Online Language Learning

Tips for Teachers

Laurence Mann
Jieun Kiaer
Emine Çakır
 Online Language Learning

“Given the sudden recent surge in online learning, this book will be extremely
helpful to anyone teaching foreign languages in universities. Based on the experi-
ences of the authors and written by teachers for teachers, the chapters centre on
practical and digestible tips for integrating online technologies and materials into
teaching procedures and academic practices.”
—Professor Paul Seedhouse, Director of ilab:learn, Newcastle University, UK

“A distinctive feature of this interesting book is that it is based on teaching lan-

guages and cultures other than English so will be useful to a broad range of lan-
guage teachers and teacher trainers (including ELT). I particularly recommend the
book for MA students but it could also be a springboard for research into social
media for language teaching.”
—Dr Aisha Walker, EdD Director, School of Education, University of Leeds, UK
Laurence Mann • Jieun Kiaer
Emine Çakır

Online Language
Learning
Tips for Teachers
Laurence Mann Jieun Kiaer
Faculty of Oriental Studies Faculty of Oriental Studies
University of Oxford University of Oxford
Oxford, UK Oxford, UK

Emine Çakır
Faculty of Oriental Studies
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-91417-2    ISBN 978-3-030-91418-9 (eBook)

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 Acknowledgements

This book came into being during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and
2021. Nothing can undo what has happened; nor can any knowledge we
gain from the crisis ever hope to make up for what has been lost, in the
form of lives, livelihoods and learning. However, as disasters often do, this
pandemic has shone light on the forbearance and resilience of certain
groups of people. Through our own experiences as teachers during
COVID crisis, we have built up a huge amount of respect and admiration
for students enrolled in full-time and part-time education over the same
period. Faced with disruption to teaching and learning on scale rarely seen
in recent memory, students adapted and, to the best of their ability, got on
with the job in hand. Seeing this happen in real time, we were inspired to
write a book about learning languages online that offers teachers and stu-
dents some optimism for the future. It is to our students, therefore, that
this book must be dedicated.
There are many people to thank for their help in preparing this book.
The experiences recounted within its pages were shared by colleagues and
students throughout the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford.
In particular, we are indebted to members of the Language Teachers’
Committee and Hiroe Kaji, Lecturer in Japanese, for helping to organize
and participating in our workshop, as well as for encouraging participatory
research and professional development among our Faculty Colleagues and
beyond. We are also grateful to the former Chair of the Faculty Board,
Ulrike Roesler, and the Chair of FHS Examiners, Imre Bangha. For their
expertise and support, we offer special thanks to the editorial team at
Palgrave, as well as the three anonymous reviewers, for honing our project

v
vi  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

into something much better. Finally, we also thank Natalia Wojas and
Derek Driggs, for giving the final manuscript a thorough read, and Elvira
Mann, for providing invaluable advice and suggestions at all stages of the
process.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 First Tip: Bring Social Media into Teaching in Meaningful

Ways 19

3 Second Tip: Diversify the Curriculum 47

4 Third Tip: Find Self-Generated Opportunities for

Professional Development 73

5 Fourth Tip: Think Carefully About Assessment 97

6 Conclusion: Don’t Lose Faith127

Appendix133

References135

Index143

vii
 Abbreviations

AFL Assessment for Learning

AR Action Research
CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:
Learning, Teaching, Assessment
CF Corrective Feedback
CPD Continuing Professional Development
DAP Degree Awarding Powers
EP Exploratory Practice
GCE A-Level General Certificate of Education Advanced Level
GCSE General Certificate of Secondary Education
HE Higher Education
HEPI Higher Education Policy Institute
JFL Japanese as a Foreign Language
KFL Korean as a Foreign Language
KSL Korean as a Second Language
L1 First Language
L2 Second Language
LTC Language Teachers’ Committee
MMORPG Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game
NASUWT National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women
Teachers
NFER National Foundation for Educational Research
PEPA Potentially Exploitable Pedagogic Activities
QAA The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
VLE Virtual Learning Environment

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Screen-­sharing can be useful to indicate specific parts of texts 25

Fig. 2.2 Chats can be used by teachers to share new vocabulary and for
students’ revision 26
Fig. 2.3 Apps can easily be used to find language partners 27
Fig. 3.1 Using MSForms poll to select text genre 60
Fig. 3.2 Fandom blog selected for hip-hop translation classes 65
Fig. 4.1 Satariyan and Reynolds’s reflective model for action research
(2016)79
Fig. 5.1 Feedback conversations in language teaching 114

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This introductory chapter sets out the need for a new set of tips
for teachers specializing in language education who work online. While
the use of the internet in teaching and learning is already a well-researched
field, until the outbreak of COVID-19, there was still a reticence among
some teachers to exploit the full potential of the internet as a rich deposi-
tory of language learning resources. Through a rapid shift to online teach-
ing during the pandemic, many important lessons have been learnt and, as
this chapter argues, teachers who have lived and worked through this
period are now well placed to share their experiences with the broader
pedagogic community, with the aim of building more robust strategies for
online integration in future. This chapter also outlines the approach of the
remainder of the book—that is, broadly, to marry the unique experiences
and action research of teachers working in one UK higher education (HE)
institution, with data and practical advice gathered from an ever-growing
body of scholarship on the use of internet technologies, both in general
and in the unique environment of the language classroom.

Keywords  Teaching and learning • Languages • Higher education •

COVID-19 • Shift online • Technology • Internet • National
Curriculum • Non-European • Translanguaging

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9_1
2  L. MANN ET AL.

The Need for Some Tips

No-one reading this in the near future will need reminding that 2020 and
2021 were years of terrible suffering and loss. The coronavirus pandemic
which swept across our planet is, at the time of writing, still causing dis-
ruption and loss of life in many countries, including the UK. Now that, in
the developed world at least, the light of vaccination and immunity has
appeared at the end of the long tunnel, attention is already starting to turn
from the immediate health and safety of the public, to the longer-term
human, economic and social costs of the virus. Among these, education is
set to loom large.
In the UK, COVID-19 disrupted education in face-to-face environ-
ments over a period of months. This disruption affected not only universi-
ties but also primary and secondary schools, tertiary colleges, centres of
vocational education and, even, medical schools (BMA). The internet rap-
idly became the only practical means for teachers and students to com-
municate, for students to access essential learning materials and for staff to
organize their teaching. Computers and digital resources, including the
internet, had been used in educational settings for decades before 2020;
however, the provision of entirely digital teaching during the pandemic
was made possible only by very recent developments in internet-enabled
technologies, as well as the growing embeddedness of these in developed
societies. Had the pandemic occurred in 2000, or even 2010, it is unlikely
that the continuation of formal education would have been possible. As
with most unexpected events, levels of preparedness varied from institu-
tion to institution, and even from individual to individual, but overall,
students in the UK were saved from the worst effects of a protracted edu-
cational interregnum by their smartphones, tablets and laptop computers.
However, what might seem to be a clear and resounding triumph for
digital learning technologies and their advocates is, at best, a contested
victory. Teaching unions and professional bodies generally welcomed the
physical distancing of teaching staff and learners during the pandemic,
because of concerns for the health and safety of their members. In its coro-
navirus guidance, the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of
Women Teachers (NASUWT), for example, states unequivocally that “It
is not necessary for schools to require all available teachers to attend school
sites for the provision of remote education and blended learning without
good reason” (2021). On the other hand, some senior teachers, as well as
politicians, were vocal in calling for the resumption of face-to-face
 1 INTRODUCTION  3

learning, as quickly as it is safe to do so. For example, Katharine Birbalsingh

claimed, on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions, that the COVID-19 pandemic
and its effects on teaching and learning in the UK had definitely proven
that online learning could not replace the work of teachers (19 Feb. 2021).
This book will argue that such an assessment represents a fundamental
misunderstanding of the role of teachers in online learning.
Such claims also reflect an existential anxiety on the part of teachers
concerning the growth of online teaching and learning. In the future, it is
indeed possible that teachers will encounter the same competition from
automation and artificial intelligence that has already been faced by work-
ers in other sectors. Even now, many teachers are already concerned that
the online materials they create and offer students through asynchronous
learning environments will be reused without their permissions, losing
them their intellectual property rights and, in a worst-case scenario, result-
ing in their own redundancy (Flaherty, 2020; Vincent, 2020). There is
particular tension between teaching staff and students concerning the
pedagogic value of lecture recordings—a topic that has already attracted
scholarly attention in, for example, Morris et al., 2019. In other words,
there is a risk of digital teaching technology becoming what Rousseau
once called a ‘dangerous supplement’—seductive for its ability to please in
the present, but ultimately destructive of that which it supplements. This
is a serious point of concern, and it is right that it is being raised by
researchers and senior practitioners alike.
As teachers ourselves, we the authors do not feel immediately threat-
ened by online technologies. Even in the long term, it is unlikely that they
will completely replace us, any more than did earlier technologies deployed
in the service of teaching and learning, such as chalkboards, slates or pen-
cils. More than those technologies, however, online tools offer distinct
possibilities for widening participation outside the physical infrastructure
of schools and universities. They allow students to continue their learning
outside the classroom, across vast distances, time zones and even when in
transit between one location and another. This potential for asynchronous
learning cannot help but deconstruct some of the traditional power
dynamics of the classroom, as earlier developments in asynchronous learn-
ing (such as the foundation of the Open University) did in the past. Also
mirroring the Open University model, the technological shift to online
teaching can affect economic relationships between institutions and their
teaching staff, making it easier to hire short-term, remote tutors. Such
developments clearly have the potential to reshape attitudes concerning
4  L. MANN ET AL.

access to learning. Therefore, while online technologies might not yet be

poised to replace teachers in a post-COVID UK, they are going to change
how we work in the long run—and we need to get ready for this.
It is not our view that the COVID pandemic has proven that teachers
are more useful than technology, despite claims to that effect. What it has
done is to offer teachers profound opportunities to use and evaluate online
technologies that were previously beyond the scope of their interests or
skill-sets. Many of you will have encountered, as we have, colleagues who
were broadly unfamiliar with online learning tools before the pandemic,
who have become very proficient in their use over the past year. There will
be some skills and approaches developed during this time that even the
most-committed devotees to the physical classroom will be reluctant to
shelve, as the pandemic subsides.
We do not wish to second guess the course of development technology
will take, or the applications people will find for it. However, as we write
this, we find it difficult to imagine a future in which digital communica-
tion does not continue to permeate ever deeper into the fabric of our lives,
throughout the developed world and beyond. Mobile data communica-
tion is progressing rapidly and an ever-expanding repertoire of internet-­
enabled objects and devices are appearing in our schools and universities,
as well as in our homes. Smart devices link physical and virtual learning
environments instantly. Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies, or
future incarnations of these, have the potential to blur these lines still
further.
The development of this Internet of Things (IoT), as it is sometimes
called, is one of the reasons that, while they may have legitimate concerns
about them, teachers cannot pretend online technologies do not exist or
argue that they are protecting their students’ interests by doing so. Just as
the physical architecture of schools and classrooms met the needs of mass
education for industrialization in the nineteenth century—and just as it
failed some learners while helping others—online education is now giving
learners exposure to extra ‘dimensions’ of non-physical connectedness
that permeate their daily lives. We have a responsibility to ensure that it
develops in ways that meet a diversity of learners’ needs.
Further complicating matters is the fact that online technologies that
are more sophisticated on the inside often appear simpler on the outside.
In some cases, these are gradually becoming hidden from view and easier
to miss altogether. For example, an internet-enabled fridge, that manages
its own contents, is still fundamentally a fridge—and does not require
 1 INTRODUCTION  5

special training or knowledge of the internet to operate. As we approach a

world where almost everything humans interact with is linked together
digitally, but in increasingly subtle ways, it might therefore be an appropri-
ate point for us, as teachers, to rethink our relationships with digital tech-
nologies and, if necessary, adapt our practice accordingly.
Working with technology requires the application of thought, discus-
sion and imagination. In the longer term, there are ethical issues for teach-
ers to consider, in addition to the immediate practicalities of how to deploy
increasingly advanced tech in schools and universities. It is heartening to
see that universities are taking issues of digital ethics seriously; questions
surrounding the ethics of artificial intelligence are now on the agenda in a
number of leading institutions, including the government-backed Alan
Turing Institute (founded 2015) and Reuben College, the newest con-
stituent college of the University of Oxford (founded 2019). Trained as
they are to consider the ethical implications of all their duties, teachers are
well-placed to tackle issues, arising from widespread digitization of learn-
ing and AI integration, with professionalism and enthusiasm.
Language teachers, in particular, have a role to play. The internet is
bringing into being entirely new modes of communication, with which
learners are going to need to interact, irrespective of their existing lan-
guage background, or the new languages they are aiming to acquire. Since
the development of communication skills lies at the heart of language
learning, it is particularly important for language teachers to address the
question of how to integrate online material and approaches within their
work, as will be discussed further in Tip#1.

