To be successful e-mail users requires more than simply fluency; it always requires the ability both to express oneself using a variety of language forms and rhetorical strategies as well as to know when it is appropriate to use these different forms. (Bisenbach-Lucas, 2005)

This is particularly important for international teaching assistants (ITAs), because in order for them to be effective, they need to be able to communicate effectively with their students, advisors, and colleagues in a setting where professional communication regularly takes place over e-mail. To address this challenge, three large research institutions collaborated to identify the major challenges international academics (graduate students, ITAs, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and visiting scholars) frequently face when communicating via e-mail and to share strategies that would best support them. This article describes the results of a collaborative project undertaken at Cornell University, Michigan State University, and the University of Minnesota, which was presented at the 2013 TESOL annual convention.

Institutional Workshops

Each institution created a workshop or a class unit around e-mail communication. These workshops were designed separately in order to address the specific needs of the individual institutions. At Cornell University, this workshop is offered each semester during a week-long workshop series called The ITA Excellence in Communication and Presentation Series and is only available to those enrolled in the ITA Program courses. These 1-hour workshops offer participants an opportunity to explore a communication concept in the context of their roles as teaching assistants; it is also a networking opportunity because they work to develop their communication skills with other ITAs. At the University of Minnesota, the workshops are available to all international academics and are often offered more than once a year. Both Michigan State and the University of Minnesota continue to offer the e-mail class unit as part of their ITA curriculum.

Planning the Workshops

At the beginning stages of the collaboration process, the authors shared their existing resources with each other, as they had previously each done some type of workshop or class activities around the topic of e-mail communication. Once these resources were shared, collaborators then revised their workshops to incorporate selected activities, tailoring their respective workshops with the missions of their particular programs in mind. At Cornell University, for example, because participants are predominantly ITAs, the focus is on students’ roles as teaching assistants. Regardless of each institution’s specific focus, the materials and strategies developed for these workshops address the cultural and language expectations of e-mail communications with the following types of audience:

i. Students
ii. Advisors/professors
iii. Colleagues/peers

Designing Workshop Activities

Two diagnostic tools were developed and used to identify the major challenges faced by the workshop participants: one provided them with various scenarios (making/refusing requests, apologizing, or dealing with culturally sensitive situations) and then required them to write an e-mail appropriate for the scenario; the other provided them with sample e-mails to critique with a partner. These tools allowed the facilitators to model an active learning strategy, think-pair-share, where the participants had to write down their responses, pair up, and then share their experiences with their partners. Because answers varied, uncertainties and misconceptions emerged, which provided opportunities for the participants to discuss questions about misunderstandings and miscommunications when composing e-mails.

Several handouts were provided as a resource for the participants to use during the workshop activities. In some cases, the handouts were sent to them after the workshop. These included: 1) a worksheet with e-mail phrases for various speech acts developed to address the assumptions that could be made about the recipient’s status, level of directness, sincerity, and professionalism; 2)  an e-mail flowchart to identify the various stages involved in writing an e-mail; 3)  a list of tips on writing professional e-mails; and finally 4) an answer key for the scenarios that were used in the workshop activity.

Assessing the Workshops

There were three learning outcomes that all the collaborators hoped to achieve through their respective interactive workshops. As a result of these sessions, it was hoped that participants would be able to

• discuss the basic rules of e-mail etiquette;
• apply the basic rules of e-mail etiquette to editing and composing e-mails; and
• choose the appropriate language to be used, depending on the audience.

At the end of each workshop, the participants were asked to provide feedback via brief surveys. The results were unanimous in that they either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that these workshops achieved their goals. Open-ended responses indicated that they would have liked a longer workshop in order to have the time to practice more individual writing.

Conclusion

The e-mail workshops and the class units have been offered for several years and continue to be well received by participants, among the series of communicative workshops that are offered each semester. From the feedback received, this popularity is indicative of many international students having experienced difficulties with e-mail communications or having been confused about how to communicate effectively via e-mail. We enjoyed our multi-institutional collaboration as it allowed us to brainstorm ideas and share strategies, resources, and activities. Our workshops have been definitely strengthened by this collaborative process as we learned so much from working with each other and were able to incorporate several new ideas into each of our individual programs.

Reference

Biesenbach-Lucas, S. (2005). Communication topics and strategies in e-mail consultation: Comparison between American and international university students. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2), 24–46.

Colleen Meyers is an education specialist in the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches international graduate assistants and consults with international and native English-speaking faculty members. A coauthor of Communicate: Strategies for International Teaching Assistants (re-issued in 2007) and English Communication for International Teaching Assistants: Second Edition (2012), Colleen has presented at TESOL and the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning & Technology Conference. In 2007, Colleen was awarded a Senior Fulbright scholarship to do teacher training in Turkey. Her primary interests include how nonverbal communication serves to enhance English prosody in academic communication.

Elena Stetsenko, associate education specialist at the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota, was educated in Russia, Ukraine, and Great Britain. She works with international teaching assistants and international faculty members, training them in college teaching methods and English for academic purposes. Having taught English to speakers of other languages in a number of European countries and in the Unites States, she has developed a variety of collaborative techniques that help her students become successful educators at the University of Minnesota and wherever they may work in the future.

Zeynep Altinsel teaches the ITA English Speaking classes and coordinates language and cultural programs in the Teaching Assistant Program at Michigan State University. She also offers pronunciation workshops for graduate assistants and postdoctoral fellows.