This news article, as the title suggests, comments on a new "International Community Site with Online Language Lesson Services". It sounds comparable to any other online social networking service, except for a few special add-ons: free online language tutoring, culture and lifestyle information exchange, and even the ability to converse with other members directly through the site. Since the March of this year over 8000 members have joined, representing "170 countries and regions of the world". The project sounds very interesting, and seems like a more straightforward way to exchange language and cultural information (as compared with traveling to a foreign country, and possibly returning with an horrendous case of culture shock sometimes known as "the Paris Syndrome").
I decided to check out the site, and on first impression, found it very welcoming. Rolling clouds over a light blue ocean is background to the words "Connect with the world in Worldia!" What a happy environment for language learning.
After further reading, however, I found multiple spelling and grammar mistakes. "Worldia is the international community site where people from all over the world come to exchange information and discuss aboutcountries, language and cultures" is written directly below the site banner, and "about countries" is combined into one word. If the creators of the site are making these types of grammatical errors, how are Japanese members of the site expected to become fluent?
Even excerpts from the site with no obvious grammatical errors, sound awkward in English, for example, "Let's learn or teach language lessons in Worldia!” sounds as though it were translated directly from Japanese, a language which has a "let's ****" conjugation of verbs that, while commonly used in Japanese, sounds awkward when translated into English in my opinion.
Furthermore, with all the recent news related to facebook, and its positive/negative affects on society, where would Worldia fit in?
But obviously, I am being too hard on Worldia. There is no way to expect an online social networking site to compare with learning language and its associated cultures within that country. Most of the people on the site are probably supplementing language learning with tutoring in real life as well, and any outlet in which one can practice could only be beneficial.
All in all, I applaud Worldia for putting out such a novel idea. It will be interesting to see how the program evolves in the future.
Link to article:
http://www.ad-hoc-news.de/Aktie/12718166/News/13504261/GOOGLE.html
The Worldia Experience:
http://www.worldia.net/
An interesting article on Facebook from News Week:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227872/site/newsweek/page/0/
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Very interesting, this website clearly demonstrates the potential for the internet to help people from all over the world learn to communicate together (though it clearly has some bugs at this point!) A classmate, Nikola, has blogged about how the computer industry has inspired language change within English, so be sure to check that post out. How do you think the success of web 2.0 and online social-networking might be better applied to helping people from all over the world learn the languages they want to learn?
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