THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EMAIL EXCHANGE AS PART OF BLENDED LEARNING IN EFL WRITING CLASS : A Case Study between Indonesian and American Classrooms on ePals Project.

ABSTRACT

This study presents data from qualitative case study investigating the writing improvement of 10th grade EFL students through blended learning in Indonesia. The blended learning was incorporated in the email exchange through ePals project for six-week teaching program between EFL students in Indonesia and students in the USA. This study employed classroom practices from blended learning; however this study can also be considered as synthesis from several theories including process writing, constructivism and Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1994, Eggins, 1994) for the text analysis. During the teaching program, the interactions in the blended learning took place both online and face-to-face. The EFL students wrote four interactive emails to their partners as their online interaction and had a class discussion as their face-to-face interaction. The observation was carried out to identify how the

EFL students get their writing improvement. The students’ emails were also collected for

analysis using transitivity and mood in SFG framework.After the teaching program, the students were asked through questionnaires for their responses on the teaching program. There were some

significant improvements on EFL students’ writing. The EFL students systematically studied the

vocabularies and grammatical structure from the incoming emails and class discussion to improve their next emails. The linguistic features allow the students to bridge their expression

from oral expression to written expression. The students’ responses were positive and they said

they made improvement in their writing because they got more confident in writing. However, some technical problems were unavoidable due to the nature and challenges in blended learning. Keywords: Blended learning, ePals project, Online interaction, Face-to-face interaction

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE OF APPROVAL ... i

DECLARATION... ii

PREFACE ... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...iv

ABSTRACT ... v

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...vi

LIST OF TABLES... ix

LIST OF FIGURES ... x

CHAPTER 1 ... Error! Bookmark not defined. INTRODUCTION... Error! Bookmark not defined.

1.1 Background of the Study ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 1.2 Research Questions ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 1.3 The Purpose of the Study ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 1.4 The Scope of the study ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 1.5 Significance of the Study ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 1.6 Definition of the Main terms ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 1.7 Organisation of the Paper ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER II ... Error! Bookmark not defined. LITERATURE REVIEW ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

2.1 Definition of Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.2 Principles of Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.2.1 Features of Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.2.2 Models of Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.3 Steps of Blended Learning in Email exchange in EFL Writing Class . Error! Bookmark not defined.

2.3.1 Planning Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.3.2 Conducting Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.3.3 Feedback and Evaluations ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

2.4 Benefits of Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.4.1 Institutional and Administrations ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.4.2 Learners ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.4.3 Teachers ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.5 Issues on Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.6 Teaching Writing through Email Exchange in EFL Setting . Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.6.1 The Schematic Structure of Emails ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.6.2 Linguistic Features of Emails ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.7 Conclusion ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER III ... Error! Bookmark not defined. METHODOLOGY ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

3.1 Research Site and Participants ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.2 Research Design ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.3 Data Collection Techniques ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.4 Data Analysis ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.4.1 Participant Observations ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.4.2 Collection of Students’ Email ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

3.4.3 Questionnaires ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.5 Conclusion ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER IV... Error! Bookmark not defined. THE TEACHING PROGRAM: AN OVERVIEW ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

4.1 Pre-Project Activities ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.1.1 Planning the Teaching Program ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.1.2 Defining Goals and Objectives ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.1.3 Setting Technicalities ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.1.4 Establishing Connections with Overseas Participants ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.1.5 Introducing the Projects ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.2 The Teaching Program: Email Exchange through Blended Learning Error! Bookmark not defined.

4.2.1 Implementations: Steps in Teaching Writing through Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

4.3 Post-Project Activities... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.3.1 Questionnaires ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

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4.3.2 Resolving Connections ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 4.1 Challenges, Issues and Anticipations in the Teaching program ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

4.2 Conclusion ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER V ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

DATA FROM STUDENTS’ TEXTS ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS .... Error! Bookmark

not defined.

5.1 Analysis of Students’ Texts ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

5.1.1 The Schematic Structure of Emails ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 5.1.2 The Linguistics Features of Emails ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 5.1.3 The Analysis of Transitivity on Students’ Emails ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

5.1.4 The Analysis of Mood on Students’ Emails ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

5.1.5 Summary of Findings... Error! Bookmark not defined. 5.2 Analysis and Findings on the Questionnaires ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 5.2.1 Indonesian Students’ Responses towards Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not

defined.

5.2.2 American Students’ Responses towards Blended Learning ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

5.3 Concluding remarks ... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER VI... Error! Bookmark not defined. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 6.1 Conclusion ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 6.2 Recommendation... Error! Bookmark not defined.

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Five rules of writing the body message in the email text ... 24

Table 2.2 Differences between written and spoken ... 26

Table 2.3 Differences between Written and Spoken Language Based on Systemic Functional Grammar ... 27

Table 2.4 Process Type ... 29

Table 3.1 Email pairing ... 37

Table 3.2 Coding of the email collection ... 37

Table 3.3 Indonesian students’ responses on ePals project ... 39

Table 3.4 American Students’ Responses on ePals Project ... 40

Table 4.1 Project Calendar of Global Warming ... 46

Table 4.2 Model of email from high achievers ... 55

Table 4.3 Farewell expression used by high achievers ... 57

Table 4.3 Sample of copying from American partner’s email by a low achiever student ... 59

Table 5.1 Headers of four session email in MA1E1INA and NS21E1USA ... 69

Table 5.2 Five rules of writing the body message in the email text ... 70

Table 5.3 records of number of words in students’ email and its average ... 72

Table 5.4 Differences between the written and spoken language based on Systemic Functional Grammar ... 76

Table 5.5Excerpts from proficient student’s email ... 77

Table 5.6 Excerpts from proficient middle achievers’ email #1 to #4 ... 79

Table 5.7 Summary of process types in transitivity among students’ email ... 82

Table 5.8 Summary of pattern of clause types in mood system among students’ email ... 88

Table 5.9 Table of the growing number of clauses words in the students’ email ... 89

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Table 5.11 American students’ questionnaires on ePals project ... 98

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Figure of a new language……… 8

Figure 2.2 Figure of a New Language ………. 26

Figure 4.1 School Advertisement ……… 43

Figure 4.2 A website displaying on the global warming project that provides learning objective & standards, lesson plan and timeline ……… 44 Figure 4.3an email between teachers ……….. 48

Figure 4.4 Poster from American teacher for establishing interaction ……… 50

Figure 4.5 Students are having a Discussion and Writing their Emails to their Partner …. 54 Figure 4.6 Teacher’s email for resolving connections ………. 63

Figure 4.7 Feedback from Indonesian students ……… 64

Figure 5.1 Fluctuations of the number of words in the students’ email ………... 73

Figure 5.2 Development of number of clauses in the students’ email ………. 90

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The Implementation Of Email Exchange As Part Of Blended Learning In EFL Writing Class

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1Background of the Study

This study is concerned with investigating the implementation of blended learning in EFL writing class in an email exchange through ePals.com among high school students in West Bandung, Indonesia and Middle School in Attica, Ohio USA.

