Keypals for Language Fluency Thomas N. Robb Noriko Koizumi

Benefits To practice in reading/writing To motivate learning the target language and culture To really use the language outside of the classroom context.

Types of Keypals “Traditional” one-on-one type “Tandem exchange” “Student List”

Possible Problems Not good correspondents Not good at writing letters of interest »two or three partners A mismatch in the number of times:each class meets per week, in the length of the school

Finding Keypal Partners IECC(International classroom Connections – Kidlink –KIDCAFE-COORD--KIDCAFE-INDIVIDUAL –KIDCAFE-SCHOOL--KIDCAFE-TOPICS –KIDCAFE-QUERY Linguistic Funland – – EF Engishtown –

Finding Keypal Partners Rigby Heinemann Keypals List (Australia) – Pen Pal Quebec - for French – For Spanish – Amigos – Advertising your class on mailing list For more resources –

Understanding the Other Class’s Expectations How each teacher plans to integrate the e- mail activities into his/her own curriculum How often? How long the correspondence should be? How to evaluate?

Preparing Your Students The technical skills The language skills »be sure to supply them a useful set of phrases for openings, closings, and other functions

Tracking Your Students Problems –time management –the volume of correspondence –assigning a grade based on their performance Solution –keep a log of their correspondence

Tandem Learning To learn each other’s language To learn more about their partner and his culture To exchange knowledge –

Student Lists for Fostering Communication Between Learners Students send their messages to an list –share similar intrest CHAT-SL MOVIE-HSL SPORTS-SL ENGL-SL –

Conclusion An extremely rewarding experience for your students Discover the best implementation for your own curriculum