The study examined the features of the email discourse produced by Korean EFL elementary school children during online exchanges with Korean preservice elementary teachers. The study also investigated various strategies used by Korean children during email discourse in order to express their emotions. Ten Korean children's email messages were analyzed using a combination of inductive and deductive analyses methods within a paradigm of qualitative data analysis (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). The findings showed that the children's email discourse resembled spoken discourse and had a conversational tone. Their oral-like and informal features of email discourse were bolstered by various distinct features of the children's English use within email discourse, including: 1) spontaneous use of English; 2) colloquial expressions; 3) use of interjections. In emails, the children utilized various online compensation strategies, such as emoticons, the tilde, exclamation marks, and the Korean alphabet to express their emotions and enhance their expressions. In their email writing, the children appeared to express what they wanted to say in English quite freely and did not appear to be too self-conscious about using their English. Several implications for EFL teachers are provided based on the findings. |