Writing is the most important academic skill because writing is central to success in and out of school (Nagin, 2006, p. 5). It is not surprising that it has been paid attention to by the researchers particularly in Indonesian context, where writing has been emphasized to be taught as it can be seen from Indonesian Curriculum, 2004. The curriculum stated that students should be able to differentiate different text types; one of them is email (Appendix 1).

Email is one of the text types that has been taught using ICT. With the advance of teaching writing, currently teachers have reached the extent to teach writing through ICT (Warschauer, 2000). Writing is no longer putting pen to paper because the ICT has influenced the teaching of writing (Nagin, 2006, p.5). By the emergence of the ICT, the teaching of writing will help the students write for communicative purposes such in emails, web-based bulletin boards [social media] (Warschauer, 2007, p. 907). In addition, ICT also support the planning and revising even for struggling writers (McArthur, 2006) who can be benefitted from the technology on mechanics and hypermedia for its content and computer-mediated communication (CMC) for its context to reach the interactive writing [such as in email writing] (Warschauer, 2001, McAthur, 2006; Hung, 2007).

Research on teaching of writing though technology alone does not satisfy some researchers because technology without the help of teachers does not suffice the teaching of writing (Egbert 2005; Leloup, Ponterio & Courtland, 2003, Ware & Warschauer, 2005). The students cannot merely stand alone without the help of the teachers either virtually at all time or barely face-to-face. Teaching writing using email, blog, and other social media needs guidance from the teacher

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in a traditional way (face-to-face) to guide the students on their writing because Egbert (2005) has suggested four limitations on writing through ICT; a new literacy, computer has limited technology context, cultural matters and legal issues.

This situation then was followed by the emergence of blended learning to be the bridge between the ICT and traditional ways of teaching and learning. Blended learning has clearly been defined in the book entitled ‘The Blended learning Book; Best Practice, Proven Methodology and Lesson Learned’: “Blended learning is the combination of different training “media” (technologies, activities, and types of events) to create an optimum training program for a specific audience.” The term “blended” means that traditional instructor-led training is being supplemented with other electronic formats. Blended learning programs use many different forms of e-learning, perhaps complemented with instructor-led training and other live formats.” (Josh Bersin, 2004, p. xv).

A number of studies have been carried out upon blended learning. One of the issue being discussed in the study on blended learning is its achievement and satisfaction (Melton & Graff, 2009). Another research also discussed blended learning as a teaching model (Hadjerrouit, 2008; Banados, 2006). From the students’ perspective, the research on blended learning also analysed EFL students’ perception on blended learning (Akkoyunlu & Soylu, 2008; Liang & Bonk, 2009; Kobayashi & Little, 2011.) Blended learning through email exchange has been carried out for L2 improvement (Greenfiled, 2003; Korycinski, 2005; Mahfouz, 2010; Son and O’neill, 1999). Kobayashi & Little (2011) found out that blended learning with its interactions enables the learners to use the target language. The application of blended learning for interaction in the EFL classroom makes the class more ALIVE (Authenticity, Literacy, Interaction, Vitality and Empowerment) both virtually and traditionally (Warschauer, 2000). The interactions among students-students take place in written form through email exchange which is facilitated by ePals.com.

However, the theory of blended learning is still developing and more and more research is underway (Crystal, 2006, p.10; Huang, Ma, Zhang, 2008; Stacy & Gerbic, 2009, p. 36). The

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The Implementation Of Email Exchange As Part Of Blended Learning In EFL Writing Class

research on blended learning which involves students-students email exchange and teacher-students classroom interaction has not been done in EFL writing class in Indonesian context. In addition, the new form of writing from hypermedia and new social context has not been widely researched (Dornyei, 2007; Leloup & Ponterio, 2003). Therefore this study investigates the implementation of blended learning through email exchange with English native speaker students in the USA to improve students’ writing ability in Indonesia. Furthermore, this study also explores the students’ and teacher’s responses to the blended learning activities.

1.2Research Questions

This study attempts to address the following questions:

1. Can email exchange as part of blended learning improve students’ writing ability? 2. What are teacher’s and students’ responses on the blended learning activities?

1.3The Purpose of the Study

In line with the research questions, this study aims:

1. To find out the students’ writing improvements through email exchange as part of blended learning activities qualitatively.

2. To identify teachers’ and students’ responses on the Blended learning activities.

1.4The Scope of the study

This study is a case study focusing on writing improvement in the 10th grade students in Bandung who had an email exchange though ePals.com with American students. In the process of Blended learning, the email interactions between the L2 learners with Native Speakers were analysed by systemic functional linguistic to see how the learners can improve their writing. The analysis focuses on how they use the language and how the meanings are made in everyday linguistic interaction (Eggins, 1994). The analysis focuses on three aspects in SFL which represent the strands of meaning; experiential and interpersonal. This study also investigates the

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response of the students and teachers towards experience of email exchange as part of Blended learning.

1.5Significance of the Study

This study is significant for three perspectives; theoretical, practical and policy.

1. Theoretically, the results of the study are expected to contribute to the theory of blended learning in teaching writing in EFL classroom since the theory in blended learning is in its development (Crystal, 2006, p.10; Huang, et.al, 2008; Stacy & Gerbic, 2009, p. 36). 2. Practically, this study will contribute to the development L2 teaching and ICT. Wu

(2011) supported the argument that innovative educators will explore the use of technology such as getting an exposure to English native speakers and resulted guidelines. Implementation on this teaching practice using ICT will equip language learners and teachers in a more collaborative ways. When the problem and the solution are explored in the study, the ideas will give more anticipation for teachers who will apply this project activity so they are ever-ready at all times. The documentation of the benefit of the study will also give more insight for future development of teaching ESL applying blended learning.

3. In terms of policy, the results of this study are expected to lead to the policy related to the use of blended learning in the classroom, especially in the EFL classroom especially in the research site

1.6Definition of the Main terms

For the sake of clarity, the key terms of the study were defined in the operational definition as follows:

Blended Learning is a term referring to the way in which training is delivered. Both face-to-face

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The Implementation Of Email Exchange As Part Of Blended Learning In EFL Writing Class

pedagogically and didactically meaningful way. The training is continuously supervised by a teacher. (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008, p. 5)

CMC is Computer Mediated Communication which was introduced by Waschauer (2000) to

facilitate language learning through internet.

