We must admit that before the appearance of the Internet the opportunities of interacting with native speakers were limited to the happy few who had access to travelling or made good use of corresponding with pen pals, for instance.
Nowadays however, e-mail communication is having an enormous effect on foreign language learning since it provides students with an excellent chance for real, natural communication putting students into contact with native speakers and/or other learners around the world in seconds and providing the motivations and authentic contexts so essential for real communication.
This is the kind of environment teachers are always longing to provide to escape from the limitations and artificialities of the classroom situation. The Internet allows students around the planet to interact with one another cheaply, quickly and up to a point reliably offering learners a closeness to the real world which has never been possible before. This accounts for the impact it is having on education in general and language learning in particular.
How large an impact?
This kind of communication offers suitable conditions for language acquisition placing the student in an active learning situation where he receives an enormous amount of authentic input and interacts in natural, stress free situations/contexts.
Teachers can profit from this tool to guide students to specific targets for different learning purposes. Among them: key-pals, interschool communication, discussions, forums, etc.

Key-pals is the Internet version of pen-friends. Naturally it is faster, cheaper, more attractive, more resourceful than letter writing. Teachers who are using this communication tool regularly explain that it provides opportunities for the most useful, interesting and motivating activities they have implemented in years. The exchanges, they say, whether between learners or between institutions capture the interest of the participants in a way few activities do.
Teachers and institutions should provide opportunities selecting in the numerous key-pal websites suitable correspondents for their classes to interact with. Thus a local class can have a correspondence exchange with another in an English speaking community under the guidance of their teachers in the way I suggest below for local schools.

My belief is that the sooner teachers recognize the value of this tool, the faster they will advance in this area lowering their own resistance to making use of what students prefer: an unbelievably good opportunity to take off from a motivation that already exists. Students are already chatting with people all over the world. Why not profit from this existing habit guiding them in the process, supervising what they produce, taking advantage of their exchanges and offering new ones, providing suitable vocabulary, expanding their traditional-course book-based classes into Internet activities?
Teaching letter writing today means being aware that most of our and probably all of our students' correspondence in the future will be expressed in the format of the computer screen!

A Chatting activity: Arrange a “chatting hour” with another institution you may be in contact with in our country. Get in touch with the Head and agree on subjects to be discussed by both groups of students. Do some brain storming on the subject before the activity takes place . Possible subjects include: sports, fashion, movies, current events, music. Avoid themes students may not have an opinion about because of their age, they can only lead you to failure and frustration.
Determine the period of time the students will spend on the given topic. Put your students into groups which will communicate by e-mail , choose the day's typist ( you will vary typists every so often to give all students the chance to participate in the concrete writing task). All the students in the group must participate providing ideas. As to the teacher, he or she must act as facilitator providing the linguistic assistance required, correcting serious mistakes and stimulating the group.

Once the time is over the chatting scripts will be printed a) to stimulate students on their ability to communicate (if this is the case) first and b) to discuss mistakes, trying to elicit correction from the students.
This kind of activity is specially suitable after you have dealt with the characteristics of dialogue writing, levels of formality and appropriate vocabulary.

Roleplay. Teachers may use e-mail as a preliminary part of a role play activity. The idea being to establish a relationship before “characters” meet. For example, exchanging letters before a party, a business meeting, an interview for a job or scholarship, etc.

The general concept in these last proposals is the combination of real life situations in oral and written forms where the students are kept interested because the teacher has been able to select a subject matter that generates enthusiasm in the group. Sensing what the group will be motivated by is always basic and should come out of the knowledge teachers have of their students' interests. The rest is using the electronic tool and integrating it to the language learning process adding intercultural connections of immense value.

Alicia López Oyhenart, an ISP JVGonzález graduate is the Editor of www.e-teachingonline.com.ar, the first Argentine Internet activity magazine for teachers.

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