frizler (1995) sees Internet culture as basically supportive, Weiner (1996) posits the opposite. Reinforcing this pessimism are a number of studies about the phenomenon of “flaming” (making aggressive public remarks towards a person) in various Internet applications (Simmons, 1994; Thompsen, 1994; Wang and Hong, 1995). It would appear that individuals allow their negative feelings to appear in ways that would not usually happen in face-to-face communications. In short, Vygostsky’s “caretakers” may not be plentiful in the normal IRC channel or normal MOO site. In this situation, it would be understandable for the average ESL/EFL students to suffer a drop in what Brown (1987) calls situational self-esteem and task self-esteem. The result is a concurrent drop in motivation to use IRC or MOO as environments to practice language skills. Despite these potential problems, the surprisingly great popularity of IRC among some ESL/EFL students invites empirical research to establish which type of students would profit from using normal IRC channels and MOO sites and which would not.

To deal with some of the problems arising from using IRC and/or MOO, some educational institutions and organizations have opened their own channels and sites for students. Under the scrutiny of teachers, it can be assumed that language usage is closer to Standard English than in the average Cyber-English. In addition, participants in educational applications tend to be more tolerant toward students who are not native English speakers. This is obviously true in IRC channels and MOO sites created specifically for ESL/EFL students.

Possibly the most well known educational IRC service is operated by the KidLink organization and serves pupils from 10 to 15 years of age from all over the world. KidLink operates its own IRC server, which is separate from other IRC networks. It can be accessed by registered users via an IRC client or telnet. Users must have user-names and passwords to use the IRC service. (This is true in regard to all KidLink services.) Most of the time, KidLink IRC channels are monitored by authorized teachers and pupils to ensure the use of appropriate language and content matter. During the annual three day “KidLink Celebration”, a bot (robot, a computer program that acts like a human) is used to monitor the increased flow of communications over the IRC channels. David Lloyd, who served as the International Manager for KIDLINK IRC and as the Board Representative for Asia, estimates that about 50 percent of all discussions are monitored in KidLink IRC. The knowledge that the chat session might be monitored and that inappropriate behavior will be punished is seen as a fairly effective deterrent. When problems are reported to the KindLink IRC administrators, warnings are issued, the teachers of the “offender” are consulted, and/or the “offender” is banned from KidLink IRC (D. Lloyd, personal communication, September 19, 1997).

In the same way, there are educational MOO sites where the general environment is more supportive and the chance of meeting one of Vygotsky’s “care-takers” is rather high. In such a situation, the affective filter will drop, and students will be ready to risk more hypotheses about language. Through interaction, especially with native English speakers, ESL/EFL students will gradually progress along the interlanguage continuum and move closer to the target language. (Krashen 1976 and 1985; Long, 1983; Loschky, 1994; Vygotsky, 1978) Moreover, the cross-cultural contact with people of different cultures will probably be a positive experience.

Contrasting MOO With IRC In ESL/EFL Acquisition

The comparison between IRC and MOO, whether educational or not, is a partial one. MOO sites offer ESL/EFL students three crucial elements that are not found in IRC channels: a stable context, the option to interact with that context, and eventually the option to “own” part of the MOO site.

Unlike an IRC channel, a MOO site exists whether or not there are participants in it. People returning to a MOO site are likely to find the same geography (rooms and open areas), the same artifacts to manipulate, and many of the same participants With repeated visits, people tend to increase their perception of being in a real and permanent location (Reid, 1994; Rheingold, 1993; Turbee, 1997). Using the terms of Carrell and Eisterhold (1983), this stable context relates to a schema in the students’ previous experience with the theme of the MOO site: a university campus, a historical place, or a fantasy landscape. This reference to an existing schema aids the students’ assimilation of new information found in the textual descriptions of the MOO. This is in sharp contrast with IRC, which has no external context to refer to students’ schema. The only context existing in an IRC channel is the internal cohesion of conversation.

Turbee (1996a) calls foreign language (FL) students’ visits to a MOO site “a virtual immersion experience”. Just as on the streets of a foreign city, the people there may, or may not, be helpful when the visitors try to communicate. Unless the visitors’ L1 is known, they are expected to use the local language. For FL students, this is a dialect of the language which they study in class. As in all synchronous communication, there is little or no time for people to think about the next sentence, let alone translate it from L1 to L2. Thus, the students must learn to think in L2 and express themselves fairly quickly, with little or no translation. (Turbee, 1996a, 1996b, and 1997)

