More Self or Less Self

In Jepson's article, Conversation--and Negotiated Interaction--In Text and Voice Chat Rooms, he mentions some points which I'm interested in:

1. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has an equalizing effect on participation across gender, socioeconomic status, and age, because participants feel less anxious or shy (Warschauer, 1996, 2000).
2. Some participants use Internet chat rooms to play out their fantasy selves (Turkle, 1995).
3. Socialecomic and gender roles may be reversed.
4. Both leanring environment and sociocultural patterns are important considerations in language learning, because they certainly influence language development (Lantolf, 2002; Spolsky, 1989).

From other researches, I know that cyber learning may be one good way for learners to learn language. There are many reasons for it, and one important reason is certainly about "identity". Take myself for example. I am a little bit affraid of talking with English native speakers, because that I don't think my English is good enogh to communicate with such a proficient Englush speaker. I'm shy and I just say some short words, such as "oh yes", "really?", "sorry" and so on in front of those who are considered to be native speakers. I'm affraid that the interluctors may not understand what I talk to them. And then maybe they would mock my English. Therefore, I stop development of my English. The similar situation showed in my first year in the university, too. I was affraid of talking with teacher. More correctly to say, I was affraid of communicating with teachers. I was affraid of talking and listening. I suppose that the reason of the problems I've met is "identity". In my deep mind, I have placed myself on a lower position as I'm in front of a native speaker or some one else who is better at English than I am. I call myself an inferior. If I call myself "inferior", there must be many people doing the same thing. And this is connected to the point 1~3.

Second Life is one of the famous online games around the whole world. The apparant feature of SL is the virtual world. It's not only virtual sound, virtual words or virtual communication. Just like what it is called, second life, it is a virtual life. In SL, you can have your virtual appearence, virtual belongings, virtual jobs and anything else. And more exciting, all these virtual things, including your identity and apearence, are all changed by yourself. This benefit help users obscure and eliminate the recognition to the identity.

As what are mentioned in point 1 and point 3, people would feel anxious and shy when talking to others. On the Internet, people can reverse their own identity, however. It provides people a "safe house" (Bloch, 2004). SL seems to be the best modle for this feature. You can reverse anything in SL. And then you will get a sense of security which you hope to own.

This kind of sense of security help learners a lot develop their language; however, are learners willing to use their improved language in reality? Or can they still feel easy outside the safe house to use language? If the answerc is negative, the effect of the cyber language learning is useless. It's because that you are a real person andd you have a real life. You must use your own real identity to communicate with other.

I don't know what is exact. But to me, I would support that taking the Internet as a tool for practice but learn language in the real class.