CHINESE BLENDED LEARNING IN U.S.

UNIVERSITIES

OVERVIEW
Historically, foreign language education in an American university has experienced many curricular
changes as a result of economic and political pressures (Kramsch, 1989). Initially, the need to
understand other cultures and languages became a major force for these changes. (MLA, 2007) During
the 1970s, concern grew for more student-oriented methodologies that moved away from the audio-
lingual habit formation principle of the 1960s toward a communicative application of language learning
(Savignon, 1998). The most striking approach was the Communicative Approach, also known as
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Omaggio-Hadley, 2001). Language teaching under this
view is intended to promote communication by engaging the learner in activities that mirror real-life
scenarios in which the language teacher adopts the role as a facilitator (Knight, 2001). Since then, the
foreign language curriculum has been redesigned to enable learners to communicate proficiently in a
foreign language (Hewitt, Ryan, & Kuhs, 1993; Thompson, 1991).

In the 21st century, the national standards for foreign language learning were about (1) competence in
oral and written communication as it applies to foreign language acquisition; (2) geopolitical awareness
as encompassing perspectives, practices, and products under cultures; and (3) lifelong learning in terms
of motivation to continue the study of foreign languages and cultures beyond the classroom. (National
Standards, 1999) The introduction of standards and guidelines has brought about dramatic changes in
classroom instructions and methodologies. With the constant changing of the goals in foreign language
teaching and learning, one of the new models of language teaching has been discovered, which was
called blended learning.

Blended learning, a combination of face-to-face and online instructions, is seen as one of the most
important recent advances in education in the 21st century. (Thorne, 2003) This new type of teaching
model brings numerous benefits that are in accordance with the current goals and principles of foreign
language teaching. From Goertler (2011), blended learning is socialized into online discourse
communities and offers possibilities for individualized instructions. It enhances input and also
increases access to materials and resources including native speakers. In this case, students are more
able to reach authentic materials and perform tasks through real life scenario activities, which can
really help them improve oral and written competency. Furthermore, it involves asynchronous and
synchronous interaction (text-based and audio and video-based), providing the possibility of focusing
on both accuracy and fluency of the target language. Moreover, it achieves broader goals such as
information literacy, transcultural and trans-lingual competence and life-long learning.

Along with the development of foreign language teaching and learning, U.S. colleges currently have
thousands of foreign language colleges or schools that have foreign language degrees, foreign language
programs, or foreign language courses, and more than 14 languages have been provided in different
colleges. As China continues to expand economically, its cultural influence is also spreading
throughout the world and one way this is being expressed is in the increasing interest in learning
Chinese as a foreign language. The specific features make it a unique language. It is very different from
many Indo-European languages, which makes it more complicated and difficult to learn it as a foreign
language. The adoption of blended learning, which combines traditional face-to-face and online
learning, could bring a number of advantages to teach and learn Chinese as a foreign language (CFL).
Despite these important advantages, there are many issues associated with such courses that potentially
affect their successful implementation. However, some of the problems that are inherent to purely
online courses can be avoided with a hybrid approach because students and instructors can meet in
person to develop rapport (which often carries into the online environment), deal with problems, and
handle administrative issues. When done well, this blended approach to learning can have all the
advantages of both virtual and face-to-face environments.

To blend well two modes together and achieve its original goal for more effective learning, this paper
addresses some major challenges of implementing Chinese blended learning courses in American
college settings, and explains how this type of courses can be designed to teach CFL successfully.

DISCUSSION
As a new form of language learning, blended learning would face a variety of challenges owing to the
beliefs and principles of language learning and the characteristics of Chinese. From the former practice
and research, some of them have been discussed, experimented and reached various results. The
following part is a discussion about blended learning based on previous research, especially for
Chinese as a foreign language, drawing on time allocation, content, coherence, interaction, feedback
and participation.

Proficiency
The proficiency level is one of the main contexts to be considered for the course design. In traditional
foreign language classes, teaching for different proficiency levels is not only distinct in content, but
methods, tools and strategies as well. As a new form of language teaching, blended learning also needs
to organize diversely for different proficiency levels.