Email exchange is exchange of emails between partners (student-students) within a group of

students in different classrooms (across countries) to do a project for virtual discussion.

Project activities is the activities conducted by students and teachers based on the ePals project Epals.com is a website that provide classroom connection to do online learning collaboration

around the world

1.7Organisation of the Paper

This study has been organised into five chapters. Chapter 1 covers general description of the introduction including background, research questions, purpose of study, and significance of the study. Chapter 2 explores relevant theories related to blended learning and CMC, writing theory and SFL. Chapter 3 provides the design and methodology of the study that covers research design, research site, participants, data collection and data analysis. Chapter 4 elaborates data presentation and discussion of each finding. And finally chapter 5 is the conclusion and recommendation based on the study.

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the methodology outlines that include research site and participants, research design, and data collection techniques. Data collection techniques cover the participant observations, the collections of students email and the use of questionnaires. The methodology is in line with the literature review in chapter two. As it was mentioned, the purpose of this study is

to investigate the implementation of blended learning in the students‟ writing improvement in

EFL writing class through ePals.com between high school students in Indonesia and America. The final part of this chapter is the methodology on how the data are analyzed.

1.1Research Site and Participants

The research took place in a suburban school in Bandung involving 21 year 10 students with different levels of English proficiency. The ages of the participants were between 15 - 16 years-old. Their mother tongue is Bahasa Indonesia. In this school, the students are encouraged to use English for their daily communication. As one of the measures to use English as their way of communication, the students were encouraged to have a contact with English native speakers in a project. In this study the project was designed in their writing class as one of the attempts to practice their communication in written form for their real life learning. The EFL writing class consists of 11 female students and 10 male students. They were all paired randomly by the teachers from both countries for emails exchanges.

Based on Indonesian English language syllabus in curriculum 2004, year 10 students have to be able to write emails. The syllabus stated that “students should be able to write various texts for daily communication such as email” and “expressing the nuance of meaning with the proper rhetorical development in written text such as descriptive, …]” (curriculum 2004, Competence Standard for English language in high school). To follow the curriculum, the syllabus for year 10 was made by the teacher in the beginning of the academic year. Email writing as language competence has been set with the help of text book as supporting materials. The topic in the text book was about Global warming for the language competence aforementioned (see Appendix 1).

33 The description of the teaching program will be discussed further in Chapter 4. The syllabus and curriculum are the reasons for selecting the group participants.

1.2Research Design

This research encompasses the characteristics of a qualitative case study. This case study is concerned with a single case that deals with development of language competence of small group of individuals in the implementation of blended learning (Brown & Rodgers, 2002). The focus of the case study was writing development on a single high school group of year 10 students who worked on ePals.com project (Burns,1994). By employing case study, this study obtained a thick descriptions (Dornyei, 2007), rich and in-depth insights (McMillan& Schumacher, 2001) of issues involved in the blended learning.

In addition, like other qualitative research, this study is also characterized by the nature of the data that were originated from various sources of data, including participants observation, students text (emails) and questionnaires (Kvale, 1996; Nunan, 1992; Frankel, 2007 & Alwasilah, 2009). The design of most case studies are discovering and presenting the findings about the unrecognized insight in connection with the design of qualitative research (Brown & Rodgers, 2002). Qualitative research is concerned with the subjective interpretation of the findings based on the data collections. Each data collection will be elaborated in the next section.

1.3Data Collection Techniques

As mentioned above, the study used three data collection techniques (McMillan& Schumacher, 2001) including participants observations, email (text) collections and questionnaires. The participant observations were conducted by the teacher who acted as a participant observer. The observations were conducted in 6 weeks including pre-teaching program, conducting the program and post teaching program. After each observation, a field note was made immediately to maintain a chain of evidence in anecdotal record for validation (Fraenkle & Wallen, 2008).

Furthermore, the teachers‟ emails were also complementary data to support the field notes.

The second data collection technique was email collections (Burns, 1994; Cresswell, 2008).

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Students‟ emails were collected to find out the students writing development in terms of the use of language and organizational features of email (based on ePals rubric). The use of language and organizational features include organization, clarity, word choice and mechanic (see Appendix 2).

The emails were selected based on sampling strategy using intensity sampling (Duff, 2008;

Coyna, 1997; Patton, 1990) which means that the students‟ email texts were selected based on

high-achievers (HA), medium-achievers ( MA) and low-achievers (LA). The category of the low achievers students was taken from the highest and the lowest score for the high and low-achievers and the average score for the medium-low-achievers students.

The email analysis covered the analysis of language production and Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The first analysis is the language production that employed word count which is considered as part of the supporting analysis on writing improvement (Egbert, 2005; Swine and Lapkin 1995 in Claro, 2008, p. 5). However, the second analysis on SFG employed detail text analysis on transitivity and mood (Eggins, 1994; Eggins and Slade, 2007) which are not as many as the analysis of language production. The second text analysis involves one representative of each category (HA, MA, LA) because the texts were anlysed qualitatively to investigate the complexity of process types and interpersonal relation between partners.

The final data collection technique was a set of questionnaires aimed at identifying students‟

experience during the project activity. The questionnaires were given to both Indonesian and American students to find out their opinions about the teaching program. The teaching program will be discussed in Chapter 4. In this study, the questions were set up to elicit reactions and attitude (Cresswell, 2008) towards the blended learning.

The questionnaires for both research participants were in different forms; open-ended questions for American students and Likert scale questions for Indonesian students. The reason for choosing different types of questions was the focus was different for each group participant. The questions for Indonesian students focused on the writing development and for American students focused on the topic and problems during the teaching program. However, both questionnaires are aimed to find out their opinion and fact about the project. All data aforementioned were

35 triangulated to enhance the validity of the conclusion and to make sure that all the data tend to come to the same conclusions.

All data analysis will be discussed further in Chapter 4 and 5. Chapter 4 will mainly rely on the field notes and questionnaires because the chapter will discuss the teaching program. Chapter 5

will discuss the development of students‟ writing ability which mainly relies on the text analysis

using the Systemic Functional Grammar. Although each chapter has main data resources, all the types of data in this study are basically required to support the objectives of this study.

1.4Data Analysis

Data from observation were analysed and referred to the implication of Blended Learning to the lavish description in ways how the class could get the benefit from. All the data collections such

as participant observations, students‟ email collections and questionnaires were analysed. Before

all the data were analysed, they were transcribed, collected and organized.