Teaching and Learning Languages in Britain

Language learning and the internet are both phenomena that bridge
national and cultural boundaries. We hope that this book might be of use
to people across the world with a professional interest in teaching and
learning languages online. However, since the experiences that prompted
us to write about online language education took place mainly within a
higher education (HE) setting in the UK (and specifically in England), it
is worth dedicating a few lines to an outline of that particular context.
Learning a foreign language is currently compulsory at state-run
schools in England at Key Stages 2 and 3 (i.e. age 7–14). The teaching and
learning of modern languages in England and Wales was made compul-
sory, for the first time in history, with the introduction of the National
6  L. MANN ET AL.

Curriculum in the late 1980s. Until the government’s decision to remove

the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) language require-
ment in 2004, the largest ever proportion of British young people studied
a language other than English through to school-leaving age (16 at the
time). This move towards more systematic language education emerged
against a backdrop of a complex and diverse history. In her seminal book
Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: A History of Language
Education, Assessment and Policy in Britain (2017), Nicola McLelland
begins her account with a discussion of the languages British people have
chosen to teach and learn throughout time. Even at this most basic level
of electing a language to learn, the story is one of considerable variety
across time and space, as interests have waxed and waned alongside politi-
cal and economic factors. While, alongside Latin (the ancient language of
choice), French has been the most popular choice of foreign language for
Brits since the Norman Conquest, other once-popular choices, such as
Dutch, have all but disappeared, supplanted by newer contenders, such as
German, Spanish and Chinese (pp. 5–38).
Historical diversities extended beyond just the choice of language, to
the content and delivery of language teaching across the country. In
another important publication, McLelland (2018) puts it, “what was
taught to pupils studying French, German or any other language in
Britain … was—and remains—very decentralised and hence very variable.
Not only did Scotland have its own system entirely (and still does), but
even within the remainder of Britain, multiple examination boards were
free to stipulate their own syllabi and examination requirements” (p. 9).
This diversity was most likely linked to an organic process of development
for language teaching that met local needs. Indeed, until the adoption of
a National Curriculum, much of what was actually taught in schools was
known only to teachers and other professionals working within institu-
tions themselves. In the 1960s and 1970s, this holding in reserve of cur-
ricula information by schools was referred to by many in public life as ‘a
secret garden’. After the roll-out of the National Curriculum, modern
languages, like other subjects, were mapped onto a national framework of
Key Stages and, until 2004, this included a Key Stage 4 (GCSE)
requirement.
In the nearly two decades since this requirement was removed—and
despite efforts to the contrary—language courses in further and higher
education are suffering substantial declines in recruitment, alongside an
apparent crisis of participation and uptake lower down the system. The
 1 INTRODUCTION  7

reasons for this decline are complex and not well understood, but research-
ers have probed the links between students’ perceptions of the general
utility of learning a foreign language (often tied to the status of English as
a world language) and their own personal motivations, in an attempt to
find ways to encourage more students to pursue languages at school. In
their interventional study, Taylor and Marsden, for example, demonstrated
that learners who took part in a “panel discussion about real-life stories of
needing and / or using languages …” were not only better aware of the
“general value of languages” but, also, of a “perceived importance of lan-
guages for themselves” (2014, pp. 912–913). The same study also found
that students’ perceptions of foreign language classes as easy or difficult
exert a significant effect on their uptake—in keeping with conventional
wisdom concerning the immediacy of links between classroom experience
and personal interests among adolescent learners (Goodnow, 1992).
Official and media reports have also cited the rise of ‘global English’ and
an impression, on the part of learners, that everyone in the world speaks
English (British Council, 2020) or that foreign languages are too difficult
to learn (Jeffreys, 2019), as principal causes for the waning uptake in lan-
guage learning. Alongside this, they also point to a decline in international
engagement as well as the lack of clear frameworks for implementation in
primary schools and transitions between primary and secondary education
(Collen, 2020).
The same period, since the early 2000s, has coincided with the rapid
development of internet technologies, multimodal platforms for commu-
nication and, in recent years, a huge array of freely available resources and
applications for language learning. Anecdotally, at least, it seems to us that
the internet is driving participation in language learning activities among
some communities—and we have seen the signs of this in student recruit-
ment settings for language courses at universities. Further work needs to
be done in order to ascertain the extent to which this apparent trend is real
and, if so, why this has not translated into better participation rates in
schools, particularly for European languages such as French and Spanish
which, traditionally, have seen considerably higher participation rates than
the non-European languages that we, the authors of this book, teach.
8  L. MANN ET AL.

The Internet and Languages

If the internet is indeed driving an interest in language learning, it is not
difficult to see why. Apart from any direct impact on language teaching
technology, there are a plethora of areas in which digital multimodal com-
munication through the internet has facilitated rapid developments in
global consumption through language, impossible in the pre-digital era of
books, magazines and film. These patterns of consumption intersect
regions, cultures and languages in ways that excite the imagination—and
have made some people very rich—but, in most instances, they are yet to
be fully harnessed in support of language education. One particularly
important example is that of cooking. Global interest in food and cooking
has been greatly impacted by the development of the internet, especially in
the more economically developed countries. Already in 2015, a Google
study from the United States estimated that “59% of 25- to 34-year-olds
head to the kitchen with either their smartphones or tablets” (Cooper,
2015). The same study found that the internet provided the inspiration
for young people’s choice of what to cook and how to do so, with YouTube
searches for “‘best recipes’ on YouTube … up 48% year over year” (ibid.),
although part of the enjoyment for many seemed to be in embellishing
and building on what they had learnt from their digital tutors (ibid.).
Elsewhere, food words of international origin are thriving in English in
diverse translingual contexts, dependent in large part on the influence of
the internet and social media (Kiaer, 2020). In essence, the internet is
driving people to learn more about food cultures distinct from their own,
learning new words in the process, chatting with other global users about
these and then creating their own fusion versions—of the words and the
dishes. Human creativity, after all, knows no boundaries.
In other areas, too, trends in digital consumption are supporting world-
wide interest in cultures and languages originating outside Europe—
including such billion-dollar industries as Bollywood, anime and K-Pop.
Korean pop music is influential enough as a marketing tool to have resulted
in a new McDonald’s meal in 50 countries (Reuters, 2021). Anime is so
popular on Netflix that there are review websites dedicated to selecting the
‘best’ anime shows to watch on the platform (Kienlen, 2021) and revenue
from Indian movies screened outside India has seen dramatic rises in
recent years (at least until the outbreak of COVID-19; see Vohra, 2018).
In a globalized, internet-driven world, none of these developments are
particularly surprising. However, the popularity of these now-global
 1 INTRODUCTION  9

phenomena does seem incongruent when contrasted with the relative few
opportunities for learners to study the languages and cultures that brought
them into being—at least formally. In 2021, a UCAS  (Universities and
Colleges Admissions Service) undergraduate programme search yields
only 21 providers of Japanese courses (and most of these are only as a
minor, or part of some larger languages degree structure), 5 for Korean
and none for Hindi or South Asian Studies, although the latter can be
studied from 2021 as part of a BA in Languages and Cultures at SOAS and
more widely at postgraduate level. Further down the system, the picture is
still bleaker. While Chinese grew to overtake German in terms of GCE
A-Level (General Certificate of Education Advanced Level) entries in the
UK in 2018 (Wood & Busby, 2018), A-Level Japanese narrowly survived
scrappage in 2017, alongside wider qualification reform in England
(Hollingworth, 2015). Urdu, a major language of Bollywood, was almost
lost in the same set of changes, along with several other Indian languages
with significant communities of heritage speakers in the UK, such as
Panjabi and Bengali. As yet no UK examination board offers an A-Level
in Korean.
With European languages on the decline and globally significant non-­
European languages underrepresented in secondary school curricula, it is
tempting to muse on how the teaching and learning of languages in the
UK could develop in coming years. In university departments offering
languages not traditionally taught in many schools, we have always been in
a strong position to judge the raw interest in those languages among
applicants. Despite the lack of investment and opportunities within the
school system, we are consistently impressed by the level of commitment
to their chosen languages our students show, as well as, in many cases,
their existing attainment in the languages before beginning our ab initio
degree programmes. Clearly, this interest is now supported by digital
trends in cultural consumption, as well as online language learning tools.
Compare, for example, the bleak picture of the state of languages in UK
schools painted above with the fact that during the COVID-19 pandemic
and associated lockdowns, the UK has led the world in language learning
through digital apps. Despite the unprecedented restrictions on global
travel during that period, language learning platform Duolingo reported
rapid increases in its global user base during 2020, highlighting the 132%
rise compared with 2019 seen in the UK, which corresponded to “almost
double the worldwide average” (Palmai & Smale, 2021). It seems likely
that, in the future, European language courses at university will also be
supported by these digital learning trends.
10  L. MANN ET AL.

The conclusion that must be drawn is that language education is not

doomed. Indeed, it might even be experiencing a renaissance—however,
at the moment, this is not taking place in the classroom for the most part.
Rather, the power to learn and develop is in the hands of learners them-
selves, supported by global trends in cultural consumption, digital learn-
ing apps, social media, fandom communities and artificial intelligence.
Instead of letting ourselves be washed away, as language teachers, we must
work to ensure that we ride along on the crest of this wave.

What This Book Is and What Is It Not

This book collects the experiences of the authors, three language teachers
working with non-European languages within the UK higher education
sector during a period of exclusively online and blended teaching, coincid-
ing with the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences working online are
combined with advice, suggestions and data carefully selected from the
ever-growing body of scholarship on higher education teaching and online
learning technologies. The book’s aim is to make the case for cautious and
well-planned integration of internet teaching tools into languages pro-
grammes within universities across the country. This is because we do not
believe it is sufficient for language teachers to be carried along by a wave
of technologies designed totally outside the scope of their own experi-
ences and professional activities, or simply imposed on them from above
(often from outside language teaching altogether).
For their relationship with internet technologies to be robust, all lan-
guage teachers will need to think about how the internet, as it develops
further in the future, can be used to support their own work. Books and
resources such as this one exist to reassure teachers undertaking that task
that they are not alone—what has been described as the “commonality of
pedagogic practice” (Brookfield, 2017). This book can further reassure
them that whatever challenges they face, the outcome of their labours is
likely to be positive if they retain the same principles of good practice they
have adopted in their previous teaching, applied carefully to the digital
environment.
This brings us to what this book is not. It is not the culmination of a
large-scale quantitative or longitudinal study—meaning that it cannot
confirm the efficacy of any particular approaches statistically. Neither is it
concerned primarily with the introduction of specific learning technolo-
gies (although it does, from time to time, name examples that have come
 1 INTRODUCTION  11

in useful in our own teaching). The reasons we have, in general, avoided

instructing teachers to adopt particular learning technologies are, firstly,
that internet sites and learning tools are constantly developing (as well as
being renamed) and secondly that, as mentioned above, we feel it impor-
tant for individual teachers to have the opportunity to think about what
works for them in their own practice, experimenting with different learn-
ing technologies along the way. The usefulness of this book lies, rather, in
its new focus on the intersects between language teaching and internet
communication, established principles of good teaching and the unique,
but broadly applicable, experiences of the teachers involved in its produc-
tion, discussed further below. We thus invite our readers to approach this
book on its own terms and with the above caveats in mind.

