The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the Internet as a
language learning tool. Many claims have already been made, especially on the World Wide
Web, about the benefits of the Internet in an educational context, but while familiarising
myself with the available articles and literature I noticed that most resources were
rather fragmentary in nature and no attempt had been made to create a complete overview.
After screening all the resources I was able to locate, the reason for this fragmentation
soon became obvious. Although the Internet in EFL instruction is still a relatively young
field, an enormous amount of literature has already been published, its contents ranging
from thorough research to anecdotal evidence collected by enthusiastic teachers. Moreover,
these resources can be found in books, journals, electronic journals, and scattered on the
Internet. Therefore, I soon came to the conclusion that it would be
almost impossible to give a complete overview of the Internet and all its teaching
possibilities. Nevertheless, there clearly was a need for a document that combined the
most important aspects of using the Net in the foreign language classroom. In this thesis
I have attempted to address the major issues teachers and schools will encounter when
integrating the Internet into the foreign language curricula. The most challenging aspect
of writing this thesis was abandoning the ambition of being complete and selecting which
material I was going to use and which not. To avoid shallowness I concentrated on English
as a foreign language – my field of study. Although perhaps not complete, this thesis
does aim to be a good starting point for foreign language instructors and schools alike
and as such it explores a number of major issues and provides both theoretical background
information and practical suggestions.
The very nature of the topic of this thesis provided the reason for publishing
it in more than one way. The traditional bound version includes a CD-ROM containing its
electronic counterpart with clickable hyperlinks to facilitate accessing the web sites
mentioned in the text. In addition, this thesis has also been published on the World Wide
Web (http://home.plex.nl/~jgraus) together with
a collection of links that teachers may find useful in devising classroom activities or
locating further information.
This thesis is the result of six months of continuous hard work. From the moment
I came up with the idea until editing the final chapter not a day went by that I did not
work on it or think about it. I am indebted to many people for support, information, and
advice. Foremost, I would like to thank Dr Eric Kellerman for all his help, expertise, and
especially his motivating words (‘think of yourself not as someone who is writing
just for me, but as someone who is writing for the entire world’). Furthermore, I
want to thank my family and friends for all their patience and encouraging words when I
needed them most. I would particularly like to thank Bernadette, with whom I talked
endlessly about my thesis, and Dimitri for his down-to-earth advice whenever I allowed
myself to get carried away a little too much.
I hope that this thesis will be of use to teachers, schools, and even students
interested in integrating the Internet into the foreign language classroom. Having
completed this thesis, I am convinced of the benefits of the Internet in an educational
context and although it is by no means the be-all and end-all of education, it can be a
true asset to the FL classroom. Hopefully, this thesis will contribute to the spread of
that belief and as such I hope to have provided language professionals and instructors
with a good starting point from which they can further discover the educational
opportunities the Internet has to offer.
Johan Graus
Nijmegen
May 1999
