A study on high school students’ perceptions of the process of learning to write Emails in English

Journal of Science, Hue University of Education 
ISSN 1859-1612, No. 02(50)/2019: pp. 25-38 
Received: 30/9/2018; Revised: 05/10/2018; Accepted: 18/10/2018 
A STUDY ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE 
PROCESS OF LEARNING TO WRITE EMAILS IN ENGLISH 
TRAN THI TO, LE PHAM HOAI HUONG 
Univeristy of Foreign Languages, Hue University 
Abstract: The present study was carried out to investigate students’ 
perceptions of the process of learning to write emails in English. The 
participants comprised of 100 high school students of grade 11. Data 
collection methods include questionnaire, interview and reflective journals. 
The study found that students had good awareness of email writing skills in 
the classroom. They shared their viewpoints on the process of learning to 
write emails in English both negatively and positively, with positive 
opinions outweighing negative ones. The findings also revealed that the 
respondents had positive attitudes toward email writing skills and tended to 
accept their difficulties as motivation in their language classes. Based on the 
findings of the study, implications were put forward as to how to teach and 
learn to write emails in English effectively. 
Keywords: Email writing process, reflections 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The important roles of email in improving EFL learners’ language proficiency and 
supporting human beings in daily work have been studied by many researchers. Findings 
from studies on email learning and teaching have showed that email has been so far the 
most popular and useful tool for foreign language education (Chaffee-Sorace, 1999). 
Thus, studying students’ perceptions of the process of learning to write emails in English 
is necessary for both teachers and learners in increasing the instructional quality. 
The importance of emails in teaching and learning 
Nowadays technology, especially email is developing rapidly all over the world. As a 
result, the use of email is increasing in the classrooms for the purpose of promoting 
language learning and teaching. It can be seen that email writing is one of the most 
important skills that students should master in order to support them not only for 
learning but also for real-life situations, especially when they are preparing for 
university study. 
The rapid increase in the use of web tools in language teaching and learning has 
promoted email as a common interpersonal communication medium. As its high 
transmission speed, email has been widely used for both personal communication and 
institutional communication, particularly in academic and business institutions (Crystal, 
2001). Schwienkorst (1998) and Warschaur (1995) indicated that email writing provides 
a context for real-world communication and authentic interaction by connecting foreign 
language speakers outside the classroom with other speakers in communicative 
26 TRAN THI TO, LE PHAM HOAI HUONG 
situations. In the context of the classroom, email provides immediate feedback and 
allows students to discuss and communicate directly and cheaply with key pals around 
the world (Hoffman, 1994). 
Email is also a useful tool for students to improve their English writing skills. 
According to Alias and Hussin (2002), web- based activities such as searching for 
information, exchanging of messages via email and participating in discussion groups 
are helpful to learners in their writing process. Accordingly, the students can enrich 
their knowledge about the world and foster their writing ideas. What’s more, speed, 
power, and flexibility of the computer and email can effectively facilitate their second 
language acquisition, and then help students raise their awareness of learning writing. 
More importantly, developing email writing skill is especially necessary for English 
language students at the secondary stage. In terms of developing the overall ability of 
writing for high school students, they have to learn how to write emails in English. It 
can be said that the secondary level of education is a stage of consolidation, supporting 
and reinforcing English language basics previously learnt by students during the 
preparatory stage (Abdel-Razek, 2006). By using emails, they also become familiar with 
a communication tool that is vital to their survival in the 21st century. Thus, mastering 
writing skills during the high school study helps students’ progress in their university 
studies (El-Shafie, 2006). 
Students’ reflections on the process of email writing 
Reflection is a term which has been much used in the educational literature over the past 
decade (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985). Among many various definitions about 
reflection, Boud et al. (1985) shared the definitions with some common features and 
these are worth considering in more detail. Reflective thought was defined as active, 
persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the 
light of the grounds that support it and the further evidence by which the reliability and 
worth of a belief can be established so as to justify its acceptance. It is clear that an 
important outcome of the reflection process is changing one’s perspective as new 
information and experiences are encountered (Hay et al., 2004a). The reflection 
processes not only involve in the self but the outcomes of reflection also lead into a 
changed conceptual perspective, which helps learners understand the relationship 
between their learning and problem-solving goals. 