How to Use This Book

This book consists of four main chapters, an introduction and a conclu-
sion. The main chapters are each centred on one ‘tip’, which is designed
to help teachers think critically about and hone their practice in a particu-
lar area of teaching, when working online. These tips are intended as gen-
eral words of advice from one teacher to another, rather than precise
instructions for how to teach (we know you know how to do that already!).
The first tip focusses on the need to bring social media, SNS (social net-
working service) and other widespread digital communication tools into
language teaching in meaningful ways and gives suggestions on how to do
so. The second tip advises us to think about how we can approach the cur-
riculum constructively when shifting to online teaching, with diversity and
inclusivity in mind. The third tip explores opportunities for continuous
professional development among language teachers working online, even
under pandemic conditions. The fourth tip relates to the ongoing need for
careful alignment of learning and assessment as more and more language
classrooms integrate online and blended approaches in future. Overall,
this book stresses the need to think ‘elementally’ about online teaching; in
other words, to break down our successful offline and online teaching
experiences into the smallest building blocks we can and use these blocks
to create and recreate robust strategies for adapting to change and for
meeting our learners’ needs as circumstances and technologies evolve.
Within each chapter, readers will find a general discussion of theory and
practice related to the central theme, followed by either a small case study
or a selection of the authors’ own experiences in that area. The chapters
12  L. MANN ET AL.

conclude with a list summarizing the key points of that tip—perhaps we

can call them ‘sub-tips’—which are intended to help busy teachers make a
rapid assessment of whether that tip would work for them and, if so, how
to implement it in their teaching. Here is also where we, as authors, offer
our suggestions and solutions, based on experiences developing online
curricula during the COVID-19 pandemic. Readers are encouraged to
reflect on the interconnectedness of these suggestions, both within and
between the chapters. Good practice in teaching is joined-up practice—
and the growth of the internet is pushing this interconnectivity still further.
Due to limits of time and space, there will inevitably be many questions
and answers that we are unable to cover in this book. It is impossible to
compensate for these entirely; however, we have tried to make up for some
of the lacunae by appending a list of useful additional resources to the end
of each chapter. These come in various forms, including scholarly books
and articles; blogs written by teachers and other education professionals;
studies, reports, consultation documents by universities and professional
bodies; as well as a range of free online resources for developing skills in
online teaching. We encourage readers to consult these sources widely
alongside our advice and, in the interests of the wider professional com-
munity, to document and publish their own experiences of teaching lan-
guages online.

The Data: Language Teaching Within the Faculty

of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford

Alongside existing published material, this book collects the experiences

of a group of language teachers and academics working within the Faculty
of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford (https://orinst.web.ox.ac.
uk). This Faculty is home to teachers and researchers working in a wide
range of non-European languages and provides the mainstay of the uni-
versity’s teaching offering in those languages. Institutionally speaking,
languages in this Faculty are managed separately from modern European
languages and cultures. The reasons for this are primarily historical and
relate to the fact that the study of languages outside Europe—especially
those with a classical written tradition—has a considerably longer heritage
at the university, with the earliest posts, in Hebrew and Arabic, created in
1546 and 1636 respectively (History of the Faculty, n.d.). In contrast, the
teaching of modern European languages did not begin until 1848, after a
 1 INTRODUCTION  13

Professorship (of Modern European Languages) and two language teacher

posts were created by university statute the previous year.
Ancient and modern languages as they are taught today within the
Faculty of Oriental Studies range from the Eastern fringes of Europe and
North Africa to Japan and incorporate an interdisciplinary palette of lin-
guistic, historical, cultural and literary material. While extremely diverse,
the languages taught within the Faculty have in common that they are all
fairly distant, linguistically and culturally, from the language and location
of instruction (British English, England). Many of them are grammatically
very dissimilar to English and are written in a different script—or, in some
cases, multiple scripts. Three of the largest undergraduate subjects by stu-
dent numbers within the Faculty, Chinese, Arabic and Japanese were
placed in the highest category (V) of languages that “are exceptionally
difficult for native English speakers” by the US Foreign Service Institute
(Language Difficulty Ranking, n.d.).
Although teaching within the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford
goes on in a unique context (which brings its own particular challenges
and concerns); in many respects, it resembles language teaching generally.
While by no means purely technical programmes of language training, all
degrees offered by the Faculty have the teaching and learning of languages
at their core, focussing on the holistic study of a region through the
medium of its language or languages—and avoiding dependence on mate-
rial in English translation. Students therefore have to acquire fluency in a
language (or languages) from the regions they specialize in, in order to
make sense of the societies, cultures and literatures that have emerged
from those regions. In the case of languages still spoken today, this fluency
is expected across the four skills of writing, reading, listening and speaking.
Though the languages taught within the Faculty of Oriental Studies are
considered to be ‘difficult’ (see above), the challenges faced by students in
the Faculty confront the learners of all languages to some extent. For
example, while it might appear obvious that Chinese and English writing
are fundamentally different in how they encode language or that French
and English are more similar in that respect, at the level of processing in
the brain, the picture is more complex. Although an ‘alphabetic’ system,
English writing contains substantial logographic elements. A great deal of
psycholinguistic work is ongoing to investigate the extent to which exist-
ing understandings of the mechanisms underpinning bilingual reading in
alphabetic written languages are useful in understanding logographic
bilingualism, including work on logographic-logographic bilinguals (Ma
14  L. MANN ET AL.

et al., 2020). In practice, teachers are left to try to navigate the differences
between European and non-European languages in their own way—and,
for the most part, this means the same regular repetition, practice and sup-
port of learners’ essential to all language pedagogy.
Another commonality between our work in the Faculty of Oriental
Studies and language pedagogy more broadly relates to classroom diver-
sity. Learners come to us with a variety of backgrounds and experiences of
language learning. Some are heritage learners, some are ab initio students
and others arrive with knowledge developed in other contexts, such as
schoolwork, previous employment or self-study. These days, widespread
access to global popular cultures and language learning tools through
internet-enabled devices adds to the colourful diversity of L2 learning
experiences we observe among our students.
Teaching staff are similarly varied. Some are native speakers, some are
learners themselves. For some, language teaching is the main focus of their
professional lives and, for others, the portfolio is broader. Depending on
the size of the subject and teaching team, some may be solely charged with
almost all teaching and administration for their language, whereas in larger
teams this workload is often divided into various specialisms, each over-
seen by an individual faculty member.
The principal language of instruction also varies between different class
types and the skills on which they focus. A class in Classical Chinese trans-
lation, for example, will inevitably involve lots of discussion and feedback
in English and, for obvious reasons, is never taught by a native speaker. An
advanced oral skills class in modern Japanese, however, is taught by a L1
speaker of Japanese, almost entirely in Japanese. The inherently cross-­
cultural and cross-disciplinary focus of research and teaching within the
Faculty means that almost all classes within the faculty do contain some
strategic integration of multilingual discourse within the teaching and
learning space—or what has sometimes been called “translanguaging”
(Canagarajah, 2011).
In sum, the bulk of our activities as language teachers in the Faculty of
Oriental Studies are not dissimilar to those of language teachers working
elsewhere. We therefore hope that the tips in this book will prove relevant
and heuristic to teachers at a variety of institutions, working in European
languages, EFL or Classics, as well as our colleagues in Asian and global
area studies programmes.
 1 INTRODUCTION  15

Becoming a Reflective Learner (and an Empathetic

Language Teacher)
Many language teachers will have experience of learning an additional lan-
guage themselves. Others have observed children learning their first lan-
guage or languages. We are aware of how much language learning takes
place outside our classrooms, and for the most part, we are committed to
ensuring that what takes place within them supplements and complements
that. Part of the rationale for writing this book has been to encourage
language teachers to work with the internet to develop and enhance their
practice in ways that support the needs of learners whose learning experi-
ences outside the classroom also depend largely on the internet.
This might sound straightforward. However, when the language learn-
ing experiences of most teachers have not involved the internet, there is
clearly a potential for an epistemic disparity to develop. To demonstrate
this, let us consider the example of learning how to write in Chinese.
Before computers and the internet, L1 and L2 learners of Chinese
depended on paper dictionaries and extended hours of writing practice, in
order to memorize the thousands of logograms necessary for fluent com-
munication in the written language. In fact, the process of learning char-
acters through copying and memorization had not changed greatly
throughout the long history of the Chinese language. Today, logographic
writing systems are usually ‘typed’ through a software-based input editor
using a transcription, often Pinyin in the case of Chinese. The software
selects the correct characters based on the pronunciation entered, in addi-
tion to grammatical and semantic context. Where ambiguity still exists,
users select the correct logogram from a list. Similarly, when reading,
unknown characters can be entered using a handwriting function, or sim-
ply highlighted, copied and pasted into any one of a large number of
search engines and online dictionary resources. Among L1 and L2 learn-
ers, receptive recognition of the characters—including the ability to select
the correct one from a list—is thus the most fundamental skill for reading
and writing Chinese today. Although this applies to the language use of
both learners and teachers in the present, it is nevertheless difficult to
imagine encountering Chinese for the first time this way, for those of us
who learnt the language even a few short years ago.
A major risk is that we allow this disparity to develop into distrust. As
Walter Ong reminded his readers, Plato once argued that writing was “a
mechanical, inhuman way of processing knowledge” that was “destructive
16  L. MANN ET AL.

to memory” (2002, p. 25). Putting aside the question of whether this is

true under any circumstances, few would argue that human societies
would be better off had writing never existed or that the deployment of
writing to record and complement spoken language has not added to the
total sum of our species’ knowledge and creative achievements. Written
culture never wholly replaced oral culture, nor is it likely that digital or
virtual culture will ever replace what preceded it. Over time, though, we
may expect it to bring about similarly innovative and important develop-
ments in patterns of language use. As teachers of language, we should
work with these, rather than against them—and, crucially, this means
accommodating language as it is used online within our teaching. Tip#1
discusses in further detail how we might respond to the effects of internet
communication in our teaching.
Returning to the gulf in experience between learners encountering L2
for the first time in a highly digital environment and teachers who are
learning about the effects of that environment after learning the language,
we are still left with the question of how, if at all, it is possible to overcome
this. Like a number of others, Stephen Brookfield’s seminal book Becoming
a critically reflective teacher (1995, 2nd edition 2017) encouraged us to
become just that, teachers who reflect critically on our own practice. A key
stage within this process of reflection is returning to our own background
as learners and recollecting our studies and strategies. This approach could
be particularly helpful to teachers working with online technologies for
the simple reason that it helps us break down our personal views of learn-
ing to the elemental level.
For many of us, engagement with digital learning technologies is still
often at the level of the experiment. This is not at all a bad thing, since it
brings about innovation and gives us fresh opportunities to think about
teaching. However, in order to ensure our engagements with technology
are built upon sound pedagogical foundations, there is a clear need to
work at the elemental level; that is the level of learning objectives, skills
and knowledge. This does not mean we need to teach at this level. Good
learning activities regularly combine a number of such elements into a
seamless whole. It is rather at the planning stage, particularly when
encountering a novel environment or technological context in which to
work, that it is most useful to break down learning into key elements. If
we are able to do this, through reflection, for our own learning in the past,
this will provide comparative context to do so again for the new modes of
learning we are developing in the present. Remember that not all the
 1 INTRODUCTION  17

things you did in the past worked out well. Most of us would admit to
having memories of some unsuccessful strategies. There will inevitably be
other activities and strategies that worked in the context you deployed
them as a learner, but that are less likely to be successful in a digital, online
environment. Finally, you might have your own more recent experiences
learning other subjects or completing professional training activities
online. These can also provide important context for designing new online
approaches in your own teaching. The need to break down our experi-
ences through such activities into their core elements and interrogate their
objectives, before reconfiguring these, as appropriate, within our own
teaching, is stressed throughout the remainder of this book. By doing this,
what might have appeared a challenge can become an opportunity.

