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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Since the early 1990’s, a growing body of researches have reported on the

effects of various e-mail writing projects on different aspects of language learning.

Guided by the three research issues as previously mentioned, this chapter is divided

into following sections. First, the effects of using e-mail in language classroom in

terms of cultural awareness, linguistic gains, and students’ perceptions. Second, the

factors sustaining students’ e-mail communication after the required writing activity

is completed. Third, the introduction of the concept “willingness to communicate”

(WTC) used to investigate students’ sustainability.

2.1 Raising students’ cultural awareness

Though recognizing culture as an integral part of language learning, many

language teachers still consider introducing linguistic concepts and monitoring their

production the top priority. They regard understanding of target culture as “an

automatic byproduct of language instruction” (Brown, p.182), assuming that, with

little specific treatment designed to promote intercultural understanding in

curriculum, the cultural acquisition would automatically occur. Some teachers even

treat the role of culture in teaching as merely a temporary refresher in the normal

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course and believed that playing movies and songs, or introducing the customs and

holidays of the target culture equals teaching the target culture. True, these activities

would, to some extent, help students form the knowledge, but run the risk of

oversimplifying the richness and variety of culture and never offer learners chances

to experience the lived culture of the target language speakers. As a result, what

Taiwanese students know about Halloween is not the origin of the holiday, but the

scary costumes and pumpkins. As for Thanksgiving, only the turkey but not Pilgrim

and Mayflower. In this way, the term “culture” turns out to become nothing more

than an empty word in second language classroom. The teachers seem to be unaware

that culture represents not only the material products, but also the attitudes, beliefs,

ways of thinking, behaviors shared by the community members (Kramsch, 1995).

Wilson (1982) proposed “cross-cultural experiential learning,” through which

learners will be able to compare the difference between their own culture and the

target culture, and thus develop the global view to the community, the country and

the world. Teachers must allow students to observe and explore cultural interactions

from their own perspectives to enable them to find their own voices in the second

language speech community. In line with the ideas, Liaw & Johnson (2001) stated

that “as the EFL students interacted with representatives of the target language

culture, they became aware of the process of culture in very real and personal way.”

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(p. 248) However, since visiting foreign countries or studying overseas requires high

cost and great time consumption, only a limited group of learners have access to

make real interactions with people of different cultures. In contrast, e-mail, with the

features of immediacy, convenience, accessibility and low cost, provides learners

with an opportunity to build direct correspondence with the individuals in the target

culture and thus can explore different aspects of the target culture (Gonloewski,

Meloni and Brant, 2001; Warschauer, 1995; Warschauer, 1997; Jogan et al. 2001).

“Without leaving their home environment, the students acted as cultural informants

and agents of cross-cultural exchange” (Liaw & Johnson, 2001, p. 248). At the same

time, since e-mail can easily create two-way cultural dialogue, it becomes less

challenging for language teachers than incorporating the authentic meaningful

interaction with the native speakers from target culture into the class (Jogan et al.

2001).

Many studies have found that e-mail exchange projects not only develop

relationship with learners in other cultures (Liaw & Johnson, 2004) but also help

them obtain cultural information. For example, in Handle & Corl’s (1998) study, the

learners were aware of the differences and the similarities between American and

German culture, after reading the same texts dealing with the culture-related issues,

such as the school system and television watching, and then reacted to them by

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sending written comments via e-mail to both classes.” Similarly, both Hertel (2003)

and Jogan et al. (2001) reported that students involved in the cross-cultural e-mail

exchange perceived the differences and similarities between their own culture and

the target one and were motivated to pursue the ongoing discovery about the other’s

culture. What’s more, Hertel (2003) even noticed that the participants were

increasingly concerned about the world problems through the experience. Following

the similar study design by Hertel (2003), Liaw (2006), too, recognized the benefits

of the exchanges and discussions with speakers of another culture and even

compared such interaction to “a journey of discovery and reflection,” (p. 60) in

which EFL students’ intercultural competence was fostered and they would be likely

to become “intercultural speakers.”

