What Interactional Competencies Contribute to the Effectiveness of Synchronous Online English Language Teaching?

Edited by Jiaqi CAI, Kefan ZHENG, Beibei LEI, Yihang JIAO Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, synchronous online lessons (SOLs), referred to as lessons delivered synchronously online through video-conferencing tools (Peachey, 2017), are becoming increasingly prevalent. Although SOLs contain multiple benefits for language learning in the digital age, they also bring us challenges (Moorhouse et al., […]

Interactions between Traditional and Digital Genres

Edited by Huiwen DENG, Lanyun HUANG, Ranran MAI, Xiaoqing LIU This post is based on Connecting traditional and new genres: Trends and emerging themes by Luzón and Pérez-Llantada (2019). Image from freeimages.com Imagine that you are a language learner who wants to enhance your language learning efficiency: how will you obtain the knowledge you want? Will you […]

Re-recognize Your Identity in Digital Context

WHO ARE YOU? Image from pixabay.com When you heard this question, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?   Let me guess, you may talk about something related to your social identity like your nationality, ethnicity, personality,  Has it ever occurred to you that you might have digital identities too?  Introduction The role of identity construction and negotiation […]

How to Teach Students in Separate “Boxes”?

By  Shirley, Cindy, Lia, Elaine Introduction Online teaching has been a research hotspot because of the pandemic in the past few years. Furthermore, the relation between technology and pedagogy contained in the process of online teaching has also caused concerns. Sankey (2020) believes that teachers should firstly decide teaching approaches and choose appropriate technological tools […]

Facebook! Where I Get My New ID

By Danielle, Kristy, Rose, Sylvia Introduction Each of us might have a different understanding of the relationship between our linguistic identities and individual languages. Some might feel more comfortable using English and identify themselves as English users, others might feel different and consider themselves to be English learners. The availability of digital writing only further […]

Welcome to My Cool Website — the Combination of CMC and EFL Learning

By Christine, Heidi, Carina and Sophia. Almon, a teenager emigrating from Hong Kong to the United States, was quite desperate about English learning in the beginning and had little hope for his future as poor English proficiency means few job opportunities. However, only after about one year, Almon had made great progress in English and became much more […]

Teachers’ Self-initiated Professional Learning Through PLNs

Introduction to Personal Learning Networks As a possible ESL teacher in the future, have you noticed that our everyday life is increasingly mediated by technologies and so is our classroom? More and more online applications like Canvas are being used and at the same time videos, images, or useful links are more often seen during […]

CMC–Talking in Text, Learning by Net

Conducted by Champion, Nicole, Shirley and Queenie Not the building CMC (Creative Media Center) located in CityU, the CMC that we will talk about in the following passage is computer-mediated communication. Computer-mediated communication was defined as “a vehicle for the metaphorical construction of community, the crafting of multiple personae and collective identities, and the assumption […]