AWEJ Volume 4. Number. 3, 2013 Pp.135- 150
The Effect of Using E-mail on Developing EFL Writing Skills for Secondary
Stage Students at the Experimental Schools
Mervat Abd Elfatah Ali Said Ahmed
Oklt Al Sqoor College of Science and Arts
Qassim University
Saudi Arabia
Abstract
The present study aimed at investigating the effect of using e-mail on developing EFL writing skills among first year experimental secondary school students. The study followed a pretest-posttest experimental-control group design. The study sample consisted of 60 students from Fakus Experimental Secondary School and was divided into two groups: 30 students for the experimental group and 30 students for the control group. For identifying the most important EFL writing skills required for first year experimental secondary school students, a writing skills list were developed .Then, a pre-post e-mail-writing skills test, free-writing test and a rubric for scoring the tests was developed. Students in both the experimental and control group were pre-tested using the e-mail-writing skills test and the free-writing test. Then, students of the experimental group were taught through the program of e-mail and writing and students of the control group were taught in the traditional method. Finally, students in both groups were post-tested using the same instruments. The study showed that; first, the experimental group outperformed the control group in the post-test of e-mail-writing skills test and the post- test of free-writing. Second, there was statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the pre-post e-mail writing skills test and the pre-post free-writing test of the experimental group at 0.05in favor of the post-tests. This difference can be attributed to using e-mail .Hence, it was concluded that the program of e-mail and writing proved to be highly effective in developing first year secondary school students’ EFL writing skills.
Keywords: E-mail, Writing, EFL