E-mail is a form of communication popular for
its speed and simplicity. In a few
minutes a message may be sent from Canada to
Japan. It is bringing the global
community together in ways never before possible.
Not only is it easy to quickly
exchange ideas, but also to attach files such
as word processed documents, images, and
even web pages. Programs are also fairly
simple to operate with user-friendly interfaces.
Eudora is the most popular Windows version.
PINE is one of a few that may be used in
the text-based environment of UNIX.
E-mail can provide many communicative opportunities
to the ESL class. It can
provide an interesting medium for discussion
amongst students, a chance for students to
ask the teacher short questions, and a possibility
for communication with native speakers.
Because students can send a written composition
to all students in the class at
once, e-mail is a useful tool for peer evaluation,
which has been shown to have a positive
effect for ESL learners (Mittan, 1989; Long &
Porter, 1985). The students have a less
threatening environment than if it were a face-to-face
confrontation. This anonymity and
reduced threat promote opinion-reporting, question
asking, and feedback.
E-mail may also increase classroom participation.
Mehan (1979, as cited in
Sullivan, 1993) observed that in one oral classroom,
the teacher initiated interaction 81%
of the time. Sullivan reported that e-mail
increased inter-student communication, as only
14 of 181 messages (7.7%) were sent by the teacher
during a forty minute period.
Sullivan and Pratt (1996) also found supporting
evidence. The CAI class they observed
had a participation rate of 100% while the traditional
oral classroom’s rate was only
50%.
Another possible e-mail activity is e-mail penpals
(keypals). Students may be
matched with another ESL class or matched on
an individual basis through a website that
provides this service. If you are on or
near a campus where all full-time students are
given an e-mail address, an option is to recruit
keypals by placing posters around the
campus, inviting native English speakers to volunteer
as e-mail penpals. Roberts (1994)
reported having done this with very positive
results. Keypals will be discussed more in
depth in the Activities section.
Before students attempt e-mail on their own, they
must be able to do the
following:
Due to the asynchronous nature of e-mail, it is
easy for the sender to forget the
content of the message he or she composed, so
students should be told to include the
original message, or a paraphrase of it, in the
reply. Additionally, students should
respond immediately to messages, even if they
cannot write a proper, long reply, and
inform the recipient that a complete response
will follow at a later date.
E-mail does have some other practical purposes.
It is an excellent way to
distribute handouts, assignments, and course
outlines. It saves on paper, and if students
want a hard copy they can print it.
There are a few points teachers must take into
consideration when planning
e-mail activities. Computer lab time is
often limited and few students own computers.
Class time should be set aside for these activities,
and the activities should be such that
they may be completed in the time allotted.
A teacher can not always expect the students
to complete the tasks outside of class time in
the lab as students often have other
responsibilities.
If students are not able to procure e-mail accounts
through the school, they may
acquire them through the World Wide Web.
Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com/)
is an
excellent web-based e-mail service.
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Keypal
Activities
As mentioned, keypals are e-mail penpals between
classes or individuals. There
are some recommendations to be made for this
type of activity between two classes.
First, each class must be committed and reliable
for responding. Second, the two classes
must have similar term scheduling and be at a
similar proficiency level. Third, the goals
of each teacher must be the same. It is
a lot of work on the part of both teachers as they
must communicate prior to the commencement of
the class to determine what activities
they will engage in together. Robb and
Tillyer (1993) also suggested that teachers assign
several keypals per student; if one keypal stops
sending messages, there will be at least
one other to continue. As well, the teachers
must take into consideration whether this
will be an in-class exercise or homework, and
whether it will be graded or not.