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 CHAPTER 2

First Tip: Bring Social Media into Teaching

in Meaningful Ways

Abstract  The first ‘tip’ offered in this chapter is to try to harness the
immense power of social media to facilitate language learning, particularly
in the area of pragmatics and highly context-dependent communication.
This chapter emphasizes the need to see social media not just as a single
tool but, rather, as a diverse pool of resources that can be brought into
teaching in equally varied ways. By letting go of the reins a little and allow-
ing students to experience a fuller range of pragmatic strategies used by
native speakers through popular culture sources such as dramas and music,
as well as the social media and fandom responses to these, teachers can
oversee a process whereby learners naturally gain access to the complex
web of contextual information that underpins native-speaker discourse.
According to the student experiences shared in this chapter, this approach
stands in stark contrast to the officially sponsored apparatus of online
teaching, such as video calls and institutional virtual learning environ-
ments (VLEs), which often come across as failed attempts to replicate
face-to-face teaching. This chapter also introduces the potential of social
media apps and technologies to provide unprecedented opportunities for
language exchange with native speakers, as well as self-regulated learning
outside the classroom.

Keywords  Social media • Pragmatics • Communication • Dramas •

Apps • Language exchange • Pronunciation • Immersion • Chatbots

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9_2
20  L. MANN ET AL.

Everything has gone virtual. We all thought this would happen someday
but nobody expected such radical change to affect everybody’s everyday
life all of a sudden. Everyone is learning how to interact virtually—across
languages, cultures and generations. Elderly grandparents are desperately
learning how to talk to their family using video-chat applications, includ-
ing some that have only become available very recently. Parents are rush-
ing to arrange virtual play dates for their children using similar platforms.
Pupils in most of the world have already migrated to Google Classrooms.
Reporters cannot always be present at crucial scenes. Ordinary people pick
up their phones and record, tweet or livestream what they see and how
they view it and share this with their global neighbours, through social
media. The sudden change we face now, humanity’s collective virtual
migration, is unprecedented in human history.
The vehicles for this global change have been the proliferation and
diversification of internet-enabled technologies and, alongside this, the
ever-increasing integration of social media into people’s daily lives. Social
media can be defined as a “broad category or genre of communications
media which occasion or enable social interaction among groups of peo-
ple, whether they are known to each other or strangers, localized in the
same place or geographically dispersed. It includes new media such as
newsgroups, MMORPGs, and social networking sites” (Oxford A
Dictionary of Media and Communication). Studies on the use of social
media in language education to date see these media as powerful drivers of
change for language teaching and learning.
In this chapter we will outline the various aspects of social media that
make them useful, accessible and socio-pragmatically rich additions to the
language classroom as it already exists today. Whilst social media has long
been recognized as an essential aspect of modern living, the advent of the
COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in closure of workplaces, classrooms and
international borders, has served only to prove the indispensable nature of
online platforms as an arena for supporting productivity and learning.
Social media have proved themselves not only ideal for maintaining con-
tact between physically separated friends and family, but accessible and
socially distanced theatres of learning. Although the educational aspect of
social media has always been present, it is largely through the course of
coronavirus lockdowns that its validity as a teaching and learning tool has
been tested on a global scale.
This chapter looks at five key aspects of the deployment of social media
in the language classroom, as a language learning tool. Firstly, we will set
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  21

out the proposed ‘hybrid’ model of language teaching, in which socio-­

pragmatic language learning techniques, chief amongst which is the use of
social media channels, are used hand-in-hand with more traditional
textbook-­ based classroom methods, to achieve the perfect balance of
rigour and interest for diverse learners. This is followed by an assessment
of the social media activity amongst young people and the population as a
whole, setting out figures that demonstrate the pervasive nature of social
media within society and thereby demonstrate its potential to increase
interest and encourage self-initiated language learning. Thirdly, we will
discuss the potential of social media to provide ‘virtual immersion’. The
immersion technique of language learning has long been heralded as the
most natural and effective manner of building practical language skills,
resulting in exchange programmes and years abroad becoming integral to
medium- to long-term language courses. In this chapter we will propose
the use of social media as a space for ‘virtual integration’, wherein students
may achieve the similar goal of conversing with native-language speakers,
in a more convenient and accessible manner. In the fourth section of this
chapter, we will outline the specific benefits of social media as a teacher of
pragmatics, which is difficult to illustrate effectively in the sterile environ-
ment of a textbook or classroom. The final section of this chapter focusses
on the variety of language used on social media (such as slang and emojis)
and its socially engaging nature, that makes it such a useful tool amongst
teen and young adult learners. Ultimately, we will argue that social media,
particularly as a result of the experience of the global population through
COVID-19 lockdowns, should be considered a legitimate and valuable
tool in the language classroom, providing students with an accessible and
engaging manner through which to immerse themselves in the practical,
everyday vocabulary and conventions of foreign languages.
This chapter adds to existing literature on social media and language
learning, which has until now primarily sought to understand current pat-
terns of use, by taking a more conceptual and design-oriented approach.
This constitutes an initial exploration into a more fine-grained under-
standing of social media in language learning and teaching, based upon an
investigation of the use, implications and perceptions of their specific fea-
tures and affordances (i.e. the perceived properties of technologies that
suggest and indicate possible uses). To do this, we examine usage patterns
and underlying assumptions and perceptions of individual features of
social media technologies, in order to generate design recommendations
for its incorporation into language learning. This chapter includes the
22  L. MANN ET AL.

results of a former study into language learning methods. This study took
the form of two workshops in a UK university, one workshop with learners
of languages and one with teachers. In these workshops, participants dis-
cussed their use of social media in terms of individual features and services,
as well as their assumptions and perceptions regarding their use in lan-
guage learning, teaching and generally. We consult the results of this study
throughout this chapter to inform our discussion of the potential uses of
social media, alongside the existing traditional language classroom.

The Hybrid Model of Language Learning

Language Learning in Lockdown

As the COVID pandemic has spread across the world, language teachers
and learners have had to adapt to new circumstances, both presenting
challenges and leading to interesting pedagogical discoveries and opportu-
nities. Many long to return to the pre-pandemic world, but when it comes
to language learning, a new integrated style of online and offline learning
could prove a game-changer, helping not only to increase absorption and
retention of a language, but also to bolster enthusiasm for language learn-
ing, which is particularly important in the UK, where, as noted earlier, the
study of foreign languages is in decline (Jeffreys, 2019). In this sense,
COVID-19 lockdowns have forced widespread large-scale adaptability,
teaching us a lot about new and diverse kinds of learning, including using
online tools such as social media as a classroom resource.
Firstly, in regard to the teaching of languages, lockdown classes have
unveiled the pros and cons of using online platforms. In particular, screen
fatigue is one of the biggest problems of online learning. After staring at a
computer screen for long periods of time, the eyes may feel strained,
resulting in headaches, sore eyes, blurred vision, and difficulty concentrat-
ing. Aside from screen fatigue, however, there are other problems, par-
ticularly associated with synchronous teaching methods. For instance,
there is a lack of spontaneity and a momentary lag in transmission on
online platforms, which can result in speaking and listening practice
becoming awkward and stilted. Additionally, correcting pronunciation
may prove difficult due to unclear audio. ‘Zoom fatigue’ is a term that was
popularized during the shift to online teaching and learning as a result of
the COVID-19 pandemic, describing another form of fatigue induced by
digital technology. Characterized by the anxiety, exhaustion and
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  23

listlessness that users in Zoom meetings feel, Zoom fatigue is aggravated

by a number of factors including impatience in becoming accustomed to
the platform, a depersonalization of communicative experiences, and
unreliable or intermittent internet connection. Furthermore, the accessi-
bility of the platform results in seemingly endless schedules of video con-
ferences which blur the work-life boundaries that many need to help
maintain a balanced lifestyle.
In a workshop conducted with university language teachers, we asked
participants to discuss what they considered to be the most pressing topics
of conversation or issues, either positive or negative, that they had observed
in the process of teaching online. The box below shows the conversation
points that proved most popular amongst the teachers:

1. Screen fatigue (for both teachers and students)

2. Social media fatigue (for both teachers and students)
3. The usefulness of an online archive for passive (but not interac-
tive) language learning
4. The difficulty of interactive feedback during online classes
5. The difficulty and time required to accurately teach pronuncia-
tion across online video teaching
6. The lack of spontaneity in feedback and student assessment,
including the inaccessibility of programmes through which to
achieve written back-and-forth commenting and feedback.
7. The difficulty of ensuring the integrity of student examinations
conducted at home and online
8. The increasingly written nature of teaching and learning
9. The increasing use of innovative visual materials
10. The increased length of time required to prepare classes, for
both students and teachers
11. The difficulty of photographing/scanning and uploading hand-
written submissions
12. Issues relating to the organization or cancellation of years

abroad, and how to replace them when necessary
13. Striking a balance between formal and informal language learning
14. The positive and/or negative influences of physical proximity
on classes, and how this is changed in an online forum
24  L. MANN ET AL.

Clearly, while tuition remains purely online, efforts have to be made to

alleviate these difficulties and means sought to establish technologically
sound and physically healthier learning environments. Students might
need to be encouraged to take a break and time scheduled within the ses-
sion for this, if necessary. Activities could be varied and perhaps included
pen and paper work, which could be photographed and uploaded later. As
tuition moves back to more face-to-face teaching and learning, an increased
variety of activities, including working online, will cater for a diversity of
students’ needs and learning and will naturally ease the problem of fatigue
brought about through excessive exposure to synchronous online teach-
ing tools.
However, synchronous platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom,
have also provided opportunities for innovation. For example, the option
to share one’s screen has proved particularly useful when reading texts as
a class. Instead of each student looking at their own copy of the text,
sometimes struggling to work out which part is being discussed, teachers
can directly highlight and indicate which part of the text they are referring
to on their shared screen (see Fig. 2.1). Hence, students can engage with
the text more easily. Moreover, the chat function of online video platforms
has also proved beneficial, allowing teachers to quickly type new words
into the chat for students to see. This is particularly useful for languages
such as Chinese and Japanese, where specific Chinese characters or kanji
need to be seen by students. Not only this, but these words are automati-
cally saved in the chat, creating an archive of new words for students to use
for their revision (see Fig. 2.2). Hence, when it comes to reading texts,
even synchronous online learning can prove beneficial.
Moreover, online platforms can deliver excellent supplementary materi-
als for asynchronous online learning. For example, YouTube channels
such as Chinese Zero to Hero and Learn Korean With Go! Billy Korean
provide clear explanations of numerous grammar points ranging from
basic to advanced level. These videos also present many example sentences
with the selected grammar, by extension allowing the student to learn new
vocabulary as well. Additionally, sites such as The Chairman’s Bao offer a
range of exercises including reading and listening practice, which can help
to increase exposure to the target language and aid practice for related
examinations.
Furthermore, the interactivity of the internet is a bonus and a vast range
of highly interactive apps and websites have been created specifically with
language education in mind. For example, HiNative allows language
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  25

Fig. 2.1  Screen-­

sharing can be useful to
indicate specific parts
of texts

learners to ask questions about their target language and its culture.
Learners may ask questions such as “show me examples of sentences using
___”, and “does this sound natural?”. They may also respond to similar
questions about their native languages. When asked for the differences
between zhizuo 制作 and zhizao 制造, which both may be translated as “to
make” in English, one user replied “zhizuo is mostly used for craftsman-
ship and creating works of art, while zhizao is used for production and the
creation of new objects”, whilst another gave examples of usage such as
using zhizuo for making lanterns, watches and handcrafts, and zhizao for
making aeroplanes and cars.
Additionally, students can partake in online language exchanges, either
via video call or via a typed chat, allowing them to absorb the language in
an interactive way. This can be easily done on apps like Tandem, where
users can connect with each other to practise their desired language easily
(see Fig. 2.3). For languages with speech levels, this can prove particularly
26  L. MANN ET AL.

