A warm welcome for UWA students from China Jiliang University
Over the course of the last semester (July – November 2010) I worked with my colleague, Ms Pearl Zhang, at China Jiliang University (Hangzhou, Zhejiang) to explore how our students could interact using the Internet and assorted communication software. Pearl teaches in the School of Foreign Languages in a special programme for students taking the teaching of Chinese as a second language. My students at The University of Western Australia are intermediate Chinese language students. So it seemed to be a match made in heaven. And so we launched the ‘Online Cross-Cultural Communication Project’. The emphasis here on ‘cross-cultural’ alludes to the fact that this was not just concerned with language exchange but rather with using language teaching as a medium to enhance cross-cultural awareness. I first visited China Jiliang University in May 2010. You can read about that initial visit here. The ‘Online Cross-Cultural Communication Project’ was built upon that first visit. It was good to catch up again with colleagues I met last time: Professor Li, Dr Chen and the new Dean, Professor Guo, plus the many teachers and students. I must extend thanks to my colleague and friend from Zhejiang University, Professor Wu Zongjie, for helping to make all this possible in the first place.
Finding their partners in the crowd
The project lasted for four weeks (Monday 20th September to Friday 22nd October). Each student in my Chinese Intermediate Two class was paired with a partner at China Jiliang University. Pearl told me that her students were so keen there were not enough of my students to ‘go around’, so participation from her end was very competitive. From my end I made the project a part of the assessment and thereby hoped to use both a bit of ‘stick’ as well as ‘carrot’. The students from UWA were instructed to: ‘engage online with your partner once per week for the duration of the project. Each period of contact must be for at least 60 minutes. You must first email your partner and set the time and date for the first ‘meeting’. At the conclusion of each session make sure to set a time for the next week’s contact period.’ Students could choose which communicatin platform to use: MSN Messanger, Skype, Yahoo or the Chinese platform ‘QQ’. (‘QQ’ is the most amazing online communication platform I have ever seen/used and I will be writing about it later in my research on the Chinese hiking communities which spend more time social networking on QQ than hiking).
Partner found!
The first two contact weeks were devoted to introductions. Students from UWA were instructed to introduce themselves and to interview their Chinese partners. A copy of the dialogue and a written report was required. The last two weeks of contact were given over to the trainee teachers from China to design a specific learning module. As a means of encouraging the students to reflect on the project and their learning both Pearl and I asked them to keep ‘reflection diaries’. These proved to be extremely interesting and informative. It was clear that both sides were anxious about the project not knowing what to expect. My students were nervous and shy. They worried that their Chinese was not up to scratch and would find themselves embarrassed or without anything to say. As it turned out both sides found that had a lot to discuss. Many students reported that they often extended the scheduled online contact time for anything up to another hour. My students reported that their confidence had been given a great boost. They surprised themselves in being able to confidently and competently communicate in Chinese with their partners on a range of subjects (this came as no surprise to me of course). For many of my students it was the first time they had ever communicated with a native Chinese speaker outside of a formal class environment.They same was true for the trainee teachers from China.
Student reports on the project
So I’m pleased to report that the ‘Online Cross-Cultural Communication Project’ was an outstanding success. But that is not the end of the story. In early December a number of the UWA students who took part in the project came to Hangzhou to study Chinese at Zhejiang University. China Jiliang University arranged to bring the UWA students out to the campus (way out in the suburbs of Hangzhou) to meet and interact with their partners. It was quite an experience to say the least. Although they had never met in person before the students had little difficulty in locating each other in the crowd. There were hugs and warm welcomes as they first embraced like long lost cousins (except for poor Philip who’s partner was ill that day!). We then moved to a lecture hall where the China Jiliang University students gave presentations reflecting on the project. It was extremely moving and very valuable. I had really underestimated the impact this project would have on the Chinese students. The UWA students were also in high spirits and Ash and Andrew gave a great presentation in Chinese and English (well done!) introducing themselves and life in Perth. When time came to depart I saw a few tears and sad faces.
There were a few hiccups. Technology and the Internet can be very unreliable and tricky at times. Initially we were hoping the students would be able to use Skype or QQ to talk to each other. But often the network was not strong enough to allow that so they fell back on using text. But that was fine as it gave my students a good opportunity to familiarise themselves with computer based Chinese character input methods. The UWA students also gave me valuable feedback and pointed out a few flaws. Pearl and I, along with Professor Guo and Dr Chen, took the opportunity whilst I was in Hangzhou to have a meeting and work out the strategy for implementing the project the next time. Based on this information Pearl and I are planning to expand and develop the project in 2011. We also hope to publish a research paper on the project in 2012 (plus also present the findings at a suitable academic/teaching conference).
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