1.2 The Evolution of Second- and Foreign- Language Teaching

We are entering a new millennium, a new age one which Negroponte (1995) terms the "digital age". The digital age is an age of bits instead of atoms, an age of "ubiquitous computing" with smart cards, smart cars, "wearable media" and "digital butlers". Most importantly, it is an age of exponential change. Such change presents new possibilities and potential for learning. MUDs, MOOs, virtual worlds, 3D worlds, micro worlds, intelligent environments, simulated environments, global networks, adaptive systems and hypermedia environments are now characteristic of the digital landscape for learning. Video conferencing, e mail correspondence, virtual travel, web publishing, key pals, electronic mentoring, electronic searches: these are but some of the categories of activities in which students can engage in the context of learning online.

Perhaps more than any other area of the curriculum, the teaching of a second or foreign language can capitalize on the potential and possibilities of online learning. The Internet facilitates, in a very large way, authentic and meaningful communication and presents significant potential for making language learning both more purposeful and more meaningful for students. Furthermore, sites, projects and activities for learning FSFL increase daily as interest in the Internet grows in education circles. Virtual communities, museums, virtual travel, global exchanges, visits to the Louvre in Paris, conversation with Francophone keypals, access to Francophone libraries: developments and progress in the Internet offer students of FSFL opportunities for authentic, meaningful, communicative language activities by recreating a virtual French environment in their very classroom. The concepts of virtuality and simulation characteristic of the Internet are not new to the teaching and learning of FSFL. One of the conventions assumed of a language class is the willingness and capacity to suspend belief and to participate in simulated communication. Thus, the teaching and learning of FSFL actually depends on these concepts in order to recreate the essence and elements of being in the milieu of the second or foreign language.

Methods for teaching FSFL have varied based on whether or not the learner has had direct access to the culture of the target language. The learner's access to oral practice or lack of it largely dictated the method. Advances in technology mean that all learners can now have virtual access to the target language and culture. Whether the learner is in a classroom in a remote Anglophone community in Canada or directly in Québec City or Paris is less of a constraint. The emerging technologies of the Internet and virtuality provide a "binocular illusion", "a magical window onto other worlds", the experience of being in a virtual world or remote location (Rheingold, 1991).