This quarter, I am expecting you to become involved in four different e-mail related activities. You may use our E-Mail discussion site for other purposes, too, but these are the regular activities I am expecting you to be engaged in (unless it really starts to become a hardship for you (see "caveat" below). If it does, all of us will need to be engaged in a process of some negotiation. If all else fails, see me and we will see what can be done). The good news is that I am NOT expecting you to learn how to create WWW websites. Whew! The four E-Mail activities (which I believe are manageable) are the following:
Preliminaries: You need to get an e-mail account of some kind. If you do not have one now, you may secure one for free through GSU. We will discuss how on our first day of class but ask your classmates, those who have been in the program for a while can lend assistance. By the way, those who lend assistance will be credited for this as you will notice in the link to grading criteria for this course.
1) Keyboard Contacts: I would like you to initiate and sustain E-Mail connections with at least one ESL student during the ten weeks of our course. Once you have an account, you can begin this immediately through the following WWW link: e-mail addresses of ESL learners from around the world. If you'd prefer, here is a link to e-mail addresses of ESL students enrolled in our Department's own ESL program here at GSU. As background, you might also be interested in exploring another site called International EFL/ESL EMail Student Discussion Lists which provides some helpful guidelines on how to engage in Keyboard Contact exchanges of this kind. You will have to scroll down on your computer screen for the sections devoted to "Why Student Lists?," "Procedures," and "Before your students subscribe."
2) Comprehension Quiz items: Each week, I expect you to send at least two separate E-Mail messages to the whole group (through our class discussion list). Each of the two messages should present one "comprehension quiz" type item (and along with your own corresponding model answer) tied to one of our required course readings for that week. Your two submissions may treat either the same or different reading(s) as long as you indicate which reading is being addressed clearly. For the most part, I want you to center your efforts on the readings included in our course packet. Most of these are journal articles. Please avoid questions tied to the H. D. Brown Teaching by Principles text since these are treated thoroughly through links already included on our daily course schedule. As an illustration, here is a link to over two dozen model comprehension quiz items from one of our first days of class: a list of quiz items tied to H. D. Brown's 2nd chapter . Please refer to the H. D. Brown text comprehension quiz items as models for the items you generate on your own.
In your e-mail message, first provide the comprehension quiz type item, then hit your "return" key a few times as to leave plenty of blank space between your item and your own written answer to the item. This way, when reading your message, we will be able to try to answer the item ourselves prior to "scrolling" down on our computer screens to read the prepared answer you provide.
3) Discussion Topic: At least once each week, you should use the Nicenet system to post at least one general discussion topic for all of us to see and (possibly) respond to (if we are so inclined). Your posted discussion topics need to be clearly focused on one of our course themes (e.g., recent readings, issues that come up in class, seminar discussion topics).
4) Discussion Responses: At least once each week, you should post a thoughtful response (i.e., one illustrating that you are seriously engaged in the themes of this course) to at least one general discussion topic provided by some other member of our course. Your discussion response need not be excessively long but would probably be longer than your writing for items #2 and #3 as described above. (The length of your e-mail exchanges with ESL students is completely up to you). I will venture to guess that an appropriate minimum length for item #4 discussion responses would be around 100 words in most instances.
Caveat: If you have excessive trouble accessing an E-Mail account, please complete tasks 2, 3, & 4 as described on this page as best you can and simply bring in a sufficient number of "hard copies" of your work to class. You should distribute these copies to all of us in the course when the class meets. Obviously, this arrangement will not be possible for e-mail connections with ESL students.
In sum, you have four (4) e-mail tasks to work on each week
2) Quiz Items: You create at least one comprehension quiz type items focused on a reading from our course packet.
3) Discussion topic: You create at least one general discussion topic for all of us to consider.
4) Discussion Response: You respond to at least one general discussion topic posted by some other member of our course.