Motivating Learners and Cultivating Intercultural Competence Through International Online Exchange
This article introduces an asynchronous online exchange activity designed to motivate learners and cultivate intercultural competence through international collaboration. The collaboration involved students from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's (XJTLU) Japanese language class and Okinawa University in Japan sharing daily life experiences through self-shot video clips on educational online social networking platform Padlet. Existing research has pointed out the reluctance of students to engage in conversational activities (Horwitz & Horwitz 1986, Liu & Jackson 2008, Zhang et al. 2018). Based on existing literature about language anxiety and communication apprehension (Liu & Jackson 2008, Zhang et al. 2018), our attempt highlights the benefits and challenges of online interaction. The findings show active student engagement in multimodal communication and observe chains of communication through posts and responses. Future efforts will explore Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) to achieve more in-depth communication and intercultural learning.
Keywords: Foreign language learning, video exchange, Padlet, students’ motivation, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) is a unique Sino-British university that provides an education per UK standards to mostly Chinese students. The author teaches Japanese at the Modern Languages Centre in the School of Languages, which offers Japanese and Spanish language modules for undergraduates and Chinese language and culture modules for foreign students and faculties.
Chinese students are generally respectful of the teacher's instructional guidance and do well on the tasks they are instructed to do, yet some students are used to waiting for instructions rather than applying their knowledge in a more practical way. These problems can also be seen in our classroom, especially in speaking activities. To address this issue, the author tried an online exchange activity between the XJTLU Japanese class and Okinawa University in Japan, in which students learn the Chinese language. It was conducted in the Japanese Language and Culture Summer Course in June 2023. This article explores the effectiveness of this online class activity and its potential for future development.
The research question for this paper is:
How can we improve students' engagement in conversational activities?
Conversation is essentially a relationship between people rather than a task to check the understanding of the textbook. First, it requires speakers to have someone they want to talk to and something they want to share with others. The author often reminds students: "We are not just in a student-teacher relationship. We are living in the same society. You are part of me, and I am part of you. I want to know you, and I want you to know me." We are "social agents", using the CEFR's term, who equally constitute the same society. It is only in the limited setting of the classroom that our relationship is defined as teacher-student, and although the teacher has the advantage in terms of knowledge and experience of the subject concerned, outside the classroom, there are, naturally, areas in which the student is more skilled than the teacher. The author believes that such involvement and interest are the basis of conversation.
To achieve the objective of facilitating students' speaking activities, the author tested the following hypotheses:
To test these hypotheses, the author organised an online exchange between XJTLU students of the Japanese language and Japanese students studying Chinese at a Japanese university. The two classes shared their daily lives in China and Japan through exchanging self-shot video clips. In relation to Hypothesis 1, we suppose that students are willing to talk to Japanese students much more than to their class teacher. They are the same age and are both curious about learning the language and culture from each other.
As for Hypothesis 2, this task is quite common for young generations who post their daily life stories on social media. They can think more creatively about what to say rather than having a conversation where the expressions that need to be used are prescribed by a textbook.
This exchange activity was conducted online. When thinking of online language exchange activities, one might imagine live exchanges using online meeting apps such as Zoom or MS Teams. However, there are several problems with live exchanges. First, it is very difficult to coordinate the dates of both classes. It is a big challenge to schedule two classes with different time zones and academic calendars, and it would be a heavy burden on both students and teachers to make it an extra-curricular activity; hence, it makes little sense to do it in such a low-motivated situation. Moreover, it is too challenging for novice-level learners to talk freely with native speakers online. Unlike offline, non-verbal communication is very limited in online interactions and the use of supplementary tools, such as drawing pictures or showing pictures stored on a mobile phone, is difficult. This can place learners in anxious situations, such as not being able to cope with the speaking speed of a native speaker, being overwhelmed by unfamiliar vocabulary, or not being able to respond immediately, which can result in a loss of confidence and self-esteem for the learner. This time, therefore, we conducted an asynchronous online exchange. Students presented short, one-minute videos of their daily life around them, which they posted on the online bulletin board Padlet (Photo 1).
Photo 1: Padlet board
Students from both sides could see each other's posts, comment on them, and reply with videos. The use of social media in China is subject to certain restrictions and the platforms that can be used are limited, while platforms that are mainstream in China are not used much outside the country. This should be kept in mind when conducting international exchange activities. We decided to use Padlet, as it has been used in many educational settings and is accessible in China. Padlet is characterised by its flexibility. For example, the design of the board and the layout of threads can be freely changed, and a variety of formats are supported for posting, including text, images, videos, GIFs, audio files, and hyperlinks.
The author first conducted this activity in a non-credit summer course as a test case. The JPL team organised a JPL Japanese Language and Japanese Culture Summer Course in June 2023, which included two weeks of language teaching and various cultural activities. The online exchange took place within one of the language classes. First, the author gave the class an overview of the exchange activities and their purpose. Next, the author showed a video he had shot as a demonstration. The author presented the following three topics in the video:
1 Live fish selling in a Chinese supermarket.
In the Chinese supermarket, fish section, fish are kept alive in tanks; when ordered, the shopkeeper cleans it for the customer. This is very different from Japan, where fish are sold filleted in Styrofoam trays.