Fig. 2.2  Chats can be

used by teachers to share
new vocabulary and for
students’ revision

useful, as students can learn how to interact informally with their peers—
something that may not be achievable in a classroom setting. Nonetheless,
even for languages without speech levels, this kind of interaction allows
students to learn how to communicate with peers on social media. This is
an important skill today, when so much interaction takes place online,
including the organization of group events.
Finally, online materials can help to boost interest in studying lan-
guages. In particular, watching TV shows and films, or listening to songs
in the target language, can help students to understand real-life applica-
tions of the language in an enjoyable manner. This has been evidenced in
particular by the rise of interest in the Korean language across the globe.
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  27

Fig. 2.3  Apps can

easily be used to find
language partners

As the popularity of Korean dramas and music has grown, interest in the
Korean language has increased too. Korean dramas, music and variety
shows are widely available on popular global video-hosting platforms, and
by watching these, students become interested in the language and cul-
ture. They are also unconsciously taking part in embodied learning,
absorbing vocabulary and pronunciation naturally and effortlessly, as well
as learning about cultural customs and norms.
In our study on online language learning, one student highlighted the
benefits of learning Korean pronunciation through watching dramas, con-
trasting this with the stagnation that had occurred during synchronous
class time:

The natural back-and-forth exchanges of Japanese in my language classes is

impossible to achieve over Zoom. In class, in order to avoid painful feedback
loops and technical issues, we have to remain muted unless called upon, which
means we aren’t able to express the usual natural interjection or commentary
or offhand questions we normally would in a face-to-face setting (having to hit
28  L. MANN ET AL.

the ‘raise your hand’ button, wait to be called upon (which disrupts the lesson in
a way just interjecting with a question in real life would not), pray your mic
turns on properly, hope your internet is strong enough to let your teacher hear
your question, and then hope it’s strong enough to hear your teacher’s reply is a
strong disincentive for asking questions!) In addition, skills that are already
often-neglected (i.e. not outright taught or mentioned, so therefore skills you end
up learning subconsciously via observation and practice) such as body language
and tonal differences also get lost through the internet. Videos freezing or cam-
eras being off add to the issue of only being able to see your teachers and class-
mates in 2D, which already restricts how much body language you can see
compared to our 3D world. Stuttering audio, or a less-than-excellent internet
connection, means understanding English is much harder than normal—let
alone a second language you are actively trying to learn—and most in-built
laptop microphones cannot convey the minutiae of the spoken language. An
example of this is the Korean sentence ending particle ‘요’. When said with a
flat tone, it is just a politer way to conjugate a verb, but when said with a rising
tone it indicates a question. When my professor was first explaining this, I was
completely unable to hear the difference between the two—even when he exag-
gerated it. However, the second I heard an example in a drama (with profes-
sional high-quality microphones), it was very easy to hear the difference. To add
to this, lags and technical difficulties make co-watching media in class difficult,
and as a result most of my classes have settled into simply reading the textbook
together and answering questions—despite the best efforts of my teachers. This
makes for a less engaging and less educational experience, as the very little
immersion we were able to access before has been blocked off. Especially during
lockdown, I have had to strive to maintain motivation for studying, and to find
additional ways to re-light my interest and ability to be proactive in learning
Japanese and Korean.

Overall, a combination of in-person and online learning is the future of

effective and efficient language learning. In-person teaching provides
invaluable interaction between teachers and students, allowing for ease of
asking questions, correction of pronunciation and smooth interaction. In
comparison, online language teaching offers innovative methods which
may be particularly useful for teaching texts. Then, online resources can
also be used to supplement classroom learning, with extensive free materi-
als ranging from grammar exercises, to online interaction platforms, to
popular culture audio-visual materials. Hence, we can begin to move
beyond traditional methods of textbook-based language learning, to take
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  29

a more integrated approach, where in-person and online resources com-

plement each other better in engaging the student and increasing their
enthusiasm for language learning as a whole.
Language students were also asked a series of questions along the lines
of the issues raised by their teachers, as seen earlier. A selection of their
responses is shown below:

Pace of Lessons:

• My online lessons run at a slower pace

In my experience I think this is a result of three factors. First is

the lack of student engagement both inside and outside the
lesson. The lack of engagement leads to long pauses and the
need to cover material more thoroughly that students were
meant to prepare for outside of the lesson.

Second is the structure of the lessons. The language lessons

operate nearly exclusively on a format where the teacher speaks
through a text or exercise and asks questions one by one. That
format means that any questions the students have completely
halt the lesson …

… Third is, of course, technical difficulties, but these have only

become fewer.
Tasks Set in Lessons:

• There is a greater emphasis on language speaking than in in-

person classes

This difference is only minor but, because I am not spending

much time doing exercises and because I cannot talk to other
students very easily, I actually end up having more time speak-
ing the language with my teacher. This might just be a result of
the fact that the ‘question & answer’ lesson format is one that
I take well to, pushing myself to answer questions.
Probably too many.
30  L. MANN ET AL.

• There is less emphasis on written work than in in-person classes

This one is self-explanatory and is a result of the online format

along with the Q&A lesson style.
Interaction and Engagement:

• I find it easier to disengage from online lessons

I try to police myself on this one, but one way or the other my
computer is a host of distractions. As mentioned above, the
lessons work at a very slow pace without the need for me to
engage apart from when the round of Q&A comes to me. This
also depends on the teacher, so in Korean I find I disengage a
lot more because a lot of it is spent reading through the text-
book … There is very little need for me to engage so I often
end up making vocab lists and doing future Korean homework
during lessons.
Teaching Style:

• There is less diversity in the lesson type for online teaching

Every lesson is in the same style and there is no differentiation

for individual learning pace. Of course, a speaking and a writ-
ing class can be different, but I find that the writing classes all
blend together as one, more than for in-person teaching. This
is probably because introducing something new is harder with
technological barriers or just because we are all a bit tired.
Out of Class:

• I have not noticed a significant difference in the amount

of homework
Marking and Feedback:

• I have not noticed a significant difference in the amount of

marking and feedback
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  31

I actually find I get about the same amount of marking and

feedback and that it is better. In particular I find that my home-
work and Korean preps have more clearly accessible comments
in the word document …

Thoughts:

• I am apathetic about the slower pace of the lessons mentioned

above. It is not very annoying for me because I can always dis-
engage from the lesson and read ahead. I generally like work-
ing by myself.
Frustrations:

• I find I am more nervous about sending off work online. I do

not really know why this is, but I have done quite a few of my
preps only to then worry that the language is not good enough
or I should spend longer on it. This was not a problem before
online teaching and might be related to my aversion to sending
emails or contacting teachers.

• I feel that the amount of work I put into the online lessons
rarely changes how much I get out of them so I end up less
motivated to put work into them. I generally make sure to do
the work, but compared to the level of motivation I have read-
ing for one of my tutorials I feel apathetic about my lan-
guage lessons …
• I cannot ask questions as informally as I would like or bother
teachers outside of lessons as easily. Usually, I would like to ask
teachers about odd things I had read that were confusing or
interesting for me, perhaps in the corridor or in the few min-
utes after a lesson or when everyone was doing exercises. I
understand that I could send an email online, but I am less
comfortable doing that and the questions feel too minor.
Honestly speaking, asking these questions was usually just a
way to make me feel better and have some sense of feedback to
the extra work I would do.
32  L. MANN ET AL.

Benefits:

• The increase in speaking for Japanese lessons that I mentioned

above has been a benefit of online teaching, as has the clearer
feedback on the writing preps that I do end up submitting.

• There is no commute, and I can maximize the work I do at

home far more easily. I love getting to do all my lessons from
home, I make clear distinctions between workdays and week-
ends, and I find I only become more efficient and productive
the more control I have of my time.

As is clear from the interviews above, students and teachers alike recog-
nize that there are significant drawbacks in the use of synchronous online
educational tools as a wholesale replacement for in-person language teach-
ing. However, where benefits are noted, they tend to pertain to the clarity
of feedback obtained in printed text and the convenience of being able to
learn from home and within a comfortable setting. It is interesting to note
that this student’s perception of online teaching and learning focusses on
what he or she sees as increasing emphasis on speaking and listening,
whereas teachers tended to highlight the written dimension of internet-­
based platforms for language learning. The student also hints at the prob-
lem of screen fatigue. His or her comments reflect an effort, on the part of
the tutor, to replicate face-to-face teaching online, as faithfully as possible.
The student’s response gives the impression that this effort has, in large
part, failed. This is understandable, given that most of us have been
launched wholesale into teaching through a medium of which, hitherto,
we have had little experience. Here, as elsewhere, we are reminded of the
need to think about the elements of our teaching that are successful and
reconfigure these accordingly, to suit the environment in which we are
working. This could include a hybrid model that brings together the ben-
efits of well-planned in-person classroom teaching with the pragmatism
and convenience of multimodal learning via social media apps and other
online communication platforms.
The lessons that teachers and students alike have been learning through
their use of online educational materials can be taken and extended to
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  33

social media in general. The benefits of tools such as Zoom and Microsoft
Teams outlined above, like being able to save and refer to specific phrases
and orthographies used in class, as well as the interactivity of language
tools such as HiNative and Tandem, can all be obtained through social
media platforms too. Additionally, social media has a distinct advantage
over these educational resources due to young people’s existing familiarity
with and regular use of social media in their everyday lives, requiring very
little conscious effort on their part to begin using them as an educational
resource. As can be seen from the above discussions, it is clear that in-­
person classroom learning cannot be satisfactorily replaced by online
learning. However, once the COVID-19 situation permits students across
the world to return to in-person learning, the text-based side of online
learning and social media language exchange can be used profitably to
contribute to students’ overall language education and practical profi-
ciency. It is for this reason that we propose the hybrid model of traditional
classroom learning bolstered by social media channels.

Social Media as a Language Learning Tool

Understanding context is essential to understanding language and learn-
ing to do so is an essential part of language learning. Within scholarship
on language, the effect of context has been managed under various head-
ings, including “semantics” (Firth, 1935), “communicative competence”
(Hymes, 1971) and many others. One of the most widespread of these is
pragmatics, which has also been studied extensively in the context of lan-
guage education. Research on teaching pragmatics has generally agreed
that it is more effective when done explicitly, rather than implicitly (Moody,
2014, p. 40). This may have led to the assumption that classroom teaching
is the most effective way to help students acquire knowledge of pragmat-
ics. However, in fact, there are serious limitations to this approach that
make themselves felt particularly keenly in a study of non-European lan-
guages which have very different fixed levels of politeness. In particular,
the specific nature of the student-teacher relationship and its effect on
language use in, for example, Japanese and Korean does not provide learn-
ers with the necessary range of contexts essential to explore diverse prag-
matic skills, including honorifics. The same can be said for peer-to-peer
classmate relationships. Even face-to-face teaching must therefore be
complemented by more contextual, diverse interactions. Researchers in
East Asian language education have already suggested the need to move
34  L. MANN ET AL.

