Emailing and its effect on intermediate learners' writing in an EFL context

The present study was set out to investigate the effect of email on EFL learners' writing skill and to show the benefits of using one of the new learning opportunities of the age, emailing, in an EFL writing class for both students and teachers. The differential effects of the two types of treatment (i.e., traditional and the use of emailing) on the learning of writing skill was investigated. The participants of the study were forty four female students, aged 15-17 who were randomly assigned to the two groups of experimental and control. Each group consisted of 22 participants. The course lasted for about three weeks, and was held in one of English language institutes in Sari, Iran. The experimental group sent their assignments through email in addition to the traditional class activities but the control group had the traditional class and assignments were handed in hard copies. For measuring the writing skill, a pretest and posttest was administered to both groups. The pretest and posttest were based on the materials covered in the class. The pretest and posttest were of parallel recognition tests and productive writing tasks. The results of the study showed improvement of the writing ability in experimental group. Further, students in experimental group expressed their positive ideas about the effect of emailing, having an effect on the enhancement of their writing ability during and at the end of the course, as well as improving their other school activities.