Language PLUS Copyright 2001
This paper is for teachers who want to do email projects or who have tried email projects, but have met with limited success. The aim is to show these teachers what to do to make email a useful tool for meaningful intercultural communication.
This paper shows how to lay the groundwork for successful e-mail projects (e.g. getting students e-mail address, finding co-operative teachers in other countries). The paper shows how to handle difficulties like; students not answering email, ability matching students, privacy, different school semester schedules, unsolicited email, etc. This paper also discusses having native or non-native English speaking partners.
If your school computer administrator doesn't give your students email addresses, then you can get addresses from a free email provider like Hotmail www.hotmail.com or Yahoo mail.yahoo.com. These are online email providers which means that you must be online to not only to send your email, but also to read and write it. Which means that if are using a modem and your telephone company charges by the minute (i.e. NTT) your are paying by the minute. There is a huge advantage to online email addresses and that is that you can get your email anywhere there is a computer with an Internet connection. So your students can change seats or change computer labs and you don't have to change the user profile on the email programme. In addition students can access their email at home or even in another country.
To save time you could give the students an address, but they need to learn how to do it themselves and how to avoid some pitfalls of choosing an address.
When it comes to choosing a email name for your students, you have to limit the students choices. Asking them to choose whatever name they want is very time consuming. Almost all the popular names are gone. There are well over 200 people using hellokitty at hotmail.com. Your students could spend hours trying to find the name they want. In choosing a name you have be careful that it will not invite spam mail.
By the way, spam mail is computer generated junk mail. The subjects of these messages are anything from money scams to invitations to porn web sites. These email messages keep coming to you again and again and again. Spam is a canned luncheon meat made of ham and some other kind or meat. Spam mail gets it's name from a Monty Python's Flying Circus song called Spam. This song has the word spam sung over and over again to a marching rhythm.
Email addresses like junko84@hotmail.com will invite spam mail. As will an address like tanaka521@hotmail.com. There are programmes that generate thousands of email addresses at a time. People who send out spam use these programmes all the time. Now if your student combines her first and last name and adds her age, like this junkotanaka19@hotmail.com, there is less of a chance to get spam mail as the programmes have a harder time getting the correct combination of names and numbers. Also with this address it is easier for you to recognize whose address it is.
As for the password tell the students to make a password that is easy for them to remember, but hard for anyone to guess or find out. Don't use birthdays or your mother's maiden name, everyone uses those. It is hard a stranger to guess your mothers' maiden name, but it not hard for a friend to seemingly innocently ask. It's better to use something like an old street address, or your first pet, or a favourite teacher from grammar school or the name of the first boy or girl who you kissed. These things we already remember and they are in the past so they will not change. Make sure students use either all lower case letters or all UPPER case letters. Mixing cases up leads to confusion and forgetting later on. Some sites ask you for a secret question in case you forget your password. The same rule applies. Use something that will always be remembered and nobody can guess. Make sure the answer is in all lower case or all UPPER case. Tell your students to NOT use sentences for answers as they will forget verb tense or punctuation. One or two word answers are fine.
Some teachers will want students to write down their email addresses and their passwords so the teacher will keep them of file in case the students forget. Of course the students will forget and usually before the next class begins. If you don't have the password then the student learns for herself that she must remember it. Also if students know that you do not have access to their email it gives them a better sense of privacy.
Once your students have an email address tell them to send an email message saying hello to you. This way you will have a copy of their addresses that you can quickly put into your email address book.
The above precautions about email address will screen out most unwanted email, but at some point your students will encounter something that they or you do not like. Most online email address providers have a block sender option. Just click the link and follow the instructions if there are any. But remember you cannot unblock the sender. Check that it is someone the student doesn't know and not her friend or brother goofing around. Do NOT write back to the sender telling them not to send email again. That only tells them that they have found a real address and will send even more spam. Sometimes there is a note at the bottom about how to be removed from the mailing list. Usually it's something like "if you wish to be removed from our list, please reply to this e-mail with the word remove in the subject". It's a trick to get you to send a message and thus confirm that it is a real address. Just delete the message.
If you use an email program like Netscape or Microsoft Outlook there should be some way to filter messages. The filter works by scanning incoming mail for addresses or subject titles that you have said you don't want. Depending on which option you set, the filter then moves the message to the trash can or deletes it all together. Look for email message filters under edit or preferences or options. Each email programme puts them in different place.