Jogan et al. (2001), Hertel (2003), Itakura (2004), and Liaw & Johnson (2001)

further indicated that e-mail exchange with native speakers enabled the learners to

modify existing stereotypes and form new perception of the target culture, and

“benefit the learners in different ways to develop more sensitive and complex views

on culture.” The results of Fedderholdt’s (2001) study again confirmed that

stereotypes toward another culture had been challenged, and both learners are

surprised at discovering the similarities and differences between the two cultures.

(Fedderholdt, 2001; Liaw & Johnson, 2001) However, if not carefully functioned, as

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O’Dowd (2003) cautioned, such intercultural exchange can result in “a reinforcement

of stereotypes and a confirmation of negative attitudes” (p. 138).

2.2 Facilitating students’ language learning

E-mail was considered a hybrid communication - writing and speaking. The oral

characteristic was revealed not only by a conversation-like writing style but also by

certain conversation cues (wow, oops) as observed in the students’ e-mail messages

(Wang, 1996) and typographics, such as exclamation marks, capitalized words, and

creative emoticons representing smiles ‘☺’ or winks ‘;-)’ to “lend tone and feeling

to a medium of communication….as in an oral communication” (Absalom &

Mardem, 2004, p. 415). The conversational and informal style has two advantages -

one is to encourage the students in e-mail dialogue journaling to write more than

paper-and-pencil dialogue journal, which students tend to view as formal writing

(Wang, 1996). The other, as observed by González-Buneo (1998), is that students

have a chance to develop conversational–like language and even increase potential

speaking skills and oral fluency.

Though oral-like, e-mail takes place in a text-based form, in which the speech

can be permanent. Therefore, besides allowing learners to communicate

interactively, e-mail, as one of the form of the text-based Computer Communicated

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Communication (CMC), can be easily “transmitted, stored, archieved, reevaluated,

edited, and rewritten" (Warschauer, 1997, p. 472) and thus offers an additional

advantage of reflection (Vinagre, 2005; Warschauer, 1997; Absalom & Marden,

2004) and the later retrieval (González-Buneo, 1998).This in turn reinforces the

overall thinking-composing-writing process. The aspects of the

speaking/interaction and writing/reflection are emerged in Handle & Corl’s (1998)

cross- cultural e-mail project. First, students both in America and Germany

e-mailed their written responses on a selected reading. Second, students reacted to

their fellow students’ comments. This required students to reflect in the process of

interaction, and the text-based communication permitted them to do so. Such

e-mail exchange unleashed “the interactive power of text-based communication” as

Warschauer (1997, p. 472) claimed. Moreover, according to Handle & Corl (1998),

subsequent in-class discussion and composition are reinforced by the prior e-mail

discussion. Learners made both quantitatively and qualitatively richer oral

exchanges and linguistic use than those of a parallel section that had read the same

texts but not engaged in the e-mail discussions; moreover, they demonstrated

“better compositions that benefited from the additional communicative

opportunities.” Krooneberg’s (1994/1995) study provided evidence of the

advantage. Integrating e-mail in the language conference between two classes, she

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found that thoughts and arguments composed in writing e-mail gave students time

to reflect before the oral discussion. A student reported “whenever we have a class

discussion based on e-mail entries, I find the quality of the arguments is enhanced

and thinking is more creative than without this kind of preparation” (Krooneberg,

1994/1995, p. 23).

