The Use of Email in Education

The use of email is one of the most efficient methods of communication. Even though it is an exclusively written medium, Murray (1991) contends that email is a combination of written and spoken discourse. Therefore, it widens the opportunity for language learners and teachers to incorporate email in language teaching and learning. DiMatteo (1991) claims that email communication provides more writing practice, whereas Barker and Kemp (1990) claim that it encourages collaborative writing.

Crystal (2002) states that email is the use of computer systems to transfer messages between users. Knowing how to use email effectively is an essential skill in business today. It is already widely used in the corporate world and more people use it every day. Email is popular because it is quick, easy and cost-effective. Wallace (1999) notes that electronic mail (email) has become a vitally important Internet environment for net users, who now consider it to be, along with the Web, an indispensable technology. People use it to communicate with friends family, and business colleagues. It is widespread in colleges and universities, government agencies, corporations, and homes. From estimates provided by Spam Statistics 2004, there are 31 billion email users, thus verifying the current popularity of email in the world of information technology. Although it takes up only a relatively small domain of Internet "space," in comparison to the billions of pages on the World Wide Web, it far exceeds the Web in terms of the number of daily individual transactions made.

In the 1970s, email was first used in education for academic information exchange and then to supplement university-level courses. By the early 1980s, network communication began to be adopted by K-12 schools. Teachers and learners launched joint writing and research projects. Some employed basic methods, such as informal electronic pen pals, while others developed cross-cultural collaboration projects integrated with their respective curricula. Waters (2000) asserts that writing email continues to be the most widely used applications on the Internet apart from browsing websites to seek information. Email has opened the way for a new kind of access which enables anyone with an Internet connection to reach out to almost anyone in the world. Email continues to account for an enormous percentage of the total traffic on the Internet because it has become a primary communication tool for both business and pleasure

Further, Crystal (2002) notes that email will take its place in the school curriculum, not as a medium to be feared for its linguistic irresponsibility (because it allows radical graph logical deviance), but as one which offers a further domain where children can develop their ability to consolidate their stylistic intuitions and make responsible linguistic choices. Email has extended the language's stylistic range in interesting and motivating ways. Therefore, it is not a threat for language education, but an invaluable opportunity.

Reference:

Barker, T., & Kemp, F. (1990). Network theory: A postmodern pedagogy for the written

classroom. In C.Handa (ed.) Computers and Community: Teaching Composition in the Twenty-first Century. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Crystal, D. (2002). Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

DiMatteo, A. (1991). Communication, writing, learning: An anti-instrumentalist view of

network writing. Computers and Composition, 8(3), 5-19.

Murray, D (1991). Conservation for Action: The Computer Terminal as a Medium of

Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wallace Patricia (1999). The Psychology of the Internet. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Waters, J.K. (2000). The everything Computer Book: Everything you need to know about your computer, from email to the Internet, from hardware to software, processors to printers, memory to modems and more. London: Longman.