Online Language Teaching: the Pedagogical Challenges

Abstract

Reflecting on the experience of teaching two fully online papers in Chinese at the Bachelor of Arts (Chinese) program at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) (delivered for a total of ten times since 2008), the object of this paper is to examine the problems along the way, and to address issues which arise. The problems are all pedagogical by nature, instead of being technical concerns upon which a large proportion of online language teaching research has been focused. The issues at stake are two very important assumptions: that there exists a Virtual Classroom, and that one can move the class to the cyberspace and build an Online Learning Community in online language teaching. Discussions are centred on the changing learner profile and the changed learner behaviours in online learning, and their far-reaching impacts on the way we traditionally teach. This author argues that both assumptions are mere myths, and urges a re-think of the online pedagogical approaches which still treat online courses as “classes†and insist on building the online learning community to re-invent traditional classroom-learning in cyberspace. An urgent call is then made for a radical pedagogical shift in online language teaching from teacher-centred approaches towards a personalised, small-group orientated, multi-dimensional model of teaching. In this spirits, a proposal on online language teaching design is formulated with specific and practical suggestions for online language teachers.

https://doi.org/10.34105/j.kmel.2011.03.030