232 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
The various language professions have begun to take strides of
varying length, with respect to the different Internet situations, the
field of foreign language teaching taking the first and longest ones
(as has traditionally been the case in applied linguistics). Language
pathologists, literacy specialists, mother-tongue teachers, and oth-
ers have begun to sense the possibilities of the Internet as a medium
for motivating their populations (patients, reluctant readers, etc.),
and as a way of facilitating some of their clinical, remedial, or
educational tasks, at least with reference to reading and writing.^9
But it is in relation to foreign-language pedagogy that the most
searching discussions have taken place, along with some innova-
tive and effective practices relating to both teaching and learning.
This domain has long been involved in computer-assisted language
learning (CALL), but the Internet has provided a fresh dimension.
Mark Warschauer and Deborah Healey, in a state-of-the-art review
in 1998, sum it up in this way:^10
It is the rise of computer-mediated communication and the
Internet, more than anything else, which has reshaped the uses of
computers for language learning at the end of the 20th century
(Eastment 1996). With the advent of the Internet, the computer –
both in society and in the classroom – has been transformed from
a tool for information processing and display to a tool for
information processing and communication. For the first time,
learners of a language can now communicate inexpensively and
quickly with other learners or speakers of the target language all
over the world.The reference is to David Eastment, who carried out a survey
on English-language teaching (ELT) in relation to the Internet,
on behalf of the British Council in 1996,^11 and who was in ‘no
(^9) Atypicalforward-lookingstatementinthefieldofspeechandlanguagepathologyandau-
diology is Masterson, Wynne, Kuster, and Stierwalt (1999). For references to educational
Web-based language projects generally, see Atwell (1999); and for projects in creative
writing, see Dorner (2000). For writing composition, see the papers in the special issue
(8:1) of the journalWritten Communication(1991). A wide range of topics is covered in
10 the journalLiterary and Linguistic Computing.
11 Warschauer and Healey (1998: 63).
Eastment (1999: 1), the published version of a survey originally carried out for the British
Council’s English 2000 project. See also Dudeney (2000).