Chatting and language learning

Chatting, as a synchronous computer mediated communication, is an effective tool of communication for digital natives who spend most of the time online. Chatting is convenient for most people because we are always online, we can do it while working on something else (does not require instantaneous response like a voice call) and it allows us to share pictures, songs, links and/or videos. This last option is crucial for digital natives who are becoming increasingly visual and like to see what they are saying (script) and audio-visual materials relevant to the topic of discussion. I think this is why sites that allow for sharing pictures and videos like youtube and facebook are really popular among the younger generations.

As a tool of communication, it is an authentic language practice in which language is used solely for purposes of communication, besides, it lifts the anxiety of face-to-face communication off the speaker's shoulders, especially if it is done in the speaker's second language. Thus, it can be claimed to be a language learning tool that language learners can use to develop their communicative competence. Research finding prove that language acquisition is enhanced by any communication that involves negotiation of meaning, in which speakers get comprehensible TL input (through simplification and explanation) and produce modified language output (by noticing their linguistic production and attending to their interlocutor's feedback). Taking into account that NNS negotiate meaning in computer-mediated communication in the same way they do in face-to-face communication, I would argue for chatting as a valid learning activity to be employed by FL teachers in the classroom and in homework assignments.

As a digital native and NNS of English, I would like to argue for the use of chatting in ESL for adolescents (digital natives) for a number of reasons. First, going online and logging on msn and yahoo messengers is a daily activity for almost all adolescents whether or not they have the intention to chat. This makes chatting a normal activity and takes their focus from classroom concerns like grades and focus their attention on the negotiation of meaning. It also guarantees their involvement in the learning activity that they view as a medium for social networking. Second, typing down and seeing what they normally say, without being cognitively aware of how they structure it , will arose their awareness of their innate/subconscious structural knowledge and feedback from interlocutors will put their defected structures in sharp contrast with the correct ones and help their update their interlanguage grammar. Third, learners always run the chance of internalizing new words and/or structures from the discourse of their interlocutors or learn how to spell words that they only know how to pronounce.