The advantages of introducing a classroom penpal project for your students should be considered heavily.

Why? Whether guided by a program or curriculum (or not), classroom penpal exchanges can be beneficial to students because they get to practice reading and writing, and use language not to communicate with their teacher in a contrived environment, but as an authentic medium for expressing ideas, thoughts and beliefs to a real audience.

We suggest that a teacher who gets involved in this type of project consider the following:

1. – Choose the other teacher you will be working with carefully; otherwise, you might end up being alone and encountering major difficulties with the project.
2. – Maintain personal email contacts with the teacher involved in the project. This is one of the most important items because if something goes wrong with a pal or the project, the teacher can identify the problem and try to find a solution.
3. – Make sure you and the other teacher have the same objectives. Discuss the objectives and what you want your students to achieve with the penpal project.
4. – Discuss and establish a definite beginning and end for the project with the other teacher. Each project has to have its time span set from the very beginning so that any necessary adjustments can be made by the teacher.

There are additional considerations with regards to the students:

1. – Pair the students off according to their language level and age.
2. – Make sure the students write to their pals regularly and reply to all email or letters received. To avoid problems, it’s a good policy to ask students to give you a copy (if by email, a cc) every time they send a message or letter to their pals.
3. – Be motivated and do your best to motivate the students.
4. – Assist the students whenever they need it. The students must know that the teacher is guiding them, even though s/he is not evaluating their work, and the project is not part of their class grade.
5. – Make sure the students commit themselves to the project and to you. Establish deadlines for work and be strict about sticking to them. It’s also important to keep tabs on the students’ work, especially if you want to analyze their progress throughout a project.
6. – Ask students to write a report at the end of the project about their successes and problems. The students’ report can help a teacher to evaluate the project, to identify its advantages and drawbacks, and to find ways to improve it.

Penpal projects are a great way of practicing technology (for email exchanges) or good pen-manship (for letter writing) in language teaching and learning and should not be overlooked as a tool in your teaching arsenal.