However, there are also studies in which learners show no positive

improvements of language performance in e-mail exchange, and Leh’s (1999)

research is one of the examples. To investigate if the reading, writing, and speaking

performance of the students using e-mail in class differ from the performance of

those students not using e-mail in class, Leh (1999) conducted a voluntary e-mail

exchange between Spanish learners in America and native speakers of Spanish in

Mexico and administered the cloze test, three written reports, and the oral

examination both pre and post e-mail. Even though the quantitative results of the

study indicated that there was no significant difference on reading, writing, and

speaking performance between the two groups, both participants and instructors

were in favor of the use of e-mail, which provided them with a good environment

for friendship, learning, and communication. Leh later still strongly recommended

that e-mail or technologies should be integrated into a foreign language course

Since e-mail is in-built with word-processing function, the electronic texts

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can always be revised during the writing process. Students are thus willing to take

more risks to test the recently-learned expressions or patterns and not afraid of

committing original thoughts to paper (Greenfield, 2003; Torii-Williams, 2004).

Also, such practice of free-writing encourages students to put down what comes to

their mind and focus only on the communication (Handle & Corl, 1998;

Kroonenberg, 1994/1995; Warschauer, 1995; Wang, 1996), which makes e-mail

writing more spontaneous, compared with writing using pencil and paper (Wang,

1996). This spontaneity leads to the assumption that students’ writing might end up

in sloppiness. However, sometimes it is not necessarily the case. Particularly when

e-mail was set between two classes as a conference assignment in which students

had access to everyone’s entry, students take more care of their writing than in the

traditional writing. One student even commented “I tend to proofread more when

my writing is on the screen,” since they were aware that their writing was open to

the public (Kroonenberg, 1994/1995, p. 21). Aistsiselmi (1999) even found that

despite the length of the messages, “the learners’ ideas appeared to be organized in

a more logical and structured way than most of their paper assignments” (p. 9). As

mentioned earlier, the text-based form of communication could be accessed at any

time, which creates an opportunity for teachers to notice students’ common errors

in the e-mail entries, and design a follow-up instruction to raise students’ awareness

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to the target misuses (Handle & Corl, 1998; Torii-Williams, 2004). However,

students’ errors should be treated with care. As one of the main objectives of e-mail

used in L2 classroom setting is to promote genuine communication, teachers must

be more concerned with the global comprehension rather than grammatical

correctness. This treatment is also welcome by the learners, who in Aistsiselmi’s

(1999) e-mail activity commented after the e-mail activity that they preferred

getting responses on their ideas to receiving those where every mistake was

underlined or highlighted. Thus, with the objective of focusing on content, some

teachers adopt an alternative. That is, without directly pointing out students’

grammatical errors, teachers model grammatical structures students have trouble

with or newly learned in their response, assuming learners may subconsciously

notice and acquire the target features (Krooneberg, 1994/1995; Aistsiselmi, 1999).

On the other hand, students are not the only ones that benefit from the written

features carried by e-mail. Instructors alike also enjoy using such electronic

medium. One of the reasons is that students’ writings could be saved in the

computer for later reference (Warschauer, 1995; Wang, 1996). Another advantage

for teachers is that they can see students’ writing process by organizing writings

assignments electronically based on the group of students’ names, date, or topic

names (Belisle, 1996). Besides, teachers can further monitor the participation of the

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online project by asking students to send teachers a copy of e-mail intended to their

partners through the mailing list (Handle & Corl, 1998).

Because of its asynchronicity, writing via e-mail is time and

place-independent. Writers can compose and send their message at their convenience

(Warschauer, 1997; Xu, 1996; González-Buneo, 1998). Besides classroom and

computer lab, students can carry on online communication at any place they like,

giving rise to great self-initiated interaction (Warschauer, 1996). Compared with

other synchronous CMC such as instant messaging and online chatting, which

demand the urgency of communicative flow, e-mail, on the contrary, offers a

“comfort zone” (Jogan et al., 2001, p. 346) allowing students for more time in

preparation as well as in in-depth reflection (Meloni et al., 2001; Warchauer, 1997;

Beauvois, 1997). Students are able to control their own paces, and have more time to

monitor and edit their message by making use of language-related resources before

sending (Absalom & Mardem, 2004), which contributes to “greater grammatical

accuracy and coherence of ideas” (González-Buneo, 1998, p. 60). This would not be

easily achieved in the traditional classroom setting due to time and situation

constraints. Therefore, when integrated in writing courses, e-mail can enhance

students’ linguistic development. Being time-independent, e-mail in some way

creates a “conversation in slow-motion” (Beauvois, 1997) as well. Students are given

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more time to think, respond, and read than face-to-face conversation, while at the

same time maintaining the communicational context.

