Providing learners of a foreign language with meaningful opportunities for interactions, specifically with native speakers, is especially challenging for instructors. One way to overcome this obstacle is through video‐synchronous computer‐mediated communication tools such as Skype software. This study reports quantitative and qualitative data from a Skype partner program that emphasized meaningful communication between American students learning Japanese in the United States and Japanese students learning English in Japan. Analysis of pre‐ and posttests showed significant improvement in the listening and speaking abilities of the Japanese participants and in the speaking abilities of the American participants.
Computer‐mediated, communication‐based foreign language learning programs are showing great promise. Among these, video‐synchronous mediated communication seems to offer an effective way to provide speaking practice, although research findings have been inconclusive. Furthermore, among studies that have documented the effectiveness of video‐mediated communication, it is not clear why some learners improve more than others. This study reports data from three separate learner groups who engaged in video‐synchronous mediated communication with native speakers. Specifically, the study investigated its effectiveness on learners’ oral fluency and explored the impact of enjoyment, target language speaking time, and instructional level on improvement. The data suggest that participation did not necessarily guarantee greater improvement when compared with students in a control group; that instructional level is associated with improvement; that allocated time is associated with a decrease in pausing; and that students’ reasons for enjoying the program, rather than their overall enjoyment, are related to improvement.
This quasi-experimental study reports on the outcomes of a video-synchronous learning program in which an element of project-based foreign language learning was integrated. The project chosen was to cooperatively create a homepage. American students learning Japanese in the United States and Japanese students learning English in Japan made pairs and communicated in both their native and target languages via Skype to complete the project. The goals of this educational program were to increase intrinsic motivation in learners and improve their target language oral abilities, and identify challenges and problems with implementation. The program was conducted during the spring semester in 2017 and evaluated both quantitatively (via pre- and posttests) and qualitatively (via surveys and reflection papers). The results show that both groups of students had improved their mean length of utterance in their target language, a strong indicator of increased speaking ability. Furthermore, qualitative analysis showed their motivation levels increased as compared to previous similar programs. Although the majority of the students were interested in creating a homepage, there were some technical problems with the homepage creation software.
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