How to use e-mails with EFL/ESOL students   Getting your own e-mail address Before you set up e-mails for students it’s a good idea to get your own. If you already have an e-mail address and are happy for students to e-mail you direct then use this but having a separate account only is quick, free and keeps your work separate from other messages.  Visit www.yahoo.com or www.hotmail.com and click on ‘join’ to sign up. Setting up e-mail If you have access to a computer and your students have less than elementary English it’s probably best for you to set an account up for them. If not, print out the help sheets in the ‘Computer Lessons’ section. Often filling in the on line forms are a more hassle than benefit, your students will get much more from being able to e-mail you than learning to fill in a form. Many students will already have their own addresses and it’s helpful to utilise these. Ideas for e-mails There are a million and one subjects to e-mail your students about.  Ask about subjects relevant to your students, but make sure there is more than one question. An e-mail that says simply ‘What is the most difficult thing about learning English?’ will probably get a very short answer. Give opportunities for students to write as much as they can on a subject that they have an opinion on. There are lots of good ideas for questions at the Internet TESL Journal: http://iteslj.org/questions/ (no www) Correcting student e-mails To save time learn a few basic keyboard shortcuts. Shift+ the arrow keys select text. CTRL + B for bold. Put mistakes in parenthesis and corrected punctuation or spelling changes in bold, in this way students still have a record of the errors they made as well as the right answers. See below. I’m work in a shoes shop in the paris I (‘m) work in a shoe(s) shop in (the) Paris. Keep the e-mails flowing E-mails work best if you send them every week and expect replies. This is easy if your class has access to computers, but if not, it’s still worth sending them to students who are keen. Why use e-mails In the modern world everyone needs to able to write an e-mail, so e-mails are not just a way for your students to practise their written English. Students will be more motivated to send replies especially if the subject is something that motivates them. It takes too much time It takes about five minutes to compose an e-mail and block send it to your students. With shortcuts, correcting up to ten should take about ten minutes, as much time as it would take to correct paper based writing. Students will also have a clean, well set out, saved copy of their work with your corrections.