2 Women's dancing circles in squares.
In parks and squares in China, it is common to see local women gathering in the evenings and at night to dance to loud music. The difference in the way public space is used is interesting from a Japanese point of view.
3 Street vendors with QR codes.
In Japan, it is not very common to see street vendors, but in China, if you walk around for a while, you will often see people selling vegetables on the roadside. One major difference from Japan is that electronic payment is quite widespread in China, and even street vendors have their own QR codes for electronic payment. There are almost no opportunities to touch cash on a daily basis in China.
The above three points are very common scenes for people living in China, and they usually do not pay attention to them. However, these are very interesting from a Japanese point of view. The author encouraged the students to try to introduce these topics, i.e. ordinary daily life, in simple Japanese. Finding something to share with Japanese friends is actually a way of rediscovering their own culture that they were unaware of.
Following the demonstration, the students began to look for objects to post. The author did not leave this task as homework, as it is important to start immediately before the current interest cools down. The author took the learners out of the class since daily life never happens in the classroom. We walked around the campus, and we were able to talk about the cultural differences between Japan and China in a very relaxed environment that was different from the classroom, and this was one of the biggest rewards. The author also participated in a class at the University of Okinawa, our partner, and similarly explained the purpose of the exchange activities and gave a hands-on explanation of how to use the Padlet.
Each student introduced their own life to the Japanese partners from their perspective. One student introduced the shared bikes parked around campus, and another introduced the nightly stalls in front of the student accommodation. Another student sat on her bed in her dormitory and introduced herself to the camera through a monologue. Students in Okinawa posted self-introductions, whole-class dances, etc. As a result, out of the total number of sixteen students enrolled in the course, twelve students took part in this activity.
Moreover, some chains of interaction were observed on Padlet communications. For instance, student A from XJTLU posted a video in Japanese describing his lunch in the campus cafeteria. Student B and her classmate C from the Japanese side talk together in their video. B tells C in Japanese: 'How is student A's video? In response, C replies, "Very good!" in Chinese, and decorative Chinese captions are displayed on the screen. (Photo 2)
Photo 2: Students react in the video
After receiving this video message, student A again replies with a text comment. (Photo 3)
Photo 3: Student reacts using a text comment
In this way, a short but conversational interaction occurs. In addition, multimodal forms of exchange, ie. text, voice message, photos, videos, emotional stamps, and likes, were incorporated. This means the students were able to make their own decisions about what to say and how to express it.
Out of the 16 students enrolled in the course, 12 took part in this activity. The summer course was not a credit-borne module. Therefore, exchange was, naturally, not a requirement for the assessment. Although the activity was based on completely voluntary participation, we obtained the participation of about 75% of the total number of enrolled. It suggests that we successfully achieved the goal of this activity to increase students' engagement in the speaking practice. The interaction was asynchronous so that students who were unfamiliar with speaking with native speakers would not be confused. Through posting, students could check the pronunciation of their own recordings by themselves. It also allowed for self-management and self-determination of their learning, as they could rerecord until they were satisfied with their own recording. Similarly, they could re-listen to the recording of their partner until they understood it, facilitating self-directed learning.
As we have seen in the previous section, chains of communication happen on social media. However, they rarely developed in-depth interactions. To address this point, we introduced a new exchange activity in the JPL summer course in June 2024. This activity involved putting bilingual speech bubbles on cartoons using Canva’s collaborative editing features. We held a fifty-minute online meeting using Microsoft Teams. Students were divided into groups and created bilingual stories based on selected cartoons. They had tasks such as selecting pictures, developing storylines, translating, etc., which required both verbal and non-verbal communication. According to a post-activity survey, 89% of participants agreed that this activity increased their motivation to learn. Surprisingly, 89% of students felt that their online interaction partners were as same as their classmates in the classroom, despite this being their first meeting. This indicates that online interactions can foster a good group dynamic, including students from both sides.
Based on this positive feedback, we are continuing to develop online exchange activities. This initiative is part of the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project, led by Dr. Anisa Vahed from EDU. The next round of activities, planned for the first semester of the 2024-2025 academic year, will include students from Korea, Indonesia, and other countries studying in Japan. Our observations will continue, focusing on communication in a translanguaging environment, where any language resources are mobilized to achieve communication. This aligns perfectly with the polylingual concept proposed by the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2018).
This article reports on the practical activities of asynchronous online interaction between Chinese and Japanese language classes. The students actively participated, which suggests a positive effect of the activities. To further develop more in-depth communication, we would like to give them collaborative tasks in the next activity in the hope that they will practice translanguaging communication and foster intercultural competence.
Council of Europe. (2018). CEFR Companion Volume with New Descriptors. Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/companion-volume-with-new-descriptors
LIU, M., & JACKSON, J. (2008). An Exploration of Chinese EFL Learners' Unwillingness to Communicate and Foreign Language Anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 92(1), 71-86. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00687.x
Horwitz, E. K., & Horwitz, M. B. (1986). Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety. Joann Cope Source: The Modern Language Journal, 70(2) (Summer, 1986), pp. 125-130
Zhang, J., Liu, J., & Ohashi, M. (2018). Outcomes and challenges of interactive international remote teaching: A case study of remote network exchange between Qingdao University of Technology and Tokushima University. Journal of Higher Education Research, 15, 55-64.