1.4.1Participant Observations

All the data from observations were transcribed in a condensed version and analysed. In the 6-week teaching program, the researcher, who acted as an observer (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001), wrote the results of participants observations which were called field notes. The field notes consist of descriptive and reflective issues (Fraenkle & Wallen, 2008). This division of filed notes enable the researcher to spot the any required data to support the teaching program overview in Chapter 4 and findings in Chapter 5. Chronological events, reconstruction of the dialogues and depiction of activities were transcribed in descriptive field notes meanwhile reflection of analysis and impressions of the researcher were transcribed in reflective field notes

(Patton, 1990; Fraenkle & Wallen, 2008). The field notes then synchronised with the teachers‟

email because it contained the evidence of new plans for each session, reports from the ongoing activities and comments on the teaching programs.

The descriptive and reflective field notes exhibit the data organization of the participants observations which had to be done on the ongoing process (Fraenkle & Wallen, 2008). As it was mentioned above about the chronological events in descriptive field notes, all the participant

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observations were written in chronological order starting from email #1, email # 2, email # 3 and email # 4. All the participants observations were dated based on sessions and topics (see Chapter 2 Section 2.3). All the descriptive data were coordinated with each session on the teaching program overview in Chapter 4. One example of the reflective field notes were as simple as when the American teacher wrote the email without writing the opening remark. He just wrote

her name without „Dear ...‟ to the researcher. The impression was a question whether the way he

wrote an email as an English native speaker was acceptable.

In conclusion, recording descriptive and reflective field notes were ways to analyse the data that gave more information to the teaching program overview in Chapter 4. Most of the teaching program data were mainly derived from participant observation and questionnaires.

1.4.2Collection of Students’ Email

The second data is students‟ emails which were analysed using Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) (Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994; Kress, 2003; Emilia, 2005; Eggins & Slade, 2007). Email collections were analysed in four steps; categorizing, organizing, coding, analyzing schematic structure and analyzing the linguistic features; the theme, the transitivity and the mood.

Before the analysis, the students‟ emails were categorised into high, medium and low-achievers. The emails from each group were taken as an intensity sampling (Duff, 2008; Patton, 1990) that represents the three groups aforementioned. This attempt was taken due to the large number of data as Miles & Huberman (1994) suggested that the study should apply data reduction. To illustrate this, the number of emails was technically 21 pairs of emails for four sessions. It means that each pair has eight emails so that the total number of emails is 168 emails. Consequently, the data reduction was needed.

As mention in Section 3.3, the analysis employed word count for language production and SFG analysis. The email collection for SFG analysis consisted of a set of 4 emails representing HA, MA and LA categories. So, the numbers of emails for SFG analysis were 12 emails. However, In language production analysis, the sample of the students text were 9 sets of emails representing the category aforementioned (HA, MA, LA) to provide credible results (MacMillan & Schumacher, 2001, p. 177) in language production. Thus, each category had 4 sets of emails

37 based on 4-session teachings. The total numbers of email analysis in language production were 72 emails.

The samples of students‟ emails were organised by pairing the emails after data reduction. The

aim of pairing the emails is to identify the interaction between students. The interaction is needed in the mood of SFG analysis. The emails were paired as follows:

Table 3.1 Email Pairing

Email # 1 home Email # 1 partner

Identi

fy

in

g

in

te

ra

ctio

n

Email # 2 home Email # 2 partner

Email # 3 home Email # 3 partner

Email # 4 home Email # 4 partner

Notes:

This table identifies horizontal home and partners email pairing in red arrows and the diagonal home and partners email pairing. The objective of pairing is to see the connection between emails #1 from home (Indonesian) with email # 1 partner (English) and so on. Then, since email #1 from partner will be connected two email # 2 from home (Indonesia) and follows the same pattern. In short, all the emails were connected from the first to the last email.

The next step of email analysis is coding. In this study, the coding of the data are the codes for participants over the selected emails based on the category aforementioned to protect the privacy of the individual and to identify the identity of the data (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2008). The coding for the intensity sampling is presented in Table 3.2. The second purpose of coding is to comply with the Provalis QDA miner software when analysing the email text using SFG t.hat will be discussed further in SFG analysis.

Table 3.2 Coding of the email collection

Students Email #1 Email #2 Email #3 Email #4

High-achievers1 HA1E1INA HA1E2INA HA1E3INA HA1E4INA

PARTNER NS11E1USA NS1E2USA NS1E3USA NS1E4USA

Mid-achievers1 MA1E1INA MA1E2INA MA1E3INA MA1E4INA

PARTNER NS15E1 USA NS15E2USA NS15E3 USA NS15E4 USA

Low-achievers1 LA1E1INA LA1E2INA LA1E3INA LA1E4INA

PARTNER NS21E1USA NS21E2USA NS21E3 USA NS21E4 USA

Notes on data coding:

HA1 – High Achiever student MA1 – Medium Achiever student

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LA1 – Low Achiever student

E – Represents email and the number after E means the order of email (E3 – third email) INA –Indonesia Student

NS – Native Speaker partner coding USA – American students

The number following HA, MA, LA and NS is the code based on the name list

All the coded data then were analysed specifically to follow experts in SFG on the schematic structure of email and its linguistic features of the emails. The schematic structure of email was mentioned in Chapter 2 Section 2.6.3. The schematic structure of emails can be seen from the display of selected students email. It can be seen whether or not the students applied the rules of email structure such as greetings, body of the message; opening and closing framers and farewell (Crystal, 2006; Don, 2007). The students‟ emails were also marked based on the rubrics (see Appendix 2) that focus on the schematic structure e.g., the rubric for the highest mark stated that

the “Paragraphs are detailed and well-developed. Transitions between paragraphs make language flow naturally. Whole email is effectively structured.” (ePals.com rubrics, http://www.epals.com/projects/info.aspx?DivID=CActivity_Rubric)

The students‟ texts were analysed using Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) that presents three linguistic features of the emails as texts; theme system, transitivity and mood (Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994). However, the linguistic features for the analysis in this study were transitivity and mood. The theme system was not used due to characteristic of email language which was not like a composition, more like a ideologue. The text analysis using Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) was assisted by Provalis QDA miner software for Transitivity and Mood. This software requires coding for its analysis to be automatically calculated. The codes for transitivity are the process types such as material, mental, verbal, behavioural, relational and existential. The codes for mood were taken from pattern of clause types, mood types and modality such as incomplete clause, declaratives, imperatives, interrogative-wh, interrogative pollar, minor clause, modalities-modalisation, modalities-modulation and adjunct.

At this stage, the second research question i.e., related to the students‟ responses to teaching

program, has been answered by means of the analysis of students‟ email writing with respect to the teaching and learning activities.

39

The students‟ and teacher‟s responses were displayed from the questionnaires of all the selected

participants. The responses were about their attitude to the teaching program. The model of the

response from the participants was adapted from the research about Madrasah students‟ attitude

to school life. (Ali, Kos, Letz, Nugroho, Furqon. Zainul, & Emilia, 2011).

