Social networking translates to tutorial

MyHappyPlanet helps users learn foreign languages

CAMBRIDGE - When Karen Ong found herself awkwardly stuttering the word "toalla," to request a towel during a trip to Latin America two years ago, she felt the chasm between classroom drills and real conversation.

"It's not that I can't understand it, not that I don't know the language. I was just intimidated," Ong said. When people talk, "it's not like your traditional lesson where you have to learn to say 'volcano,' 'mountain,' 'tree' in Spanish because that's what is included in lesson one."

That spurred Ong, a student at Harvard Business School who speaks a half-dozen languages, to create MyHappyPlanet.com, part of a rare breed of online social networks that actually have a useful real world purpose: helping users learn another language.

MyHappyPlanet, which launched last summer and now has 100,000 members, is one of a crop of new websites that integrates an online friend network with language-learning tools.

The websites let members find like-minded people to communicate with - through written messages, talking, or instant messages. MyHappyPlanet includes features that allow users to correct grammar and vocabulary when people send messages and has integrated a phrase translator. Other portions of the website include lessons created by users, and an assortment of user-generated videos that give a glimpse of cultures and languages from around the world.

Such websites are a new twist for the language learning industry, which has been anchored by teachers, CD-ROM programs, CDs or podcasts, and books that may provide practice but may not reflect people's reasons for wanting to learn: interaction. A video on MyHappyPlanet, "One Semester of Span ish Love Song," offers a parody of traditional language training, showing a man serenading a woman in Spanish, crooning things like, "What time is it? I like the library . . . I have two bicycles. Thank you."

"It's cool to say you speak six languages," Ong said. "But the process of learning a language is boring."

By putting language learning tools online, Ong thought she could leverage the power of the Web as it was originally envisioned - as a technology that could knit together a global community.

Three months ago, James Toepel, a 23-year-old from Seattle, began using audio programs to learn Spanish for an upcoming trip to Buenos Aires. He signed on to MyHappyPlanet and found Spanish speakers looking to practice English. Now, he is staying with a friend in Argentina whom he met through the website and getting an inside introduction to culture and language - discovering a drumming show he never would have found in his guide book, authentic local cuisine, and simple things like just knowing which clubs and bars to go to, and when.

"It was great to be able to have someone local to take you to what they consider the best restaurant for steak," Toepel wrote in an e-mail. "Of course, there are dozen of intangibles that I cannot even really convey."

Other websites are targeting the same opportunity. Babbel offers audio flashcards to beef up vocabulary and social networking features. LiveMocha lets members write, speak, and tutor one another in their native languages. On VoxSwap, members can join forums and live chats and make friends.

"It's what the students today are interested in and are doing on the computer already. When they go home, they're logging in to Facebook and MySpace, and are communicating with friends, so it's a way to take the language learning out of the classroom and make it part of their lives," said Sandy Cutshall, editor of Language Educator, the magazine for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Niche social networks have been proliferating rapidly, taking the same general idea behind MySpace and Facebook and extending it to specialized groups.

EMarketer, a research firm, projected in a recent report that online social network advertising in the United States would grow from $920 million in 2007 to $2.7 billion in 2011. While MySpace and Facebook get most of the attention, advertising on niche and market-sponsored social networks is projected to double, from $75 million last year to $150 million this year, or about 10 percent of all US advertising on social networks, according to the report.

Such websites are often so specific they seem to verge on the ridiculous, but they may offer an attractive audience for advertisers.

There is little doubt, for instance, that dog lovers will create profiles on Dogster.com, or that fishermen will be the ones creating an online "cabin," or making "fishing buddies" at AnglingMasters.com.

The language websites, however, create a reason for people to interact - something that may be lacking on sites where like-minded people convene.

The websites aren't going to be a replacement for other forms of instruction. Native speakers interject slang and bad grammar into their speech and conversation, and it would be difficult to learn from scratch.

But they represent an opportunity for what every language teacher dreams of, Cutshall said. Fluid conversation with native speakers about common interests, instead of stilted conversations driven by a vocabulary list.

Maria del Carmen Vega Paredes, who lives in Mexico City, said that MyHappyPlanet has helped her meet new friends across the world.

Before logging on, she said, she had not had a chance to practice English. Now, messaging with friends from around the world, she said, she has learned "to live close to the real language, not the language of books."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.