outside classroom settings to avoid this. Kambara (2011) suggests that

because context is required to effectively teach pragmatics, in this case in
Japanese, film clips can be used in the classroom (p. 147). Brown (2013)
proposes teaching Korean pragmatics in a similar way, using clips from
dramas to demonstrate pragmatic principles where “contextual factors are
expected to be more complex than those encountered in fabricated dia-
logues” (p.  7). A recent study found that drama clips are successful in
treating even obscure pragmatic elements like dialect and regional identity
(Kiaer et al., 2019). Instead of worrying about how to offer feedback on
language tasks through institutional virtual learning environments (VLEs)
or video calls, simply allowing social media to present patterns of language
use and contexts in which speech styles, address terms and nonverbal hon-
orifics are used could help to teach learners explicitly to use pragmatic
strategies. This could be a totally new way to think about explicitness in
teaching pragmatics, particularly in socio-pragmatically rich languages.
Immersion has generally been considered the failsafe method for learn-
ing pragmatics. In the age of COVID-19, however, opportunities for
study abroad and immersive learning are even less common than they were
previously. Rather than letting these limitations keep all learning in the
classroom, however, educators can take advantage of virtual opportunities
to increase range. Studies to date demonstrate the power of social media
as a tool for language education. An in-depth understanding of the differ-
ences between social media and how they are perceived and used by learn-
ers and teachers is fundamental to creating successful teaching strategies
based on those media. Previous research has highlighted disparities
between teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of social media inside and out-
side education (2020) and demonstrated that most learners engage with
digital technologies in “fairly simplistic” and “pragmatic” ways (Sharpe
et  al., 2019). It is therefore beneficial to nurture simple and realistic
engagements with social media technologies—which offer their own,
unique set of pragmatic conditions for learners to navigate. One obvious
means to do so would be to develop student-led, authentic models for
social media integration and reflect these in assessments. Another priority
in the deployment of social media recognized here is modelling an authen-
tic communication flow. For example, AI-based social media, such as app
technology, can be efficiently adapted to supplement classroom resources
for the teaching and learning of pragmatics. In this case, especially in a
world in which social media is increasingly ubiquitous in the lives of learn-
ers, an online learning approach combining social media interactions with
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  35

chatbots and AI technology could provide optimal conditions for L2

learners to develop a working understanding of pragmatics, because it
would allow them to examine natural language use in context.
Very often what has been taught in the classroom fails to represent
diversity among interlocutors and their linguistic and cultural back-
grounds. For instance, most interactions found in the textbooks for learn-
ing Korean focus on the standard language (close to Seoul Korean) if
interlocutors are Koreans.1 Research shows that teaching about regional
differences and ‘non-standard’ varieties of Korean increases learners’ con-
fidence in pragmatic interactions (Kiaer et al., 2019). The textbooks fre-
quently used rarely show this kind of diversity. They also rarely show how
speech styles are shifted through negotiation to reflect intimacy or respect,
even though this competence comprises an important part of pragmatic
knowledge for Korean as a Foreign Language (KFL) and Korean as a
Second Language (KSL) learners.
As educators diversify the methods they use, the range in which lan-
guage learning takes place and the variety of content taught, learners can
be better equipped with pragmatic competencies. Hence, adding social
media to the current status quo of traditional textbook-based learning
only serves to diversify students’ learning, maintaining interest and bol-
stering real-world practical language skills in a way that classroom learning
alone cannot.

Social Media Active Population

The most obvious, and indeed most important, reason for which we pro-
pose social media as a valuable part of language learning amongst young
people is the simple fact that it already makes up a significant portion of
teenage and young adult learners’ everyday lives, thereby making it conve-
nient and easy for users to incorporate its use in other languages. Whilst
there appears to be a distinct gap between the online language learning
activities of young British people and the desire to study languages in
school, the incorporation of social media into the language classroom
presents an interesting and relatively low-effort method of encouraging
young people in more formal language education.
In 2016, Ofcom reported that 49% of people in the UK aged 8–15 had
their own tablet computer, 79% of people aged 12–15 had their own

1
 This is explored in Study Abroad in Korea: Korean Language and Culture (Kiaer, 2020).
36  L. MANN ET AL.

smartphone and most people aged 5–15 years old owned three or more
electronic devices (60% of 5–7-year olds, 82% of 8–11-year olds and 96%
of 12–15-year olds). More recently, in 2017, the Office for National
Statistics reported that 79% of 16–24-year olds use the internet ‘daily or
almost every day’. These statistics, although not specifying social media
itself, demonstrate the regularity and ease with which young people in the
UK revert to online platforms as a pastime, knowledge source and method
of communication.
Based on these data, it is clear that the use of social media as a language
learning tool will appeal strongly to digitally engaged young people,
enabling them to combine their daily use of social media with the need to
learn foreign languages in a practical and useful manner. In the 2020s,
older people are also becoming increasingly engaged with social media
and internet-enabled technologies, and as they do so, modes of online
language learning based on such technologies will increase their appeal for
those groups of learners too.

The Year Abroad and Language Immersion

as an Educational Tool

A common element of many foreign language degrees is the Year Abroad:

an entire year dedicated to immersing oneself in the target language and
culture, which has proven to be very effective. In light of the COVID-19
pandemic however, the Year Abroad has been subject to new limitations
with physical movement restricted and travel bans in place. However, even
pre-COVID, the Year Abroad posed financial challenges and, even with
grants and bursaries, can be very expensive when considering differences
in cost-of-living, alongside transportation and accommodation fees. In
face of these challenges, more pronounced since the pandemic restricted
movement, attitudes to the Year Abroad have changed. In the future, atti-
tudes could shift still further against widespread student travel for the pur-
poses of Year Abroad programmes, due to considerations of climate
change and institutional policies concerning cutting carbon emissions.
Moving forward, we must address the need for more accessible, sustain-
able and effective ways students can learn a language without the Year
Abroad in circumstances where it is not possible.
A multimodal approach to language education would be one step
towards reaching a viable alternative to the Year Abroad, including the
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  37

integration of features of social media. It is common for foreign language

learners to participate in particular online chatrooms, discussion boards
and groups, to find a community of people who use the target language
with whom they are able to interact. In fact, there are even apps and other
online platforms where one can find native speakers of the target language
who are willing to help them on their language learning journey. Apps
such as FluentU, where subscribers have access to thousands of hours of
foreign language video content from which to learn, market themselves
entirely on ‘language immersion with real-world videos’, thereby very
much setting themselves out as a lower cost and more convenient alterna-
tive to travel. On social media, one can find language partners—whether
intended or by chance—facilitating a sort of virtual immersion at a much
lower cost than the Year Abroad.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many to effectively relinquish
their opportunity to travel abroad, a significant proportion of students
have opted to stay in their home country and seek digital and online lan-
guage learning resources instead. Through the consideration and develop-
ment of online exchanges with language partners, social media can be a
useful tool and, perhaps, even a more sustainable alternative to the Year
Abroad. In the future, creating an immersive virtual experience with help
from social media and other digital platforms may well be the way for-
ward, should students aiming to undertake a Year Abroad be prevented
from doing so by personal circumstances or unprecedented scenarios of
any type. These circumstances could be long term, such as care responsi-
bilities or environmental concerns, or more sudden, such as an accident or
public health emergency. In this sense, social media represents a far more
accessible method of giving a wider breadth of students, whether engaged
in formal education or not, the low-cost opportunity to access language
immersion, as part of their language learning journey.
The following student’s comments throw light on the benefits of online
language exchange, as a means to develop language and culture skills anal-
ogous to those acquired during a Year Abroad programme:

The benefits of a language exchange [online], particularly during the corona-

virus, are immeasurable. Having been scheduled to go to Korea in summer
2020, which was of course cancelled, and then in summer 2021, unlikely because
of Korea’s current quarantine procedures, and now hoping to make it there in
December 2021, my language exchange partner has been my only method of
obtaining exposure with a native speaker of my own age. Furthermore, it is also
38  L. MANN ET AL.

my only interaction with a native Korean speaker outside of a classroom envi-

ronment, which allows a much wider range of non-directed conversations as
opposed to a syllabus-led classroom conversation, especially at my university
which predominantly focuses on reading comprehension at the expense of other
language skills. Speaking to someone my age also allows me to pick up on more
of the slang and conversational terms used by people my age (my language
partner is also a female university student), as well as filler words, and over the
past 8 weeks or so of participating in my language exchange I’ve begun to see
my Korean gradually pick up a more ‘native’ sound—absorbing some of my
language partner’s phrases and verbal habits, and having my pronunciation
corrected by her too. Because we’re both university students, we spend a lot of
time talking about university, so I’m picking up some cultural points too—like
some Korean universities having midterms, which I’m grateful we don’t have
at Oxford!
Another benefit is that I know when I finally make it to Korea, I now have
a friend in Seoul to show me around! It’s nice to feel this more ‘real’ connection
to the country whose language I’m studying, because apart from my teachers
and media I consume, all of which takes place in the UK or over the internet,
having someone actively in Korea and feeling that connection is surprisingly an
aid to my motivation and to feeling a bit more connected, especially dur-
ing Covid.
On my language exchange partner’s side, having spoken to her, she empha-
sised the benefits of understanding English culture more through our exchange
thus far. In particular, we have spoken on English vs Korean feminism, the
vaccine progress (in fact, this was how I decided to postpone my summer trip to
Korea—knowing that the vaccination rate was quite slow and that women
under 30 had been banned from it, it seemed unlikely they’d completely open up
by summer), and life at Oxford. We’ve spoken at length on ‘youth culture’ in
England and in Korea, including the cram school system in Korea and British
drinking culture, and nightlife in both countries, and this information has
been so useful to both of us, both in terms of understanding each other better,
learning the relevant slang, and being more thoroughly equipped when we
eventually travel to each other’s countries. It also helps minimise misunder-
standings—knowing about radical feminism in Korea and therefore that the
term is understood by certain people to be more ‘militant’ or extreme than the
UK’s more benign perception of the feminist movement means I’m far less likely
to judge someone in Korea for not identifying as a feminist, and be less likely to
think that they hate women (which I would probably do if an English person
said they weren’t, because feminism has a different interpretation here).
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  39

Teaching Socio-pragmatic Content Through

Social Media
Pragmatics, discussed briefly above, is cited by language learners as one of
the most difficult and nuanced aspects of a language—and one with which
they struggle. It is even more problematic for those learning languages
with different fixed levels of politeness, such as Japanese and Korean. One
of the major drawbacks of a wholly traditional approach to language learn-
ing is that it tends to be heavily reliant on grammar books and other types
of textbooks, which can result in students feeling as if the material they
engage with is not relevant to real life; language learning becomes focussed
on verb conjugations and spelling, rather than more spontaneous dia-
logues that take into account pragmatic elements. With the COVID-19
pandemic limiting the classroom language learning experience mostly to
the (synchronous) online realm, impromptu conversations to practise the
language in lessons have suffered a serious blow.
Social media, however, may be the solution to the problem. One nota-
ble aspect of many of the features of these online platforms is spontaneity.
For example, users are able to text, send voice messages or play games,
which lead to less stilted and rehearsed interactions that make use of the
target language. What students tend to learn in the classroom, whether
online or offline, is the formal side of a language, with minimal opportu-
nity to appropriately use slang or more colourful expressions. However,
informal language is just as valid as its formal counterpart in terms of real-­
life use and social media comprises one of the authentic spaces in which
multiple registers can be used and adaptability to varying levels of formal-
ity can be tested. For foreign language learners, many features of social
media will be useful in developing their figurative ear for pragmatic cues.
Furthermore, whereas social media could be considered a proxy for
real-life pragmatic discussions, we would instead argue that social media is
real life. It is one of the most common arenas in which people, both
strangers and friends alike, come into contact, as part of their everyday
lives. As such, for people learning to communicate in a foreign language,
becoming confident and effective when using online platforms such as
social media is, of itself, an important aspect of modern language ability.
Therefore, incorporating social media into the language classroom not
only helps students’ overall abilities but also builds their confidence in
learning certain types of language that are widely used by the ‘native’ lan-
guage community online.
40  L. MANN ET AL.

