Since the United States was the foremost runner in the development of early computers, text handling was heavily based on the English alphabet. This has created a less-than ideal environment for other languages. Thus, people who are interested in e-mail in foreign languages need to have some knowledge of how non-English letters are being handled.

I. Basics of e-mail

1. E-mail address

E-mail addresses look like jjohnson@red.cc.abc-u.edu or tyamada@sakura.cc.tokyo-u.ac.jp
Every e-mail address has a logon ID, an at-sign (@), and an address of a machine. The address of a machine may be short or long. The last few words of the address indicate a type of organization and a country. For example, if the last word is "jp", it is Japan. "fr" for France, "ca" for Canada. (The USA does not have this country code.) The second word to the last usually indicates a type of organization such as "edu" for education, "com" for commercial entities. Japan uses "ac" for academic institutions, and "co" for companies. There are variations but you can usually figure out the system. (If an address ends in "it", what do you think it is? What about "au"?)

Some computing centers assign "aliases" to full (or true) addresses. The purpose of of an alias is to make an e-mail address simpler and more user friendly. For example, an alias of jjohnson@red.cc.abc-u.edu may look like james.johnson@abc-u.edu. With the alias, the person is readily identifiable and the address is shorter, thus, you can publicize your alias instead of the true address. An alias becomes convenient when your true address changes for some reason such as an retirement of an older computer. You should, however, be aware whether you are using the full address or an alias because the distinction becomes important when you set up e-mail software.

Students and staff members of a school usually receive an e-mail address from the school, while general public relies on the service of an Internet provider. There are many Internet providers large and small. All of them give you an access to Internet. It means that you receive your e-mail account on their machine. By calling a number with a modem, you will be able to send and receive e-mail messages. You can also have an access to World Wide Web (WWW). One may wonder how much sending an e-mail message costs. Does sending a message overseas cost more? The answer is yes and no. E-mail is not entirely free. The monthly fee that you pay to an Internet provider covers the fee to exchange e-mail freely. There is no per-mail charge, however. In the case of school, the cost is usually incorporated into student’s fee.

2. Connection methods

In order to use the Internet for e-mail exchanges, your computer must be connected to the Internet. There are two predominantly popular methods of connection. They are commonly called Ethernet and PPP. Ethernet is a terminology used when a computer is connected to school’s computer network system directly. The connection and setup are usually done by a technician. If you look at the back of computer and see a blue wire which is a bit bigger than a telephone wire, your computer is likely to be connected to the school’s dedicated computer network. The socket for Ethernet looks similar to a telephone jack, but it is a bit wider. When a computer is connected to Ethernet, you can assume that your computer is always connected to the Internet.

The other method is to connect a computer to the Internet through a telephone line. This is the way to get Internet services at a home computer. PPP, which stands for Point to Point Protocol, has become the most popular method in this category. In order to connect your computer to the network through a telephone line, you need a device called modem. A modem may be internal or external to the computer. (See chapter 2 for information about modems.) Schools and commercial Internet providers alike provide necessary software and instructions on how to connect a computer to Internet by PPP.

3. Setting up personal-computer-based e-mail software

There are two types of e-mail programs. One is server-based program and the other is personal-computer-based program.

Examples of server-based e-mail programs are ELM and PINE (/pa-i-n/). Examples of personal computer based programs are Eudora, Outlook Express, and the mailing program found in NetScape. Generally, personal-computer based e-mail programs are more user-friendly and handling non-English languages is much easier on personal computers. Thus, we (i.e. foreign language instructors and students) primarily use personal-computer-based programs.

There are a number e-mail programs available on the market. In order to use these programs, you must first provide necessary information such as your logon ID. Fortunately, most of them require the same information for basic operation regardless of computer types. In preference or set-up section of your software, you need to supply at least the following pieces of information to get you going. The following figures show a couple of examples for pages where you enter necessary information in different e-mail programs. Figures .1 is taken from NetScape and 7.2 from Eudora for Macintosh. In this example, the person e-mail address is jsmith@xuniv.edu and his real name is James Smith.

4. Logon ID

This is the registered name of your account. There are a great deal of variations in naming conventions, but the first initial followed by the last name seems to be a fairly popular one. A logon ID may contain underscore or hyphen. (As was mentioned earlier, a name like "james.smith" is most likely an alias, and it cannot be used as logon ID here. You must find out your real logon ID from your computer center.)