Goertler’s (2011) German blended course in Michigan State University only offered a technology-
enhanced format with most of the homework assignments being completed online in their first year
curriculum. She defined the reduction of face-to-face time for beginning level as “dangerous” since the
interaction in face-to-face classroom was significant for students to feel being engaged and beginners
relied more on teachers’ guidance and support. Therefore, the blended learning was only applied in
second-year, the advanced German and the fourth-year content course. There was no significant
difference in language gains between the blended and traditional class for the second-year course. The
survey from the students and an interview with the teacher showed low buy-in on part of the students
and the instructor for blended or any technology-enhanced teaching. (Goertler, 2011) However, the
fourth-year content course did result in a positive impact on confidence, motivation, fluency,
management, responsibility, and classroom atmosphere.(Goertler, 2011)

Considering the impact of proficiency level on blended learning distribution, some may argue that
blended learning or online learning is not applicable for beginners since face-to-face interaction is
crucial for this level. However, it depends on how two modes being arranged and how materials and
tools being selected. For beginners, more time on the face-to-face portion would be better and the
online portion could serve as an extension (adding more activities in the same form as the face-to-face
portion) or supplementation (using activities from other sources or devising additional activities just for
the online portion) to maintain the sense of community and ensure automaticity. During the online
portion for beginners, instructor needs to serve as a conductor to guide students to progress. For
advanced level, more time for individual work online would be more beneficial since the online portion
offers free, specialized and self-expressive types of learning to help students achieve diverse goals. The
teacher’s role for the advanced level would better be a facilitator and resources to help students find
their own pathways to success.

Content and Tools

Content and tools selection is very essential for language learning. It is a great challenge for instructors
to choose accurate, meaningful, effective and interesting materials from the ocean of information.
Besides, the way to present them would also impact the outcome of learning. For blended learning,
there would be more special challenges: which parts of content should be learned online, which parts
should be learned in the classroom, and how to distribute them.

The Internet provides plenty of materials and tools for language learning, which becomes one factor
promoting blended learning. However, it is necessary to give more control on these online resources, to
make sure the appropriateness and accuracy of the potential usable material. The previewing of the
resources for the content, accuracy, usability and appropriateness by instructors can be a good way to
control input for language learners.

Besides the quality control of resources, instructors also need to consider suitable content as input and
triggers owing to the characteristics of different languages and contexts for language learning. As
mentioned in Nielson, Gonzalez-lloret, Pinckney (2009), Chinese is a tonal language, which means that
many words are differentiated from one another simply by their tones. It is very important for
beginning learners to have up-front training in tone recognition and production. Adequate resources to
demonstrate and explain the tone system must be included in the curriculum, and students must have
assignments with feedback on both their comprehension and production. It would be very helpful for
using authentic listening materials to identify tones and requiring students to record their pronunciation
and compare to native-speakers’ models or instructors’ feedback. (Nielson, Gonzalez-lloret, Pinckney,
2009) Additionally, distance students will need access to interactive tutorials that illustrate how the
sounds and characters match and how words are parsed. It is very necessary to have a virtual classroom
with a whiteboard space demonstrating how the script works in real time during synchronous sessions.

In addition, Chinese is character-based. The orthography does not systematically make the sounds of
words apparent. More supportive presentation and exercises are needed to help students to link sounds
with patterns and meanings. For the online mode, activities requiring characters typing can help
students link the sounds and meanings; for the face-to-face mode, more interesting instructions about
writing characters would help students link patterns with meanings. Also, there are many interesting
animation videos online to explain characters with their origins. Adding those resources into the online
mode would also benefit students’ understanding and memorization of characters. Besides, there is
some existing software that can make students practice writing Chinese characters by touching the Ipad
with their fingers.

Coherence
Blended learning refers to a combination of face-to-face and CALL modes, in this particular type of
course, a smooth and intense connection between the two modes would have a significant impact on
the learning outcome, since learning should always be a coherent process. If an obvious gap between
the two modes exists, they cannot cooperate well with each other to achieve the common goal for the
whole learning. Without smooth blending, students would consider the online portion as a redundant
part and could not make good use of it; even though some students do participate in the online portion
actively, they would fail in integrating the language and skills from two modes as a whole system to
improve their production. Therefore, the online portion would become a burden or negative factor for
learning instead of a promotion as its original purpose.