2.2.1 E-mail as comprehensible output

As one of the forms of networked exchanges, e-mail is text-based and learners

have the need to type or produce the message. This is an example of comprehensible

output (Swain, 1985), which creates a fertile environment for SLA to occur. Such

"comprehensible output" proposed by Swain (1985) is a learner language that is

intended to convey meaning to an interlocutor while stretching the learner's linguistic

resources and would seem to have a potentially significant role in the development of

syntax and morphology. In other words, not all production qualifies as valuable

comprehensible output. It may be important that learners have an audience for the

linguistic output they produce so that they attempt to use the language to construct

meanings for communication rather than solely for practice (Chapelle, 1998).

Furthermore, the language production on e-mail writing also enables learners to

notice a gap, a linguistic problem in their existing interlanguage capacity. The

attention was triggered either by external feedback like teachers or native speakers as

in the tandem projects or by the self consciousness. As reviewed in both the case of

Torri-Willams(2004) and Absalon & Marden (2004), students would consult the

resources when they felt the need to fill the gap in linguistic knowledge or modified

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the output. For example, some students commented that the reason they learned new

expressions was because “they wanted to express certain thoughts and had to look

them up in their dictionaries” (Torii-Williams, 2004, p. 114). As a result, the

syntactic mode of processing helps learners internalize new forms and even improve

accuracy of their existing grammatical knowledge. The use of the target language

thus becomes an end in itself for the learners engaging in the e-mail tasks, and it is

generally believed to be an indicator of and a necessary condition for successful

second language acquisition.

2.2.2 Assessment / Evaluation of language gains in e-mail exchange

Generally, most of the studies did not provide an objective assessment of

improvement in language proficiency through e-mail exchange. To make learners’

writing genuine communication, instructors may prefer not grading the e-mail

assignment as they usually do to other written assignments. Even though some did

choose to grade the e-mails, the grades were based on the regular exchange of the

weekly e-mail instead of linguistic accuracy aimed at assuring students’

participation (Hertel, 2003; Torii-Williams, 2004). Krooneberg (1994/1995) made

students’ e-mail assignment part of students’ portfolios and self-assessment process.

The latter was students’ comments on their language skills and suggestions of

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strategies of improvement. For fear that student’ perceptions about their progress

may not be objective, she later joined the discussion with students to examine how

the student’s writing, thinking and debating skills had developed until the two sides

reached agreement. Woodin (1997) later proposed a more comprehensive

assessment in his tandem partner e-mail project, which was also adopted by

Vingare (2005) in her tandem e-mail exchange. From the substantial data collected

for each participant, an attempt was made to assess certain characteristics of the

students’ involvement and experience that might generally be considered to be

indicative of successful language learning. According to Woodin (1997, p. 23),

these characteristics include:

" Exposure to language: The number of e-mails written and received.

" Active learning: Students who seemed involved and interested in their partner and their culture or language were considered more successful.

" Negotiation of meaning and information seeking: These characters are of particular importance in tandem learning as they help build partner relationships.

" Error correction: Participants who corrected others and received corrections were considered to be successful; error correction was regarded as evidence that their performance was monitored.

" Use of cultural information acquired by participants: students have the opportunity to use information gained from their partners in an oral presentation given at the end of the project period.

" Re-use of language offered by the participants’ partner: Re-use of information an incorporation of corrected errors in the subsequent e-mails was taken as evidence of active involvement in the learning process.

