Communication

  Electronic communication;  personal experiences..

Communication is of course, the goal to achieve in any language; particularly when we learn another language, we have in mind that we want to learn how to communicate effectively in that language. But sometimes our means of communication also play an important role.

Electronic communication has a lot of advantages and also offers different ways to do it. There is always a question of which one is better.  Here I am going to explain my experiences between a threaded discussion vs. an e-mail discussion vs. a live chat discussion.

Threaded discussion. Some people like a .  I see it widely use in some professional panels.  As a teacher of high school, I don't find this way of communication very useful; because many teens only read some and part of the opinions/discussions on the thread, and they miss very important information if this is towards the end of the thread. 

My students like to use "Discord" as a  substitute for an email, but I find out this to be more like a thread in its format, than an email. It is easy to read; however, I ask my students to always communicate in one way only among the class, instead of using several ways because it could get very confusing.

It is common also among my students and some colleagues to use a thread of discussion via texting.  More than discussion, they pass information on a group chat and people ask and answer questions in it. It could be useful for an emergency announcement to a group, but I found it very distracting if you have the sound alert on. 

Email discussions. This has been the easiest way to communicate to a small group; particularly when you have to share not just written information, but also attached files, pictures, etc. At work, it's a "common denominator" as a means of communication. We all have the same format and it's an email for the school; where all students, faculty and staff have an individual email address, that is also part of our school. Everyone can receive a personal  email, or a group announcement.  However, I personally feel that when an email is sent to a large group, and that email has a question waiting for several responses. People don't read all the responses and answer the same things, or if the email contains some topic, in which people have questions, I found reading people asking the exact same question many times. People do not read carefully, and in a big group, there is a big chance of missing a great deal of information that has been exchange in this form of communication. 

Live chat discussion. This is another great tool of communication in particular settings. This really helped me during the lockdown; I have live online classes, many of my students felt too shy about asking questions orally, so they use the live chat to ask questions during class. Perhaps, they asked more questions on the chat, than when we have in-person classes. It was a little difficult to me to read the questions while teaching; but again, I became used to it, and I was glad to be able to help the student with this form of communication. 

All of them have their Pros and cons.  Which one do you prefer?