The internet can be used to find partners and to exchange e-mails with them. The Tandem project has proved very useful in this area. It basically puts individuals in touch with each other depending on the language in which they want to carry out the exchanges and their level.

Tandem: http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/email/infen.html

Cf. Guide pour l'apprentissage des Langues en Tandem Par Internet. (version Française réalisé à l'ENST-Paris) Available from me.

Cf also Warschauer, Mark, E-mail for English Teaching, TESOL 1995. Available from Resource centre.

Cf. Schwienhorst, K, Modes of Interactivity - Internet resources for second language learning http://www.tcd.ie/CLCS/assistants/kschwien/Publications/modinter.htm

"In the Tandem system, students are paired with a partner from the target language community (for example an Irish student, English native speaker, learning German is paired with an Austrian, German native speaker, learning English) by a central dating agency in Bochum, Germany [...]. The Tandem Network also provides a bilingual mailing list for each language combination (so far there are fourteen languages involved). These student pairs can meet in the MOO, explore these virtual worlds according to their interests (walk through a virtual rain forest, a virtual human brain, down through Dante's inferno, etc.) or use the language learning resources to collaborate on tasks and projects, alternating between their respective two languages. Not only can students meet as long and as often as they like to use the target language autonomously, in whatever context they prefer, but they can also "record" their conversations in a text file which is instantly retrievable on their home computer (i.e. ready for print outs). These log files can be used individually or in class to evaluate the student's performance in a real, meaningful situation with a native speaker, enable the student to detect deficiencies, errors that seriously affected comprehension, unsuccessful conversational strategies, etc. It also provides, however, a wealth of authentic material in the target language that can then be analysed- for example unknown vocabulary that can be looked up in a dictionary or a text corpus using concordancers. In this way, it can help the student to become an autonomous language learner who can take responsibility for his or her own short and long term goals and analyses past performance and plans future activities.

Cf. Aitsiselmi, Farid, "Second Language Acquisition through email interaction", in ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 4-11

15 students at Bradford university sent a weekly e-mail to their teacher. It was made clear that this would not be assessed or judged for grammar but reacted to as a genuine communicative act. The theoretical framework used for the study was the Monitor Model developed by Krashen (1985). According to Krashen acquisition occurs when comprehensible input is available and when focus is on meaning. "If we accept the validity of this theory in which acquisition is central and learning secondary, it follows that the fundamental objective of pedagogical programmes should be to foster acquisition by placing learners in a low anxiety situation of genuine communication in the target language." (7) FA replied to the e-mails almost immediately. This feedback constitutes the input to which students are exposed. "Krashen argues that acquisition occurs when we understand input that contains structures a little beyond our current level of competence." FA therefore took special care to include corrections of their most common mistakes. He concludes that this was a positive experience and that as a language learning tool,email communication in the target language seems to fit perfectly with the general principles of second language acquisition theory."

Graus, Johan, An Evaluation of the Usefulness of the Internet in the EFL Classroom (MA thesis) Chapter 7.3 The effects of e-mail on L2 Discourse, http://home.plex.nl/~jgraus/thesis/content/ch7.htm

Pincas, Anita, Reference in Online Discourse: http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej13/a1.html

Abstract "Effective reference to previous parts of the discourse is especially crucial in a collaborative online context, such as a distance learning course using computer-mediated communication (CMC). The paper surveys and measures the way a group of students in a recent CMC course attempted to develop referencing conventions to suit their learning purposes, relying heavily on actual quotation (citation) from previous messages. It is suggested that success in using referencing correlates with success in a CMC course and that without it CMC users find it difficult to develop an effective mental representation of the discourse.

Ron Belisle, E-mail Activities in the ESL Writing Class, The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. II, No. 12, December 1996 http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Belisle-Email.html

Tom Robb, E-Mail Keypals for Language Fluency, http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/keypals.html

Tom Robb (PCI Coordinator), Deborah Healey and Ron Corio, CyberESL Email and Beyond
http://www.orst.edu/~healeyd/pci/cyberesl.html

Ruth Vilmi, Global Communication Through Email: An Ongoing Experiment at Helsinki University ofTechnology, http://www.hut.fi/~rvilmi/Publication/global.html

Asim Sakar,The cross-cultural effects of electronic mail exchange on the Turkish University students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) http://www.lerc.ritsumei.ac.jp/callej/6-1/sakar.html

Back to main page