Abstract
Universities in Australia are rapidly moving toward the online delivery of courses, and language education is part of this trend. This chapter presents a study based on a newly developed, fully online Japanese language beginners unit"”Japanese 101"”at Western Sydney University. The online unit aims to deliver the same content as its on-campus equivalent. The unit covers the four essential skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking, and was designed in such a way that the course content could be taught via the Blackboard learning management system, supplemented by ZOOM videoconferencing. This chapter will firstly describe how the unit was re-developed in order to cater for its online delivery. It will then examine the assessment issues that are part of an ongoing improvement process. Some positive and negative aspects of online delivery will be discussed, in comparison with its on-campus equivalent. The students' achievements indicate that it is possible to learn the language online. However, the question remains as to whether or not online delivery is the best method for language courses in the context of a university language education.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Intersections in Language Planning and Policy: Establishing Connections in Languages and Cultures |
| Editors | Jean Fornasiero, Sarah M. A. Reed, Rob Amery, Eric Bouvet, Kayoko Enomoto, Hui Ling Xu |
| Place of Publication | Switzerland |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Pages | 225-241 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9783030509255 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9783030509248 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Keywords
- Japanese language
- distance education
- study and teaching (higher)
- web-based instruction