The stable context provided in a MOO site is particularly important for intermediate students and shy advanced students. (It is assumed that beginners would not venture into a typical, text-rich MOO site.) These students have the opportunity to “lurk”, to listen in on the conversations of others. This is not eavesdropping since the speakers know that the silent students are there. Students not yet ready to speak can also explore the MOO site by themselves, reading the descriptions and experimenting with the objects. For example, students might meet a robot waiter in a restaurant. To order food, the students must first negotiate with the robot about how to orderthe food. Thus, the students are interacting with the context itself. True, weaker students may not be able to process all the descriptions and instructions, but they will learn skimming and scanning strategies to find information important for functioning in the MOO. This is true for one student or groups of students working together. While groups of students may choose to discuss real world matters, there is a constant option to explore the textual fantasy world of the MOO. No discussion exists in isolation. Students’ conversations alwoccur in a geographical location of the MOO. Once again, this fantasy world is a potential linguistic context and invites the use of L2 in authentic and meaningful ways (Turbee, 1996a). (Of course, participants may choose to chat about other matters, in which case the context’s potential is not realized.) With each visit, the student is exposed to more L2 and gains more experience negotiating meaning in L2, both with other MOO participants and with the MOO site itself. Thus, with each visit, the student moves along the inter-language continuum towards mastery of the L2.

Bruckman (1997) stresses the powerful nature of MOO participants creating their own environment. While not specifically writing about ESL/EFL students, an extension of her line of reasoning is that students who use language to construct a MOO object will probably acquire that language better than those who use the same language to merely examine the object. In fact, Bruckman posits that building, particularly collaborative construction, is one of the most important educational aspects of extendable MOO sites.

ESL/EFL teachers can choose among three structural modes in which to send students to an educational MOO site: an autonomous mode, an individual task, teacher-defined mode, and a group task, teacher-defined mode. There is a theoretical basis for sending the students on an autonomous voyage into a MOO site. Freire (1970, 1985, and 1989) posits that students learn better when they are responsible for the content of their studies. Krashen (1976, 1977, and 1985) urges that students be put in low anxiety situations, approximating as much as possible their L1 acquisition experience. And the proponents of the Whole Language Approach have stressed both the importance of using authentic language in natural ways and the importance of linguistic interaction

within a social context (Peyton & Crandall, 1995; Petzeit, 1995). Fanderclai (1995) notes the potential of incidental learning while students wander through a MUD site. Bruckman (1997) noted that tasks were not given to the children using MOOse Crossing. Responding to the theoretical justification, Yankelevsky (1997) used a modified version of student autonomy when she brought 16 EFL students to an educational MOO site, having them decide on their goals in advance. After setting their goals, her students visited the MOO site many times at their own convenience and spent extended periods of time working on the student-defined tasks. Yet Yankelevsky (personal communication, September 7, 1997) concluded that such high level of autonomy can present a number of the problems. In particular, she noted that her students often spent time conversing with each other rather than interacting with the MOO site itself or with unknown people.

The second mode is having the teacher set tasks for individuals to complete in the MOO site. Frizler (1995) makes the distinction between bringing students on-line and actual teaching. The teacher must use Internet tools with clear objects and goals in mind each time the students come on-line. Even Fanderclai (1995, p. 3), who advocates the importance of incidental learning in the MOO environment states, “Students need clear goals, and knowledge of the tools and methods they might use to accomplish those goals. And then they need for us to stand out of the way and let them learn”. Yankelevsky (personal communication, September 7, 1997) suggested that this second mode of MOO visit would be more productive for EFL students than total autonomy.

Giving each student a number of specific tasks would focus their discovery process and facilitate greater utilization of the MOO environment. While these tasks would be limited to discovery and examination for novices in the MOO environment, more experienced students could be given the task of building objects with rich textual descriptions. In either case, there would ample opportunity for incidental learning and interaction with unknown participants along the way. In fact, in attempting to complete the tasks, the students would be encouraged to interact with others.

The third structural mode of visiting an educational MOO site is through a group project. A group of novices in the MOO environment could asked to perform a large discovery and examination task comprised of many smaller ones. For example, a group could be asked to find, examine, and list all the permanent robots in a MOO site. After work in subgroups, the students would have to produce a list of all the robots, their location, their function, and how to operate them. Students more experienced in the MOO environment can be asked to build a project based on one of their school subjects. Thus history, literature, and other subjects that students traditionally consider dry and static can come to life with experiential learning. A resourceful teacher can find ways to incorporate almost any topic into a MOO experience.

All three structural modes of working in a MOO environment (autonomously, with individual tasks, or with group tasks) may foster the concept of virtual community for the students, given extended and repeated visits. Turbee (1996a) sees this sense of community, and the sense of ownership within the community, as positive encouragement for foreign language students to use L2 in authentic and communicative ways. In addition, since the definitions of community are formed by the speakers of the local language, the foreign language students will experience, and perhaps acquire, some of the cultural traits that accompany the target language (Frizler, 1995).

