ABSTRACT
Today Internet users can choose between thousands of electronic editions of newspa-
pers, online dictionaries, quizzes, gap-fill exercises and other forms of self-study
material which educators have put on the web to share the fruits of their labour with
other users.1 Many of these tools and programs are tremendous aids to language
teaching and learning if they are exploited appropriately, and several chapters in this
book present excellent suggestions in this respect. However, a treatment of the Inter-
net which is limited to these rather static resources fails to appreciate the web’s capac-
ity to act also as a conduit for dynamic interpersonal communication.