This study analysed the questionnaires to gain more information related to the responses as they were displayed to answer the research question. The questionnaires were given to both participants; Indonesians and Americans who were expected to identify their experience of learning how to write emails in the blended learning. The information from questionnaires was later incorporated to see the connection of their writing development process during the four sessions in blended learning. The questionnaires for Indonesian students were a Likert-scale-type and the open-ended questions for the American. The questionnaires in Likert scale will be further be analysed and interpret in Chapter 4 and 5. The following is the pre-analysis of the questionnaires for Indonesian student:

Table 3.3 Indonesian students’ responses on ePals project

Following are several questions about Indonesian students response on the blended learning through the use of Epals.com project

QUESTIONS Strongly

agree Agree Undecided Disagree

Strongly disagree

Response Average

kemampuan menulis terbatas (I am not good at writing)

18.75% (3) 25% 4 31.25% 5 25% 4

0 13.5

Project ePals menambah pengetahuan menulis email

(ePals project increased my knowledge on writing email)

37.5%

6

62.5%

10

0 0

0

17.5

Mendapatkan pelajaran baru tentang menulis

(I got new knowledge on writing lesson)

43.75%

7

56.25%

9

0 0

0

17.75

Teman baru saya menyenangkan (My new friend on ePals was fun)

31.25% 5 50% 8 18.75% 3

0 0 16.5

Menulis dalam project lebih menyenangkan dibanding tugas menulis biasa di kelas

37.5% 31.25% 31.25%

40

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(Writing though project is more fun than writing in a traditional writing classroom)

6 5 5

Kemampuan menulis saya jadi lebih baik

(I think my writing ability has improved)

12.5%

2

87.5%

14

0 0

0

16.5

Mendapatkan ide dari teman sekelas setelah berdiskusi untuk menjawab email

(I got the ideas from my classmates after I had a discussion to answer my email) 18.75% 3 68.75% 11 12.5%

2 0

0

16.25

Saya jadi bisa bekerja dan berpikir mandiri dalam project menulis ini (Now I think I can work and think independently after this writing project) 12.5% 2 43.75% 7 43.75%

7 0

14.75

Total participants 16

Skip questionnaires 5

The questionnaires from American students were different. There were five open-ended questions sent through emails upon asking permission from their teacher who gave permission on any ethical issues related. The questionnaires samples with the answers from American students are as follows: (more comprehensive data can be seen in the Appendix 3)

Table 3.4 American Students’ Responses on ePals Project

QUESTION 1 _{How do you feel about ePals project? Please explain}

QUESTION 2 Please describe your impression about your experience having an Indonesian partner on the ePals project?

QUESTION 3 _{What is the benefit of joining this project?}

QUESTION 4 Has your global warming knowledge and awareness improved after joining the ePals’ Global Warming project?

QUESTION 5 Do you find any problems during our project? Please explain if you have one.

After finishing all the analysis from three types of data, this study organised the result of analysis mainly on the text analysis. All the three types of data (field notes, email and questionnaires) are intertwined to answer the research questions. The result and finding in the field note mostly

41 contributed to the teaching program that is discussed in Chapter 4. The findings of email analyses are discussed in Chapter 5.

1.5Conclusion

This chapter has focused on the detail methodology of how the study was conducted that includes the participants, research setting, research design and methods of analysis and software for analysis. How the data are collected and sample of data analysed have also been outlined in this chapter.

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CHAPTER V

DATA FROM STUDENTS’ TEXTS ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS

Chapters 4 and 5 cover the findings of the research while Chapter 4 presented an overview of the teaching program in which its findings were mainly taken from the participant observations. Meanwhile, this chapter provides two detailed analyses from the email collections and questionnaires to support the teaching program. The email collections contain 24 emails representing three groups of participants from four-session project. Four emails from three representatives (High, Medium and Low achievers) were analyzed using the Systemic Functional

Linguistics to investigate the students‟ writing development (Schleppegrel1, 2007; Don, 2007). The discussion presents students‟ texts analysis in Section 5.1 and students‟ questionnaires in

Section 5.2. The questionnaires also support the existence of perceived-writing-development (or

perceived positive impacts, Warschauer, 2000) and students‟ responses upon the teaching

program.

5.1Analysis of Students’ Texts

This section describes general descriptions of collected emails and the analysis of email using systemic functional grammar based on the number of selected students previously mentioned. The collected emails were analyzed to find their characteristics; the structure of emails and the writing improvement. The improvements of students‟ writing were viewed based on the several aspects; interactions, the increasing number of words/clauses, transitivity and mood.

In the first two sections, the description of email was based on the linguistic features, interaction, attitude and language impacts (Warschauer, 2000, p. 104-109) which were summarized into the linguistic features and schematic structure. In the last two sections, the writing improvements were identified from the analysis of transitivity and mood.

5.1.1 The Schematic Structure of Emails

In analyzing a text, it should not be difficult to identify genres and the schematic structure; however, since email is a hybrid product, the genre of an email is not easy to be determined because email is classified as a macro genre (Don, 2007). It was as a text that incorporates

different types of genre (Joyce and Feez, 2012). Therefore in the analysis, the macro-genre can be identified by breaking it down the structural elements of email. The structure of email is fixed in many respects to the traditional letter or memos (Crystal, 2001:95). In fact, it consists of header, greeting and farewell, and body.

 Headers

The basic format of the header contains four elements; dates, the sender of the email (from), the receiver of the email (to) and the brief description of the topic of the message (subject) (Crystal,

2001; Don, 2007). All the students‟ email contained date and receivers. Only a few students did

not rewrite the topic or the subject. The following is the full headers with the changing subject in every session.

Table 5.1 Headers of four session email in MA1E1INA and NS21E1USA

MA1E1INA NS21E1USA MA1E2INA NS2E2USA MA1E3INA NS2E3USA MA1E4INA NS2E4USA 2012-Jan-31 11:33:38 2012-Feb-01 23:36:54 2012-Feb-07 12:28:52 2012-Feb-09 23:20:55 2012-Feb-14 12:07:55 2012-Feb-21 11:32:24 2012-Feb-29 14:43:26 2012-Mar-07 23:21:53 From: Melati N

<melatin@epal s.com>

From: JOSEPH R <josephr5625@ epals.com>

From: Melati N <melatin@epals. com>

From: JOSEPH R <josephr5625@ epals.com>

From: Melati N <melatin@epals. com>

From: JOSEPH R <josephr5625@ epals.com>

From: Melati N <melatin@epals. com>

From: JOSEPH R <josephr5625@ epals.com> To:

josephr5625@ epals.com

To: Melati N melatin@epals.c om

To:

josephr5625@e pals.com

To: Melati N melatin@epals.c om

To:

josephr5625@e pals.com

To: Melati N melatin@epals.c om

To:

josephr5625@e pals.com

To: Melati N melatin@epals.c om

First Email Re: First Email Second e-mail

Re: Second

e-mail Third email

Re: Third email LAST email Re: LAST email

BAL_tanah_lot_t

emple.jpg,

IMG_1791.JPG 430c10.jpg

0119111916a.jp g, winter-snow-887-2.jpg

Hi Joseph, Hello Mella, Hi Joe, Hello, Hi, Hello, Hi joe, Hey melatti!