The exchange must be arranged between teachers. Both you and the other teacher want the email exchange to happen successfully. Email exchanges in which students look for individual keypals don't work very well because very often some students never hear any replies. Also the individual keypal may have no interest in exchange projects being completed. The individual keypal will only reply if the student is interesting. The individual keypal may stop writing because he is too busy with other things. The individual keypal may have may have an "alternative" interest in your student (some people getting very excited at the thought of 17 year old Japanese high school girls).
When organizing an exchange through another teacher many negative uncertainties will be avoided. Most importantly the main goal are the same - practising a second language through real communication. Other smaller objectives (e.g. story telling, describing family members, etc.) can be scheduled out to suit both teachers. When problems occur (e.g. a student is absent due to a long illness, computer problems, etc.) the teachers can communicate to each other and pass on the information to their students. With individual keypals, your student has no means of finding out why her keypal is not answering back.
A most highly recommended site for keypaling is Intercultural E-mail
Classroom Connections
For long term keypaling for your class you need to cultivate a friendship with the teacher you are having an exchange with. You have to get to know about his family, his vacation plans, events happening in his country. In other words he is your keypal. You should start to get the keypal teacher about 2 months before you start your students sending messages to their keypals. If the teachers become friends then planning the email exchanges with their students and working out the problems is much easier. Build the friendship and trust before you have your students send email. The friendship will carry you through the keypal exchange and she will be there next year as well.
Of course the friendship you build is rewarding in itself. Sending gifts for Christmas or births of children helps strengthen the friendship. Occasional souvenirs help too, especially if they can be shown or shared with his class. Your students need to know that their keypals' teacher is your friend. There is less anonymity and more real connection.
Everybody wants an email exchange with a class of native speakers of English (or the target language). But in the ESL world these are hard to find. But don't be discouraged if you don't find a native speaker class.
Keypal exchange sites are set up for English learners have mostly non-native students looking for keypals. Student keypal exchange sites used by native speakers are often topic specific (e.g. migration of whales, river pollution, history of slavery). While joining these projects will involve communication in English the goals of a ESL teacher and a science teacher are very different. An email exchange for a science class project is often a one off activity, with little self introduction or exchange of family information, etc.. Most task specific exchanges only want the collected data or the opinion. An ESL teacher is looking to build long term keypal relationships that will be used as a practice forum for English.
Themes of cultural awareness exchanges with native speakers are closer to the goals of an ESL teacher. However, be aware that while your students are asking "What is your favourite food?", the native speaker keypal will ask "What are the specific differences between Shinto and Buddhism?"
Exchanges with native speakers learning your students mother tongue can be successful, but one language will dominate the other. If it's your students' target language - great. If it's your students' mother tongue that is the dominate language of communication all is not lost. Your students will gain an appreciation of language learning by helping others learn their mother tongue.
There are pitfalls with having exchanges with native speakers. They often make cultural references that your students (or yourself) wouldn't understand or know about. Native speakers often use sentence fragments, idiomatic phrases and slang that your students have not studied.
It's often expected that native speakers will correct your students English. However, they are not ESL teachers, so they may not know why there is an error or how too explain it is wrong. More importantly they cannot be expected to correct or teach your students. They have their own goals for the email exchange and those goals may not include being a teacher to your students.
That said, some of your students (or administrators ) may expect or demand that the keypals be native speakers of English. Don't be surprised about what some students will accept as a qualified native speaker. Many countries where English is the official and spoken language may not rank as "English" speaking countries (e.g. Caribbean countries and the Indian Subcontinent). Then there are the surnames of keypals. Though the keypals may be born in the USA or the UK; family names like Chan, Lopez or Kowalski may not be thought of belonging to native speakers of English. Unfortunately there is an expectation that all native speakers look the actors of television programmes like Beverly Hills 90210. It's a peculiar form of prejudice. Hopefully by communicating with their non-Dylan native speakers of English your students get over this prejudice.
There are many advantages of email exchanges with non-native English speaking classes. One is that there are more teachers trying to arrange exchanges for their ESL classes. Though the main advantage is that you and the other teacher have the same goals for your students - practising English through real and meaningful communication.
