Linking up learners of Chinese with native speakers through WeChat in an Australian tertiary CFL curriculum

Abstract

Under the task-based language teaching (TBLT) framework, this study investigated learners’ perceptions of a WeChat task being integrated into a Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) curriculum. The WeChat task linked up learners of Chinese from an Australian university with native speakers of Chinese as international students on the same campus. The learner-native speaker pair were required to complete weekly assigned communication sub-tasks through WeChat for ten weeks in semester 2 of 2017. Both a questionnaire survey and an interview were conducted for data collection. Findings show that participants were very positive with the WeChat task. They expressed their enjoyment and satisfaction in completing the question-asking and answering interactions with native speakers through WeChat. As an important component of the tertiary CFL curriculum, the WeChat task was a great learning task to supplement classroom learning. It is also an ideal learning task that makes use of the native speaker resources and mobile assisted language learning technology to achieve the best learning outcome in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.