In addition to the main feature of the header, there is also a carbon copy (CC) for the sender to

send the other recipients. Most of the students‟ email did not contain CC because they only sent

the email to the partner alone. A few students wrote a CC for their friends and teachers because they wanted to share what they did to the other friends. It is sent as a notification to the other recipients that the sender had sent the email. Other than that, the attachments were also part of header that became the issue on the characteristic of multimodal text which is relevant with

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multimodal learning (Coulson, 2012). The attachments were usually sent in the second up to the third emails. The students in this study mostly send the email with attachment such as pictures to support the information in the body message.

 Greeting and farewell

The opening part of the body of email is greeting and the last part is farewell. This is a convention of email before the writer write the main message. However, sometimes the email can be without the greeting when it comes to a response email in a prompt. Longer response usually contains greeting. The greetings expressed a wider range of effects from most formal to most informal. The informality of greeting spread among students such as “Hi”, “Hello”, “Dear” in the collected emails. The greeting using “Dear” was dominant; most of the students

started writing their greeting with Dear and farewell with “sincerely”. The greeting is

categorized as opening framer by Don (2007). In the end of the body message, the writer writes a farewell or closing remarks. Don (2007) also named the farewell as closing framer. Farewell displays fewer possibilities for variation but it has two elements available; the pre-closing formula (Regards) and the ID type (Naya).

 The body of the message

The findings of this study were mainly found in the body of the emails because it was the content of the emails. Before going further to the analysis of the body, there is a recommended convention to write the body message based on Flynn and Flynn (1998 cited in Crystal, 2006). In reality, the email users use it as they resemble to a written phone call especially for personal emails.

Table 5.2 Five rules of writing the body message in the email text

Rules Gloss

1 Write as though mom was reading

Write to the widest audience imaginable. If your message is too personal, confidential or important to write generically, reconsider e-mail as your vehicle.

2 Think big picture Always provide a brief executive summary at the beginning of the document.

3 Keep an eye on spelling You can be sure your readers will notice 4 Do not use email to let off

steam

Compose yourself before composing the message. Never use obscene, abusive or otherwise offensive language

5 Do not send to the world Respect others electronic space, as you would have them respect yours.

In general, the body of the message length of email is relatively short. Crystal (2006) found out that the average length of personal email is 10.9 lines per message including greetings and farewell and attachments. The structured elements of email above will guide this study to break down the email text for the detail analysis. All the 5 rules mentioned was not entirely complied by all the students except number 4. However, the emails in this study had different characteristics. They were not as short as email that Crystal (2006) suggested. The content of the emails were not only about personal matters but also with the content in which the students discussed global warming in the interactions. In this case, the students could practice their writing and discuss the subject matters.

Most of the students‟ email body did not comply with the five rules of writing email because

they wrote both personal email and discussion, this following example is a very personal conversation from email #2:

Naya: I‟m so glad that I got you as my email partner, because you are just so adorably kind. I like it. Well, I think you‟re amazing, because you dance, you play music, you‟re a runner, and I‟m guessing that you‟re good in science. I mean, you must be a very talented girl.

Tia: “This is so much fun! You make me smile and laugh and makes me look forward to coming to class when we do this.”

Most students could not write email in brief because they wanted to discuss their personal lives as pen pal and they had to discuss the topic based on the time line (see Table 4.1). The example

of incompliance to the rule was a surprising reply from Kakay, Gigabols‟ partner in her first

email. She wrote a very long email which contained 1388 words with 17 questions about her partner. Gigabol was so excited because he thought by writing the long email, she showed her genuine enthusiasm to her partner. This excitement emerged because they found writing email was easy compared to formal or academic writing. This situation is relevant with the previous research by John and Cash (1995) cited in Warschauer and Meskil (2000) on computer-assisted

discussion that allowed the students to better notice the input from other‟s message and

incorporate the inputs into their own messages such as new linguistic chunk, collocation, common phrases and in this study technical terms on global warming.

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The language of emails allowed them to write as they want because they write like they speak as Collot and Belmore (2009 in Warschauer, 2000) suggested that their personal writing might be non-threatening for the writers. Looking at the number of words in the email, here is the summary of the average number of words the email body among the proficient, middle achievers and struggling students.

Table 5.3 Records of number of words in students’ email and its average

High Achievers

Pseudonym _{High INA1 USA 1 INA2 USA 2 INA 3 USA 3 INA 4 USA 4 AVERAGE} Naya HA1 302 662 433 646 569 0 76 107 349.38 Ririn HA2 223 151 647 169 447 134 250 41 257.75 Candra HA3 353 757 360 374 420 178 301 178 358.38 Medium Achievers

Pseudonym _{Med INA1 USA 1 INA2 USA 2 INA 3 USA 3 INA 4 USA 4 AVERAGE} Mela MA1 163 238 375 236 306 310 205 144 247.13 Nadi MA2 137 157 194 285 268 161 86 74 170.25 Cici _{MA3 148 190 219 318 903 398 86 74 292.00} Low Achievers

Pseudonym _{Low INA1 USA1 INA2 USA 2 INA 3 USA 3 INA 4 USA 4 AVERAGE} Ando LA1 88 164 95 95 199 179 133 37 123.75 Mari _{LA2 154 256 249 191 277 241 191 127 210.75} Jangkung _{LA3 122 368 295 690 0 0 0 0 184.38} Notes:

HA = High Achievers MA= Medium Achiever LA= Low Achievers

INA 1 = first email from Indonesia USA1 = first email from America INA2 = second email from Indonesia USA2 = second email from America INA3 = third email from Indonesia USA3 = third email from America INA4 = fourth email from Indonesia USA4 = fourth email from America

High Achievers

Medium Achievers

Low Achievers

Figure 5.1 Fluctuations of the number of words in the students’ email

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700

1 2 3 4

HA1

HA2

HA3

0 200 400 600 800 1000

1 2 3 4

MA1

MA2

MA3

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

1 2 3 4

LA1

LA2

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As Figure 5.1 makes clear, the three groups are comparable. The tendency among the groups has

the increasing number of words from email #1 to email #3 indicates the development of students‟

writing in language production has improved, in terms of the number of words. The growing number of words in each session coincided with the research by Yates (1996) cited in Warschauer (2000) who measured the type-token ratio (the number of total words and lexical density). He found that written communication through computer had high type-token ratio so that this type of communication was closer to written than spoken mode because it had high lexical density. Higher lexical density suggests a good environment for pushing language development forward (Warschauer; 2000, p. 106).