Considering assessment tools may fail to accurately and adequately evaluate

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important to document (Greenfield, 2003). As one of the aspects of learning

associated with learner autonomy, self-evaluation serves double functions in the

learning progress (Vinagre, 2005). One is that it allows learner to assess his

progress, as a summative evaluation regarding the overall learning progress. The

other is that it is “a prerequisite for making decision concerning all aspects of one’s

own learning,” (p. 379) which ensures the learner autonomy in the learning process.

To obtain the students’ answers as data, self-evaluation adopted in the studies is

usually in the form of questionnaire or open-ended questions. However, the tools

did not seem to help evaluate the improvement in students’ language proficiency

objectively as they had been expected to, since the students’ answers to the

self-evaluation questionnaires and their compositions commenting on different

aspects of the project are “highly insufficient and thus inconclusive” (Vinagre,

2005, p. 384).

2.2.3 E-mail as collaborative interaction

It cannot be ignored that all the language gains through the e-mail process is

not built on an individual effort, but on the collaborative on-line interaction between

two parties. E-mail exchange represents a form of collaborative peer interaction, and

thus creates an environment “to learn language, learn about language, and learn

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‘through’ language” (Warschauer, 1997, p. 471). The linguistic forms are

incorporated in the meaningful communication with either in-class peers or native

speakers from various cultures and thus become the tool for social interaction. Such

communicative context makes students aware that what they write is not for

correction by teachers, but to share the thoughts with the peers, the real audience.

Moreover, from the perspectives of Vygostky (1978), the collaborative learning,

either among peers or capable others, is essential for assisting each learners to reach

his or her potential development, the so-called “zone of proximal development.”

There are many study designs closely related to language gains in the

sociocultural context. For example, Li’s (2000) study demonstrates the positive

relationship between audience interaction and students’ e-mail writing. That is,

learners produced more sophisticated written language syntactically and lexically in

the tasks involving such interactive feedback as exchanging ideas on specific writing

topics than in those without interaction. Greenfield (2003) set up the cooperative

discussion and negotiation between the ESL students in Hong Kong (HK) and the

English native speakers in the US. According to HK participants, cooperative

learning is not only fun but also “the ‘most helpful’ means of improving English” (p.

54). Although students felt they did make progress in reading, writing, listening, and

speaking skills, whether the exchange could really improve the public exam-related

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skills such as grammar usage and discrete language functions deserves further

exploration. Vinagre (2005) conducted a Spanish-English e-mail tandem learning

project, with an aim to establish a partnership between two learners who are learning

each other’s mother language and help each other improve communicative

competence on the basis of reciprocity. The learners in the study did show

improvement of language proficiency by means of “exchanging personal, linguistic,

and sociocultural information and corrections about each other’s language” (p. 369).

Not only are the native speakers’ feedback and commentary beneficial to the

non-native speakers’ language learning, but their writings also serve as models for

correct language usage and the strategies used in both spoken and written language

(Jogan et al. 2001). The results again confirm the findings from previous studies,

which recognize that on-line cooperative communication facilitates the language

learning. The collaboration also contributed to the cross-cultural understanding. As

Liaw & Johnson (2001) observed in their cross-cultural e-mail study, after students

having initial exchanges on general cultural information such as holidays, foods, and

school activities, they would then “scaffold and help their partners to associate with

something more culturally specific” (p. 247).

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2.2.4 E-mail offers a non-threatening environment

Most language teachers have confronted with heterogeneous group of students with

varying linguistic levels in L2 classroom, and increasing the equal participation

among the students has been of the most challenging issues. Students with weak

communicative competence are usually found reluctant to give their voice in the

discussion. There are number of factors involved in the reluctance. Besides lack of

linguistic competence, preparation and experience, affective factors should be taken

into consideration. Students with low proficiency in L2 are mostly fear of mistakes,

in lack of confidence and thus intimidated and anxious with the judgmental feedback

from the advanced peers. Due to the faceless environment provided by e-mail,

students with the inhibition and the fear of being on the spot are more willing to

express themselves and take risks than in the face-to-face conversations (Belisles,

