The Internet and the

Language Classroom

Review by Carmen-Pilar Serrano-Boyer

LE.S. Terreon del Alcarzar Secondary School, Spain

Ronel D. Cornella
MEAL - I
Nowadays language teachers admit that the
Internet is one of the best tools that can be
used in classrooms to motivate students
and obtain innovative resources and
information. The only problem is that
sometimes one does not know where to
begin. Gavin Dudeney helps the language
teacher by sharing his personal experience
as a consultant for language schools and
educational institutions in this really useful
book.
The Internet and the Language
Classroom is divided into five parts
 Guidelines
 Activities
 Projects
 Advance Net
 FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Guidelines
is a general introduction to help teachers know how to
use the Internet.
 1.1 The World Wide Web
 1.2 Website FAQs
 1.3 Email
 1.4 Email FAQs
 1.5 Searching the Internet
 1.6 Search FAQs
 1.7 The Internet as resource bank
 1.8 The Internet as a classroom tool
The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked
hypertext documents accessed via the
Internet. With a web browser, one can view
web pages that may contain text, images,
videos, and other multimedia, and navigate
between them via hyperlinks.
Web Browser
A web browser is a software application for
retrieving, presenting and traversing
information resources on the World Wide
Web. The major web browsers are:
Chrome www.google.com/chrome
Firefox www.mozilla.org/firefox
Internet Explorer ie.microsoft.com
Opera www.opera.com
Safari apple.com/safari
Website
A website, is a set of related web pages
containing content such as text, images,
video, audio, etc. A website is hosted on at
least one web server, accessible via a
network such as the Internet or a private local
area network through an Internet address
known as a Uniform Resource Locator. All
publicly accessible websites collectively
constitute the World Wide Web
 Email
Electronic mail, is a method of exchanging
digital messages from an author to one
or more recipients. Today's email
systems are based on a store-and-
forward model. Email servers accept,
forward, deliver and store messages.
Neither the users nor their computers
are required to be online simultaneously;
they need connect only briefly, typically
to an email server, for as long as it takes
to send or receive messages.
(mail.yahoo.com)
(www.hotmail.com)
(mail.google.com)
Searching the Internet
There are three principal ways of searching the
web:
 Search Engines

 Subject Guides

 Real Language
Questions to be Asked in
Searching the Internet
 What exactly am I looking for? (webpage, image,
etc);
 Is this general or specific term? (general searches
work best in subject guide, whilst specific is best left
to search engines);
 How much information do I want? (some search
agents feature reviews, summary, summary of page
content,etc);
 Can I use the search engine? (some search pages
are difficult to use properly and require a full reading
of the help page)
Search Engines
Search engines allow the user to enter
keywords that are run against a database.
Based on a combination of criteria
(established by the user and/or the search
engine), the search engine retrieves WWW
documents that match the keywords entered
by the searcher.
In most cases, search engines are best used to
locate a specific piece of information, such as
a known document, an image, or a computer
program, rather than a general subject.
Searching the Internet
Popular Search Engines

www.yahoo.com

www.google.com

www.bing.com
Other search engines:
(http://search.lycos.com)
(http://www.altavista.com)
(http://blekko.com)
(http://www.dogpile.com)
(http://www.webcrawler.com)
(http://www.info.com)
(http://www.infospace.com)
(http://www.hotbot.com)
And, Or and Not
 AND (+) looks for documents featuring all
words in the search entry box
 OR looks for documents featuring any of the
words in the search box
 NOT (-) looks for documents featuring some
words, but not others
Therefore the search for EFL and London
should take you to sites connected to with
teaching English as Foreign Language in
London, whereas EFL not London will find
you all the sites on the subject anywhere else
in the world. A search done using EFL or
London should give you a list of both type of
sites (and a lot more).
Subject Guides
Subject guides are hierarchically organized indexes of
subject categories that allow the Web searcher to
browse through lists of Web sites by subject in search
of relevant information. They are compiled and
maintained by humans and many include a search
engine for searching their own database.
Because subject guides are arranged by category and
because they usually return links to the top level of a
web site rather than to individual pages, they lend
themselves best to searching for information about a
general subject, rather than for a specific piece of
information.
Examples of subject guides include:

Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com)

Excite (http://www.excite.com)

Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org)

Real Language
Searching the internet depends entirely on the
keywords entered on the search box,
however, it is possible to search information
from the internet with entering questions such
as “Why is the sky blue?”. This is real
language.
“Real language” search engines are the human
side of searching the Net. They allow the
browser to ask questions, then they give
suggested answers.
Example of Real Language (search engines):
Ask Jeeves (http://www.uk.ask.com)
It is always good to bear in mind that the
search engine is not always the quickest way
to find things; some bigger sites have
enormous amounts of useful data.

