There are few opportunities provided in the public junior high school English curriculum for creative writing. The ambitious teacher will have students write a letter or two or perhaps a composition about future aspirations, but in my experience, teachers rarely deviate from the grammar focus implicit in textbooks at this level. Reasons include the perceptions that writing activities are too difficult, that they are irrelevant to high school entrance exams, and that they are time-consuming to read and grade.
Writing skills can only be developed through practical experience, and none of the dozens of hours spent on grammar will help improve creative writing skills. I believe students should start writing in junior high school, and in this article, I would like to report on my experience with students using e-mail for international exchange.
Background
I am a private Assistant English Teacher (AET) in a small town north of Tokyo. Another AET colleague and I alternate monthly between two junior high schools so that each school almost always has an AET present.
Following recent Japanese Ministry of Education initiatives in 1997, both schools introduced half-year elective classes in core subjects including English. These ran from April to September and October to February. The criteria for these electives were that the students should have a choice of interesting activities related to the core subject matter and that they should work independently.
At one of the schools the AETs were placed in charge of the English elective class. We tried a pen pal exchange with our first group of students. Two problems with this activity arose: First, students had to wait several weeks for the assignment of a pen pal through a Japanese pen pal organization, and second, delays between sending and receiving replies by mail were long. Students practiced typing in the computer laboratory during the interim, but with such slow feedback, motivation was low. When they were finally assigned a pen pal, the students were barely able to send and receive a reply letter in the remaining time left in the term, and most managed to write only one letter by June.
Over the summer, both junior high schools had one staff computer hooked up to the World Wide Web. I had recently taken a CALL course, and I immediately saw the possibility of replacing the pen pal option with e-mail exchanges. Twelve third-year students signed up for the e-mail program in the second term.
Choosing Hardware and Software
Personal computers, Internet, and e-mail are still relatively unfamiliar to teachers in Japan and the prospect of mounting such a program may be daunting. However, once convinced of the potential benefits of e-mail exchanges, anyone can master the computer basics and mount a similar program in either their English classes or English club.
Ideally, the teacher starting such a program will have a fully-equipped computer lab with up-to-date word processing software. A direct connection to the Internet available to the students is also desirable. Our school did not meet these criteria. First, our Internet connection was only through one staff computer, which was not in the computer lab but in the staff room. Second, we could not install Windows 95 on the student computers, which would have provided them with a choice of complete English word-processing programs. Instead, we had to settle for an old version of the Ichitaro word processing program available on floppy disk in the computer laboratory. Ichitaro was designed for Japanese word processing applications but can produce English text. Luxuries such as a spell checker or sentence wrap were not available. Further, students had to start up from scratch in a DOS system, which made functions such as "saving" and "quitting" fairly complex.
A third problem arose with printing. We thought it important that the students print their own letters and receive printed copies of letters from their e-mail correspondents. To this end, we prepared file folders for them to keep all this material and their typing exercises together. Unfortunately, we found the laboratory printers unreliable and quickly abandoned them. Students saved their letters on disk and the teachers did all printing using more sophisticated staff computers.
In effect, we had very few choices available to us. However, I mention these problems not to discourage other teachers but to show that, even with minimal hardware and software, an e-mail exchange program is still possible.
Setting Objectives
Before the first class, I set the following objectives which addressed both computer competency skills and letter writing skills:
- The students will learn how to type in English (20 words per minute).
- With the teacher, the students will set up an e-mail account on the school's staff computer.
- The student will send an e-mail letter of introduction to one or more partners in a group of overseas students selected by the teachers.
- The student will send at least two more e-mails to the same person or another person in a foreign country.
The class met once a week for 50 minutes. Since students were unfamiliar with English keyboarding and the operation of computers in general, I set aside two months to introduce and have the students practice basic functions. Not having access to a commercial typing tutorial program, I adapted an old typewriter manual (Levine, 1980) and made my own exercises. We also taught basic word-processing skills, such as how to start up and exit the program, how to get the program into English typing mode, and how to save documents.
Finding E-mail Partners
During the typing phase of the course I asked the students with whom they would like to correspond. All wanted partners in North America, in particular the United States. Warschauer's E-mail for Language Teaching (1995) lists some good keypal sites. I contacted Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections (IECC), an organization which maintains lists of teachers looking for e-mail partners. To subscribe, type the word subscribe in the body of a message to <iecc-request@stolaf.edu>. Do not to write anything else in the message box, such as your e-mail signature. You will receive a detailed reply explaining what to do after that. Using the list was easy and we were able to find many groups or classes interested in corresponding with our own students. In fact, Japanese correspondents were quite in demand and I had to reject several requests for keypals.
Not getting replies was a potential problem which we solved by making sure that our students responded to their keypals. Not all of our U.S. colleagues, however, did the same. In one case, a teacher, responding to our posting on IECC, asked us to provide e-mail partners. I sent our students' introductory letters, but not one of his students wrote back. In the end, we worked with three classes of American students in Florida, Ohio, and Texas who were 14-16 years old, about the same ages as our students.