Making Language Learning Fun

Over the years, the UK has seen a decline in the number of students opt-
ing to take a foreign language as one of their General Certificates of
Secondary Education (GCSEs). According to the British Academy report
of 2015, one of the main reasons that learners are put off is that language
learning is perceived to be difficult and disconnected from ‘real life’; many
feel as if they are rehearsing the language instead of actually using it to
carry out authentic real-world actions with a tangible end product. From
this, we can gather the following core problems: a lack of engagement and
inauthenticity.
However, this can be fixed—not necessarily as an overnight change, but
with the implementation of particular aspects of social media in the teach-
ing and learning experience, language learning can be fun! Younger peo-
ple are in general adept at and active on social media platforms, meaning
that they are familiar with and accustomed to its many and varied features
(see Table 2.1). As one of the interviewed students mentioned, one issue
with online lessons is the lack of diversity in the teaching style: ‘every les-
son is in the same style and there is no differentiation for individual learn-
ing pace.’ This is a real problem which engenders demotivation, as students
have reported that they also find it easier to disengage from online lessons.
Yet this cycle of monotony can be broken with the integration of well-­
known social media features. Lambton-Howard et al.’s study (Lambton-­
Howard et  al., 2020) found that social media allowed for a focus on
authentic communication flow, as conversations utilizing direct text mes-
sages, for example, permitted students to practise their language skills in a
less formal and rigid classroom setting, at their own pace.
Another way in which one can make use of social media functions to
diversify the language learning experience is through playing games. On a
number of social media platforms, such as Facebook, users are able to take
part in games with another person, whether asynchronous or synchro-
nous. This element can be used alongside more traditional methods to
allow for more dynamic and interactive education. For many people, inter-
actions on social media are not limited to one medium and instead branch
out to multimodal communication. Alongside the digital texts, for
instance, part of students’ language learning experience involved sharing
emojis and stickers (Lambton-Howard et  al., 2020); this integration of
visual language is worth considering in the innovation of teaching meth-
ods, for it offers another real-life way in which people communicate. This
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  41

Table 2.1  Social media functions

Feature Description

Direct text Asynchronous primarily text-based communication between one or more

message people, for example, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp chats
Audio Asynchronous audio communication between one or more people, for
message example, Facebook Messenger record audio, WhatsApp record audio
Audio call Synchronous audio communication via social media application between
one or more people, for example, WhatsApp call, Skype call
Video Asynchronous video communication between one or more people, for
message example, Instagram/Snapchat video, WhatsApp video record
Video call Synchronous video communication between one or more people, for
example, Skype video call, WhatsApp video call
Stories Asynchronous presentations of video, image, text and audio vignettes.
Typically, with 24-hour life spans and only visible to friends or followers,
for example, Instagram stories, Snapchat stories
Comments Publicly visible text messages related to, and usually positioned beneath,
an article of media, for example, Instagram comments, YouTube
comments
Feeds Asynchronous presentation of public or pseudo-public multimedia
content generated by users, for example, Twitter feeds, Facebook feeds,
Instagram feeds
Chatbots Automated conversational agents, typically with natural language inputs,
for example, Bots on Messenger, Slack, Twitter (not Siri/Google
Assistant, etc.)
Game playing Asynchronous or synchronous game playing with another person,
embedded within a social media technology, for example, Facebook
games, WeChat games

can enhance a learner’s experience when used in tandem with other media.
It must be stressed that this line of argument does not intend to pit social
media against traditional methods; social media is not in competition with
it. Instead, we advocate for a combination of the two, in order to reap the
best results. Where textbooks and lectures fall short, features of social
media may rise to fill the lacuna.

Conclusion
Recent circumstances have compelled communities around the globe to
switch to online learning, working and socializing. In this chapter, we have
discussed how the lessons of the pandemic can be applied to the language
classroom going forward, with relation in particular to the use of social
42  L. MANN ET AL.

media in the teaching of foreign languages to diverse groups of learners.

In summary, here are eight ‘sub-tips’—the main points that we would like
you to take away from this chapter:

1. Synchronous online learning that tries to reflect the face-to-face class-

room too faithfully runs into all sorts of problems—which have been
noted by teachers and learners alike.
2. To overcome these, we need to build a model of online teaching on a
solid foundation of essential elements of teaching and learning (skills,
knowledge and objectives) that takes advantage of the resources for
language learning that the internet has to offer, notably social media.
3. Social media constitute an essential arena for communication and are
characterized by emergent patterns of language use. For language
learners, they offer a medium through which socio-pragmatic language
can be learned via conversations with native speakers anywhere in the
world and at any time. Social and digital media help language students
to learn in a fully contextualized manner, which can help them to learn
vocabulary and remember patterns more effectively. Social media can
also introduce students to slang and shorthand that only exists in infor-
mal online communications.
4. Many textbooks and formal language learning resources present only
standardized forms of language; this can affect a learner’s confidence in
real-life settings where regional accents and slang are frequently
encountered. Pragmatic language use is also often missing from lan-
guage teaching. The use of digital media as a teaching tool can help
students become accustomed to regional language variations
and accents.
5. For languages which have different registers of formality, it can be dif-
ficult to practise certain ways of speaking in a classroom setting. Digital
media can help students observe how speech patterns change in differ-
ent situations, even if they themselves cannot experience the situation
naturally in real life.
6. Though problematic, even straightforward synchronous platforms

have some advantages over face-to-face teaching. For example, the
share-screen function in technologies such as Zoom is useful for lessons
based on a reading text, allowing the class to move through it together,
without anyone losing their place. Saveable chat boxes in synchronous
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  43

meeting applications allow for the real-time collation of communal

vocabulary lists.
7. If and when we see a return to more face-to-face teaching, we propose
a hybrid learning model, in which traditional classroom learning is
complemented with the use of social media. Exposure to social media
has the potential to make language skills learned in the classroom more
well-rounded and applicable to the real world, as well as to help to
bolster interest in formal foreign language learning amongst students
in the UK—which is currently in decline.
8. The accessibility of social media and online tools for language exchange
allows a wider pool of students to achieve ‘virtual immersion’, thereby
offering a cheaper and more convenient alternative to Year Abroad
study. This digital immersion will be a viable option for many students,
going forward, when faced with restrictions on travel for financial, pub-
lic health, environmental and other reasons.

We hope that the discussions presented in this chapter help contribute

to the widespread acceptance of social media-based language learning and
‘virtual immersion’ as valid and indispensable tools, within language class-
rooms across the globe. Our next tip will deal with one way of implement-
ing social media-driven online teaching—in this case, to develop a more
diverse curriculum.

Useful Resources
You may find the following resources helpful when thinking about incorporating
social and digital media in teaching:

Aloraini, N., & Cardoso, W. (2020). Social media in language learning: A mixed-
methods investigation of students’ perceptions. Computer Assisted
Language Learning.
Akbari, E., Naderi, A., Simons, R. J., & Pilot, A. (2016). Student engagement and
foreign language learning through online social networks. Asian-Pacific Journal
of Second and Foreign Language Education, 1(1), 1–22.
Godwin-Jones, R. (2018). Chasing the butterfly effect: Informal language learn-
ing online as a complex system. Language Learning & Technology 22(2).
44  L. MANN ET AL.

Godwin-Jones, R. (2019). Riding the digital wilds: Learner autonomy and infor-
mal language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 8–25. https://
doi.org/10125/44667
Navarro-Pablo, M., López-Gándara, Y., & García-Jiménez, E. (2019). The use of
digital resources and materials in and outside the bilingual classroom.
Comunicar. Media Education Research Journal, 27(1).
Mısır, H. (2018). Digital literacies and interactive multimedia-enhanced tools for
language teaching and learning. International Online Journal of Education and
Teaching, 5(3). 514–523. http://iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/
view/178/250
Reinhardt, J. (2020). Metaphors for social media-enhanced foreign language
teaching and learning. Foreign Language Annals, 53(2), 234–242.
Reinhardt, J. (2019). Social media in second and foreign language teaching and
learning: Blogs, wikis, and social networking. Language Teaching 52(1).
Wong, L., Sing-Chai, C., & Poh-Aw, G. (2017). Seamless Language Learning:
Second Language Learning with Social Media. Comunicar Media Education
Research Journal 25(1).
Zheng, B., Yim, S., & Warschauer, M. (2017). Social media in the writing class-
room and beyond. Teaching Writing.

References
Brown, L. (2013). Teaching ‘casual’ and/or ‘impolite’ language through multi-
media: The case of non-honorific panmal speech styles in Korean. Journal of
Language, Culture and Curriculum, 26, 1–18.
Firth, J.  R. (1935). The technique of semantics. Papers in linguistics: 1934–1951
(pp. 7–33). Oxford University Press.
Hymes, D.  H. (1971). On communicative competence. In C.  J. Brumfit &
K. Johnson (Eds.), The communicative approach to language teaching. Oxford
University Press.
Jeffreys, B. (2019, February 27). Language learning: German and French drop by
half in UK schools. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-­47334374
Kambara, W. (2011). Teaching Japanese pragmatic competence using film clips.
L2 Journal, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.5070/L23210001
Kiaer, J. (2020). Study abroad in Korea: Korean language and culture. Routledge.
Kiaer, J., Park, M., Choi, N., & Driggs, D. (2019). The roles of age, gender and
setting in Korean half-talk shift. Discourse and Cognition, 26, 279–308.
Lambton-Howard, D., Kiaer, J., & Kharrufa, A. (2020). ‘Social media is their
space’: Student and teacher use and perception of features of social media in
language education. Behaviour & Information Technology. https://doi.org/1
0.1080/0144929X.2020.1774653
 2  FIRST TIP: BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TEACHING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS  45

Moody, S. (2014). Should we teach rules for pragmatics? Explicit instruction and
emergent awareness of Japanese plain and polite forms. Japanese Language and
Literature, 48(1), 39–69.
Sharpe, R., Qi, W., & Pavlakou, M. (2019). Exploring patterns of technology use
in UK college students: A cluster analysis of learners’ digital practices. Research
in Post-Compulsory Education, 24(1), 20–36. https://doi.org/10.108
0/13596748.2019.1584436
 CHAPTER 3

Second Tip: Diversify the Curriculum

Abstract  This chapter offers language teachers a second tip when work-
ing online: to take advantage of the internet as a vehicle for increasing
curriculum diversity. After briefly examining the strategic and pedagogic
imperatives for enhancing diversity in language curricula, the discussion
builds on points made earlier concerning the use of social media to model
pragmatic strategies, context-dependent communication and other fea-
tures of natural language for students, highlighting the unique potential of
social media and fandom language communities to (a) help learners form
a more nuanced awareness of diversity in the target language and culture
and (b) appeal to a wider range of interest groups among learners them-
selves. To illustrate this, this chapter introduces the case study of the use
of a fandom text about Japanese hip-hop, sourced from social media, to
teach Japanese-English translation. The conclusions of this research point
towards the possibility of increased student engagement and a potential
way into what have been traditionally conceived of as higher-order think-
ing skills, such as analysis and reflection. The notion that ‘authenticity’, a
term often invoked in strategies related to curriculum diversity, can extend
beyond the introduction of materials not designed for educational pur-
poses, to include the involvement of learners in emergent research and
other real-world professional activities, is reinforced throughout this chap-
ter and the case study.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 47

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9_3
48  L. MANN ET AL.

Keywords  Curriculum • Diversity • Authenticity • Decolonization •

Social media • Fandom • Pragmatics • Translation • Rap

Emcee Battles in Japanese

Outline
This chapter presents an opportunity offered by the shift online in lan-
guage education—to diversify the curriculum. Since digital diversification
often depends on multimodality and social networks, this chapter follows
on nicely from Tip#1’s focus on the need to bring multimodal social
media platforms and other digital technologies together in new pro-
grammes of online language education.
Here is how this chapter will proceed. First, we will outline the need for
curriculum diversity and what this means for language teachers. Second,
we will discuss how digital technologies support curriculum diversity and
how this intersects with the issue of digital inequalities. Third, we will take
a look at how digital curriculum diversity could actually work in the online
language classroom, by means of a case study of teaching rap and hip-hop
within East Asian studies. This section is written from the perspective of
the teacher who carried out the design and delivery of the curriculum.
Finally, as in the last Tip, we will assemble the key points for you to think
about in your own practice and a small selection of additional sources
which might prove useful when you do.

What Is Curriculum Diversity, and Why Do We Need It?

