Victoria Muehleisen
Institute of Language Teaching, Waseda University
[email protected]
The exchange between the two teachers is currently resuming with Kristin's new students in her two English Composition classes at Seoul National University all of whom are English Education majors. Vicky's students are also writing to penpals in the U.S.
We got in touch with each other as a result of a workshop on "English for Inter-Asian Understanding: Korea and Japan" Kristin attended at the 1997 Korea TESOL Conference.
Vicky made the e-mail project more of a core part of her course, spending class time in a computer lab to write to their penpals, whereas Kristin's students wrote their e-mails outside of class.
Letters got progressively longer as students wrote. Students wrote about topics ranging from the weather, their majors in school, music, movies, holidays and travel.
Mello, Vera. 1998. "Report on a Penpal Project, and Tips for Penpal-Project Success," The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IV, No. 1, January.
Muehleisen, Victoria. 1998. "Organizing E-mail Penpal Exchanges." Presentation at JALT CALL: Human Connections, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, May 30.
Nagel, Pieter S. 1998. "E-mail in the Virtual ESL/EFL Classroom," The Internet TESOL Journal, Vol. V, No. 7, July.
Robb, Thomas. 1996. "Email keypals for language fluency."
Roberts, Bruce, Rice, Craig, and Thorsheim, Howard, 1994. "Education goals." IECC discussion.
Roberts, Bruce. 1995. "Integration of E-Mail in the Classroom." IECC discussion.
Warschauer, Mark. 1994. "Success stories" IECC discussion.
Muehleisen, Victoria. 1997. "Projects Using the Internet In College English Classes." Presentation given at the CALL: Basics and Beyond conference at Chubu University, Nagoya, Japan, on May 31. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 6, June.
Sperling, Dave. 1997. The Internet guide for English language teachers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.
Warschauer, Mark. 1995. E-Mail for English Teaching. Alexandria, VA: TESOL. (A pretty good book for beginners, although there is not much on e-mail exchanges.)