Volume 3, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Technology-Enhanced Teaching of Chinese as a Foreign Language; Guest Editors: Dr. Lijing Shi and Dr. Qian Kan

This paper makes a case for the Bakhtinian concept of “chronotope” in explaining the space–time affordances of technology in second language pedagogy. It examines the production of space–time that intersects online/offline, formal/informal and local/translocal activities in task-based language teaching. Drawing on an example of instructional design using WeChat to facilitate the learning of business Chinese, this paper illustrates that the chronotopic affordances of mobile apps such as WeChat, when creatively integrated with task-based language pedagogy, can significantly expand the learning mobility and opportunities defined by the classroom in its traditional sense. This chronotopic expansion enables learners to be positioned in digitally mediated and simulated scenarios and roles that transcend the space–time of the classroom, closely resembling real-world communication in the globalising world. It is suggested that language task design, taking into account the chronotopic affordances of technology, can facilitate authentic and networked space–time of learning by embedding it in mobile, hybrid, individualised and collaborative contexts. The chronotope concept helps us not only critically understand the complexity of mobile-assisted language learning but also theoretically reimagine the classroom chronotopes and the roles, relationships and processes of learning in an increasingly technology-based knowledge economy in post-pandemic education.

In early 2020, the tertiary sector in Australia, as in many other parts of the world, was confronted with a series of unforeseen challenges arising from the coronavirus epidemic. As governments responded to the crisis by implementing increasingly strict social distancing and isolation measures, universities had little choice but to adapt their courses for online delivery. The ensuing chaos and confusion prompted academics and support staff to adapt quickly to changing delivery while continuing to offer high-quality teaching and learning experiences. This mixed-methods study explores the approaches that were adopted in a translation course that moved fully online and examines students’ engagement with and evaluation of the new course design. The findings reveal that it is possible to maintain high levels of student satisfaction by ensuring a clearly structured course design in an online mode with interactive and engaging course materials. This has implications for university lecturers wishing to redesign courses in an online or blended format, especially under time pressure.

Previous research into listening to recorded tutorial interaction highlights the potential of tutorial recordings as a scalable resource in online contexts. Dialogue between tutor and learner or between peers may mediate the understanding not just of direct participants, but also of listeners, and listening to interactive recordings may facilitate deep learning. In language learning, both direct and indirect interactions have been shown to contribute to language development. This is relevant for online learning design, especially so in contexts where no tutorials are provided, and students are confronted with a challenging language such as Chinese. This paper reports on a small-scale project which explored potential learning benefits of working with recordings of online tutorials in a non-accredited, self-directed course for beginner learners of Chinese through surveys and stimulated recall interviews. Our analysis of the data shows that viewers focused on different visual and auditory elements of the recordings; they participated vicariously in interactions between a teacher and students, and they reported benefits for language learning and motivation. Findings suggest that these perceived benefits and preferences are linked to linguistic competence in comparison with direct attenders. The study aims to feed into a larger research project including more languages and accredited courses at the next stage.

Taking inspiration from a popular online English test, this study first documents the development of an achievement test containing a newly developed C-test and pseudo-character test for beginner-level Chinese learners. Then, based on the test results collected from 53 university learners and using statistical tools, analyses were conducted on its content validity, construct validity, criterion-related validity, difficulty, discrimination power, and reliability. Results indicate that this new achievement test has relatively satisfactory reliability and validity, with only minor issues that need to be addressed in future studies. Situated in the context of language assessment, the study sheds light on the application of the C-test and a pseudo-character section in both face-to-face and at-distance Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) classrooms. Furthermore, the study also provides practical and applicable methods for CFL teachers to develop their own assessments.