A coherent combination never means to be placed together mechanically, but smoothly blended with
natural transitions so that they could promote mutually and support students’ development together.
Therefore, smooth combination should be considered during the course design process.
After defining the context, instructors need to decide what kinds of materials and tools to use for
blended learning according to students’ personal information, the physical settings, the types of the
course, other stakeholders’ requirements and so on. With the related content and similar types of tasks,
it would be easier for students to switch between two modes and combine the outcome together. For
example, instructors should ask students to report or show their pair work outcome from the online
portion in the classroom; students need to practice or discuss the input from the online activities during
the classroom time. “The beauty of the blended approach is that the most difficult aspect of teaching
online—fostering a sense of community—can be achieved in the physical classroom.” (Nielson,
Gonzalez-Lloret & Pinckney, 2009, p4) The online portion should equip students with new input or
revision to reinforce the sense of communities so that the face-to-face time would be more effective
and efficient. A blended class can be extremely efficient when concepts are introduced in person and
then practiced and reinforced at a distance (or vice-versa, i.e., introduced at a distance and then
discussed and clarified face-to-face). The material used in two modes could also be a tool for smooth
blending. If the materials of the CALL mode are parallel with those in the face-to-face mode or in the
same sequence, it is much easier for students to relate the content together and find the necessity of the
CALL mode. Grgurovic (2011) utilized the materials for two modes from the same series, which means
an embedded connection between two modes. Also, Cheng (2011) designed the online portion based on
the same textbook for the classroom time. Besides, for better utilization of the timeliness and
authenticity of online materials and tasks, the content of the online mode could refer to more topics
about the real life and help students realize the connections between what they learn and what really
happens throughout our world.

Interaction
Language learning happens through interaction. The meaningful interactive activities that mirror real-
life scenarios could better promote the communication skills of students. The interaction in blended
learning is one of the biggest issues. As it claims, blended learning is aiming to provide more
opportunities to self-learning. What we want is that the online course could support students’ self-
learning through much more interactive activities. However, distance courses must compensate for
inherent disadvantages that come with a virtual classroom. Most obviously, it is difficult to create a
sense of community in an online class where students and instructors never meet one another face-to-
face. While this lack of community affects all types of classes, it is particularly troublesome in foreign
instruction, where learning occurs through interaction. (Nielson, 2009)

Bo Hu (2010) claims that the lack of the social and teaching presence in online courses is one of the
biggest challenges. Due to the decrease of face-to-face courses, there is less and less opportunities for
peer-peer and teacher-students interactions, which plays an important role in language acquisition,
especially for beginning learners. Most students in this stage feel that face-to-face interaction could
better facilitate them practicing language and being more confident in the target language. However, in
this specific setting, even though there are some discussion-boards, Skype sessions, teleconferences
available for students to interact, students are still in pursuit of a more natural and communicative way
to learn languages rather than the mechanical type of communication.

Actually, the Internet provides many opportunities for communication not found in a traditional face-
to-face classroom. A distance-learning course should take advantage of the computer-mediated
communication (CMC) and create opportunities to connect language learners with other learners and
fluent speakers of the target language. (Nielson, 2009)

Instructors should encourage students to use both synchronous and asynchronous

communication tools. There is a wide variety of tools available for the CMC. The interactions can
occur synchronously (i.e. chat rooms) as well as asynchronously (via email, bulletin boards, forums and
blogs), and they can be through texts, audios, or both. Synchronous CMC is a valuable tool for the
online classroom because it promotes a sense of community, helps build the relationship, and it allows
for abundant participation and interaction, especially for those students that are usually shy in a
traditional classroom. In addition, students using the CMC tend to produce languages that are lexically
and syntactically more complex than that produced in traditional classrooms, and the text-based SCMC
promotes self-monitoring and self-repair, because students have more time to prepare and reflect on
their responses than they do when they are speaking. It offers an efficient way to foster both language
accuracy and fluency. It is very crucial to limit the communication to a single set of tools which help
maintain order in the virtual classroom and prevent students from losing the track of one another when
logged into mutually exclusive chat systems (e.g., one student is on Yahoo Messenger while another is
using Google Chat). (Nielson, 2009)

Instructors should create assignments that require students’ communication. Apparently, it is not
enough to make CMC tools available for students. In order to have students engaging with one another,
communication must be the focus of many assignments. (Nielson, 2009) Instructors should assign
conversation partners and make sure that there are times when they can “meet” virtually for
communicative activities. For instance, “information gap” activities can be a great option, where each
partner has the information that the other needs, so they are forced to communicate with one another in
the target language.

Instructors should encourage students to communicate with more fluent speakers of the target
language. Teachers can give students opportunities to engage in meaningful activities by establishing
collaborative projects with native and other speakers of the language, in which students can receive rich
input from expert speakers and engage in real communication. Instructors can use already existing sites
of contacts to connect the class with other classes of Chinese speakers. Some useful sites to find tele-
collaborative projects are: E-pals, PenPal World, and My Language Exchange (Nielson, 2009).
Assigning a native or fluent speaker as a teacher’s assistant could also be very helpful in the online
classroom.

