n 100
languages in December 2004, 6 million articles in 250 languages in
December 2006, and 7 million articles in 192 languages in May 2007,
including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German,
500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000
articles in Spanish. In August 2009, Wikipedia was among the top five
websites in the world, with a total of 330 million visitors a month.

Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, founded in June 2003,
which has run a number of other projects, beginning with Wiktionary
(launched in December 2002) and Wikibooks (launched in June 2003),
followed by Wikiquote, Wikisource (texts from public domain), Wikimedia
Commons (multimedia), Wikispecies (animals and plants), Wikinews,
Wikiversity (textbooks), and Wiki Search (search engine).

LEARNING LANGUAGES ONLINE

= [Quote]

Robert Beard, a language teacher at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania, wrote in September 1998: "As a language teacher, the web
represents a plethora of new resources produced by the target culture,
new tools for delivering lessons (interactive Java and Shockwave
exercises) and testing, which are available to students any time they
have the time or interest -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also
an almost limitless publication outlet for my colleagues and I, not to
mention my institution. (...) Ultimately all course materials,
including lecture notes, exercises, moot and credit testing, grading,
and interactive exercises will be far more effective in conveying
concepts that we have not even dreamed of yet."

= CTI Centre for Modern Languages

Since its inception in 1989, the CTI (Computer in Teaching Initiative)
Centre for Modern Languages, based in the Language Institute at the
University of Hull, United Kingdom, aims to promote and encourage the
use of computers in language learning and teaching. The CTI Centre
provides information on how computer-assisted language learning (CALL)
can be effectively integrated into existing courses. It offers support
to language lecturers who are using computers in their teaching, or who
wish to use them.

June Thompson, manager of the CTI Centre, wrote in December 1998: "The
internet has the potential to increase the use of foreign languages,
and our organization certainly opposed any trend towards the dominance
of English as the language of the internet. The use of the internet has
brought an enorm