1996; Beauvois, 1997; Kroonenberg, 1994/1995; González-Buneo, 1998; Aistsiselmi,

1999; Liaw & Johnson, 2001; Sabieh, 2002). This offers the diverse learners the

opportunity to meet their needs and styles which a traditional classroom in most

instances fails to offer. Hoffman (1996) states that the "anonymous quality of

network communication can be face-saving as well, relieving learners of the

inhibitions associated with face-to-face communication and allowing them to express

themselves more freely..." (p. 55). These observations respond to Krashen’s affective

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filter hypothesis (1982), which claims that the best acquisition will occur in

environments where anxiety is low, that is, in context where the “affective filter” is

low. Aitsiselmi’s (1999) e-mail project between the learners and tutor may be the

model, where, as he claimed, the affective filter is at its lowest. Not only the activity

itself was voluntary, but learners were not evaluated on the formal correctness of

their L2 output. Moreover, the tutor also had a regular meeting with the learners to

establish the relationship of trust, so that they would be willing to make the

correspondence. As a result, in their feedback, some students found pleasure in

e-mail writing, since they treated it as a form of informal chat. The bonding between

instructor and the learners was also stressed by Sabieh (2002) and Stockwell & Levy

(2001), the latter further noted that the bond was related to e-mail sustainability. In

this way, the role of an instructor plays in e-mail communication seems to have

influence on the learners’ behavior.

2.2.5 E-mail with native speaker (NS) group v.s. non-native speaker (NNS) group

Most of the cross-cultural e-mail exchange projects have had the participants

interact with the native speakers (NSs) (Jogan et al., 2001; Hertel, 2003; Itakura,

2004; and Liaw & Johnson, 2004). Besides giving learners opportunities to

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understand the target culture, as previously reviewed, e-mail interactions with NSs

help non-native speakers (NNSs) gain language competence with the linguistic input

from the NSs. According to Krashen’s input hypothesis (1985), language acquisition

occurs when learners are exposed to the comprehensible input a little beyond their

current level of competence. In this way, learners can understand most of the input

but still be challenged to make progress. NSs also appear to be the figure of authority

as sources of cultural information when learners attempt to explore the stereotypes of

the target culture (Itakura, 2004). But Leh (1999) later argued that exchange with

NSs may prove to be difficult for L2 students, for the NSs themselves may have little

motivation beyond learning about another culture, while the NNSs are concerned

about the language. The viewpoint was echoed by Stockwell & Levy (2001). On the

other hand, Varonis and Gass (1985) showed that NNS-NNS interactions resulted in

more meaning-negotiating exchanges than NS-NNS interaction. They indicated that

NNSs felt freer with one another to demonstrate their non-comprehension and thus

negotiate for meaning since they recognized their “shared incompetence” (p.84).

Based on the interviews with her NNS students after the NNS-NS networked

collaborative interaction, Lee (2004) further found that NNS prefer working with

NNSs to NSs, for the pressure of NSs’ high language proficiency levels. Thus,

Fedderholdt (2001) concluded and justified involving the NNS in the e-mail project

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“when NNS exchange emails, the balance of linguistic and cultural power is more

equal, as neither group belongs to the target language culture” (p. 275).

2.3 Students’ perceptions of e-mail activity in language classroom

A number of studies have demonstrated and reinforced the positive results and

learners’ achievements brought by the e-mail project. However, students’ voices are

seldom heard and analyzed in terms of the project itself but focus on language

learning, cultural acquisition, authentic communication, self-fulfillment and so on.