Feedback
Obviously, it is essential to provide feedback in language learning. Both explicit and implicit feedback
would bring about different impacts to language learners. It could scaffold students to notice the gap,
and modify their own output, which better build up learners’ interlanguage. In blended learning,
feedback given in classes of two different modes contains their own features. However, some studies
indicate that there still remain some problems when giving feedback in distance.

Bo Hu (2012) states this problem by emphasizing the role of teachers in blended learning. In the
distance learning environment, it is unavoidable that teachers could not provide as punctual, effective
and useful supports to students as in the face-to-face classrooms, even though teachers can use emails
to contact their students and provide comments and feedback online. Many of the students still feel the
help and support from teachers are not sufficient and effective. Additionally, Bo Hu (2012) also claims
that during the online communication between teachers and students, a more teacher-initiated contact is
rare and lacking in this type of course, which actually is essential to not only better track students’
progress, but also provide more opportunities to support learning. Much research approved that no
matter how efficient the online courses could be, the face-to-face courses could not be replaced.

Admittedly, it is impossible to avoid these challenges when more interactive environments are initiated
in online learning. There are still a number of solutions to resolve these issues. Given the fact that the
online courses can be completely asynchronous, self-paced, and individualized, it could be very
beneficial for instructors in online environments to tailor instruction, feedback, and assignments to each
student. Additionally, the online environment lends itself well to feedback because students’ errors are
archived for analysis. In a face-to-face class, conversations are ephemeral— an error disappears as soon
as it is made. In an online environment, both synchronous and asynchronous chat is preserved via
transcripts, and audio discussions can also be recorded, which can be very helpful for post-discussion
error analysis. (Nielson, 2009) In this case, if we can design the course well to take advantage of face-
to-face courses and online courses, the blended learning courses can be very effective. It will fulfill one
of the most important principles in foreign language teaching, focusing on both accuracy and fluency.
Here are some useful tips to keep in mind when designing the course.

Instructors should provide feedback during communicative exchanges and after analyzing
student’s output. (Nielson, 2009) On one hand, during the text-based CMC in online courses, it is
possible for instructors to provide feedback to the students by re-typing the erroneous utterance in their
response to the student, when they see students have made an error as in writing. It is also a good way
to provide a recast. When students do not seem to notice the correction, the instruction can use input
enhancing techniques to direct learner attention to the form (e.g., bolding a word, adding color, etc.).
On the other hand, students and instructors in an online classroom spend considerable time creating and
posting output. Instructors can identify patterns in the learners’ inter-languages by reviewing these chat
transcripts, blog posts and forum discussions; and tailor assignments with input focusing on the form
proper to a learner’s developmental level. It can greatly meet individual needs. In addition, learners can
analyze their own text chat interactions to discover their language learning patterns and correct their
linguistic and pragmatic mistakes. Moreover, instructors can record themselves providing comments on
written exercises to offer more interactive feedback.

Instructors should promote peer-feedback. Encouraging student constructive critical comments on

peer’s content and language work can be important to create a learning community. Students can
provide feedback on other students’ blog entries, discussion board contributions, recorded sound files,
etc. Also, it is definitely a good way to improve interaction among students and students. (Nielson,
2009)

Instructors should provide feedback actively and frequently. Based on some research, students still
feel the help and support they receive from teachers are not sufficient. Significantly, it is vital for
instructors to remember to provide feedback more actively and frequently. If the instructor maintains an
active presence in the classroom, students are more likely to do so as well. (Bo Hu, 2012)

Participation
As is known to all, the language learning process requires constant effort and attention in order to
achieve an ideal outcome. One of the efforts students need to make is to participate in the class. One of
the biggest advantages of this type of course that involves traditional and online courses is to meet
individual needs. If students could not take good advantage of this, even do not participate in the class,
they might not be able to continue studying more advanced Chinese courses or even could not catch up
with their current Chinese learning.

However, the participation in online courses could be a big challenge as for the nature of assignments
in online courses, since they are often time-consuming for both students and teachers requiring more
self-management (Cheng, 2011). On one hand, based on studies of Cheng (2011), students need to take
more time and energy working on online courses than in face-to-face courses. First of all, students need
to spend more time on their own to practice and reinforce their knowledge from the classroom rather
than doing plenty of exercises in face-to-face classrooms. Especially for Chinese, with totally different
writing and tonal system and many distinguished features, requires more exercises and drills to
successfully acquire. Secondly, the activities can be finished in face-to-face classrooms groups now
need to be completed individually. On the other hand, the design and teaching of the course costs two
to three times more work hours for teachers to complete. (Cheng, 2011) Needs for extra time for self-
study really call for high-level self-management. Unfortunately, avoiding boredom and catching up
with the lesson schedules on time could be difficult for many college students.

