Computer-mediated approach in the teaching of English in Chinese classrooms is mushrooming.Thisrevolution provides a challenge to traditional ways of teaching in Chinese educational field but also an opportunity as Chinesestudents are on the boom and the classroom participants are also on the increase.The present paper is an attempt to explorethe use of e-mail in the teaching of English writing in Chinese classrooms.As the traditional teaching of writing in China isby way of handwriting is partially replaced by e-mail and word processing recently,as represented either in students’completion of writing assignments,or in their submitting of academic paper.How to tackle this new phenomenon remains tobe a topic both of great interest and of a problem to the teachers of Enghsh.The present study attempts to provide sometheoretical analysis of the linguistic features of e-mail and a comparative study with the traditional ways of writing.
