A Reappraisal Study of IT and the Development of Iranian EFL Learners' Writing Skills

The transformation from a traditional to an information-based society is occurring rapidly throughout the world. The transformation is also occurring in education and the world is witnessing the globalization of education. Over the past few years, the Internet has emerged as a prominent new technology which can be used in language teaching situation. Although during the long history of language teaching a lot of materials and various types of activities as teaching aids and technique; in teaching writing have been proposed by many instructor, little attention is paid to their effectiveness. The only assumption generally accepted by most practitioners, but not testified yet, is that educational technologies are more effective. This study attempted to investigate the positive effects of the Electronic Mail (e-mail) and Text Message, i.e. SMS on Iranian students' writing abilities. The e-mail provides a number of characteristics that can help Iranian EFL learners to improve their abilities as well as promote their confidence in the writing of English compositions. Writing is often considered a process that involves four main stages i.e., planning, drafting, revising and editing. These four steps seem to be applicable for paper-based writing as well as for e-mail writing. Although there are some limitations, the findings of this study revealed that the advantages of the electronic tutorial using the e-mail and SMS to enhance writing skills in English overshadow the shortcomings.