Reflection on Week 4 Reading – Language Learner Behaviour in Virtual Environment

Roed (2003) first pointed out that people usually behave differently when they have online communications compared to face-to-face interactions. In this paper, students’ communication through text in a virtual environment was recorded and being analyzed.

From the research, the writer found that learners generally feel more comfortable to express themselves in a virtual world, rather than in real communications. Some learners consider themselves not attractive enough, which makes them not confident enough to talk to others. Therefore, students’ participation is thus higher when using text communication platforms as learners think that others would not have judgment over their appearance. Also, anxiety is the main factor when an L2 learner needs to communicate with others in a language that they do not speak fluently. Although the writer points out that learners might have a high private self-awareness as they are proud of how proficient they are in the target language, learners generally cares about how people access them, which is the main reason of causing anxiety. Being able to be an anonymous when communicating with others is one of the ways to help reduce learners’ language anxiety.

However, there are also some negative consequences when using such kind of virtual communication. Suggested by Roed, students in the project found it boring when the lag time is too long for them. All they could do was simply waiting as there were too many students typing at the same time. Annoyance was thus the result of a number of students as they thought people were not responding at a normal pace or they thought that the system didn’t work. This kind of communication might also lead to misunderstanding due to a lack of body language and facial expressions. Learners have to interpret and show the tone and attitude simply by texts, which could cause misinterpretation by others.

In conclusion, a virtual learning environment can help students learning progress in some areas. However, with its difference from face-to-face interaction, it cannot totally replace all kinds of communications as these are not the sole communications in their lives. Oral interaction is also an important area in language learning, which cannot be replaced by the communications in a virtual environment.