Writing strategies in a second language: Three case studies of learners using electronic mail

This study describes how beginning language learners generated electronic mail in a foreign language, Spanish, and what the resulting texts looked like. The research was conducted at a public school where technology is used to support the curriculum. The article focuses on three of the participants who belonged to two classes of sixth-grade learners of Spanish. The study uncovered different, contrasting writing behaviours and a diversity of texts. The study argues that communicative activities in the language classroom pose dilemmas for language learners. Students experiment with linguistic forms and integrate old and new information sources in order to communicate, but they do not always succeed. E-mail is a tool that can generate communicative contexts for the language classroom, and the study draws implications about the use of electronic mail and of communicative activities in this setting.