An increased popularity in the learning of foreign languages has led to a rise in demand for language exchanges1. However, students learning foreign languages in their home countries often lack sufficient after-class opportunities to practice their newly acquired skills with native speakers. Language schools offer practice opportunities, but these are often limited, leaving students to seek out language exchange partners on their own, or do without the additional practice. Related to this situation and to this body of work are modern advancements in information technology (IT). Advancements in IT have made the exchange of information across networked platforms affordable and readily accessible to many. People use computers, mobile phones, personal communication devices and newer technologies like Skype phones and instant messenger programs to share data and voice almost anytime and anywhere. These developments, together with the needs foreign language students have for greater chances to practice, create opportunities for firms with the right assets and competencies to serve and prosper. The following business plan explores elements of a concept firm designed to fill unmet needs of language learners. Called NetSpeak!, the firm would leverage the power of IT to create systems that would enable people to practice newly acquired language skills with native speakers located in other parts the world via personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal computers, telephones and networked infrastructure. Thus, NetSpeak!’s principal business activity would be that of making 1 A language exchange is an informal meeting between people (usually two) of different tongues for the purpose of taking turns practicing and coaching language skill development. network-based language exchanges a viable alternative to face-to-face language exchanges. To estimate market attractiveness for such a venture, this body of work first describes elements of the firm and its business strategies, and then presents analyses of customers, markets, competition, as well as the overall general environment that such a firm would compete in. It was found that in a new market—one defined by the unique attributes of network-based language exchange services—where barriers to entry/exit are low, relatively low startup capitalization would lead to a large number of rival participants rendering an unattractive market. However, it was also found that for a first-mover, one that could successfully establish significant barriers to entry, the market attractiveness would be high.

The effectiveness of e-mail writing has been exhaustively studied and reported on, especially in Taiwan. However, there has not been any research carried out on the topics that mainland Chinese university students enjoy writing about when corresponding with their Western epals, nor does the literature report research on writing e-mails to two groups of epals simultaneously. This study explores what issues concerned the participants when they exchanged e-mails with their Western epals and how they viewed their cross-cultural learning experience. The participants were 28 mainland Chinese second-year English majors who voluntarily corresponded with 28 American high school pupils and 28 Western adult epals for about two months in Autumn 2006. The data of this exploratory interpretative research was mainly collected from their e-mails, ‘final reports’, the mid-project questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The study found that the topics the participants enjoyed writing about actually depended on with whom they were corresponding. With the younger school pupils, they tended to look for friendship by talking about pastimes, their own high school experience, etc. To the more sophisticated adult epals though, they wrote largely about personal matters, on which they seemed to be covertly seeking advice. However, some topics were common to both groups and were equally popular – for example, school and daily life. The data also reveals that the majority of the participants enjoyed the experience and overall had positive views about it. These fall into three broad categories of learning: language, cultural, and communication. However, some experienced minor difficulties and problems in these areas, particularly regarding the communication aspect. Meanwhile, in the process of the participants multiediting their ‘final reports’, learning seems to have occurred between their first and final drafts – perhaps as a result of responding to the researcher’s written feedback, which seemed to make a significant difference. The implications arising from the study suggest that the students’ interest in it stimulated their engagement with learning - though the findings are tentative. Some recommendations for further research are also given.