"It's All Make Believe, isn't It?": Online Play in Language Learning

The personal experience of an online role play activity was eye-opening to me not only as a student and educator, but also as the rather anaemic individual that ekes out an existence behind these roles that have permeated, infiltrated and completely run amok in my life of late. I will, therefore, begin this reflection with the insights of my malnourished individual self, before exploring my views “in character” as a student, teacher and educational administrator. Just this once, indulge me.

Personal insights
A profound personal insight was that every human being is far more than the roles that we are assigned by the necessities of daily life. Our behaviour is often dictated by time and circumstance rather than our own choices. Stepping out of our true identity (or day-to-day mask) and into another is both liberating and empathizing.

Another revelation was that participants in a role play may benefit from the traits of the characters they play. In my own case I was assigned the identity of the ultimate blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe – my diametrical opposite. My behaviour as a professional is always spearheaded by reason, logic and frankness. Feminine wiles are simply not in my artillery out of principle. Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, built her entire career around her womanly appearance and charisma, ingénue behaviour and disarming charm. While I am hardly on the verge of exchanging my rhetoric for eyelash-batting, some re-evaluation may be in order.

Finally, I was reminded that deepened understanding of people often reveals unexpected depth. Monroe is often typecast as the quintessential dumb blonde. Yet my research on her revealed her capacity for profound thought and emotion. In fact, at least 90% of my contributions to the chat were direct quotes of her. The effect was poignant and showed a very different side of the legend.

In short, on a personal level the chat session was both thought-provoking and invigorating.

Student insights
As a student, I very simply enjoyed this chat session, and its preparation, far more than any other within and possibly beyond this course. The value of enjoyment in learning is self-evident.

As a student who is often self-conscious about the imbalance of contributions in the chat seminars, usually with myself dominating, I found the session a great relief. The participation was far more balanced than in any other session I have attended, with all students getting involved. A cursory word count of previous chat sessions showed that there was also far more activity on the whole. The MS Word word count in this session’s transcript was 6 396, as opposed to 3 621 in Unit 2, 3 421 in Unit 4, and 4 672 in Unit 6 transcripts.

One problem is that the activity’s effectiveness suffers if participants come unprepared. The solution in itself, however, points out the strength of CMC for social construction of meaning: other participants helped characters by providing more information on their history.

Educator insights
As an educator, actually participating in an activity of this nature allowed me to uncover potential benefits and drawbacks of online language play, particularly role play, in general and among my current students.

General benefits include those cited by Warner (below): increased motivation, increased participation, increased language input and output and potential for social construction of meaning, decreased contextual information and liberating power of anonymity. I would add to this that the nature of the activity can guide learners towards practice of particular target language. In this case, for instance, all but one of the characters was no longer alive, necessitating the use of the past tenses. The necessity to find out more about other characters, and later also their true identities, makes the use of question and answer forms an absolute requirement.

Benefits in my teaching environment would centre around the particular cultural constraints. Social taboos on communication between the genders severely cripple face-to-face classroom interaction. The mere use of pseudonyms could have a dramatic impact on the quality and quantity of interaction in mixed-gender classes if CMC became a reality in our under-resourced classes. A further benefit of anonymity would be its potential liberating effect on students who are self-conscious, or are more comfortable with computer use than English use.

General drawbacks can include learners’ avoidance of correct or more challenging language forms. This would include learners giving overly brief answers rather than fuller sentences, as well as copying and pasting information when not feeling confident to formulate their own expressions. In the longer term, instructors would be wise to provide ongoing feedback on frequent language errors, since the converse of learners’ increased use of the language is the danger of entrenching a fossilized interlanguage. Finally, systems should be in place to support learners to move from increased confidence in their language use on the screen to increased confidence in the real world. It is important to consider the character or pseudonym as a tool, not a crutch for life.

In my own context, the drawbacks may once again be related to the cultural taboos, which have an inhibiting effect on the possibility of many kinds of language play. Among the small samples of language play that have come up in the reading and in the activity, there were numerous examples (crude language, sexual banter etc.) that would be unacceptable to students and would compromise the teacher legally. Detrimental instances of flaming, due to student frustration in a mandatory course, are a further potential hazard. Since so many social norms are not always overtly expressed, and the price for transgressing them is so high, serious thought would have to be given to the ways in which online language play can be fostered in this environment when infrastructural development finally makes it possible.

Conclusion
Personally engaging in an online role play can provide valuable insights on a personal, academic and professional level. Such an activity can have a multitude of potential benefits. Optimal implementation will demand careful construction of the activity, taking into consideration ways to exploit the potential benefits of CMC and control the potential drawbacks within a particular teaching context.