Investigating mobile-assisted oral feedback in teaching Chinese as a second language

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article reports on an exploratory study investigating mobile-assisted oral feedback in teaching Chinese as a second language (CSL). It is aimed at exploring the characteristics of mobile-assisted feedback on oral production with the smartphone social communication app WeChat as a case in point and examining learners’ perceptions of mobile-assisted oral feedback. A total of 13 CSL learners participated in the study. They were assigned nine discussion topics over the semester and were asked to send their recordings via the WeChat platform. Two native Chinese speakers were employed as research assistants who were responsible for providing the students with feedback based on their oral production. The results show that mobile-assisted corrective feedback is centred on overt correction, mainly targeting the linguistic aspects of grammar and vocabulary, whereas positive feedback is concentrated on affirmation, with content and vocabulary as the most frequently focused linguistic targets. In addition, the findings revealed positive attitudes by students toward mobile-assisted feedback and confirmed the facilitative role of WeChat feedback in enhancing their speaking ability. It is therefore suggested that smartphone social communication apps be applied to foreign language teaching for the provision of feedback and other learning activities.