Internet Basics for ESL Students
Lesson 10
The Net

keywords: HTML, link, web page, code.

Dictionary

• The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus

---

Reading: The Internet is growing very quickly, and it is difficult to find what you want. There are hundreds of new home pages on the World Wide Web every month. There are family pages, and newspapers and pages about almost anything.

---

Dialogue 1: Looking around the Internet

Pair work. Practice the conversation. Jim: There are millions of web pages on the net. How do I find what I'm looking for? Paul: Use a search engine like Alta Vista. Jim: How does it work? Paul: You enter the name or topic you are interested in then ask the search engine to find pages about your topic. Jim: It must take a long time to search all those pages. Paul: Not really, usually less than a minute.

---

Group discussion:

1. Which search engines have you used?
2. Which is your favorite search engine?
3. How are search engines like Altavista and Yahoo different?

---

Dialogue 2: Retrieve and store information

Pair work. Practice the conversation. Jim: I just downloaded a new program for writing web pages. Linda: Make sure that you check it for viruses before you un-zip it. Jim: That's a good idea. Linda: Last month my brother downloaded an infected file. It was a big problem.

---

Reading: To find a file on the Internet you must know its URL (Universal Resource Locator.) URLs look like this:

http://www.harenet.or.jp/personal/schweiz/

The first part describes what internet protocol to use.

Protocol	Description
http	Hypertext Transfer Protocol: used for home pages on the world wide web
ftp	File Transfer Protocol: access files and transfer them to your computer
gopher	text based information retrieval system
telnet	connect your computer directly to another computer
file	a file found on your home computer

After the :// is the name of the host computer, and the rest is the location of the file on that computer.

---

Dialogue 3

Pair work. Practice the conversation. Linda: Where did the Web come from? Paul: It started in 1989 at a Laboratory in Europe known as CERN where physicists around the world work together. Linda: Why is it so popular? Paul: Because it is easy to use and connects people around the world who want to locate information and share knowledge. Linda: Thanks. I think I'll go surf for a new salad recipe.

---

Activity: How do you write a web page?