ESL Blogs

The Story of Emily & Tomy

Some English Club members don’t use the chatroom often; some don’t use it at all. The reason why some members prefer to stay away from the chatroom is that they don’t feel comfortable there. Why? Because they are always pestered by people they don’t want to talk to. It is more common for female members to experience this than for male members. Consequently, I rarely use chatroom (maybe just to say 'hi' to some close friends) even though the chatroom is for all English Club members.

Though I began by writing about chatroom issues, the point of this blog is not only the chatroom but the whole English Club. Nonetheless, the chatroom acts as a mirror for English Club.

In this blog, I tried to prove something about English Club. Lately, we have been discussing if English Club is seen as a flirting site or not. We are confused with some members' attitudes. It is easy to understand one’s intention by the comment he/she leaves. You can read what’s going on in his/her mind.

Emily. She joined English Club on a Friday on February 10th, at 11.30 am, excited, in the hope of making good friends while learning English.

The following day, Tomy also joined English Club with the same hope as Emily’s.

Who could know Emily was going to be luckier than Tomy? Just 15 minutes later, someone said 'hi' to Emily. Following that person another one, and another one… In the first hour, Emily made 10 friends; 9 males, 1 female. Tomy, in his first hour, could make only one buddy. After their first chat in English Club, Emily and Tomy joined chatroom in the afternoon, evening and night each for one hour. At the end of the day, Emily made 28 friends (27 males, 1 female) while Tomy made only 2 friends (both males).

Though many of Emily’s friends want to improve their English, there are some who just want to flirt with her. That’s unfortunately possible since society is made up of a variety of people. Even though English Club is a great site to learn English, share ideas and meet friends quickly, maybe, we are not able to prevent all the bad eggs from abusing this site. We can, however, decide who is a good friend and who is here to learn English without any other intentions.

It’s difficult to differentiate if someone is flirting with you or just being nice. As you can see from the result of my experiment, there aren't too many guys who just “want to be friends”, I don't care what they say. “You are female, and I am interested in you. So let’s be friends!” I view flirting on a site where people want to learn English, and flirting with someone whom you have never met a selfish, malevolent game, and I find it unacceptable.

Virtually anything you can do in the offline world you can do in the virtual world. And, that includes flirting with those you meet through online learning sites. For some, it becomes easier if the other person is receptive too. Lots of us might not realize this since we’ve all come to know learning here as being friendly.

Let’s stand up against those who think that they are flirting with other people without their knowledge. Well, we know what you are doing. Can you just find another site for yourself? English Club is and will always be for learning English!

Thank you very much teacher Francois Oosthuizen for correcting my mistakes.