E-MAIL WRITING PROJECTS IN AN EFL CONTEXT: FROMLINGUISTIC AND ATTITUDINAL PERSPECTIVES

Pei-Ling Yang

Abstract


A great number of benefits have been claimed in a Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) context; however, little research has been conducted by the method of discourse analysis. The purpose of this study is to, through discourse analysis, unfold and uncover EFL learners’ underlying feelings about e-mail writing and their writing styles. The participants were thirty-four Applied English-majored college students, writing e-mail to their peers for five times. Based on the data collected from the learners’ e-mail and reflection discourse, the results showed that the majority (88.24%) had positive attitudes towards e-mail writing. Besides positive feelings about this writing project, the learners presented highly active participation in writing e-mail to their peers. Through the e-mail writing project, they not only had more opportunities to use the target language, but also supported each other to deal with academic and personal difficulties. Furthermore, their e-mail writing style had also been analyzed. Through the analysis, it was claimed that EFL learners also used repeated letters, punctuation marks, emoticons, and special features in the e-mail writing. Implications of these findings for future studies are proposed to be of help to those who would like to apply e-mail writing to an EFL context.

 

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e-mail writing, discourse analysis

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejel.v0i0.1938

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