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30 send one message to entire class members. This can save valuable class time.
Moreover, with the return receipt capabilities of e-mail the teacher is able to know whether each individual student has opened and read the message. This
is an important feature to help monitor the progress of the student or the group.
It can be concluded by using e-mail, students and teachers become better problem solvers and better communicators. By using e-mail, students
can begin to realize their full potential when they are trigged to deal such feature as a tool in completing their writing tasks more effectively. Students
have the chance to collaborate and work together with others and teachers. On the other hand, by working electronically, teachers can help learners create,
analyze, and produce information and ideas more easily and efficiently. In this case, teachers directly make their works easier in teaching and learning
process.
C. Review of Related Researches
There are some researchers giving evidences about the use of e-mail in teaching learning. First, Huitt 1997: 3 concludes that students in most college-
level courses would benefit from the use of e-mail. E-mail relates to the educational needs of students and provides students with experiences throughout
their programs that will expose them to the benefits of e-mail without its use becoming overwhelming.
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31 Second, Lee 1998: 3 confesses that e-mail is a very useful vehicle for
teaching English. It enables the teacher to monitor the process of the students writings to save class time for the teachers assignments and comments. E-mail
can furnish teacher-student, student-student communications including formal and informal consultations, exchange of dialogue journals and writing conferencing.
Speed, power, and flexibility of the computer and e-mail can effectively facilitate second language writing.
Third, Murar and Ware 1998: 2 discovered students were scheduled to read the August Wilson play Fences at the same time, they set up e-mail
communication between students to allow some teacherless talk about the text. Though teachers were not involved in student online dialogues, the conversations
evidenced the same reading strategies promoted in teacher-led discussion, including predication, clarification, interpretation, and others.
Forth, Ramsey in Kristina Torres, 2006: 2 acknowledges teaching writing using e-mail is more innovative. She describes how she stepped away
from traditional skill and drill writing exercises and started teaching students to write clear, concise e-mails, reports, and other texts. But she acknowledged that
one of the challenges has been refining the curriculum for teachers with fewer resources.
Fifth, Gonglewski, Meloni and Brant 2000: 10 state while e-mail is now already considered a relatively low-tech medium; it can bring effective benefits
to the process of learning a foreign language. The most important benefit is its
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32 potential to offer learners opportunities for much more valuable communicative
interaction in the target language than was ever possible in the traditional foreign language classroom.
By considering the concept of the nature of writing, the use of e-mail, and review of related research, it can be assumed that by using e-mail in this research,
the students can improve their writing skill.
D. Rationale