Virtual exchange refers to technology-enabled online communication between people who are geographically separated from each other. It has been increasingly adopted in education in the past two decades, especially since early 2020 when teachers and students were forced to move to an online mode of teaching and international exchange owing to the most recent pandemic. The current study is based on a nine-week virtual exchange project that took place between 22 students learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) from a British university and their partners from a Chinese university. The subjects conversed online with each other on self-directed topics on a weekly basis, and they completed their collaboration project for showcasing in the final week. From a translanguaging perspective, naturally occurring online conversations between intercultural interlocutors were investigated through the method of multimodal conversation analysis (MCA). The students leveraged a range of linguistic, semiotic and multimodal resources to navigate through communication with their partners. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the understanding of how translanguaging is embodied in virtual exchange interaction and how MCA can be applied to reveal the details present at the micro level of intercultural exchanges in the CFL context.

Compared with traditional language teaching in a face-to-face setting, online language teaching elicits new challenges that require instructors to adopt new strategies when designing and delivering online courses. One of the challenges, according to our literature review (Cull, S., Reed, D., & Kirk, K. (2010, June 23–25, 28–29). Student motivation and engagement in online courses [Workshop session]. In Teaching geoscience online – a workshop for digital faculty, Virtual workshop . https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/online/motivation.html) and our instructors’ observations of online Chinese courses, was that college students suffered from loss of learning motivation, which impacted their learning experiences and outcomes, resulting in a downhill, vicious cycle. This paper discusses various adaptations that we designed to improve learner motivation by applying Keller’s ARCS model (Keller, J. M. (1983). Motivational design of instruction. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: An overview of their current status (pp. 383–434). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Keller, J. M. (1984). The use of the ARCS model of motivation in teacher training. Aspects of Educational Technology , 17, 140–145, Keller, J. M. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of instructional design. Journal of Instructional Development , 10(3), 2–10, Keller, J. M. (2010). Motivational design for learning and performance . Springer) during the process of (re)designing online Chinese courses from 2018 to 2020. Among many theories and models of learner motivation, Keller’s ARCS model stands out with its focus on instructional design, with four main practical categories: attention; relevance; confidence and satisfaction. This model further provides detailed subcategories for improving learner motivation, e.g., increasing variations in course material layout to capture students’ interest and providing real-time, encouraging feedback to enhance students’ beliefs in their competence. Our contextualised discussion of the ARCS model will benefit teachers and course designers seeking to enhance learner motivation in their online courses.

In this paper, we first introduce three ecological principles for designing Chinese language online teaching and learning activities drawing from ecological psychology. The first principle – perception and action cycles in an ecosystem , advocates for situating online learning in a physical environment and creates activities with potentials to engage perception-action cycles. With the second principle – intention and attention merge in an ecosystem , we advocate for designing complex, flexible and dynamic activities and providing scaffolding for attunement. The third – meaning-making and values-realizing coincide in an ecosystem, calls for designing activities that allow for care-taking of oneself, each other, and the environment and cultivate curiosity and mindfulness for values-realizing and individual meaning-making. To highlight ways to tap into learners’ interest and connect to people and places, we then share two example activities with both low-technology and high-technology options.

Along with the development of speech and language technologies and growing market interest, social robots have attracted more academic and commercial attention in recent decades. Their multimodal embodiment offers a broad range of possibilities, which have gained importance in the education sector. It has also led to a new technology-based field of language education: robot-assisted language learning (RALL). RALL has developed rapidly in second language learning, especially driven by the need to compensate for the shortage of first-language tutors. There are many implementation cases and studies of social robots, from early government-led attempts in Japan and South Korea to increasing research interests in Europe and worldwide. Compared with RALL used for English as a foreign language (EFL), however, there are fewer studies on applying RALL for teaching Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). One potential reason is that RALL is not well-known in the CFL field. This scope review paper attempts to fill this gap by addressing the balance between classroom implementation and research frontiers of social robots. The review first introduces the technical tool used in RALL, namely the social robot, at a high level. It then presents a historical overview of the real-life implementation of social robots in language classrooms in East Asia and Europe. It then provides a summary of the evaluation of RALL from the perspectives of L2 learners, teachers and technology developers. The overall goal of this paper is to gain insights into RALL’s potential and challenges and identify a rich set of open research questions for applying RALL to CFL. It is hoped that the review may inform interdisciplinary analysis and practice for scientific research and front-line teaching in future.