(http://www.microsoft.com)
(http://www.bbc.co.uk)
(http://www.britannica.com)
(http://www.encyclopedia.com)
The Internet as resource bank

(http://www.usingenglish.com)
(http://www.tefl.net)
(http://www.english-to-go.com/index.cfm)
(http://www.sitesforteachers.com/index.html)
(http://www.tes.co.uk/home.aspx)
(http://www.englishclub.com/)
The Internet as a classroom
tool
The Internet as a classroom
tool
Activities
is the second section and offers a wide range of
themes for students at various levels. A language
teacher can choose the activity that best suits
his/her students. The classification of activities
according to the students' level and according to
themes is extremely helpful. In this section,
Dudeney shows how to proceed in four steps:
preparation, online, offline, and follow-up/variations.
Thus he gives teachers the opportunity to adapt the
chosen activity to their students. For example, one
teacher might try introducing variations while others
might avoid them, depending on the students' level,
course objectives, and school facilities.
Sample Activity
A Little Je ne sais quoi
Summary: Borrowed words in English
Level: Lower Intermediate and Above
Time: 45 minutes (15 minutes on the net)
Language: Foreign words and expressions
used in everyday English
Sites: http://www.krysstal.com/borrow.html,
http://www.quizrevolution.com/ch/a99029/go ,
http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/Something-
Borrowed-A-Matching-Quiz-On-Loanwords.htm
Preparation
Hand out copies of Borrowed Words quiz and
give students a little time to match the words
and country. Get some feedbacks on their
decisions, but don’t go over the correct
answers yet.
Online
Get students to go to the Borrowed Words
website and find the words from the quiz,
noting where the words came from. Quick
finishers can have a look round at the
webpage to find out if there are words in
English borrowed from their own language.
(To save time, click – Edit, then choose – Find
and enter the word your searching for. You
can also use the Search function of the site.)
Offline
Get feedback on the correct answers. Now
brainstorm the activity in reverse, with
students thinking of a list of English words
which are used in their own language. Do
equivalents exist in the original language?
The world of technology is particularly rife
with the English Language.
Follow-ups / Variation
With higher level groups, a discussion of
“language purity works very well, with
students tackling the issues such as the
evolution of language, ‘inventing new words’,
etc. With lower groups, a map of the world
can be used to practice country names and
language, with countries also being illustrated
with a word which English has borrowed.
Borrowed Words
Match the words used in English on the left with
the language they came from originally.

1. ketchup a. Inuit
2. robot b. Japanese
3. kayak c. Chinese
4. karaoke d. Czech
5. copra e. Indian
Sample Activity
The London Sightseeing Tour

Summary: Planning a day out in London

Level: Lower Intermediate and Above
Time: 1 hour (30 minutes on the net)
Language: Making arrangements, suggesting,
agreeing, disagreeing
Sites:http://www.londontown.com/
Preparation
Start off with a general chat about London. Have any
of the students visited the city? What did they do
there? What did they visit and see? Get students
into groups of three or four and give them time to
talk with each other and find out what they like doing
when they visit an new city. Do they like seeing
monuments, going shopping, visiting galleries, etc.?
Now tell them they are going to plan a day out in
London, between them, and they must try to agree
on what to see and do and to accommodate the
likes and dislikes of each member of the group.
Online
The London Town website has complete
coverage of things to see and do in London.
Steer students towards sections such as
Attractions, Open Top Bus Tours,
Sightseeing and Walking Tours. There are
also sections of eating, shopping, etc.
Offline
Once they have agreed, get them to complete
the London sightseeing tour worksheet.
Re-distribute the group members to make
new groups with everyone explaining to the
others what their group decided to do, where
to go, etc. If you have paper maps of the city
or other realia, this can make the activity
more interesting. For those with unlimited
internet time, stay with the computer for a
more interesting discussion, using the
website.
Follow-ups / Variation
A logical follow-up is to design a similar
resource for the city your students live in.
Decide on the major features of the city. Why
would someone want to visit it, and what
should they do while there? What other
information would they need to know to have
a successful visit?
The London Sightseeing Tour
Worksheet
Sample Activity
Computer Detectives

Summary: Solving mysteries

Level: Upper Intermediate and Above
Time: 1 hour (30 minutes on the net)
Language: Predictions, reasoning, giving
explanations
Sites: http://www.mysterynet.com/
Preparation
Start off with a mystery of your own. My favourite is to
describe the following scene: ‘There is a man in the
middle of a field; he is dead and has an unopened
package next to him. What happened?’ Students
are only allowed to ask questions which can be
answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The answer is that he
jumped from a plane, and the unopened package is
his parachute. This is also a good opportunity to do
some work on prediction, encouraging students to
talk among themselves: ‘he might have been…’,
‘perhaps he was…’, etc.
Online
Mystery Net has weekly and daily mysteries, so
you’ll have just to look at the website before
you do the class. The See-N-Solve section
(http://www.mysterynet.com/see/ ) has a
crime story with a picture of the crime scene,
so both textual and visual clues play a part.
Choose a mystery and give students time to
read it and discuss the clues before they take
a look at the solution.
Offline
Examine how typical a mystery story is put
together, trying to identify key parts: set the
scene, introduce the characters, drop in a
couple of clues to the identity of the criminal,
the solution.
Use the picture from the Flash
(http://www.mysterynet.com/flash/) to create
group mystery stories or supply pictures
yourself from magazines or newspapers.
Follow-ups / Variation
In Preparation stage, encourage students to
participate with mysteries of their own.
Alternatively, put them in pairs and invite
them to make up their own mystery stories.
THE END