Of course non-native students don't have prefect English. This may be an advantage to your students (e.g. simpler grammar structure, fewer idiomatic expressions, etc.) Non-native English countries are less known than English speaking countries. Therefore there will be more questions about food, music, school routine, city life, etc. Many movies and television shows come from the USA and the UK, so there is plenty of cultural exposure to the American and English way of life. Thus there is less curiosity to motivate students to ask questions.
Another advantage of non-native speakers is that they are more patient with errors in English. After all they make errors themselves. Though don't expect your students to correct their keypals errors and visa versa. Students will not think it is their role or place to correct their keypal. After all students don't correct each other when they do conversation pair work in their regular English class. Students will be too focused understanding their keypals' message and then replying to that message. Asking them to correct any errors is asking them to do too much. You want them to enjoy exchanging email with their keypal, you don't want it to seem like work.
In organizing an exchange with a class beware that the dates school terms begin and end are different in each country. For example in North America the school year begins in the autumn and run until the spring, but Japanese schools start in the spring and end in late winter. That means that exchanges between Japanese and North American schools can only take place in the fall and early winter. For a good list of school terms please see Thomas Robb's School Calendars Around the World site at www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/terms.html
Students and their keypals should be of a similar age. If the age gap is too wide then one group will think their keypals are children. The things they will want to talk about are very different. The movies and music they are interested in, the social relationships they have experienced will be too widely different and natural friendships will be difficult to form.
It's best to try to find classes that are a similar size. There always be a few extra student on one side or the other. Some of your students can be given two key pals. These students need not be the best students in the English. If the students are friendly and outgoing they more likely to write two key pals. Be sure to tell them they will have to write a different email to each keypal. Sending the same message to each keypal appears rude and uncaring. The keypals will soon realize that their email messages are identical. They will think that your student is not genuinely interested in them and will only make a token effort to reply.
If you are considering having your students and their key pals doing chat (sending text messages back and forth in real time) then select a country in a time zone that is close to yours. Chat is great tool for communication practice for your students. However, chatting with a class in another country is very difficult to organize. The problem is time. Can your class change the time when you have access to the computer lab? Are your students be willing to come to the school earlier then usual or stay after classes are finished to do a chat session? Then there is selecting which chat programme to use. If you have a firewall you have to be sure that chat programme works through it. You'll have to test it with the keypals' teacher at least two weeks before the chat session. Why two weeks? Well, if it doesn't work then you have to ask your computer support staff if they can get access through the firewall. If they can't (or won't) then you have to find a new chat programme very quickly.
Keypaling between two classes of roughly the same ability level in the English is ideal, but extremely difficult to set up. You could use scores on standardized tests as a guide (e.g. TOEIC, Cambridge Certificate). Though most of these tests measure English by receptive means such as listening for detailed information or identifying the grammatical error. They don't truly measure self generated communication ability, especially writing ability. Also, tests that are popular in Japan may not be popular or recognized in the keypals' country.
When describing your class use the broad terms of basic, intermediate and advanced. Saying things like pre-intermediate or elementary are often teacher biased. Teachers in one school have a difficult time distinguishing between similar levels. Try to imagine the misunderstandings of two teachers in two different countries. Very often when teachers define a student as an elementary or pre-intermediate level they are only comparing the student with other students they know. Which is fine within a school, but what is considered an advanced level in one country, might only by an intermediate level in another country. An intermediate level student in Denmark may be considered an advanced student in Japan. Don't rely on years of study. There is a big difference once a week for three years and once a day for three years.
With the other teacher plan a course of email messages. Many email exchanges have died after the first introductory message. The students don't know what to write about next. Chances are they don't have much experience exchanging regular mail in their native language. You and the keypal teacher should post the email topics and their due dates on a web site that both groups of students have access to. There are many sites that allow teachers to create online syllabi. If you are using David Sperling's book Internetactivity, he has an online syllabus site that teachers can use http://cw.prenhall.com/cgi-bin/binder/syl.cgi?site=sperling. Also, don't make the email messages a significant part of any outside projects. It's a wonderful idea to have an email exchange that's tied to a project in the geography class. However, you will find that there are often delays in getting answers from the keypals. Your students may not get an answer until long after the geography project is due.