In the light of developing one’s knowledge and skills, reflection can be considered as a 
learning tool and action process has long been seen as a crucial prerequisite to effective 
decision making, especially in decision environments that contain ambiguous problems, 
unique elements, and no defined solutions (Pee et al., 2000; Schon, 1987). Therefore, it 
supports to revise extant understanding or to construct new meanin ... themselves, how they worked together in order to write a 
good email. The study showed the students’ efforts in developing their email writing 
skill though there were still some weak points in group or pair discussions. 
The following table displays the results of the study on teacher’s feedback on students’ 
email writings. 
34 TRAN THI TO, LE PHAM HOAI HUONG 
Table 5. Teacher’s feedback on students’ email writings 
N= 100 Min Max Mean SD 
18.The teacher should give you feedback by a grade or mark only 1 5 2.61 1.15 
19.The teacher gives you feedback by a grade or mark first, then 
comments. 
1 5 3.25 1.17 
20.The teacher gives you feedback by comments first, then a garde 
or mark. 
1 5 3.78 1.07 
21.The teacher gives you feedback by comments only. 1 5 3.35 1.14 
Table 5 demonstrates students’ expectation in receiving feedback from their teachers. 
As depicted in Table 5, most of the mean scores were over than 3 (ranging from 3.25 to 
3.78), indicating the respondents mostly have a high agreement on teacher’s feedback. 
However, with the value of 2.61 for item 18, showing the disagreement level was not 
low as well. In other aspect, all the standard deviation range from 1.079 to 1.175 
implying that the responses spread out from the mean scores remarkably. 
As showed in Table 5, many students did not want to be given feedback by a grade or 
mark only (item 18, M = 2.61). A male student shows that he did not care of how many 
grades he had received because it might make him become more dependent on the final 
results and ignore the main goal of learning English. He responded in the interview, “I 
did not want to focus on marks so much; I hoped to receive comments from my teacher 
to foster my writing skill rather than marks only. The comments provided me with useful 
advice that I could improve my email later”. 
Similarly, another student shared in her reflective journal that comments were better 
than grades because it was comments that could help the student recognize the real 
strengths and weakness. She wrote: “One of the reasons why I did not like grades or 
marks only was that many students did not realize what were good or bad in the email 
writings, they just focused on the final results and satisfied with what they had done”. 
However, not all feedback is the same and not all feedback is equally effective in 
promoting learning (Black & William, 1998). When being asked about this issue, a 
female student said that marks or grades were the standard, which could be used to 
measure whether the student was good or bad. She expressed in the interview, “I 
thought that grades should be a standard used to assess the students’ level. As you 
could see that our final results at the end of each term was assessed by grades. Each 
student should be aware of their own learning through grades that they got from their 
teacher”. 
To the item 20 (M= 3.78), many participants strongly agreed that both comments and 
grades or marks were really fundamental to them. Comments could help the students 
recognize their limitations or strengths, and then they could adjust their learning 
strategies more appropriately. Meanwhile, grades or marks could be considered the final 
results, which motivated them in learning and achieving higher levels. 
The analysis indicated that feedback by comments strongly influenced students’ 
A STUDY ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE PROCESS... 35 
subsequent performance. Receipt of a low grade might lead to a substantial decline in 
writing performance by students who thought the grade has come from the instructor, 
but a praise or positive comment from the instructor appeared to ameliorate students’ 
motivation to learn to write emails. However, in the absence of detailed feedback, a 
grade appeared to enhance subsequent performance just modestly. These statistics also 
imply that the teachers should be more flexible in giving feedback to their students and 
try to leave some comments on good points, bad points so that students can clearly 
understand what should be done to improve their email writing. 
4. CONCLUSION 
This research adopts questionnaire, interview and reflective journals to study students’ 
perceptions, reflections and the actual process of learning to write emails in English. 
Several conclusions can be drawn from the findings of the study. 
Firstly, the study found that high school students in this study had good awareness in 
foreign language learning. They showed their positive attitudes toward email learning 
and the process of teaching how to write email as well. They seemed to be more 
concerned about teacher’s methods in guiding them how to write emails (M=3.7914) 
than the other aspects when learning email writing. 