Teachers can look for a class to collaborate with
in an e-mail penpal exchange at
http://www.stolaf.edu/network/iecc/
2.1 Culture
Exchange. (All levels)
Students can be assigned information gathering
tasks, such as finding out specific
information about their penpals, or the culture
of the penpal. Keypals can compare their
cultures. Students are to write a short
paper at the end of the term, describing their
keypals, and the culture (adapted from Tillyer,
1994)
2.2 Opinions.
(All levels)
The students from both classes watch the same
video or read the same story, then have to
discuss it with their keypals. Discussion
could take the form of each student writing an
opinion about the video/story then sending it
to the keypal, then responding to the other’s
opinion (adapted from Parkinson, 1994).
Between Individuals Activities
Students are assigned individual keypals, found
either locally or via the Internet
(see Kenji and Kathleen Kitao’s page, Keypal
Opportunities for Students, at
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/visitors/kenji/keypal.htm).
2.3 Culture.
(All levels)
Students are to find out about the culture of
their keypals, and at the end of the term write
a brief report on the other culture. If
the keypals are from different areas of the world,
each student presents his or her report to the
class.
2.4 Grammar
Puzzles. (All levels)
The teacher sends a grammar question or puzzle
to all the students who try to answer it.
It could be a text with grammar/spelling mistakes
in it which students have to correct, or
a question of what the difference in meaning
is between words or phrases. For a
competition, whoever answers it first wins.
2.5 Newpaper
articles. (All levels)
Students are in groups of four. Each student
reads a different newspaper article, then
summarizes it and sends the message to the three
other members of his or her group.
Every member of the group does this. Students
then ask each other questions about the
article.
Variation:
The student summarizes the article, then gives
an opinion about the article. The others in
the group must respond to the sender’s opinion,
either agreeing or disagreeing. This
could fit in well with gambits on polite agreement
and disagreement.
2.6 Story
Reconstruction. (All levels)
Give each student a different part of a story
(you can use one or two stories) via e-mail.
It could be a sentence or a paragraph.
Students then print their part of the story, and must
work together to reconstruct the whole story
(Tillyer, 1993)
Variation:
Have Advanced students remember the story without
printing it. They must then put the
story together orally. It may be wise to
divide a large class into two groups, each group
using the same story.
2.7 Analysis.
(Int/Adv)
If the keypals are native speakers of English,
print some of the messages so the class can
see informal writing styles. It may also
be a good source of idioms, slang and
vocabulary. Analyze it for any mistakes
(Kendall, 1994)
2.8 Peer
editing. (Int/Adv)
Students are in partners. Each student
sends to the partner a short composition, and the
partner critiques it. For this activity,
however, students will have to have some
instruction in how to critique effectively yet
in a non-offensive manner.
2.9 Chain
story. (Int/Adv)
Students are divided into groups of four.
One student starts a story, then at the end of a
time limit (10-15 minutes) e-mails it to the
next, who continues the story for the next
10-15 minutes, and so on. Every student
begins a story so that every student is typing
something in each time slot. This activity
could be done with more time allotted to make
a longer story, however, this may not be successful
if students are absent (adapted from
Opp-Beckman, 1997).
Variations:
(A) Each student draws four idiomatic expressions
studied in class. In the portion he or
she writes, one of these idiomatic expressions
must be used, and cannot be repeated, so
each expression is used once.
(B) The story may be restricted to take
place in the present tense, future tense or past
tense.
(C) You may want to give the students a
starting line for the story, such as “I was on my
way to school when...” or “When I was very young
I used to...”
2.10 Movie
Reviews. (Int/Adv)
This is similar to the newspaper article activity,
but here students watch a movie then
write a review on it, stating what happened in
the movie, what they liked or did not like
about the movie, and whether or not they would
recommend that someone else watch the
movie.
2.11 E-mail
Jigsaw. (Int/Adv)
Each student receives a small part of information,
all different. The students must read
their piece of information and remember it.
They then mingle and exchange the
information in order to solve the jigsaw.
Usually this involves filling in a chart, or
answering questions. Some jigsaws may be
adapted to this e-mail activity. See Keep
Talking. Communicative fluency activities
for language teaching by Friederike Klippel
(1995).
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