The use of web-conferencing in a task-based beginners' Chinese class

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference abstract

    Abstract

    The development of new technologies and the falling cost of high-speed Internet access have made it easier for institutes and language teachers to opt different ways to communicate with students at distance. The emergence of web-conferencing applications, which integrate text, chat, audio / video and graphic facilities, offers great opportunities for language learning to through the multimodal environment.
    This case study aims to explore best practice in applying task-based language teaching (TBLT) via a web conferencing tool Blackboard Collaborate in a beginners' online Chinese course by evaluating the technical capacity of the software and the pedagogical values and limitations of the tasks designed.
    Sixteen undergraduate on-campus students who enrolled in an introductory Chinese language course participated in this project. Five fortnightly one-hour online sessions were conducted, which included two jigsaw tasks, two decision-making tasks and one information-gap task. Learners' interaction in the online sessions has been recorded and transcribed for a deep investigation of learners' negotiation actions in peer-peer interaction. Their experiences of using Blackboard Collaborate and tasks were recorded in in-depth interviews and pre and post-session questionnaires.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publication5th International Conference on Chinese as a Second Language Research
    Subtitle of host publicationconference proceeding booklet
    Pages118
    Number of pages1
    Publication statusPublished - 2018
    EventInternational Conference on Chinese as a Second Language Research (5th : 2018) - The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
    Duration: 14 Jun 201816 Jun 2018

    Conference

    ConferenceInternational Conference on Chinese as a Second Language Research (5th : 2018)
    Abbreviated titleCASLAR-5
    Country/TerritoryHong Kong
    Period14/06/1816/06/18

    Keywords

    • computer-mediated communication (CMC)
    • CALL evaluation
    • TBLT
    • web-conferencing
    • online Chinese teaching

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