Interestingly, the growing number of words among the students‟ email declines in email #4 as

displayed in Table 5.3. The reason for the decreasing number of words in email #4 was the finalization of the project. The message in email #4 was resolving connection and saying good bye.

The detail description of each group starts from high achievers group. Two students from high achievers group had the similar tendency to the main whole group that the number of words increased until email #3 and decline in email #4. However, Ririn (HA2) students had the increasing number of words up to email #2 and declined in email #3 and #4. The reason for this declining word numbers of HA2 was presented in Section 4.2.1 in Step 2. This finding is relevant with the principle of blended learning which discusses social presence, teaching presence and/or coaching (Williams & Christy, 1976 cited in Geer, 2004, p. 43). The situation was also support that face-to-face interaction is unavoidable although email exchanges provide learners with an anxiety free environment (Mahfouz, 2010, p. 394).

In medium achievers group, a student made a big leap; the number of word production from email #2 to email #3 increasing 684 words. Cici has wrote 903 words in her third email. The content of the email was not merely about global warming because she talked/wrote more about

her craze on Korean culture. This great increasing number is relatable to Warschauer‟s (1996) motivational aspect of CMC theories that stated: “self-reported knowledge of computers and

this case, Cici had a motivation to do self-reported knowledge in writing her emails to her partner.

Low achiever group was different from the other two groups. Jangkung (LA3) had problems in his attendance and ability to read and write his email so he did not manage to write email #3 and #4, as it is shown in low achievers figure 5.1. He also had less communication with peers to help him. Unlike Mari (LA2) who had a progressing language production. She kept working with students from high achiever group, Ririn (HA2) and she helped Mari a lot in reading and writing email. Thus, in this case, the social presence (Christy, 1976 cited in Geer, 2004) played important role in constructing knowledge. Such social interaction that involves L2 learners created social learning environment (See Figure 2.1). Social interaction that took place in face-to-face discussion was relatable to Collins, Brown & Newman (1998) in Liang & Bonk (2009) about cognitive apprenticeship (modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation and exploration). In conclusion, the general writing improvement based on linguistic features and the schematic structures of emails include the formality of a language, the prestige lexis which in this study means technical terms and the lexical density. Synthesizing the findings from both linguistic features and schematic structures, this study draws a conclusion that the improvement was identified from the body of the emails on the number of words and extended technical terms. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the investigation of the writing improvement through blended learning was analysed through Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). SFG can recognize the strength and focus on what the writers (students) need to learn and identify features that relevant to particular tasks (Schleppegrel and Go, 2007). This was supported by Eggins (1994) that SFG was aimed at explaining meanings that were made in daily language interaction. Basically, the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) analysis used the three metafunctions (types of meaning); theme system (theme progression), transitivity and mood system (Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994). SFL is also concerned with education because it deals significantly to language learning (Emilia, 2005).

In Chapter 3, the data analysis procedure using Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) needed coding systems for the elements of the process type in transitivity analysis and to classify the

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pattern of clause type in mood analysis. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) analysis was assisted by Provalis QDA miner software. This software requires coding for its analysis to be automatically calculated. The example of codes for transitivity applied all the process types of transitivity such as material, mental, verbal, behavioural, relational identifying, attributive, existential, possessive and cause (Halliday, 1992; Eggins, 1994; Emilia, 2005). As mentioned in Chapter 3, the codes for mood were the number of clause, incomplete clause, declarative, imperative, exclamative, interrogative-wh, interrogative pollar, minor clauses, modalisation and modulation, adjunct textual and interpersonal (Eggin and Slade, 2007). The codes were retrieved and resulted the coding frequencies which were displayed after analysing the email through the software.

In this study, the analysis only covers the transitivity and mood because the focus is only to the ideational/experiential meaning and interpersonal meaning. Textually, emails represent more on the spoken language so in this case the theme is remained unanalysed. All the descriptions of transitivity and mood analysis are discussed in the next section.

5.1.2 The Linguistics Features of Emails

The linguistic features of the collected email were not different from what was described in Chapter 2 Table 2.2. The linguistic features were about the combination of written and spoken style (Eggins, 1994, p. 57; Chrystal, 2000; Warschauer, 2000, p. 105-109; Pardubova, 2006, p.11-12)

Table 5.4 Differences between the written and spoken language based on Systemic Functional Grammar – synthesized from (Eggins, 1994, et. al)

No Written Spoken

1 Monologic organization Turn taking organization _√

2 Context independent Context dependent 3 Synoptic structure (rhetorical and closed

finite)

Dynamic structure (Interactive staging and

open-ended) √

4 Final draft, Indication of earlier draft

removed √ Spontaneity phenomena, incomplete clauses √

5 Formal _{√ Informal √}

6 Prestige lexis, technical terms _{√ Everyday lexis, daily/non-technical terms √}

8 Grammar simplicity _√ Grammar complexity _√

9 Lexically dense _{√ Lexically sparse √}

The three sets of emails collected had the linguistic features mentioned in the table above. The turn taking as one of the linguistic features was obvious as presented in email #1 to email #4. It indicated that the emails were interactive. The following is the example of turn taking in email Naya and Tia.

Table 5.5 Excerpts from high achievers’ email

Naya : My name is Nabila Yahdiani, but people called me Naya.

Tia : I love your name, it is so pretty! I am so happy to be talking to you, there is so much excitement in me right now I'm not sure where to start.

Naya : I‟m so glad that I got you as my email partner, because you are just so adorably kind. I like it.

Well, I think you‟re amazing

Tia : This is so much fun! You make me smile and laugh and makes me look forward to coming to class when we do this.

Naya : I‟ve seen your photos, and I think that you really enjoy your life hahaha.

Tia : ---- silent because NS1USA did not send the email

Naya : How are you? I‟ve been waiting for your e-mail. But I didn‟t get it.

Tia : I know that i replied. Maybe it didn't send. =( I think we should still try to be friends even though this project is finished. But that is up to you. I really enjoyed talking to you and i know i would love to continue talking to you.

The description of the sample email interactions mentioned will be illustrated and analysed one by one based on the Table 5.1 starting from organization and lexical density. Firstly, based on the organization, the excerpt shows the turn taking organization instead of monologic organization. The excerpts email above show the interaction of the participants that characterize email as spoken discourse.