Blended learning provides many supplemental opportunities of learning online which requires students’
high level self-management and control. On one hand, it is essential to inform students of the
importance of involvement, spending time and effort to the online learning in order to let them know
the design of the blended course is to meet individual proficiency and learning styles. Therefore, taking
advantage of it could be very useful to them. On the other hand, it is also necessary for teachers to
better control the distance learning process (Cheng, 2011). Even though some parts of the online
learning are supplementary for students to finish, it is necessary to be mandatory with the parts
providing great reinforcement of the target knowledge and more chances for communication. Some of
them can even be incorporated in syllabus as one of the requirements.

Moreover, blended learning would unavoidably encounter the technical issues of distance learning
courses (Bo Hu, 2012). For instance, there were occasions when students could not complete the
assignments in time due to having no or a broken Internet connection. Students’ computers may not
play the sound files well because the requirement of certain software and the difficulties in uploading
or submitting assignments. Also, their work may lose due to the website malfunction. These types of
problems could easily frustrate students and disrupt their learning process. In terms of teaching
Chinese, many educators have adopted a pen-less approach to Chinese learning, where students type
words phonetically and then choose from a selection of characters. Advanced software is able to show
tonal markings and characters’ pronunciation. It can help learners to distinguish characters, improve
listening comprehension skills, and aid in the pronunciation. However, some of the students might not
know how to type Chinese characters. Therefore, Cheng (2011) mentioned that his design for the online
Chinese courses only included the low intermediate and heritage learners because they have already
learned how to type Chinese. In order to solve these potential problems, some suggestions are given as
follows.

Taking measures to prepare the students. As is known to all, technical support is very important, but
an immediate solution can rarely be achieved. Therefore, taking measures to prepare students for such
scenarios has proved to be most effective. (Bo Hu, 2012) For example, students were advised that
technical problems are likely to occur and assured them of sufficient support and moral understandings
from the teachers. Additionally, it was suggested to students that if technical problems occurred, not to
waste time trying repeatedly to solve them but use their planned hours to do alternative tasks. Printouts
of some of the online materials were also made available to the students. Precautionary measures also
included training on how to use the interface to access learning materials and assignments; how to
download and use the sound files; and other common matters that students may experience during their
distance learning. In terms of Chinese language learning in particular, training on how to type in
Chinese characters, how to change computer settings to read Chinese texts and how to use online
dictionaries can also be provided to students at the beginning of the blended course.

COURSE DESIGN
Based on the challenges and suggestions stated in the discussion part, the following illustrates a
blended Chinese course design in American college settings.

Context
This is a Chinese as a foreign language course in college settings. All students in this course are
American college students in the intermediate level of Chinese. The course would consist of four skills
with required textbook (Integrated Chinese) and supplementary materials. It is an open enrolled course
and the course has to be offered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Other stakeholders are
administrators and instructors of the department and university. Owing to the budget problems and the
trend for blended learning, a reform of blended learning in Chinese is required in the college.

Goal
The goal of this Chinese blended learning course is mainly to lay a foundation for students in the
intermediate level to continue studying more advanced Chinese successfully. The hybrid course serves
to students’ individual needs and provides more opportunities for students to communicate in Chinese
through a variety of online materials and activities. In addition, for the purpose of improving students’
oral and written communicative competence, this course integrates different types of communicative
activities in both traditional and online modes which helps learners to better communicate outside of
the classroom. This innovative type of course would also aim to establish students’ positive attitude to
the target language, culture, as well as their own learning.

Principles
An effective language course needs to be student-centered and communicative-based since languages
are for communication. The content needs to cover the most frequent language, so that learners would
obtain best returns for their efforts. Also, a course should include a roughly even balance of meaning-
focused input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output and fluency activities. The course
needs to be designed with consideration about learners’ preference with comprehensible and adequate
input and enough practice in output. Timely feedback is also essential for learners’ improvement.
Besides teaching the language, strategies for self-learning must be involved in the teaching, so that
learners could continue their learning without the instructors.