A final contrast between MOO and IRC is the potential of internal communication. While IRC offers two possibilities (/msg and /query), MOOs have a larger number of internal communications options. Depending on the MOO site, there may be MOOmail, a MOO newspaper, graffiti walls, a listing of messages when a participant is not logged on (acting like an answering machine), “channels” (operating like two-way radio frequencies), and a variety of private forms of conversations (paging, whispering, etc.). This is obviously far more sophisticated than the IRC commands that allow for private communications. In addition, most MOO sites offer a richer range of non-linguistic communications than the emoticons and /me commands of IRC. While a participant in a MOO can use the same emoticons and emote (using “: <verb> ), many MOO programs go much further by recording the user’s self-defined “mood” and showing it each time the user performs an action. In addition, most MOO sites offer “feature objects” (FOs) which are predefined action commands such as “wave” and “smile”. Some FOs allow everyone in the current location to read very complex actions while the “doer” of the action has merely typed a one-word FO. (Hahn, 1996; Turbee, 1996a and 1996b)

Choice Of Application

After analyzing the various forms of multi-user Internet communication applications for ESL/EFL instruction, the MOO environment would appear to be the most promising. While both IRC and MOO offer the potential for using authentic language in truly communicative situations, there are definite advantages to MOO. The MOO environment offers a context, a reference to the students’ pre-existing schema, that does not exist in IRC. Beyond the interaction between real people, MOO offers the option of interaction with the environment itself: examining and manipulating the objects found there. Finally, MOO offers the ability to extend the environment, thus creating a sense of ownership towards that environment. To do so, the studemust interact both with the environment and with more advanced MOO participants. Thus, MOO offers the ESL/EFL student three levels of potential interaction, while IRC offers only one. And even in the one level of interaction common to both IRC and MOO, the latter offers more to facilitate L2 acquisition than the former.

Comparing the MOO environment with its multi-media successors, once again MOO proves to be superior in terms of facilitating L2 acquisition for most students. The rich textual descriptions contain more language for the students to process thanthe visually pleasing multi-media images and graphics. In addition, the multi-media presentations currently download at a rate much slower than the attention span of most students will tolerate. This problem may be solved in time, with the migration to networks with greater bandwidth. On the other hand, the increased congestion on the Internet may counteract this improvement. In any case, the text-only environment of MOO is delivered much faster than its multi-media successors. (There are students, of course, whose learning styles demand non-textual modes. For these students, using multi-media communications programs should be considered.) Furthermore, there is a problem of additional equipment with multi-media communications programs: microphones plus earphones or speakers. If a number of computers are used in the same room, the use of speakers becomes counter-productive as the level of noise rises. On the other hand, earphones and microphones are clumsy and tend to break easily. Thus, because of various technical and methodological reasons, MOO seems to be better suited for current ESL/EFL instruction than the multi-media, multi-user Internet communications applications.

The educational MOO site recommended for ESL/EFL instruction is “SCHMOOZE U.”, located at:

telnet://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888

SCHMOOZE U. was designed primarily for college level ESL/EFL students and teachers. Nevertheless, ESL/EFL high school students and teachers can find visits very profitable. In addition, SCHMOOZE U. is also open to people outside the ESL/EFL community. The abundance of teachers and other native English speakers with whom the students can interact, if desired.

The theme of SCHMOOZE U. is a university campus, something that immediately refers to a pre-existing schema for most students. There are classrooms, a library, an administration building, a student union, dormitories, grassy walkways between buildings, a central fountain, an organic garden, and a bar/dance hall right outside the campus gates. Thus, the vocabulary and concepts found in the students’ real world are found in the virtual world of SCHMOOZE U. The students are free to explore this virtual world and meet other people in it. The proximity of the virtual world to the students’ “college schema” and the interactional use of language (with other people and with the environment itself) facilitate ESL/EFL acquisition. Frequent visitors to SCHMOOZE U. are encouraged to register and receive a room in the dormitory. Here they can customize their environment and invite friends to admire their creations. Teachers in SCHMOOZE U. usually spend their time building public areas, discussing professional or personal matters, or helping students.

Choosing the proper application is not enough to ensure achieving the expected goals. The success of the implementation of a new technology in an educational environment depends on four elements. First, there must be enough appropriate hardware and software for the implementation. Second, the teachers must be trained in both the technical and pedagogical requirements of the new technology. Third, the administration of the educational institution must actively support the implementation, and in particular, schedule adequate student access to the computers. Fourth, since the ESL/EFL teacher is not required to become a computer expert, there must be on-site support from a computer teacher or lab assistant. Attempting implementation without all four elements runs the risk of failure, frustration, and increased opposition to future attempts of technological change.

This paper has attempted to compare and contrast a number of low-cost, multi-user, synchronous communication applications supported by the Internet: IRC, MOO, and their graphical successors. The real-life purpose of this comparison and contrast was to choose the application most likely to facilitate EFL acquisition in the Har V’Gai Regional School, given its current educational paradigm. It was determined that while both IRC and MOO offer exposure to authentic language in communicative and negotiated interactive situations; the MOO environment affords a stable context for these situations that relate to the students’ pre-exiting schema, thus further facilitating language acquisition. With repeated visits to the MOO site, the students may develop a sense of community in the site, and thus lower their affective filters, easing their movement through the interlanguage continuum toward the target language. In addition, the MOO environment offers the students various levels of potential interaction which further facilitate language acquisition.

While the graphical successors to MOO and IRC may be more suitable for some students’ learning styles, because of technical problems these applications are less promising, at the present time, than the MOO environment for most students.