The email and its importance

Email is one of the most popular and useful techniques.

Email is used inside the classroom and outside the classroom.

Email is an asynchronous communication. Nevertheless, it is very practical and it is easy to use.

There are some rules or advice for writing an email. The netiquette rules vary according to the purpose of the email and who is the person that is going to receive the email.

Communication skills are important for writing emails: the language should have a polite tone, go straight to the point, write short sentences, be careful with spelling, grammar and composition format.

One of the most common usage of emails for teaching purposes is to submit classwork like essays, reports, webprojects to the teacher´s email and the teacher send the work, comments or extra material through this tool. As you can see, this is the most common way of communication in these English courses for the license degree.

I think this email communication can be implemented in the classroom. It depends on the technology facilities that students can have at school, in their houses or in their communities.

On the other hand, the use of email during the classroom for data collecting projects implies a more complex task it can be applicated to students for tenth and eleventh grade of high school or at the university.

Related to the Keypal projects, teachers should give clear guidelines to their students for promoting a crosscultural communication. The use of English should be appropiate, polite and respectful. This activity can be useful for high intermediate or advanced students.

This activity can lead students to understand, learn and respect other cultures.

Some e learning courses give the possibility to have a keypal communication. When I was taking my last courses of bachelor degree in English Teaching, I used the e learning programscalled Discoveries and Global English. For the second program, I participated in forums with people of different countires. We chated among ourselves and we gave our opinions orally by using speakers and the internet connection. This technique was synchronous and it was very interesting because you were able to listen to other people from different countries with different accents giving their opinions related to some topics.

I believe that the keypal projects is a good idea to introduce for the English teaching and learning process in public education.

Using webquests

As it was discused in the third workshop, the webquest has a specific structure, so it is more rigid than designing a web project.

In first place, for the web project students can choose the topic they want to search. It is necessary for them to narrow the topic, this means that they have to be very specific about the topic they want to study and it would be easier for them if they investigate about a topic they know. Technniques like brainstorming, mind maps, clustering, and using trees are useful for organizing some details about the topic and focused in which aspects they need to go deeper.

The search engines like google, yahoo, and altavista are some of the most common web tools for looking some information. Morover, students can show creativity when presenting the web project: they can use word processor or power point slides to put the text, the letter size, images, colors, movement, and sounds to make it more attractive. Finally, the teacher can evaluate the web projects by oral presentations. This activity can be done in the classroom if the facilities like the access to a computer lab is possible or planned for homework.

Using websites in the classroom

To select useful websites is a very important tool for the English learning process.

The teacher needs to choose a topic that will be interesting for the students and it also can be a current topic.

In addition, this resource is very useful for exploring deeper school curricula contents like the environment, community, and my country. The specific topic can be related to the students´social context and encourage them to give solutions and suggestions for the topic or problem proposed. This tool can be used for accomplishing an extra homework or project.

To warantee success, the students should show motivation, have a clear objective to accomplish, use appropiately websites that provide prescise data for their activities, and show creativity. Besides, the teacher can show creativity designing the task for the pupils, take time to choose the weblinks and encourage students to critize the information they found.

The evaluation can be done through checking a written report, have an oral activity such as a speech or organize a group disscusion related to the information collected. By using these techniques, the learning process can go smoothly and the lesson is going to be more dynamic.

Use of chat in English teaching

Hello, teachers and professor Ariel,

I want to comment that the chats are very easy and very useful.

Students and teachers can use them to have brief conversations using abbreviations, short sentences and contractions in written English.

Also, this is a communication (socila software) which is faster and synchronimus. So, you are able to write a message and receive a reply in a few minutes.

I had the experience using a chat through my email account last Wednesday April 16th. The professor Katalina and some of my classmates of Communication and Culture, were discussing about some aspects of the deeper elements in American culture. The topic was very interesting and every member of the pannel had the opportunity of making comments and answering questions.

The professor made questions and tried to understand each members´ points of view. Besides, I took notes and this is a very important strategy for clarifying doubts.

To sum up, teachers can encourage students to use chats in order to analyse some topics. Rules about politeness, being cautious with spelling and messages´contents, and showing respect are necessary to be aware of.