Reaching Real People

II. Promoting writing through pen-friendship

I wanted to promote writing skill with my students, just as much as oral ones. And in this area too, students needed motivation; I felt the need to find real-life situations (writing and receiving real letters to and from real persons) in order to make writing more communicative for students. That’s how, two years ago, I came in contact with an American colleague teaching French in Denver, Colorado. She needed a pen-friendship exchange programme for her students to practice more French as I wanted mine to have real English speaking friends from other countries. The experience triggered a real excitement in both our schools. Our lessons on letter writing became of necessity as everybody wanted to have a pen friend. We chose snail-mail as the mode of correspondence so they could include photos in their letters. At the beginning, most students would want me to “correct” their letters, because they didn’t want to make too many mistakes, which allowed more follow-up and practice in writing. We continued the experience with Denver students till the event of the “Anthrax” when we decided to try e-mail.

The year after, I renewed the experience with Julia, a Belgian colleague who came to Kaolack on a working visit. Once she got back home in Belgium, we began the pen-friend programme with our students and it’s still going at the time of writing this..
Dear reader, I hope to receive more suggestions from more experienced colleagues such as you, if you know better ways of promoting speaking and writing. Your suggestions will be most welcome.