Abstract

This case study involved designing an electronic-based environment to explore the effectiveness of electronic mail (e-mail) as a writing tool for dialogue journaling. The setting for this study was an intermediate-level reading and writing class in the American English Institute Program on the campus of a large public university. Over a period of 9 weeks, six randomly chosen English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) students in the class wrote dialogue journals to their instructor using e-mail while the rest of the students in the class wrote dialogue journals to the instructor using paper and pencil. The issues investigated were: What were the students' attitudes toward dialogue journal writing via e-mail? What was the instructor's perception regarding e-mail dialogue journal writing? What problems occurred in the process of using e-mail as a tool for doing dialogue journal writing? In what ways were e-mail journals different from paper journals? The findings of the study show that a variety of factors combined to exert an influence on the participants' attitudes towards e-mail. Limited knowledge about e-mail systems prevented some students from taking a full advantage of e-mail as a unique communication tool. Comparison of e-mail journals and paper journals reveals that e-mail created a different writing style than that of paper and pencil. For example, in the journal entries, participants in the e-mail group tended to: (1) use formula functions like opening and closing greetings (none of the students in the paper group used any); (2) use more requesting functions (asking questions) than those in the paper group; and (3) produce more language functions per writing session. In addition, e-mail communication was more spontaneous than paper dialogue. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/SWC)

Citation

Wang, Y.m. (1996). E-Mail Dialogue Journaling in an ESL Reading and Writing Classroom. Presented at Selected Research and Development Presentations at the 1996 National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology 1996. Retrieved August 7, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/80073/.

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Keywords

• Computer Uses in Education
• Dialog Journals
• Electronic Mail
• English (Second Language)
• higher education
• Instructional Effectiveness
• Media Selection
• student attitudes
• teacher attitudes
• Teacher Student Relationship
• teaching methods
• Writing Assignments
• Writing Processes