We had the most success with teachers with whom we made personal contact. With two teachers, we exchanged several e-mails to find out specifically what they were doing and what they wanted. We also exchanged our own personal information and anecdotes. It was these teachers who were most conscientious and we received the most replies from their students. We also paired the students up with more than one partner. Each of our students had at least three people to write to. In all cases, at least one of their partners wrote back.
Getting the Students Writing
We did not expect the students to compose letters from scratch or even write more than two or three original sentences per class. We used outlines in which parts of the letter were already written (see Appendix A). In the free-writing parts of their letters, we suggested themes and included guide questions. In their first letter, students introduced themselves. When I received the reply letters from overseas, I read them and attached a list of questions students would have to answer in their next letters. In their second letter, students responded to questions and wrote about their daily schedule. The third letter was a simple reply, and the topic for the fourth was about future plans or dreams. We encouraged our students to ask specific questions and suggested some in our outlines.
Discussion
Although we did not have any system for measuring typing speed, most fell far short of the 20 words-per-minute goal. In the future, a lower speed objective would be more realistic and timed typing tests would be helpful.
We were not able to have students set up their own e-mail accounts by themselves as they would have needed one-to-one instruction, which was not practical within the time constraints of the course. Instead, towards the end of the course, I divided the students into two groups and demonstrated some of the main features of the Internet and e-mail on the staff room computer.
All students met the objectives for letter writing. At the end of the course, each student had a file folder which included their typing exercises and copies of letters they sent and received. See Appendix B for sample letters. Possible topics for future letters include finding out about the foreign culture's customs, national holidays, food, or famous places.
Conclusions
Overall, students had very little prior experience writing, but e-mail exchanges were an exciting and motivating way to start. The following conclusions apply to our program:
- Students gained typing experience and familiarity with keyboard and computer procedures.
- Students thought about and wrote their own original sentences, and wrote at least three letters during the course.
- Since they were motivated to understand their e-mail replies, students gained meaningful reading practice.
- Since students had many questions about the letters that they received, there was more AET-student contact than in regular team-taught classes.
- Students were surprised and encouraged by the fact that their English-speaking correspondents made grammatical and spelling mistakes, too.
- Students developed social awareness through this project. One fifteen year-old correspondent from Ohio talked about the problems of going to school and raising his young son!
I encourage others to use e-mail for international exchanges. Our attempt was hindered mainly by the inadequate software and hardware and occasionally by our lack of technical knowledge, but overall I was encouraged by the results: In addition to improving their writing skills and gain valuable keyboarding and computer-related experience, students also enjoyed themselves. Corresponding with overseas native speakers provided them with a brief and interesting glimpse of the world beyond Japan.
References
Levine, N. (1980). Typing for everyone (5th ed.). New York: Arco Publishing
Warschauer, M. (1995). E-mail for language teaching. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Appendix A
Sample letter outline
February 4, 1998
Dear _____________________,
Thanks for your e-mail. [Answer questions in the e-mail letter.]
I'll tell you about a day in my life. [What time do you get up?] [What do you usually have for breakfast?] [What time do you go to school?] [How do you go to school?] [How long does it take?]
[Do you go to club now?] [If no, why not?]
[What time do you go home?] [What do you do before dinner?] [What time do you have dinner?] [What do you have for dinner?] [What do you do after dinner?]
What's your day like?
Sincerely,
_________________________
[Save your letter.]
Appendix B
Three sample letters
February 4,1998
Dear:Lucy Lewis
Hello. How are you. I'll tell about a day in my life.
I get up at 6:00. I walk to school because I am on a diet. It takes 35 minutes.
I study English, Japanese, Math, Social Studies, Science, Art and PE., Homemaking, Woodworking and Music, parpieculary Music and English.
Do you go to club now ? I belonged to a Braas band. I don't go now because I'm studying for the high school entrance exam.
Please e_mail soon. What's your day like?
Sincerely,
Tomomi Miyamoto.
Dear Tina,
Thanks for you e-mail.
I'll tell you about a day in my life. I get up at 6:30. I usually eat rice, soup and coffee. I go to school at 7:50 by bicycle. It takes 25 minutes. Japanese, Math, Science, Social Studies, English, PE, Music, Art and Homemaking.
I belonged to the tennis club.
What's your day like? It a short letter, sorry.
Sincerely,
Yuko
Dear Justion
Thanks for you e-mail. We have heard a lot about President Clinton. We see a lot of famous American movies. A famous Japanese baseball player, Nomo, went there.
I'll tell you about a day in my life. I get up at 6:30. I usually have rice, fish, and green tea. I go to school at 7:20 by bike. It takes 20 minutes. English, Japanese, Math, Science, Social Studies, PE, Woodworking, Art, Music, Homemaking. I go home at 4:30. I watch TV before dinnnner. I have dinner at 7:00. I usually have rice and various food. I study homework after dinner. What's your day like?
Good-bye for now.
Hiroko Sugaya.