Therefore, whether the participants involved all embrace the technology and agree

upon the benefits advocated by the researchers were not known clearly. To bridge the

gap and gain a comprehensive understanding of students’ perceptions, Greenfield

(1997) designed a comprehensive student-oriented questionnaire and personal

interviews about (1) changes in attitudes towards computers and language learning;

(2) effect of computer background on attitude, interest, and motivation; (3)

perception of their acquired reading, writing, speaking and listening skills; and (4)

attitude towards cooperative learning. Generally, in coincidence with the previous

studies, the majority of ESL students in her study also used positive adjectives, such

as useful, enjoyable, and helpful to describe their feelings toward the exchange. Two

weaknesses mentioned by students were that the project was not long enough (12

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weeks) and they did not receive enough letters from their keypals. The former was

interpreted as a positive response, which meant students wanted the project to be

more and proceed for a longer period of time. When asked what part of the project

they would change in order to make the project better, learners showed highly

content with the project itself, but not with their partners due to the lack of response.

Additionally, the four language skills were improved especially the writing skill,

which was in correspondence with the conclusions of other researches. Yet, there was

a mild disagreement with the statement that the exam-related skills had been

improved as a result of the project based on the mean score of the survey on a Likert

scale. Some students even mentioned that they did not believe the discretely taught

skills about grammar usage and vocabulary had been improved to the point of

helping them on the public exams and prefer to learn the language function sills that

would be tested on the exams. The researcher later explained that the exchange was

only a part of the curriculum, and the exam-related skills would still be taught in

classes when they did not conduct the exchange. She also argued that it was

impossible to integrate all the elements of the “national curriculum” in the exchange

while addressing the real-life communicative skills at the same time. In fact, she had

adopted a comprise solution to the problem. That is, she included the most important

items from the curriculum to the exchange, and the rest topics had been mandated in

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3 out of 8 periods of regular English periods each week.

2.4 The sustainability of e-mail interactions

Several studies mentioned that the participants showed willingness to join the

e-mail project or kept writing to their key-pals after the closure of the project (Leh,

1999; Hertel, 2003; Torii-Wiliams, 2004). But they did not further investigate what

factors contribute to the students’ sustainability of e-mail interactions. That is,

whether the participants sustain the long-term communication and the reasons behind

such sustainability are still largely unexplored. Lamy & Goodfellow (1999) did show

concern to the sustainability of threads of online discussion forum. Their

interpretations of why threads end were many, some of them were the end-of thread

messages, discourse mishaps, syntactic errors, and participants’ failure to read new

messages. They indicated that unlike real-time oral conversation, computer-mediated

communication, in lack of body language or intonation to sustain the interaction,

required more explicit discourse triggers to elicit the response. Aware of the research

gap, Stockwell & Levy (2001) involved 48 learners of Japanese and 34 native

speakers in 5-week e-mail interactions, and proposed tentative reasons affecting the

sustainability in the NS-NNS interactions. In the study, students were required to

exchange messages regarding a weekly topic and beyond the set topics. The range of

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messages produced by NNS over 5-week period was varied from 0 to 30. After

analyzing students’ end-of-thread messages, several factors related to sustainability

were identified, such as proficiency, computing experience, in-country experience,

and topic. The students who sustained high-interaction tended to be more proficient,

have more computing experience, in-country experience, and deal with topics outside

the assigned topics. Stockwell & Levy’s (2001) study did help us gain insight into the

factors contributing to the sustainable e-mail interactions. However, there was no

follow-up investigation of students’ e-mail interactions after the 5-week research

period expired.

On the other hand, according to the survey of 167 university students in 12 ESL

and EFL academic writing classes, Warschauer (1996) found that the strongest

motivating factor of using computer was communication, which, obviously, was one

of the inherent natures of e-mail exchange. By communicating with native speakers

or nonnative speakers in other countries, classmates and teachers, the students thus

felt part of a community, developed thoughts and ideas, learned about different

people and cultures, and from each other. The other motivating factors were

empowerment and students’ feeling that computer could help them learn better and

more independently. However, will these factors motivate students to sustain the

follow-up e-mail interactions? Despite the existence of the motivating factors,

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spontaneous and sustained e-mail interactions are not ensured. It is likely that

students may cease the correspondence once they are not involved in any e-mail

project. That is, whether students will willingly carry on the interactions themselves

without any extrinsic motivator, such as the interference of instructors and grades,

remains unknown. Also, if the communication is sustained, then what are the

contributing factors? Students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) might influence

their engagement in communication when they have the choice to do so.

