A study on the use of e-mail in a second -semester college -level German class

This dissertation compares e-mail vs. pen-and-paper journal entries. The study was conducted over the period of a semester in a German second semester language class. Two studies that compared e-mail and pen-and paper journals are taken to close investigation and critiqued. A new study was designed to reduce research variables.;Instead of studying a control group and an experimental group, the present project compares two media by examining two groups of subjects within themselves and follows the “Triangulation of Data Collection Principle” to reduce the bias. The data sources include students' journal entries, a semester-end survey, and a follow-up survey. The qualitative and the quantitative analyses of the data follow Long's (1996) Interaction Hypothesis and VanPatten's (1996) Input Processing Hypothesis. The collection and analysis of the student data focus on three central points: (1) the difference in students' communicative discourse and language function; (2) the difference in student linguistic performance, especially the verb system, between the two media; and (3) students perceptions of and attitude toward e-mail and paper journals according to the semester-end survey and the follow-up study.;The result of the study indicates that while using e-mail, students in this class produced a larger quantity of language output and a livelier interaction with more language function variety. However, the results also reveal that while using e-mail students made more verb errors, especially in verb placement. The semester-end survey and the follow-up survey also demonstrate that more students prefer pen-and-paper over e-mail. In sum, e-mail is a valuable supplemental teaching tool in the second language teaching for promoting student-teacher interaction, but it may increase the danger of producing more linguistic errors. Therefore, the teacher should strive for a balance between hand-written and e-mail assignments so that students can both avoid the pitfalls of and profit from both media.