try to put it inside the form tag as follows… it should work
<form action="sendConfirmation.php" name="confirmationForm" method="post">
<textarea id="confirmationText" class="text" cols="86" rows ="20" name="confirmationText"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Email" class="submitButton">
</form>
however you can use the same approach as well but you need to provide the from id attribute then
<form action="sendConfirmation.php" id="confirmationForm" method="post">
<input type="submit" value="Email" class="submitButton">
</form>