E-mail

A significant amount of contribution to pragmatics research comes from cross-cultural and developmental pragmatic studies with L2 learners in focus; however, despite broad interest in such analyses, the role of lecturers has been relatively ignored. As the lectures’ perceptions/opinions of L2 learners’ e-mail requests are important, L2 learners must become familiar with their lecturers’ perceptions of (in)appropriateness and (im)politeness of e-mail requests. Therefore, through examining Iranian applied linguistics lecturers’ perceptions of (in)appropriateness and (im)politeness of L2 learners’ e-mail requests, this study was an attempt to provide insights into lecturers’ ideal norms of (in)appropriateness and (im)politeness of L2 learners’ e-mail requests. To this aim, a purposive sample of 38 university lectures participated in this study. A questionnaire was utilized to collect the data. The lecturers’ comments in the questionnaire served as the basis to identify the major themes (e.g., directness, language use accuracy, etc.). An in-depth qualitative analysis of the lecturers’ comments revealed that the perceptions of the lecturers were greatly influenced by the use of appropriate openings and closings of the e-mails. Also, language use accuracy and appropriateness were among the most recurring reasons mentioned by the lecturers to regard the e-mails as (in)appropriate and (im)polite. Overall, the results stress the importance of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of language for applied linguistics lecturers. Findings have implications for L2 learners, teachers, and researchers.

The present study investigates the effect of e-mail on Iranian learners of English and focuses on teaching thewriting skillvia e-mail. More specifically, the study investigates (a) whether using e-mail has any statistically significant effect on improving high school students' writing skill, and (b) whether the proficiency level has any relation with students’ writing improvement through using e-mail.To this end, 150 high school Iranian students were selected randomly and divided into 3 proficiency levels, namely high, mid, and low, based on their performances on an Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The participants at every proficiency level were divided into 3 subgroups to receive 3 methods of instruction, namely traditional face-to-face, through using e-mail, and through both the traditional method and using e-mail. After 3 months of instruction, a posttest was administered and the results were submitted to ANOVA. The results obtained revealed that using e-mail had a statistically significant effect on improving students' writing skills. The Scheffe post hoc results showed that the group with the e-mail treatment performed almost the same as the other 2 groups at the high proficiency level; in other words, the group at the high level did not benefit much from using e-mail; however, thelow and intermediate proficiency level participants did benefit from it. The findings are finally discussed with regard to how email can be exploited as an educational aid by teachers and learners.