5. Password

A password gives you an access to your mail. Do not take password lightly since its protection is very important for computer security not only for yourself but for everybody on the system. (Many e-mail programs provide an option to save password so that you do not have to type your password every time you retrieve your mail. While this feature is convenient, it makes you forget your password. Thus, it is a good practice to have your password written somewhere in case you need to type it.)

6. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server

SMTP server is a computer which takes care of all out-going mail for everybody. Its address takes the form such as cc.xuniv.edu or abc.def.com. The address of SMTP server may or may not be the same as the latter part of your e-mail address. It is provided by the computing center or an Internet provider.

7. POP (Post Office Protocol) server

POP server is also a computer which takes care of in-coming mail for all users on the system. A POP server can be conceptualized as an electronic postbox system in which your logon ID is the box number and your password is the key to your box. It takes the form such as jsmith@xuniv.edu. In many cases, POP server is identical to your e-mail address. The term POP account is sometimes used synonymously.

Once you set these pieces of information, you should be able to start sending and receiving e-mail. The basic understanding of SMTP server and POP server gives you diagnostic power when something does not function correctly. For example, if you can receive messages but cannot send one, you should suspect there is something wrong with your SMTP server. It may be a simple misspelling in the server address or the server itself may be down for some reason. On the other hand, if you cannot receive mail but can send one out, you should suspect POP server.

When you set up your e-mail account, you should theoretically be able to have an access to your mailbox (where in-coming mail is stored) from any where in the world so long as you have an access to Internet. There are a few options to have an access to your e-mail while you are aboard.

1. Find a friend who has Internet access.
2. Make use of a local Internet provider. You can subscribe to one, or some providers let you have an access without subscribing to them. Large Internet providers have local access numbers world wide.
3. Connect directly to your host machine by making an international call. (The last resort!)

When you access your mail from different machines other than your usual one, you will have to provide your password. Make sure you have it with you. If you do not want to risk losing your mail, e-mail programs allow you to set a switch so that the original mail will not be deleted from your POP server.

II. E-mail in foreign languages

There is a general agreement that e-mailing through the Internet should be done in the ASCII character set. (ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.) The ASCII character set has been standardized for all computers and it contains 127 characters. 96 of them are printable characters which include the upper and lower case letters used in English, Arabic numerals, and punctuation marks. The rest of them are called non-printable characters, and they are used to control various functions of computer such as carriage return and line feed. The set does not, however, include letters with accents; thus, it already falls short of handling the full range of characters in close siblings such as Spanish and French. It appears to be a general practice in these languages to drop accents and umlauts in e-mail messages. (An extensive discussion can be found at Minnesota CARLA, Arabic computing page.)

Non-alphabetical languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.) require special e-mail program (or a special version of a program) in addition to language support at the operating system level. (Popular operating systems are Windows, Mac OS, and UNIX.) Extensive discussions on a wide variety of resources can be found in

Lunde (1999). (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cjkvinfo/noframes.html)
Knut S. Vikor (1997) Non-English and the net (www.hf.uib.no/smi/ksv/char.html)
Guide to Japanese Computing at University of Washington (www.tjp.washington.edu/computing/japanese/
Computing and Japanese in Keiko Schneider’s page (www.nmjc.org/center/personnel/computing.html)
Wei, et. (1995) ASCII Printable Characters-Based Chinese Character Encoding for Internet Messages (sunsite.auc.dk/RFC/rfc/rfc1842.html)

Recently, Microsoft has introduced a free kit for Internet Explorer 5 which enables viewing and inputting in Chinese (simplified and traditional characters), Japanese and Korean. Its e-mail companion program, Outlook Express, works with this kit. This is a welcome addition since you do not need anything else. (Note that, however, this kit does not allow you to do anything in these languages outside Internet.) Since this is a Microsoft product, it only works with Internet Explorer 5 on Windows. (www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/ime5_win32/en/ime5_win32.htm)

III. Using attachments

Many e-mail programs have a feature called "file attachment" or just "attachment." What this feature allows is to send different types of files such as graphics, formatted files, and sound files as a part of a message by attaching it to an e-mail message.

Since you can send any type of file using the attachment function, sending files written in a foreign language is not a problem at all. A couple of cautions are (1) a possible size limitation and (2) cross-platform transmission.

First, if you send a huge file which contains a large color graphics, sound, or video, you may encounter a problem with attachment. Files containing only text in any language usually do not have problems with their size.

