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IT and communication: breaking the barriers to effective writingGladys Noemí Baya
(gbaya@tutopia.com)
Member of APIBA - LICEO CULTURAL BRITANICO – Buenos AiresHow can information technologies help our students develop effective writing strategies? In this demonstration, wediscuss several computer-based activities tried with teen and adult EFL learners and reflect on how computers can beused throughout the writing process (attending to fluency as well as accuracy) to favour the development of writingskills. Suggestions for ways in which to adapt the activities presented to classes without access to some of these toolswill also be made.
♦
Introduction
Why do our learners hardly find it easy to write in the EFL lesson? It seems teachers are to blame:“by teaching skills out of context and focussing on written language as an end in itself, we made thetask harder, impossible for some children.” (Goodman 1986 p.24). Hoping to avoid that beatentrack, I set out to help my EFL learners appreciate that writing is a process in which meaning comesfirst. I insisted that “Not even the best writers get it right the first time” (Belisle 1996 p.2). I thoughtI encouraged them to think about what they wanted to say, explore genre and take risks. Yet, I hadto admit I was far from achieving my aim. When asked, my students pinpointed a number of objections to account for their rejection of writing:
•
“I never write to anyone in real life. How can I think of writing to someone who is not ateacher?”
•
“
 I’m not familiar with such a genre
.
 Examples in our coursebook are not clear/enough
.”
•
“
 I don’t know what to say about this topic. I have little imagination. ”
•
“
 I can’t pay attention to ideas and be tidy / organized at the same time
.”
•
“I always make so many mistakes... I just hate it!”
•
“
 Re-writing takes too long. I don’t feel like going through the whole piece again
.”
•
“
This is all pretending. Only the teacher will ever read what I write
.”
Page 1
 
I decided to try some activities using a number of computer tools (namely
word processors
,
e-mails
and the
Worldwide Web
), hoping these would enable my EFL learners to deal with thewriting process more effectively. My purpose now is to share some of the activities tried, so thatother teachers can consider their application to their own teaching-learning environments. All thetasks proposed in the present paper have actually been carried out with volunteers in my classrooms(totalling fourteen teens and adults ranging from low intermediate to pre-Cambridge FCE). Finally,I will suggest a few alternatives which do not require the use of computers by all parties in a course,so that classes without access to some of these tools can still benefit from this approach to writing.
♦
“
 But I never write!
”
Was it so? Did my students never write in real life? I found most of them used
e-mails
frequently,either to ask for information or keep in touch with friends. Yet, they were reluctant to see this as“writing”, which, to them, was just an artificial task restricted to the EFL classroom. Could e-mailsget them to write to anyone but “a teacher hunting for mistakes”?I decided to e-mail my class regularly, either with greetings (e.g. at Easter and on their  birthdays) or messages (e.g. reminders of dates or assignments). Often, students wrote me back!When a new student joined in, I asked somebody in the group to e-mail them a welcome message.After a while, a few students started sending their own messages to the group, dealing with all sortsof topics - from further discussion of course issues to jokes. I now understood that “collaborationvia e-mail was a viable way to keep group interaction and build community on the Internet” (Burke1997 p.9). Perhaps we had found a way to use writing for genuine communication in the EFLlesson?Through the process of sending e-mail back and forth to one another, students started anatural flow of authentic, fluent writing. As the example in
Figure 1
(on the following page) shows,they were no longer worried about being accurate. It was interesting to notice that “when students
Page 2
 
communicate with each other using e-mail, their audience tend to focus almost entirely on themessage itself and much less on the form, grammar, spelling, mechanics, etc.” (Belisle 1996 p.2). Itwas now clear to me that computer-mediated communication increases opportunities for interactionamong learners and thus creates further opportunities for language learning. I definitely wanted togo further.
Figure 1: spontaneous e-mailing between two students
♦
Dealing with problems in content and style
Especially in the case of students preparing for international examinations or studying ESP, lack of familiarity with certain genres (e.g. film reviews, articles, reports) may pose a very serious problem
1
.At other times (and particularly often in the case of teenagers), the students’ limitedknowledge of the world severely reduces their chances of finding something to say about certain
1
See Bowers 1995 for a most interesting report on how the Web was exploited by a group of Mexican biologists toimprove their academic writing.
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