Teaching Chinese Language and Culture Through Chinese-American Virtual Exchange: A Pedagogical Reflection

Despite its increasing popularity and widely reported success, the use of virtual exchange has not been very popular in the field of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The Chinese language program at a U.S. liberal arts college has been experimenting with various types of virtual exchange projects in partnership with Chinese students at a Chinese university in China in the past years. To further promote virtual exchange in the CFL field, this article attempts to provide a pedagogical reflection of one of the telecollaborative exchanges implemented at this college, outlining the description of the exchange, the rationale of the project design, learning outcomes, pedagogical challenges, and practical implications for future Chinese-American virtual exchange projects. The positive learning outcomes of the described exchange indicate that the combination of the e-tandem model and the telecollaboration model poses a promising direction for future virtual exchanges. The reported pedagogical challenges reveal that Chinese language instructors need to take a wide range of factors into consideration in virtual exchange design, including time difference, target language proficiency gap, workload, task type, and more.

Title	Teaching Chinese Language and Culture Through Chinese-American Virtual Exchange: A Pedagogical Reflection
Creator	Luo, Han
Publisher	Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching
Academic Department	Languages and Literary Studies
Division	Humanities
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	2023
Date Available	2024-01-08
Type	Article
Language	English
Keyword	Chinese as a foreign language
	pedagogical reflection
	telecollaboration
	Virtual exchange
Bibliographic Citation	Luo, H. (2023) "Teaching Chinese Language and Culture Through Chinese-American Virtual Exchange: A Pedagogical Reflection." Journal of Chinese Language Teaching 14 (2): 76-92.
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/0c483k81h
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/0c483k81h
Rights Statement	In Copyright
Rights Holders	Luo, Han