Volume 2, Issue 1

Student collaboration has always been integral to the learner journey. The current limited opportunities for face-to-face discussions and student mobility due to the pandemic have heightened the need for such online intercultural collaboration initiatives like Virtual Exchange (VE). At the same time, few studies have looked at collaboration patterns between Asian and Western students, while using robust mixed methods research design (i.e., pre-post TPACK, foreign language competence, diaries) and social network analysis. To that end, this study explored an East-West VE of 10 weeks between 16 university students from China and 18 students from Portugal working together online on shared tasks. The study compared the perceived development of technological and foreign language skills between the two groups of students, the extent to which their reported lived experiences in VE were positive for all students, as well as looked at the kind of relations the students developed with each other over the length of the exchange. The study provides important pedagogical implications for educators willing to design VE for the benefit of all students, as well as methodological implications for the use of social network analysis with VE data.

This study used a community of inquiry (CoI) framework to investigate the potential in terms of fostering collaborative writing of integrating online learning communities (OLCs) with English language learning. The aim was to examine the possible impacts of out-of-class OLCs (guided by teachers) on students’ collaborative English writing outcomes and learning satisfaction. In accordance with the CoI framework, an experiment was conducted and both quantitative (end-of-semester group essay scores) and qualitative (interviews and field notes) data were collected. The results indicate the teacher-guided out-of-class OLC approach to be more effective than the lecture-based approach when it comes to fostering English learners’ collaborative writing. More specifically, the online approach helps students to write better group research essays, develop higher levels of satisfaction concerning their learning experiences and devote more time to the learning process. The results suggest that future studies of OLCs should examine the provision of safe and supportive learning environments intended to foster autonomous learning. Moreover, the results have a number of implications with regard to enhancing students’ learning motivation in out-of-class OLCs.

During the Coronavirus disease outbreak, education in schools and universities was conducted through online platforms worldwide. School teachers in China have had a taste of online teaching, which never appeared to be a necessity before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This research explores the effectiveness of English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching at the primary and secondary school levels during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The research tools comprise questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. A total of 132 teachers from more than 10 provinces completed the online questionnaire, and 12 teachers were involved in semi-structured interviews. The results showed that while some EFL teachers adopted effective online pedagogies, others encountered challenges in online teaching. The teachers who had comprehensive Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) or with previous online teaching experience tended to be more optimistic about teaching effectiveness in online language education. However, less training and a lack of TPACK and skills can hinder effective online teaching.

This study compared the perceptions and experiences of 173 students studying Chinese as a foreign language in universities online during the COVID-19 pandemic in China and the United States. Controlling students’ previous diversity of Chinese course delivery modes across countries and Chinese language levels, three two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were conducted to compare differences among three dependent variables: 1) satisfaction towards online classes; 2) self-perceived learning effectiveness online versus onsite; and 3) willingness to take a virtual Chinese course in the future. The results did not find statistical significances regarding students’ satisfaction and willingness across countries and language levels. However, the results found students in the United States (US) viewed online classes as significantly less effective than learning in-person, which was different from the views of students in China. The Pearson correlation analysis indicated that there were positive correlations among these three variables. Pearson chi-squared tests found that, significantly, students in the US preferred to take Chinese courses in-person. Pearson’s chi-squared tests on categories formed from the three open-ended questions highlighted the importance of four factors influencing the success of students’ online classes: technology, emotion and motivation, learning productivity, and teaching presence. Pedagogical recommendations are discussed.

The outbreak of COVID-19 led to the replacement of many traditional classroom teaching and learning activities with online interactions through synchronous audio or video conferencing tools. Technically, the key difference between audio and video conferencing is the latter’s use of a webcam. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the webcam’s role in video synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). Negotiation for meaning episodes, in which interlocutors try to resolve non-understanding through verbal interaction, were selected for analysis because they are widely believed to be helpful for second language acquisition. Specifically, this paper focuses on where interlocutors look during negotiated interactions in video SCMC and whether a statistical relationship exists between looking at a peer’s video image and successful meaning negotiation. Four dyads of English learners completed information gap tasks with potentially unknown words through learner–learner video SCMS interactions. Students’ multimodal performance was screen recorded for a gaze analysis and one-on-one interviews were conducted to confirm the students’ gaze directions. The results reveal a statistically significant positive relationship between the duration of one’s gaze at the peer’s video image and the number of successful meaning negotiation episodes in a dyad.

Over the past decades, corpus linguistics, as an approach to the study of language, has attracted much attention. Applications of its method and various corpus resources have been made in the field of language education as well. However, research in corpus linguistics has not yet been sufficiently converted into a language teacher training perspective especially in the primary and secondary education settings. We therefore call for the development of the corpus literacy of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers as part of their continuous professional development. In support of this call, we examine, from the perspective of a teacher educator, a tentative teacher training model based on the published literature, for student teacher trainees and in-service English practitioners. This paper also offers detailed instructions on how to facilitate the teaching of vocabulary, grammar and discourse with free and user-friendly corpus tools (i.e., SKELL, VersaText and AntConc) in pre-tertiary language classrooms. Some pedagogical implications of the cultivation of EFL teachers’ corpus literacy and major concerns when implementing corpus-based language teaching and learning are also discussed.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the 2021 ChinaCALL conference. The topics range from the traditional ones of teaching, learning and assessment to the emerging fields of intelligent computer-assisted language learning (iCALL), conversational agents and language development, the reconceptualisation of teacher digital literacy, reflections upon perfunctory gamification in language learning and particularly pedagogy in the post-pandemic era. In addition, the ability of technology to facilitate language education is explored, along with its potential to foster teacher and learner well-being.

Education is the main application field of intelligent speech technology, including automatic speech recognition and speech assessment. In this paper, we introduce some popular application cases of intelligent speech technology in education, such as intelligent micro-lessons, online distance learning and spoken English learning and testing. With the help of intelligent speech technology, people can acquire knowledge faster, learn languages more efficiently, and even communicate by using different languages. Moreover, we propose three kinds of challenging problems in the application of intelligent speech technology, including the recognition of domain-related terms, the recognition of code-switching and the fine-grained mispronunciation diagnosis. Viable state-of-art solutions to these problems are also discussed in detail. Meanwhile, we also discuss what language teachers and researchers can do in solving the above technical problems.