Abstract
This study presents an educational collaborative project between two colleges in the United States and China. Forty-five Chinese preservice teachers and 5 American undergraduates participated in the project which involved a 10-week online synchronous videoconference between the participants. The project aimed at improving Chinese EFL learners’ English oral skills as well as their confidence in teaching English language in future. Quasi-experiment design was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the project. Results showed that online synchronous videoconference with native English speakers did have positive impacts on Chinese participants’ English pronunciation and oral fluency & coherent. No significant difference was found in confidence measures. The outcomes of the project contribute to the relevant literature with an applicable and low-cost English language training model for EFL learners.
Highlights
The role of China within the global economy is growing rapidly at an accelerating rate and constantly expanding
The foundation of this research consists of weekly live videoconference between Chinese EFL learners who are pre-service teachers and their American peers who are native English speakers. The purpose of this project was to help Chinese pre-service English teachers improve their competence in English oral skills and raise their confidence in teaching English language in future by creating more authentic, interactive and stress-free cyber English learning environment
The two groups scored closely on the measure of Lexical Resource, with the control group scored a little higher. These results indicated that online synchronous videoconference with native English speakers had strong positive impacts on participants’ English oral skills in terms of fluency, coherence, and pronunciation
Summary
The role of China within the global economy is growing rapidly at an accelerating rate and constantly expanding. This has given rise to a pressing demand of Chinese people for English proficiency. In conjunction with this growth and demonstrated importance, Chinese students are seeking to improve their English competence to better communicate in a global context. Though English language learning is one of the core courses in elementary, secondary, and higher education, Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners are found still pretty weak in their English proficiency, especially in listening and speaking ability. According to a recent news report, Chinese ranks the second to last in English proficiency among 12 Asian countries [1].
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