The development of literacy and computer skills through the use of e-mail.

Sue Spencer: Chesterton Community College

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Summary

This small scale study focused on a small group of Year 7-10 short stay refugee and resident bilingual pupils and investigated the ways in which their literacy and ICT skills might be enhanced by involvement in an EAL project, Speak for Yourself, which required the group to produce a Welcome booklet for new EAL pupils and a multi-cultural recipe book, sourced from friends and relatives in their home countries. Evaluation of the approach drew on teachers', observers' and pupils' perspectives - obtained through interviews and observations. Additional evidence was gained through assessment of task outcomes. Findings showed that the embedding of ICT as a communicative tool within the task-based curriculum aided language learning, literacy and ICT skills. Where the tasks were carefully designed to challenge pupils' communicative competence, all English skills (including literacy skills) were improved. There is an additional exploration of the promotion of global citizenship through e-mail.