How to Incorporate ICT in Teaching English Language (Writing Skill)

The internet serves many functions in the teaching of writing: Email, internet chat and electronic bulletin board postings are three very popular forms. No writing course would be complete without this. As these are new and very important genre for efficient and effective sustenance of life in the modern world, every teacher of writing has to include this his/her course.

* Email
1) Begin by exposing students to several examples of these genres.
2) Teach the mechanics of emailing; how to get email account, the format of email address, how to operate the various functions for example compose, forward, reply, attach and etc.
3) Grade the various forms, from most informal to official/formal e-mails. Choose those email forms that are most likely to be of use to the students in their life.
4) Teach some of the common short forms used in e-mail communication.
5) Once they are comfortable with emailing, exploit the email for various pedagogic purposes.

* Electronic Bulletin Boards
1) Start with multiple exposures to posting from the kinds of bulletin boards you would like to encourage students to visit and participate in.
2) Draw attention to the interactive nature of this genre. Instill in your students the need to follow netiquette (unwritten rules of politeness on the net).
3) Teach students the mechanics of getting to a bulletin board and posting something there. Example; wikispace blog
Internet Chat
1) This is a great form of fluency building but if unguided, it could lead to intellectual meandering and finally drying up of talk. Perhaps one form of guiding the development of talk is by getting students to find information from their talk partner on a topic the student and you agree would be interesting.