Make an Update of 300 words or more: Choose an example of a contemporary social practice – in the workplace, as a citizen, or as a person using new media in their everyday life. Describe the new practice, analyzing its communicative features. What are its implications for literacies pedagogy?

Electronic Messaging in the classroom

Although it is one of the oldest applications of “new” media, I still think that using e-mail is one of the best. It's certainly one that I'm comfortable with, and I have relied on it since the 1990s, even as more modern ways to communicate have come about. This medium is so ubiquitous to those of us reading this that it doesn't seem necessary to describe how helpful it is. It would be like writing about the advantages of the automobile. I will, then, just briefly talk about e-mail in broad terms, before moving on to its particular applications in teaching and pedagogy.

Prior to the the wide use of e-mail, there were few ways to instantly send written information, either to individuals or groups. Now, though, as long as people have internet access (and this is an important caveat because digital infrastructure isn't as universal as some people may think), e-mail can be sent and received, regardless of someone's physical location, and read at a convenient time and place.

For the reasons above, and also because people can refer to stored messages repeatedly, e-mail has the advantage that written information has had over the spoken since writing's inception: its (relative) permanence. The information doesn't disappear once it has been uttered, but stays and is able to be referenced later. As a teacher of English as a second language, making use of this resource felt like a safeguard for the information I thought was important for learners. Today, universities find e-mail vital enough that students are routinely assigned e-mail addresses when they enroll, and I made extensive use of it.

An integral part of my job, I felt, was to commit daily notifications to my students in writing and then send those messages electronically. The messages served a few purposes, including briefly summarizing new information that had been presented that day in class, providing a formally written-out description of the homework assignment, and also reminding them of ongoing and upcoming assignments and tests. I believed that the notices were so important that I would frequently remind students during class to check their e-mail accounts. Some did so while they were still in their seats.

This is where the obvious benefit of permanency comes in. Written language allows for more complex thoughts and fewer repetitions, so it is more efficient than haranguing learners repeatedly with easily misconstrued instructions in class time. Even though I was only in their physical presence for a few hours a day, as long as they had access to the internet in the subsequent hours, no student would have an excuse for not knowing my expectations when I was not right there. This was my “insurance.”

My experience with e-mail shows its practical application in teaching classes on almost any subject. Looking at it through the lens of teaching a language, though, I can identify some pedagogical principles at work.

Because I saw these reminders as being so important, completing the messages to 2 classes often would take me an hour. Why did they take so long? It was because the messages demonstrated Situated Practice, trying to meet the learners “where they were” and working with the English knowledge that they had. For messages to beginning learners, for example, I used simple (and later, compound) sentences with basic vocabulary. The paragraphs would be short, having only one to four sentences. Furthermore, I tried to be consistent about the way I ordered information so that learners would see an expected structure of the text, regardless of the level: I'd first touch on what had happened in class that day; second, state was the homework for the next day was; third, tell what assignments are coming up, etc.

In the parts of the messages that reviewed the new subject matter that had been approached that day in class, the pedagogical principle was Overt Instruction. I relied on the learners metacognitive knowledge (of parts of speech in particular) to describe grammatical structures that were being taught in the beginner classes.

It is more difficult to identify Critical Framing or Transform Practice in the e-mails I sent, although there were some instances. One term, I frequently concluded messages with a daily quotation from a daily calendar of African Wisdom. I would quote the day's proverb, such as “Judge each day, not by the harvest but by the seeds you plant,”and perhaps ask a question in English meant to engage the student. If a student were to respond to the quotation (which he or she might do by e-mail or in the next class), it would require some critical analysis to work out what the proverb meant, or produce an appropriate example in their own experience.

Electronic mail, then, can be a helpful tool for learner/teacher communication, a resource for reminding, reinforcing and modeling language use.

Sources

Differences between written and spoken language (omniglot.com)

Love it or loathe it, email changed the world (bbc.com)

How Emails Changed the Way Humans Communicate (byjusfutureschool.com)

nethistory.info/History of the Internet/email.html

Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi (2005) African Wisdom for Life, A Calendar Compiled by Anetta Miller, Paulines Publications Africa