D. WU
Although this is a really short list of simple English
phrases, it received great welcome in the forum. These sim-
ple phrases are already used quite naturally by English native
speakers in real world, online, and also i n SL, but they can be
quite difficult for Chinese speaking residents who have no
previous exposure to them. One user replied to this thread: “I
was so glad that I got this list. Yesterday I used “c u= see
you”! If anyone else has more like these, please add them to
the list. Thank y ou very much!” Some ot her users then added
more phrases and abbreviations to the list. Although there are
only four replies to this thread, it has been viewe d 682 times.
This difference in number reveals that many users viewed
and probably learned from this list but did not participate in
the discussion. This thread is of interest to the users because
of its difference from what Chinese English learners have
learned before. These kind of not-so-formal chatting English
and abbreviations do not appear in English textbooks but are
used by native English speakers quite frequently. Although
the aim of language teac hing is not to teach students informal
English, students do get confronted by situations in which
they are to respond by using this kind of language. This gap
between education and practice is being filled by more and
more online study groups as the traditional classroom teach-
ing barely touches on it due to the emphasis on reading and
writing in formal contexts. There is also an extreme exam ple
of this type of gaps being filled. One of the threads in this
“Learning English” forum is “Curse in English.” This is the
only one that teaches people to curse in English. The user
who posted this thread sated that this should only be used in
encounters with those English speaker who are not friendly.
There is only one reply to this thread. Thi s thread wa s viewed
385 times but only got one reply. It was not commented by
many Chinese because in the essence of Chinese culture,
harmony is regarded as very important. Therefore, Chinese
people tend not to act drastically when challenged or even
mistreated.
They might just choose to leave rather than to fight. How-
ever, another reason might be that Chinese residents might
not be able to understand some of the i nsulting lang uage used
by unfriendly SL residents from other parts of the world, so
they just do not respond to it. However, in E nglish classes, it
is never possible that a teacher would teach how to curse in
English. Virtual worlds are just like the real world in the
sense that you might encounter any type of people. Being
equipped with the vocabulary to distinguish friendly or in-
sulting language, in my opinion, is necessary for ESL speak-
ers. As the traditional classr oom cannot provide this prepara-
tion, the online forums might be a good place to supplement
it. Although these Chinese residents in SL may not speak
perfect English and are indeed troubled by the English only
version of SL, they did show thei r inte re st in le arni ng E ngli sh
and communicate more in SL by using English. This interest
not only owes to their personal interests in learning English
that derives from different motivations but also represents the
need for communication with native English speakers or
other English speakers that is impossible in their real life.
This learning experience on the onli ne BBS forums can be
classified into group learning. As “the ability for students to
feel that they are part of an audience is important to facili-
tating a sense of shared learning (Ondrejka, 2008: p. 244),”
these Chinese residents forms their own groups. Although
these groups were not all formed with a purpose to learn
English, they do get together and share their experience.
Some of the topics they had are about interactions with othe r
SL residents from around the world. For the active partici-
pants in the BBS, they have a location in SL that most of
them often go to meet their friends or welcome new Chinese
residents to the group. This location is named “Chinaboat”,
and it also became the virtual location where I conducted
interviews with some of the residents. The following is a
snapshot of the Chinaboat in SL.
The owner of the boat and other residents who often visit
this boat are al so freq uent use rs of the BB S. They do not only
exchange their experience of learning English but also share
experience chatting with foreigners they encountered. One
interesting post by one of the BBS user is the text of a con-
versation that he had with an American. The interesting thing
about this post is that this is not in English but in Chinese
instead. The American SL resident can use good Chinese to
communicate with this Chinese resident. Although this con-
versation took place in this virtual world, the Chinese resi-
dent still keeps the typical Chinese students response to a
foreigner by saying that “my English is poor” at the begin-
ning of the conversation. It was pointed out by one of the
respondents of this post, who is also a friend of the user in
SL, that this Chinese resident can speak moderately good
English, but his reply was that he did no t want to carry on the
conversation in English because he did not want to lose
“face”, not just for himself but for all Chinese in SL. The
“face” issue is a very unique phenomenon in Chinese culture.
It refers to one’s sel f-esteem. It has always been an issue that
is closely related to ESL students in China. They dare not
open their mouth to speak English because of the fear of
losing one’s face. This Chinese resident said that that he
insisted on chatting i n Chinese because he was afraid tha t the
American resident might look down upon him because of his
poor English. This fear of speaking English did not get ap-
proved by others who responded to his post, although some
of them did express that they did the same thing in SL to
avoid speaking English. The person who posted the conver-
sation added at the end of the conversation that he would try
to improve his English so that maybe someday he can go
ahead and chat with Engli sh speakers i n English.
Cory Ondrejka (2008) pointed out that one of the unique-
ness of SL is that “residents spend a great deal of time
in-world educating each other in both direct and indirect
ways (p. 240).” Thi s is also true with Chinese resi dents in SL
on learning Englis h with or without intentions. In some of the
posts in this BBS, I found that the users expressed that they
learned more English than they expected. However, I was
surprised to find out that they learn English in various ways
other than just chatting with English speakers. The learning
happen when they chat to others in Chinese and asking
around, when they tried to learn to build something or try to
write a script, when they make changes to their avatars, and
when they try to read Linden Lab reports or manuals. One
user stated that he master more vocabulary in the process of
making changes to his avatar than in the English class he
took before. Some other users replied to ditto thi s. They said
that when they learned about body parts in English classes,
they can only remember the basic vocabulary such as nose,
face, eyebrows, etc. However, when they were making
changes to their avatars, they grasped more words such as
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