Plan clear, simple and broad subjects, e.g. describe your best friend, what is the neighbour around your school like. Subjects should be concrete. Questions like what do you think of organ donation are far to opinionated or abstract for many students. Very often they may not be able to talk about such difficult subjects in their native language. Always keep in mind you do not know the experiences of the key pals. Opinion questions could easily offend the keypals.
Make up a list of your students names on an excel file to send to your keypal teacher. Include the students' email addresses. You should also say the gender of the students. This is because your keypals' teacher may not know which names are male or female. Is Stacey a girl's name or a boy's; what about Toshio? Ask the keypal teacher to add his class list along side yours and send the file back to you. Also the top two or three students should be indicated as should the bottom two or three. Ranking all of the students would be so tedious as to be pointless. Since you do not really know the ability of the other students there are too many uncertainties. Another thing that should be indicated is the students' social skills. Label the outgoing students and the shy students. Don't include things like hobbies, ages, etc. This is information that you want you students to get.
In matching students with a keypal there is the balance between language ability and social ability. Because you don't really know the overall ability of the other class in the beginning of the exchange, put greater emphasis on how outgoing the students are. Put the shy students with the shy students and the outgoing students with the outgoing students. It could be argued that the outgoing keypal will encourage the shy student to write more. However look at your classroom. Shy students stick with shy students; they find it more comforting. Outgoing students find shy students, well, boring. It may sound cold hearted, but if you were the host at a party who would you introduce them to. Also, if your students are in their late teens or older try to match up the students boy-girl. Male students are much more motivate to write if their partners are female.
Tell your students when they send a message to their keypals to c.c. (carbon copy) the message to you and to their keypals' teacher. Ask the other teacher to have his students do the same. This way the both of you have a record of incoming and outgoing email. You can monitor your students participation level, offer pointers about style or grammar and problem solve. Very often in the beginning students make mistakes with email addresses. If the email is not getting through to the keypal then either you or the keypal's teacher can forward a copy to the keypal.
Keep a record of the incoming and outgoing email. Post this record in your computer lab. This should create some class rivalry to get more messages. Tell your students to check that the number of incoming and outgoing messages are correct. This way you can double check for the copies that get sent to you.
Try to exchange photos as soon as possible. Knowing what your key pal looks like adds realism. Seeing the face of the keypal makes the keypal a real person in the mind of your student. Either a class photo or individual photos of each student will do. If you take a class photo, be sure to label who is who in the picture.
This is an important issue that some students (and teachers) might raise concerns about. Assure your students that this is a school project and you are monitoring their email to help your students: e.g. email getting lost, students are not accidentally saying something inappropriate, and you are keeping a record of the number of messages being exchanged. Some students will say "But what if it's a secret?"; "Then don't tell it to me". Tell the student to send the "secret" message to the keypal, then send a copy of it without the secret to the keypal teacher and to you.
That said you will still learn some surprising information about your students. It's private information that you must keep to yourself. Do NOT share it with the other teaching staff. Even if you want to reveal some fact but not the name of the student - don't. It will only spread rumour and lead people to guess who the student is or worse management to demand to know who it is. If there is a serious problem, you may want to query the student in person, but you might consider that asking questions by email might be a more acceptable way to approach the student. Keep this in mind, the student has a serious problem for which the only way to find guidance is to confide in a keypal on the other side of the world who doesn't speak her language very well. She doesn't want the help of people who know her. It's that cathartic experience of telling your troubles to a sympathetic stranger on a long train ride. Why do you tell the stranger; because you know you will never meet him again.
If you do the proper groundwork and monitor the students you will find that they will write much more and more often then you expected. As the students are writing their messages go around the class give out pointers. Not so much for grammar or spelling, but for making their email interesting. If the student writes that she has a part-time job, get her to write what kind of job it is, does she like, why or why not, does she make a lot of money, is she saving up for something, etc. If her keypal writes that she has a new boyfriend, get your student to ask what does he look like, does he have a car, how did they meet, etc. The more information that they give and ask for, the more they will want to write.
As the friendship builds between your students and their keypals, you as a teacher may have nothing to do but observe your students enjoy real ongoing communication in English. Finally, the language they have been learning for on so many years has a genuine and immediate purpose outside of the classroom.
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