2.4.1 Willingness to communicate

Willingneess to communicate (WTC) was originally introduced by McCroskey

& Baer (1985) with reference to L1 communication. It was conceptualized as the

probability of engaging in communication when given a choice to do so. McCroskey

and associates considered WTC as a fixed personality trait that is stable across

situations, such as communication apprehension and perceived competence. But later

when MacIntyre et al. (1998) extended WTC to L2 communication situations, which

is intended to explain individual and situational variables that have the potential to

influence a person’s WTC. The situation-based variables representing “an intention

to communicate at a specific time to a specific person” (p. 559) need to be

considered, since L2 use introduces the potential for significant situational

(25)

differences based on wide variations in communication competence and inter-group

relations (Macintyre et al., 1998). MacIntyre et al. (1998) adapted WTC to the L2

situation in a heuristic model to account for stable and situational-based influences

on willingness to initiate L2 communication. This model was constructed as a 6-layer

pyramid, illustrating the interrelated variables in L2 use - social and individual

context, affective cognitive context, motivational propensities, situated antecedents,

and behavioral intention (Figure 1).

As Macintyre et al.’s (1998) concluded, the concept of WTC was expected to be

extended to include other modes of communication. Besides, the WTC construct

could pedagogically and practically help us learn the factors influencing the “real

world” contact. Therefore, when MacIntyre et al.’s (1998) model is extended to L2

e-mail setting, it is hoped that the model will tentatively offer the explanations to

students’ WTC, their sustainability in the follow-up correspondence.

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Figure 1. Heuristic model of variables influencing WTC ( MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, & Noels, 1998, p. 547)

2.5 Conclusion

Based on the literature reviewed in the chapter, we can conclude that e-mail

writing is helpful to enhance students’ understanding toward different cultures. Also,

no matter what class activities it is incorporated with (e.g., cross-cultural e-mail

exchange project, e-mail dialogue journal, language conference), e-mail is always

ready to provide an authentic communicative context through the real interaction and

collaboration with their key-pals, which contributes to significant language

acquisition quantitatively and qualitatively. Even though many researchers involve

native speakers to interact with the non-native participants in the cross-cultural

(27)

e-mail exchange projects, some still preferred NNS-NNS interactions, for the

linguistic and cultural power is more balanced in such collaboration. On the other

hand, learners may have a chance to get exposed to a different culture aside from

English-speaking countries. E-mail should be evaluated objectively, and a

comprehensive assessment proposed by Woodin (1997) in his tandem e-mail project

and learners’ self-evaluation are both adopted in the literature. As for students, their

perceptions of e-mail project are generally positive. Especially for those of inhibition

or low language proficiency, they can find shelter in the faceless environment offered

by e-mail, which in turn lowers their affective filter. The enjoyment can motivate and

sustain the correspondence till the required e-mail writing is completed. However,

the factors sustaining of e-mail interactions deserve further investigation. The

addition of willingness to communicate (WTC) to the literature is expected to help us

learn the factors influencing the voluntary L2 communication.

The current study is a case study that investigates if two groups of non-native

speakers perceive themselves making any linguistic gains and acquiring cultural

information through a cross-cultural e-mail exchange project. If there is any case of

sustainability found after the required correspondence is completed, WTC model will

be applied to tentatively interpret the contributing variables that have the potential to

affect such behavior. Besides, I’d like to examine if the factors related to

(28)

sustainability in the current study are consistent with those identified in the study by

Stockwell & Levy (2001), who limit their investigations to 5-week e-mail

interactions period.

數據

Figure 1.  Heuristic model of variables influencing WTC ( MacIntyre, Clément,  Dörnyei, & Noels, 1998, p

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