Abstract :
Traditionally, e-mail in the German composition classroom has been used for one-on-one, as well as classroom-to-classroom, intercultural exchanges with pen pals (keypals). This article argues for e-mails as written exchanges between student and teacher, on the basis of German Internet radio broadcasts, of the type transmitted by Deutsche Welle and Tagesschau. Beginning with a sketch of the background of e-mail use in the FL (use full term the first time) class, this article then describes the method, illustrating it with actual student summaries based on Internet radio. Once a week students e-mail the teacher a short summary of cultural and news stories from German online news radio. They select a story, take notes, compose a summary of the story in German, finally e-mailing it to the teacher for error correction and feedback. The teacher e-mails the summary back to the student via the return function. Benefits accrue to both teacher and student. The teacher, able to engage students using their favored mode of communication, has opened a venue for written interaction. S/he can provide immediate corrective feedback, intervening very quickly to highlight difficulties and to isolate persistent errors, at the same time inviting student rejoinder. Since e-mails can be easily archived, they offer a quick, panoramic view of student progress over the semester. Through learner interaction the student improves listening and writing skills, encountering new vocabulary and idioms, while choosing a favorite text from among a body of oral material in German. Students respond very positively to the element of choice. The e-mail summary then becomes very much their own story, one to which they react emotionally. No small benefits are an improved knowledge of geography and current events, including German holiday celebrations (for instance, Fasching). The article closes with a variation on my method, e-mail summaries of German Internet videos.
