Issues of computer‐mediated communication for English Language Teaching

The growth of the English language, fuelled partially at least by the Internet, has been phenomenal. Graddol's study (2000) suggests that in the year 2000, there were about a billion English learners—but a decade later, the numbers will have doubled. The forecast points to a surge in English learning, which could peak in 2010. The same study indicates that over 80% of information stored on the Internet is in English. For the first time in history, there are more non-native than native users of the language, and diversity of context in learners' age, nationality, learning background, etc has become a defining characteristic of English Language Teaching (ELT) today. What are the implications of this?