Conclusions and Implications

I began looking at this site out of frustration: I can find academic articles all day long, but trying to actually discover a community online that was (a)generating conversation, (b)generating conversation on something that would interest me enough to follow it for several months and possibly participate, and (c) was still going strong does not seem to be my strong suit. After hours of staring at the screen, trying countless searches on my own affinities, www.how-to-learn-any-language.com (HTLAL) showed up like a light at the end of an interminably long tunnel. The site itself seemed a little strangely put together, and I had no idea what I could write about, but I was hooked.

I am glad that I stayed.  HTLAL is a robust forum, with hundreds of users posting every day about a multitude of topics relating to one of my favorite things: language! While a tiny minority of users post badly-thought-out, rude, or simply incomprehensible comments, the majority of the community seems interested in carrying out a serious, thoughtful inquiry into the nature of language and how (and why) to learn it. These individuals have come together from their various geographical locations because of (or perhaps in spite of) one man, a shady Swiss entrepreneur who created a curious but inspirational website with a well-designed forum and then disappeared, allowing his followers to discover their own best practices on these forums. The forum is an excellent case study for affinity groups - one that I would love to continue looking into beyond this semester. Near the end of my research, I discovered the newly-emerging practice of replacing language teachers with self-access language learning centers, and I did not have enough time to look into them as in-depth as I would have liked. What I did find, however, was that implementing a site such as HTLAL into an existing self-access language learning center, or vice versa, seems to be a good step to take in the future of online language learning. I hope to further research and confirm this implication in the months to come.