Course Outline
Time:
F2F: 50 minutes each class; meet on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 15 weeks in total
CALL: Mandatory Attendance: Preview, Review Session and Homework/ Optional Attendance: Online
supplementary activities

Teaching Resources:
Textbook: Integrated Chinese, Level 2 Part 1, Lesson 2- Lesson 8;
Workbook: Integrated Chinese, Level 2 Part 1, Lesson 2- Lesson 8;
Online Supplementary Learning Material: Flash, Video, Audio, Texts
Equipment:
CALL: Online Discussion Forum (Blackboard), Video Conference, Chat Room, Email, Voice Board,
etc.
Face to face: Computer, whiteboard, Projector, pictures etc.

Procedures:
1. Students watch captioned videos related to the new lessons, and answer questions on videos, to gain
some cultural and background information on the new topics.
2. Students preview new grammar and vocabulary points through the flash and quiz and new texts
through videos, and finish follow-up exercises; students post questions on online forum and answer
others’ (at least 3 times/semester).
3. The instructor leads students to discuss the topic and questions from the video, and summarizes
questions online and gives response and further instructions in the classroom. The instructor also needs
to lead the practice about new vocabularies, grammar points and conversations through various
communicative activities.
4. Students finish grammar and vocabulary exercises online and on workbooks.
5. The instructor leads students to practice grammar and vocabulary through communicative practices.
6. Students complete reading comprehension questions based on dialogues in their textbook, and finish
exercises on their workbooks; watch supplementary videos containing target language points.
7. Build on the vocabulary, grammar, sentence structures, and topics have been brought into the class,
the instructor leads the integrated speaking practice in the classroom to reinforce their knowledge.
8. Students finish online quiz exercises and composition assignments through the Blackboard.
9. Students attend the online video conference for the listening and speaking practice (at least 10 times/
semester).
10. After finishing one unit, students need to complete a test online based on listening, reading and
writing questions.

Assessment:
Attendance (both sessions): 10%
Assignment: 20%
Unit tests: 10%
Midterm exam (oral test): 20%
Final exam (integrated test: oral and written test):40%

Needs Assessment
Rationale
Teaching and learning is not only asking students to absorb pre-selected knowledge from teachers, but
an interactive process which need students to participate. Therefore, analyzing needs before design a
course is extremely important for the orientation toward the teaching learning process. (Graves,
2000)This needs assessment is for designing a blended course for college settings in the United States
and consists of two parts. The first part is a survey before the course design to gather information about
students’ basic information, language learning needs and blended learning. The second part would be a
pre-designed blended trial lesson to collect information after students experienced blended learning,
which is to evaluate the course efficiency.

The Survey
 • Aim: to students’ needs and preference
• When: before the course design
• Models: Grgurović (2011), Nunan(1988) and Placement Survey in Chinese Program at UIC
• Instrument: online questionnaire on SurveyMonkey (convenience to complete and conduct
statistical analysis)
• How: email students in Chinese classes the link of the survey
• Content: The first part of the survey is to know learners’ basic information, proficiency levels,
motivation factors, expectations, target contexts, their learning needs and preference; the second
part is for blended learning with information about equipment, learners’ competence and preference
about CALL to analyze the feasibility of blended learning.
• The URL: Part 1 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FCH7CHH
Part 2 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FJ6RVDS

The Trial Lesson

• Aim: to know the applicability and effectiveness of requiring grammar and vocabulary mostly
learned by students online; to experiment which one is more effective: the flash or video.
• When: before the course design; at last of the semester of Chinese class.
• Limitation: limited trial population and learning content.
• Procedure:
• The instructor needs to choose two new grammar points and six new vocabularies in same level.
One grammar point and three vocabularies would be embedded into a conversation in a video; the
others would be explicitly instructed in a flash with text and voice; two parts would be both
implemented with online texts exercises.
• After posting them on Blackboard, the instructor needs to start up a forum for students to post
questions after learning the grammar and vocabulary online.
• The instructor needs to collect the questions on the forum and explain the common and important
ones in next classroom instruction and to lead students practice about the grammars and
vocabularies
• A quiz will be offered; the result will be analyzed by comparing with traditional instruction as well
as comparing the results between the flash and video instruction.
• A volunteered post-interview about how students think about this trial lesson would be proceeded at
the end; the questions for the interview:
• How do you like or dislike this trial blended lesson, especially for the tools and content for the
online portion;
• Which tool for online grammar and vocabulary learning tends to be more appealing to you?
Which tool for online grammar and vocabulary learning tends to be more useful to you?
• Do you think this type of learning is more effective or not? Why?
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