In this study, the use of a popular mobile social networking platform (WeChat) is investigated for learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in a beginners' course at an Australian university. Driven by practical considerations and major issues with previous literature, student engagement and authentic language used in a WeChat class group are…

Previous studies on web-based collaborative writing have shown that task modality impacts peer interaction patterns and attention to form. However, these studies have primarily focused on contrasting a face-to-face oral condition with a text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) environment. Few studies have compared peer…

Profound changes in the literacy practices of young people in the early part of this century mean that many are encountering and using English in their personal lives while studying the language formally in school or university, potentially shaping their language development and attitudes. This article reports a research project which investigated…

Over the years, educational institutions have increasingly integrated Web 2.0 platforms as support tools in the foreign language learning curriculum to facilitate learners' engagement with the foreign language, increase motivation, and enable them to socially and collaboratively interact with fellow learners online. While descriptive studies on…

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) proposed by Mishra and Koehler is a theoretical construct of teacher knowledge that describes how teachers teach subject matter content using certain instructional methods with specific technology in particular contexts. This study aims to explore the interface between TPACK and SLA, intending to…

This article discusses insights gained from a case study on telecollaboration for intercultural communication in foreign language school contexts. Focus was on non-native English and German lingua franca conversations between pairs of students (aged 14-16, B1 level) from schools in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Telecollaboration…

Some studies on technology-supported peer feedback in the writing classroom claim that it reduces the threatening atmosphere caused by face-to-face interaction and that the discourse patterns and language use in the electronic feedback are more flexible than in spoken discourse. Others present a negative view that the comments generated from…

This study investigates the different learning opportunities enabled by text-based and video-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) from an interactionist perspective. Six Chinese-speaking learners of English and six English-speaking learners of Chinese were paired up as tandem (reciprocal) learning dyads. Each dyad participated…

Previous studies have emphasized the relationship between students' engagement and learning performance, and yet the context in which students and the teacher interact to engage each other has been ignored. In order to engage college students who are learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in the context of a big class, this study developed a…

This study reports on attention to meaning among 40 NNS pre-service EFL teachers as they collaboratively constructed a wiki in a 16-week online course. Focus is placed upon the nature of individual and group behavior when attending to meaning in a long-term wiki-based collaborative activity as well as the students' collaborative autonomous…

Task-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) may represent an optimal psycholinguistic environment for form-meaning connections, but learners do not receive feedback from a trusted authority. Intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) provides feedback, but the encouragement of communicative interaction remains largely…