Page 74 - Beyond Methods

62 Maximizing learning opportunities
the aims and activities of participatory research into cyberspace. By doing so they enter an exciting world of authentic resources that have the potential, if used properly, to help them read cultural arti- facts and political events in ways that resonate with their individual experiences.
More specifically and in terms of the five recommendations, participants can form a virtual community of learners using the World Wide Web. They can contact different language schools in the country in which their target language is spoken as the first lan- guage and, through them, get in touch with learners of that partic- ular language. The can get the Web addresses of these schools through search engines such as Yahoo or Google. They can then in- teract with teachers and learners at those schools through pen pal Web sites or by posting messages via chat rooms or news groups, thus sharing their joys and sorrows of encountering a new language or a new culture.
The same channels of communication can be used to interact with competent speakers of the target language as well. Partici- pants can exchange information with other members of the virtual learning community and gain new perspectives on personal concerns and political events. Finally, they can select interesting reading ma- terials on a topic but from different sources, thus broadening their critical understanding of that particular topic. Such cross-cultural materials can be collected and later used as teaching/learning ma- terials in class. Thus, the options available on the Internet for gen- erating learning opportunities are truly phenomenal.
Reflective task 3.6
From your perspective, is connecting with the global community to critically link the word and the world a desirable and doable activity? In responding to this task, consider the widespread belief that language teachers and learners are in a privileged position to deal with various themes and topics as long as they are appropriate and done through the medium of the target language being taught and learned.
To sum up this section on generating learning opportunities in and outside the classroom, I discussed how particular types of