The content of the interaction displayed as written mode but the content sounds spoken. This features were known as hybrid text (Christensen, et, al,. 2013). Hillier (2004) also suggests that

Email was a new language form as she confirmed in her term is „writing intended to be read but

as if heard‟. These interactions are relevant to two features of blended learning i.e., it is highly interactive and authentic learning (Coulson, 2012) that generates collaborative learning (Drososs,

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2010). Construction of meaning took place when an individual or group worked collaboratively (Stacey and Gerbic, 2009) and the construction of knowledge took place in an authentic learning situation (Lombardi, 2007). The construction of meaning and knowledge exists in the 3C model of blended learning which stands for construction communication and content (Stacey and Gerbic, 2009).

Secondly, from the context point of view, the email shows the dependent context which means that the conversation happened as if both participants were in the same place and in the same time (Eggins, 1994, p., 56) i.e., virtual place and time. The context dependent in the excerpt is presented in “I love your name, it is so pretty!”, “This is so much fun!”, and many more. These expressions were written in the beginning of email #1 and email #2 as replies to her partner. The context independency is not shown in excerpt as well as in emails so the characteristic of written text is not visible in the emails.

The third linguistics feature is the structure of the email which has dynamic structure (Halliday, 1992, p.87); interactive and open-ended. The structure of the text is dynamic which relevant to the characteristic of spoken language. In other words, one sentence leading to another to another to another (Eggins, 1994, p., 56) for example “I love your name, it is so pretty! I am so happy to be talking to you, there is so much excitement in me right now I'm not sure where to start.” This sample of dynamic structure indicates the spontaneous action within the email writers which becomes the fourth linguistic feature of emai i.e., authentic learning. Based on the email analysis, most of the dynamic structures were written by the English native speakers. Most Indonesian (EFL) students attempted to write in a proper sentence regardless their grammar deficiency. The reason to have the tendency to the written linguistic feature was that some of the EFL students wrote their draft and consulted to the teachers and peers. In the beginning, the students were thoroughly careful and really formal (Crystal, 2001; Hillier, 2004) because they were not confident towards the English native if their emails are full of grammatical errors.

The formality (the fifth feature) in the EFL students‟ email existed in the beginning of the emails which gradually changed to informality in the next emails. Formality and informality could be seen from the choice of words using the sixth linguistic feature of email everyday lexis instead of

5.6, were everyday lexis although the topic of the conversation was about global warming. However, since the topic is about scientific phenomenon, the English native speaker wrote some sophisticated words such as acidification and ridges in which in the EFL students‟ point of view, those words were new and special.

Table 5.6 Excerpts from proficient middle achiever’s email #1 to #4

Mela : This term I have to do the global warming project and I have to make a poster about it. I do concern about global warming. So, what is your opinion about global warming? Because in Indonesia the weather is not really good today. How‟s there?

Didi : I am glad to be talking to you acrossed the world about our global warming project. We will be creating a web page about global warming instead of a poster. I also concern about global warming and i feel it is a very important topic. ... . It is the middle of the winter here so it is wet and cold. What type of weather do you guys have? We have about everything because we have 4 different seasons. .... . Is there snow in Indonesia?

Mela : Wow, that‟s great that you are concerned also about global warming. I think it‟s a good idea to make a web page. So, what kind of topic do you want to make? Is it about the cause and effect about global warming? If you want, you can add the tips to slow down the global warming, because it cannot be stopped right? What do you think? Hmm, is there any effect of global warming in your place?

Anyway, which season do you like? Do you like winter? In Indonesia there‟s no snow and we only have 2 seasons, such as dry season and wet season.

Didi : Yes i do like the idea of a web page too. I am very concerned about global warming. I am mainly concerned about the cause of global warming. We have learned that human beings by far are the biggest cause of it. We should start changing our daily activities and ways of transportation to help prevent global warminlng from increasing. Do you agree?

Yes, there definitely is an effect of global warming in America. In fact, there is an effect all over the world....Not just here. But anyways, my favorite season is summer. I love the warm weather, playing baseball, and swimming.

Mela : Yes I do agree with that, because some of natural disaster is caused by human. What have you got so far about global warming? To be honest, until today I still learn how to understand it deeper. What do you know about the ice core? Yesterday, in my English class I saw the slide about the ice core. Is it true that the scientists search it for observing the atmosphere?

I think it‟s wonderful to have 4 seasons, because in Indonesia, we only have 2 seasons. How many degrees when summer? Is it very hot? And what about the activities that you usually do in winter? Can you do the ice skating or skiing? Would you send me the picture when Ohio is in winter?

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Didi : We have mainly just been learning about the causes and effects of global warming in class. It is very very interesting and i worry a lot about what it will have turned the world into in about 100 generations from now. Humans are by far the biggest cause of it and i dont see it

improving. However, i do not know much about the ice core. what all do you know about it? It is really nice here having 4 seasons. Most days in the summer we average 85-100 degrees. In the winter we average 10-20 degrees. And then during spring and fall we average anywhere in between. During winter i usually go hunting and sledding for my activities. I am not very good at skiiing or skating. i usually fall on my butt.

Mela : I don‟t know much about the ice core either. But what I know, the Ice core is taken from north or South Pole. The scientists search it to observe the atmosphere layer (if I‟m not mistaken). They observe it from the bubbles inside the ice core. The shape is cylinder. Do you get it? I want to make a conclusion about what I learn from this project. It is about the others understanding about global warming. And how care you are about this issue.

By the way, I want to know, are there any holidays when summer? I often heard about summer holiday. How long does it takes?

Didi : Yes i think you are right about the ice core. My topic was ocean acidification so i didnt study much about the ice core. i studied more of what is happening to our corals and ridges. But yes we do have a holiday in the summer. It is july 4th, our independance day. we celebrate with fireworks and cookouts usually. Summer lasts about 3 months here.

From the excerpt, there are some aspects which indicate the last two linguistic features; non-standard grammar and lexical density/sparsity. In the Excerpt above contained non-non-standard

grammar that was written by English native student, Didi spelt “I” with lower case “I” and July without capital J and he misspelled across, warming, skiing and independence. The spelling mistakes was known as „performance error‟ (Hillier, 2004, p., 217)

Then after reading some emails from their English native partner, some EFL students found out that some native speakers also made many mistakes in their emails. It was acceptable that the seventh linguistic feature in the email is non-standard grammar and some paralinguistic cues (Halliday, 1992, p.31) such as „hmmm‟ [Mela in email #2], „hahahah‟ [Naya in email #3] and some emoticons that represent facial or bodily gestures. The English native students did this due to their spontaneity and the absence of drafting (see the excerpt in Table 5.3) and informality of the relation between participants (Hillier, 2004, p., 218). It implies that the EFL students were able to justify the rule of thumbs in grammar and the linguistic fratures of email that these types

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