Applying Web-conferencing in a Beginners' Chinese Class

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 for different ways to communicate with students at a distance. The emergence of videoconferencing applications, which integrate text, chat, audio/ video and graphic facilities, offers great opportunities for language learning to through the multimodal environment. This paper reports on initial data elicited from a pilot study of using web-conferencing in the teaching of a first year Chinese class in order to promote learners' collaborative learning. Firstly, a comparison of three conferencing tools was conducted to determine the pedagogical value of the web-conferencing tool-Blackboard Collaborate. Secondly, the evaluation of 10 campus-based Chinese learners who conducted three one-hour online sessions via the multimodal environment reveals the users' choice of modes and their learning preference.