Volume 3, Issue 2

This paper is an expanded version of a keynote presentation for the 2022 ChinaCALL Conference on the theme of “emerging technologies”. Today’s emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, machine learning, conversational robots, virtual worlds, virtual reality, augmented reality, automated assessment, and so on—are full of promise and seem poised to revolutionize language teaching and learning over the next decade. However, rather than looking forward, I review lessons I have learned over a four-decade career in CALL, focusing on those lessons that have continuing relevance for accommodating these and future technologies as they emerge. In the first part, I present a simple model for technology-mediated language learning as a foundation for the remaining discussion. In the second, I review seven challenges that I worked on in CALL, starting in the 1980s. I describe how I came to be aware of the issues involved and how through a combination of reviewing research, collaborating with colleagues, and drawing on my own experience, I came to learn lessons of enduring value. The final part briefly explores the potential for converting these and other lessons learned into principles to guide current and future encounters with technologies for language teaching and learning.

The release and rapid diffusion of ChatGPT has forced teachers and researchers around the world to grapple with the consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) for education. For second language educators, AI-generated writing tools such as ChatGPT present special challenges that must be addressed to better support learners. We propose a five-part pedagogical framework that seeks to support second language learners through acknowledging both the immediate and long-term contexts in which we must teach students about these tools: understand, access, prompt, corroborate, and incorporate. By teaching our students how to effectively partner with AI, we can better prepare them for the changing landscape of technology use in the world beyond the classroom.

In the current era, digital technologies, including multimedia and communication technologies, have penetrated almost every aspect of our lives. English majors are responsible for learning English languages and western cultures and serve as interlocutors between the East and the West. Therefore, such students need to be new media literate to retrieve, understand and evaluate information from multimedia sources and actively and critically participate in the digital environment. Nevertheless, very few studies have explored this group of students’ new media literacy (NML) level or their NML development via instructed training. This mixed methods study explores a group of Chinese English majors’ current NML level. It attempts to cultivate their NML via a course named Journalism English Reading and Listening . In total, by applying purposive sampling, 70 Chinese English majors were invited to participate in the study. The participants completed a pre- and post-course questionnaire based on Lin et al.’s (2013). Understanding new media literacy: An explorative theoretical framework. Journal of Educational Technology & Society , 16(4), 160–170) NML framework to quantitatively self-evaluate their NML. Results demonstrate that the participants’ consuming media literacy significantly improved. Regarding the participants’ prosuming media literacy, three constructs, including prosuming skill , production, and creation, exhibited significant improvements, but no significant differences were found in distribution and participation . This paper also introduces examples of the students’ group work to qualitatively showcase their NML development. Finally, the study offers insights into Chinese English majors’ professional training and development.

Teacher self-regulation is under-studied yet important especially for teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) who need to conduct remote teaching over the internet due to COVID-19, known as emergency remote teaching (ERT). In light of the teacher development and self-regulation model that consists of the three phases of forethought, performance and self-reflection, this qualitative study applies the microanalysis method to explore how one novice-level and two master-level Chinese university EFL teachers self-regulated their ERT teaching. After synthetical term frequency analysis using jiebaR, we summarised a total of 14 teacher self-regulation strategies corresponding to the three phases and categorised them into ERT goals (three strategies), motivation for ERT (three strategies), self-control in ERT (three strategies), self-observation in ERT (one strategy), self-judgment from the ERT class (two strategies) and self-reaction from the ERT class (one strategy). We ended by proposing a tentative EFL teacher self-regulation model for ERT context. Implications are provided.

Flipping pedagogy has gained popularity in higher education. Learning activities are decisive to the effectiveness of a flipped classroom. However, research dedicated to learning activities in flipped classrooms is limited in quantity and even scarcer from learners’ perspectives. This paper explores students’ choice of learning activities in and out of a flipped EFL classroom to find more targeted measures to enhance teaching and learning practices in flipped classrooms. Student proposals ( n = 30) for learning activities from 30 sophomores in an integrated English course (IEC) were used as media for data collection. The technology acceptance model (TAM) was used as the analytical framework. The findings showed that the participants proposed a conventional learning method emphasising lectures and revisions, which can result from students’ understanding of effective learning and their perceived usefulness of technology. This study concluded that successful flipped teaching entails considering student needs in the e-learning environment, quality learning activities and sufficient support for students to develop their autonomy.

In this study, we evaluated the effect of online flipped teaching on learner engagement in an English for specific purposes (ESP) listening and speaking course at a Chinese university. We also aimed to understand the factors influencing learner engagement in an online environment. For this study, an e-learning platform called Yunbanke was used for asynchronous teaching in a flipped class, and Tencent Meeting was employed for synchronous teaching in the non-flipped and flipped class, respectively. We used a mixed-methods approach. First, we conducted a quasi-experiment to compare engagement levels between the experimental group (flipped class, n = 34) and control group (non-flipped class, n = 35) before and after 16 weeks of online instruction. Then, we used lesson logs and conducted interviews with the students and the instructor. The results showed that online flipped teaching could significantly improve the learners’ behavioural and cognitive engagement compared to the non-flipped class. However, no significant difference was found in emotional engagement between the two classes. Qualitative data supported our quantitative findings, and five key factors leading to different dimensions of learner engagement were identified: learners’ prior English attainment, learners’ perceived affordance of online learning and teaching, interpersonal factors, instructor presence and learning tasks. Our findings can shed light on online ESP learners’ engagement and improve online ESP teaching practices.