Key-words: E-mail project, integration, CMC, writing course

The presentation deals with successful practice of integrating a telecollaborative project into a General English course.

In Russia e-projects are mostly used in secondary schools as extracurricular activities. The project described was organized for second year students within the writing section of foreign language syllabus at Humanities Department of Novosibirsk State Technical University. Based on Virginia Evans’s «Successful Writing» (upper-intermediate) book, the course helps students to master their skills in creating different types of texts: descriptions, instructions, stories, essays, reports, and letters. The e-mail project was integrated into the unit on letter-writing. Russian students and their Japanese partners from Nagoya University of Foreign Studies discussed different aspects of their cultures vie e-mail and forum to prepare group presentations and web-pages on the topics chosen. The students’ works were presented on the «Information Technology in Language Teaching» Resource Centre web-site.

Integration of e-project into the course provided students with the opportunity for real-life cross-cultural interaction, improved students’ writing and computer-mediated communication skills, and allowed students to apply the acquired knowledge and skills.

The presentation will highlight such aspects of e-mail project integration into a language learning curriculum as combining classroom activities and independent work, pre-testing and post-testing of students’ cross-cultural and e-communication skills, progress measurement techniques, and enriching a writing course with additional content, language, functions, and skills.