Second, you need to pay attention to types of computers that a sender and receiver use since a mismatch can cause a problem. In order to send the content of a non-text file through the Internet, an e-mail program must encode it so that the Internet thinks it is a regular text. When you receive a message which contains such encoded information, the program must decode it. In the normal operation, encoding and decoding get done automatically, so you do not see the encoded file looks. However, when something goes wrong, you will see a message with lines of jiblish.

There are different encoding methods for different computer platforms. The Windows usually uses a method called MIME while Macintosh commonly uses a method called BIN-HEX. When a sender and receiver use the same platform (i.e. Windows to Windows or Mac to Mac), encoding methods do not cause any problems. However, when two parties use different platforms (i.e. Windows to Mac), it is necessary for a sender to check what kind of computer and mail software a receiver uses. Some e-mail programs provide different encoding methods to choose from.

IV. Listservs and mailing lists

Listservs are electronic mailing lists for groups of people with common interests to exchange information among them. There are a large number of listservs with a wide range of interests. Once you add your name and e-mail address to a mailing list, you will start receiving messages posted by other list members. You can post a message by sending it to the list’s address. Many lists are un-moderated. It means that nobody is checking or controlling the content of postings. A moderated list makes a use of a human editor to control the flow of messages.

Kitao’s homepage contains an extensive list of mailing lists for foreign/second language instruction. Its URL is http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/visitors/kenji/lis-fore.htm. You might also want to look at Yamada Center’s directory of language related mailing list at University of Oregon. (http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/lists.html)

Participating in a listserv is very simple. You first send a subscription request to a host machine of a list you are interested in. The following example shows how James Smith can subscribe to a list called FLTEACH. (Note that your e-mail address does not show up in the subscription request.)

Send a message to: listserv@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu

The message is just one line. subscribe FLTEACH James Smith

Once you are on the list, you can set various options. For example, you can tell the listserv not to send any postings while you are on a vacation. A listserv usually sends information regarding various options when you subscribe to it.

Mailing lists are very powerful sources of information since a number of experts in given areas participate. For graduate students, it is exciting to have their questions answered, if lucky, by well-known scholars or authors of the textbooks they might be using. At the same time, because posting a question on a listserv is so easy, there are some etiquette that you should keep. For example, when you are looking for information or an answer to a question, try to be as specific as possible. You should do your homework and show some evidence that you have checked different sources before you post a question on a listserv. If people who have answers to your question feel that they can answer it in five minutes right off the top of their head, they probably will respond. However, if they feel it takes thirty minutes to answer, they may pass. Furthermore, since people are constantly getting on and off the list, similar questions are likely to be posted. One way to avoid this is the use of the archive of the list. An archive is a collection of every posting in the past and it is accessible through WWW. You can search through the archive looking for certain keywords to see if there has been any discussion on the topic you are interested in. You may find an answer in the archive or you can build your question based on past discussions. It is a more efficient use of a mailing list.

Another caution is the use of a "reply" function in your mail program. The replay function automatically places the sender of the original message into the receiver of your response. When an original message comes from a listserv, the reply function put the listserv, and not the person who sent the original message to the list, as the receiver and not the person. If you think your response should be placed on the list, the reply function should work fine. But if you just want to respond to the person who wrote the original message, you should not be using the reply function. To save you from any embarrassment, make sure who your receiver is before you hit the "SEND" button.

There are mailing lists for students to practice target languages. Examples are SL-LISTS (International EFL/ESL email student discussion lists, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/education/sl/sl.html) and GAKUSEI-L (mailing lists for learners of Japanese).

Warshauer (1995) "E-mail for English Teaching: Bringing the Internet and Computer Learning Networks Into the Language Classroom"

Exercises for Chapter 7

1. Have a good understanding of how you can send and receive e-mail in your target language. Be able to explain what is necessary to a person who does not know well.
   
   
2. Familiarize yourself with terms including POP, SMTP, Logon ID, alias, attachment, HEX conversion, MIME.
   
   
3. Make sure you know how to use "attachment" in the e-mail program you are using. Send a formatted file to a person who uses different type of computers.
   
   
4. Subscribe to a few mailing lists (listservs) which deal with foreign/second language acquisition and instruction. Stay on them at least for two weeks. Describe what kind of information being exchanged on each list.
   
   
5. Learn how to set different options such as no-mail for a vacation period, digest, and unsubscribe.
   
   
6. Check to see if the list has an archive. If it does, look for relevant postings in the archive to build your question.
   
   
7. Post a question or opinion on your listserv to see if anybody responds. Try to be as specific as possible.