Secondly, the students shared their viewpoints on the process of learning to write emails 
in English both negatively and positively, with positive opinions outweighing negative 
ones. The mismatch between teacher’s methods and learner’s style of learning 
sometimes made students get bad results for email writing because they had a great deal 
of difficulties in grasping language knowledge of email writing and focusing on 
language classes. The students also indicated that they always tried their best to improve 
their email writing skills thanks to their teachers' and classmates’ supports. However, 
not all students had the same attitudes toward this email writing process. Some of them 
mentioned negative aspects, which affected students’ participation in email writing 
activities, and then they became inactive, unconfident and timid to raise their voice in 
writing classes. 
Thirdly, the study implies that some difficulties in language knowledge and 
inappropriate methods of teaching and learning made students unable to write good 
emails in English, which results in their poor performance. One of the difficulties that 
students considered to be the most problematic for them was lacking of vocabulary and 
grammar. In addition, fear of negative feedbacks made students passive in email writing 
classes; however, it also created learning motivation for some students. 
Pedagogical Implications 
From the findings of this study, several implications are put forward to both teachers 
and students regarding the process of learning to write emails in English. 
For teachers: 
- Teachers should consider email writing as an important skill in the classroom and try to 
36 TRAN THI TO, LE PHAM HOAI HUONG 
make it become a very familiar and useful tool for all students. It is important for teachers 
to often ask the students carefully about their difficulties in email writing lessons. 
Additionally, teachers can base on the way students write their emails to determine what 
problems they are facing with. Finding out students’ problems can help teachers deal with 
students’ difficulties in learning to write emails in English more easily. 
- Teachers' attitudes and expectations are also important factors in L2 writing 
classrooms (Williams, 2003). Therefore, in order to be more effective, teachers must 
feel good about teaching and about students and believe that they can influence 
students’ learning (Proctor, 1984). In addition, teachers should pay attention to 
enriching their personalities such as humor, friendliness, tolerance and patience, which 
can help students feel less anxious and more motivated in learning to write emails 
(Young, 1991). It is believed that good teachers know how to adjust their emotion and 
reduce negative evaluation to students’ mistakes, which enhances students’ learning and 
motivation as well. 
- The teacher should create a learner-centered learning environment in which students 
can develop their abilities in their classroom. Pair work, small group work, stimulations 
and structured exercises should be employed to encourage students to communicate and 
interact. The importance is that teacher should encourage students to think, plan, and 
search for ideas, develop, organize, review their writing and above all meet the 
requirements of examinations and academic life. 
- Teachers should combine between theory and practice by giving students chances to 
exchange information through daily emails and cooperate with students to deal with 
their difficulties. Furthermore, many students expressed that they were afraid of making 
mistakes and losing face in front of the class, which stops them from expressing their 
ideas. Having positive attitudes towards making mistakes in writing lessons can help 
students deal with this problem. 
For students: 
- Students need to take their active role in learning to write emails in English and 
enthusiastically participating in writing activities in class. In order to become confident 
in writing lessons, students should be fully aware of self-study and should not depend 
on the teacher. 
- Students should recognize and accept their obstacles in email writing and consider 
these obstacles to be motivation that makes them try more in language learning. 
Besides, it is necessary for them to consult advice from teachers and other students to 
have effective learning methods. 
- They should have positive attitudes toward their email learning and writing in English. 
It is a good way for them to combine many different ways of leaning such as: group 
work, pair work, online learning on websites or from other sources. This will help 
students be more and more familiar with email writing and can feel less and less 
nervous. Especially, in the era of technology 4.0, the approach of many effective 
A STUDY ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE PROCESS... 37 
learning methods support students in dealing with difficulties easily by combining what 
they have learnt at school and their practice in daily life. 
To sum up, the current study employed questionnaire in order to collect students’ 
opinions about the process of learning to write emails in English. The results from 
interview and reflective journals were briefly reported in the study because of the scope 
of the paper. Further studies can be carried out with a larger sample with more students 
of diverse backgrounds so as to increase the reliability, and discover more generalized 
findings that can be applicable in different settings. It is also worth investigating the 
improvement of students’ email writing in longitudinal studies. 
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