Eyetracking a meeting of minds: teachers’ and students’ joint attention during synchronous online language tutorials

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many language teachers to move their teaching online without sufficient preparation. This unexpected change of practice engendered doubt and anxiety in teachers. They worried about their ability to attract and hold their learners’ attention, an element that is essential for successful online teaching. Our dual-point eyetracking study looks into how students and teachers establish joint attention during online language tutorials. It also examines various means teachers employ to guide students’ attention and scaffold their meaning making process. The data was collected from two online language tutorials where the eye movement of one teacher and one student was tracked simultaneously, as well as recordings of their stimulated reflection while watching their own eyetracking visualisation replay. By combining mixed-method data and dual perspectives, we were able to unveil the complex interactions in online language tutorials and offer practical suggestions to language practitioners who hope to improve their online teaching skills.

Review of corpus tools for vocabulary teaching and learning

This review aims to introduce corpora as useful tools for facilitating vocabulary teaching and learning. Corpora have long been applied to improve learner language learning, but their direct implication in classroom teaching is rare. This review begins with providing basic concepts related to corpora and then illustrates how corpora can benefit language learning and teaching. To make better use of corpora, careful consideration needs to be given to how to choose an appropriate corpus and what specific corpus search functions should be used. To this end, a new corpus-based language pedagogy (CBLP) is introduced as a new pedagogy to integrate corpora into classroom to facilitate teachers’ teaching. CBLP blends corpus linguistics with classroom pedagogy. In addition, four design principles are illustrated to help teachers design effective corpus-based lessons. Finally, a number of important issues are raised to help teachers improve their design of corpus-based lessons.

Exploring language learning and corrective feedback in an eTandem project

Many studies about eTandem and language learning stem from learners in Western institutions of higher education. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research investigating the telecollaboration regarding language development between learners in the East and the West. Against this backdrop, a small-scale, six-week Chinese-English eTandem project focusing on learners’ language learning processes and experiences was undertaken between nine Chinese university students learning English in China and nine British university students learning Chinese in the UK. Multiple datasets were collected from learners’ diaries, synchronous Skype communication recordings, email exchanges, interviews and a post-project survey. This paper reports the main language error types made by Chinese L2 learners of English and error correction strategies provided by eTandem partners of competent L1 English speakers, along with how Chinese participants responded to the corrections. A thorough analysis of the research data indicated three types of linguistic errors in written tasks made by Chinese L2 learners of English: grammatical, lexical and idiomatic expressions. Another finding was that, although explicit written correction was the most commonly used strategy in email exchanges, learners preferred explanations with examples. In addition to previously established gains of eTandem learning, such as authentic communication, forging friendship and promoting intercultural awareness, positive responses to competent L1 partners’ error corrections was another major benefit indicated in our data. Our study pinpoints the importance of both pre-project training of participants on error-correction strategies with examples and how to respond to partner feedback in future eTandem projects.

ChinaCALL in retrospect and prospect: opening a welcome window to the World’s CALLs

This paper, while sending a welcome message to the world’s CALL communities, presents a historical and developmental review of Chinese practices of educational technologies and ChinaCALL in particular. The review covers topics including the birth and concept of ChinaCALL, ChinaCALL’s pre-CALL heritage, pre-Web ChinaCALL, ChinaCALL in the new millennium, IBOE as a case study of ChinaCALL, and ChinaCALL in prospect. Also discussed are Chinese perceptions of educational technologies occurring at the macro, the meso and ground levels. On the ground level, technology consumers are characterized in terms of pen-pencil conservatives, AV natives, AV-CALL immigrants, CALL natives and CALL standby observers.

The effectiveness of corpus-based training on collocation use in L2 writing for Chinese senior secondary school students

Corpus tools are known to be effective in helping L2 learners improve their writing, especially regarding their use of words. Most corpus-based L2 writing research has focused on university students while little attention has been paid to secondary school L2 students. This study investigated whether senior secondary school students in China, upon receiving corpus-based training under the framework of data-driven learning (DDL), could improve their vocabulary use, especially the use of collocations, in their writing for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test. Twenty-two students aged 16–18 in a senior secondary school in Nanchang, China who were planning to take the IELTS exam participated in the study. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Word and Phrase were the main corpora that the participants used to learn various search functions. Pre-writing and post-writing tests were administered to measure the effect of corpus training. In addition, a questionnaire and interviews were used to collect students’ perspectives and attitudes. The results indicate that students made improvement in word selection after three corpus training sessions, and their attitudes towards corpus use were positive even though they were restricted from using computers to access corpora inside their school.

Reflections on research questions in mobile assisted language learning

Research questions are central to mobile assisted language learning (MALL) projects and studies, yet they have received little attention to date. Taking research questions as its central focus, this paper offers some reflections on the complexity of the broader field of mobile learning, on different kinds of research, on salient themes and challenges in mobile learning and MALL, and it suggests some research directions for the future. Since MALL research is interdisciplinary, and since research questions are an object of study in other fields of knowledge, the paper refers to sources from multiple disciplines to support a more comprehensive consideration of current and future research questions in MALL. The paper is fundamentally an invitation to a global conversation about research questions in MALL.

Designing an online business communication course in English by responding to student needs through an evidence-based approach

Communication skills are essential for the employability and academic success of business graduates. These skills are either embedded in undergraduate business management courses or taught in a separate course. Designing an English communication course for business management students is reported widely in the literature. However, research on such courses for distance education is scarce despite their increasing demand for distance courses due to an increasing globalisation of higher education and workplaces. This paper reports on the evidence-based design of an award-winning online business communication course in English which responded to changing needs of distance business management students at The Open University, UK. It draws on student needs analysis data (student surveys, online forum posts, industry skills survey reports and a content analysis of business management courses and assignments) and course evaluation surveys to investigate how the online course addressed student needs in terms of course content, teaching and learning and assessment. It argues that student needs analysis is paramount for any new course design and online delivery because the success of a course relies on meeting student needs. The paper has implications for business communication course design and business communication teachers.

Review of automated writing evaluation systems

This review generally endeavours to include a brief description of widely used automated writing evaluation systems, an explanation of underlying technologies, working principles and scopes of application, followed by a critical evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages in using these systems in educational contexts. Hopefully, the review would provide implications for language assessment practice and relevant research.