Improving Pupils’ Attitude to English Learning and Cultural Understanding through Email Exchange: an Action Research Project in a Secondary School in Taiwan

Abstract

Electronic mail (e-mail) has been widely used in communication for many years.
The main purpose of this action research was to explore whether utilizing an email exchange project can enhance secondary school pupils’ motivation and attitude to language learning and improve their intercultural learning. This was a collaborative intercultural email exchange project between two secondary schools, one in north east of Taiwan and another one in the USA. The researcher sought to identify the attitudes of and concepts of learners and teachers towards the email exchange. This study adopted qualitative and quantitative methods. However, there was more focus on qualitative data in order to determine if the project improved the pupils’ attitude to learning English and develop their intercultural communicative competence. In order to ensure trustworthiness, multiple data collection instruments were employed in this study. The findings show that using e-mail can benefit pupils in their language and intercultural learning.
The study examines outcomes and factors that made the project successful. It sets the research in the context of a theoretical framework and Taiwan education policy and suggestions for further work and research of this kind. The limitations of this study are also discussed.