These days, ‘diversity’ is a term that teachers encounter daily. In order to
do our jobs, it is essential to recognize the variety that exists within the
material we present to our students, as well as within the backgrounds and
learning styles of the students themselves. The notion that we have a
responsibility to ensure the accessibility of the content we provide, and the
methods by which we provide it, is now well entrenched in our theory and
in our practice.
In that case, why should curriculum diversity deserve particular atten-
tion? The answer lies in the notion that, as well as establishing the param-
eters for learning in the first place, culture may have the potential to affect
how teachers judge the ongoing efficacy of a curriculum. If, for example,
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  49

a teacher has no experience of the cultural context in which a particular

book was written, he or she might be less inclined to judge it worthy of
inclusion in an ‘English Literature’ programme or see the aspirational ben-
efits it might bring to certain students. When he or she raises the matter
with colleagues with similar backgrounds and perspectives, they, too, are
less likely to see the pedagogic potential of the alternative material.
Institutional and cultural inertia may further discourage the overhaul of
curricula. The long-term cumulative effect of these phenomena is that the
academic community risks perpetually reinforcing the ‘canon’ of knowl-
edge and learning its community has brought into being.
There is, however, some cause for hope. For one thing, it is very clear
that appreciation of cultural value does not exclusively correlate with cul-
tural background. If such a pessimistic scenario were true, there would be
little point in teaching literature at all, since it is a rare thing for the cul-
tural background of either students or teachers to correspond precisely
with those of the characters in a work of fiction, or even with their authors.
Under the same hypothesis, it would also be particularly difficult to moti-
vate students working with material in a different language—as language
teachers must—since new linguistic contexts inevitably bring with them
alternative perspectives and values that can be, in some cases, very differ-
ent from a student’s own. Furthermore, L2 learners and teachers are a
diverse group of people to begin with. The community of language teach-
ers in higher education (HE) contains a large component of native-­
language teachers and instructors, whose job it is to teach their own
language to L2 learners and who, inevitably, end up demonstrating aspects
of their own culture in the process. They are joined by colleagues who
have different native-language backgrounds and disciplinary interest.
Their students are similarly heterogeneous, displaying a wide range of
socio-economic and educational backgrounds—as in other departments—
but also differing in terms of their own native-language background and
degree of familiarity with L2. Diversity is, in these respects, built into the
languages classroom.
The unique potential of languages departments to lead the diversifica-
tion of teaching and learning in universities is a matter to which we will
return at several points throughout this chapter. First, let us look briefly at
some of the principal arguments that are put forward in support of cur-
riculum diversity across the HE sector.
50  L. MANN ET AL.

‘Decolonization’ of the Curriculum: Missing Knowledge

Among the most commonly cited and easy to understand examples of cur-
riculum diversification is what is often called the decolonization of the
curriculum. This is where universities and other HE institutions, in regions
of the world that have actively participated in colonial projects over the
last several centuries, revisit the materials they teach, across a range of
subject areas, to ascertain the extent to which those curricula have been
defined by the philosophical and ideological imperatives driving colonial-
ism. Importantly, this does not just mean removing openly imperialist or
racist content that has been around since the colonial period or even just
supplementing this with later material that problematizes it—though this
might be an important part of the process. To decolonize a curriculum
means to recognize the philosophical limitations of that curriculum dic-
tated by the colonial or post-colonial cultural context in which it was cre-
ated. As they have influenced how we write, colonial forces have also
influenced how we teach and study.
Michael Peters, writing in 2015, characterized this philosophical limita-
tion as a major difficulty facing teachers working at western universities
that impinges on their ability to decide if a curriculum is diverse enough
or not. Peters argues that “the curriculum … [is composed of] … ‘white
ideas’ by ‘white authors’ and is a result of colonialism that has normalized
whiteness and made blackness invisible. This is a fundamental educational
challenge that has not been addressed by the educational establishment,
nor by the majority of philosophers including philosophers of education”
(2015, p. 641).
Aside from any moral imperative to write the perspectives of black and
other minority ethnic communities into academic discourse—and, by
extension, taught curricula—a strong argument for monitoring and modi-
fying the curriculum, to ensure its attention is not held exclusively by
subject matter and modes of enquiry defined in the philosophical context
of colonialism, lies in the latent knowledge that we miss if we do not do
so. As recent academic responses to the Black Lives Matter movement
have demonstrated, ‘white’ history has left many stories untold. These
stories contain new data and new frameworks of enquiry to move our
cumulative understanding forward. They may also contain elements that
help to motivate our students and help us to teach more effectively.
As with issues of diversity more generally, language teachers are argu-
ably in a stronger position than most to decolonize their curricula. The
cross-cultural nature of the discussions taking place in language classrooms
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  51

lends itself well to the introduction of post-colonial narratives. Taught

content, itself, regularly intersects with colonialism in sufficiently complex
ways as to make a wholly one-sided, ethno- and Euro-centric perspective
difficult to uphold. This is particularly the case for the teaching and learn-
ing of non-European languages at university. It is difficult to conceive of a
modern Arabic literature course, for example, that did not engage in some
way with the dynamics of European colonialism in the Middle East and
North Africa. Although such courses are becoming increasingly rare, a
very traditional course in French literature, on the other hand, could in
theory shoot through all the greats, from Moliere to Jean-Paul Sartre,
without thinking at all about the relationships between French literature
and the perspectives and identities forged by France’s interactions with its
colonies elsewhere in the world. This latter type of languages curriculum
clearly requires more reworking, if it aims to become ‘diverse’.
Similarly, the disciplinary breadth of language common in language
classrooms might be advantageous from the point of view of decolonizing
the curriculum. In many subjects, it can be difficult to unpick the fine
stitching that gives shape to the mantle of university education, since
teaching portfolios are largely dictated by disciplinary boundaries and
these have themselves been sculpted by the cultural context of western
modernity (and, in many cases, colonial heritage). However, for language
teachers and, once again, particularly for those of us working in non-­
European traditions, the area studies focus encouraged by institutional
subdivisions such as a Department of German or a Centre for Chinese
Studies, often permits us comparative freedom—or even compels us—to
experiment with our teaching loads, blurring disciplinary boundaries in
the process. My own teaching and assessment activities over the past year
have scoped over classical and modern Japanese language, literature, lin-
guistics, translation studies, history, social anthropology and, once or
twice, even Korean. These parameters may or may not be unusually wide,
but it is undoubtedly the case that university departments working with
languages and area studies are commonly called upon to teach across a
wide range of topics that, if not contained within that particular regional
focus, would otherwise fall under a range of subdivisions of the university:
history, linguistics, literature, film studies, sociology, and so on.

 AME Underachievement and ‘Widening Participation’

B
Another issue that intersects with the recent impetus to diversify curricula
is that of BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) underachievement in
52  L. MANN ET AL.

the HE sector. The overall picture is complex but at least some groups of
BAME students do not achieve the same high rates of academic success in
university as their white counterparts. This is partly related to under-
achievement earlier in their schooling; however, given the philosophical
underpinnings of the white curriculum outlined above, it is hardly surpris-
ing that white students appear to be at an unfair advantage, when com-
pared to their BAME peers. Proponents of a diversified curriculum argue
that this could help to address this inequality of achievement, as well as
providing a learning environment that is more conducive to success for
students across a broad spectrum of community background: “A diversi-
fied curriculum with more books and journal articles by BAME authors
can help, and in any case developing more inclusive curriculums is good
for everyone” (Adebisi, 2019).
Teachers of foreign languages have the potential to be in the vanguard
of this movement, since the materials they use are often intersectional in
nature and the translingual and cross-cultural modes in which students are
asked to interact with them (translation, multilingual comprehension
exercise, analysis, discussion, etc.) encourage the development of inclu-
sive, non-canonical frameworks of understanding. As before, this trend is
arguably all the more pronounced in the case of the study of non-­European
languages and literatures, which naturally shifts perspectives away from a
wholly ‘white’, Eurocentric view of the world, to one in which the ‘other’
not only exists but also creates cultural output worthy of careful thought
and academic scrutiny. Saidean critiques notwithstanding, the potential of
language study to facilitate greater diversity in higher education curricula,
with the objective of increasing participation and success for BAME stu-
dents, is beyond question.
However, the drive towards inclusivity in the curriculum clearly has
ramifications beyond the dynamics of race and colonialism. A broad spec-
trum of inequality faces the university sector and this is reflected in under-
achievement across a similar variety of communities. Efforts to increase
educational participation and achievement rates among these groups are
commonly grouped under the heading ‘widening participation’—now a
familiar phrase in university access and student recruitment policy. When
creating, revising or overhauling curricula, it is clear, therefore, that we
must consider the positive and negative effects our choices may have across
a diverse range of student groups.
Despite rarely appearing in formal ‘widening participation’ agendas,
the most underachieving group of all is that of white, working-class men.
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  53

Across the developed world, men, in general, now fare worse than women
in university entrance rates. In the UK, they are also more likely to drop-­
out early in their programme of study (8% for men vs. 6% for women) and
less likely to gain the highest-ranking degrees (2:1 or above, 69% of men
vs. 73% of women; Hillman & Robinson, 2016, p. 24). This trend becomes
still more pronounced when socio-economic background is taken into
consideration; among school children receiving free-school meals, girls are
51% more likely to progress to higher education than boys (p. 17). Just as
the opening up of curricula to include materials and perspectives from
BAME communities is now widely recommended as a means of improving
educational outcomes for young people from those communities, effort
therefore needs to be made to refine curricula in such a way as to incorpo-
rate material that promotes the participation of young men from less privi-
leged socio-economic backgrounds. The question of how to achieve such
a target might not be immediately transparent for teachers of modern
foreign languages and is one to which we will return later in this chapter.

 uthenticity and Student Outcomes

A
Authenticity is another term that we sometimes encounter in relation to
the diversification of curricula in universities. In this context, authentic
learning means learning that has, or is perceived as having, real-world
applications. This differs from ‘practical’ learning in that it also scopes over
theoretical and academic knowledge, such as ‘authentic’ research method-
ologies (often introduced as part of research-led teaching programmes).
Authentic modes of learning have been linked to higher levels of student
motivation. In language teaching, the use of authentic materials, defined
as “materials that are not written for language students … found in the
real world and brought into the classroom”, that contain “rich cultural
and linguistic components that the average native speaker uses” (Jernigan,
2016, p. 287), has been linked to the generation of a more relaxed envi-
ronment for learning and increased student motivation (ibid., p. 291). In
a similar vein, a recent resource document issued by the University of
Oxford states that academic assessment is “particularly meaningful, engag-
ing and motivational for students when it develops skills and practices
which academics or professionals use, in other words, when it is ‘authen-
tic’” (Diversifying assessment, n.d.). The demand for authenticity has
fuelled the demand for new modes of curriculum and assessment design
which, in turn, provides academics with the fresh opportunities to think
about diversifying their teaching. The question of authenticity is central to
54  L. MANN ET AL.

many of the core debates of this chapter, including the development and
success of East Asian rap culture featured within the teaching dis-
cussed later.

Strategic Demands
Theoretical justifications aside, curriculum diversification is now a practi-
cal necessity for many working in higher education in the UK and else-
where—and this includes language teachers. Across the sector, diversity is
very much on the agenda at a strategic level, with many institutions issuing
guidance to staff concerning the need to overhaul curricula to make them
more inclusive, as well as tips on how to go about doing so. Founded as it
was on principles of inclusivity and accessibility, the Open University is a
good example of one institution that has ramped up its strategic push
towards curriculum diversity and widening participation in recent years. In
its consultative document Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the
Curriculum: Guidance for faculties and approval bodies (2008, revised
2018), the university outlines its commitment to maximizing curriculum
diversity, with the aim of improving student outcomes and participa-
tion rates:

We are committed to providing high quality university education to all who

wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential; to widen participa-
tion; and to meet the needs of diverse groups of students. Creating an inclu-
sive, relevant and accessible curriculum will contribute to attracting and
retaining our target groups, equipping students to respond to increasingly
diverse environments and will assist us in achieving our strategic objec-
tives. (p. 4)

The document further stresses that the issue of curriculum diversity, which
it sees as an important element within a larger framework of inclusivity and
equality, should be tackled through existing faculty processes, rather than
outside them. This makes it very much the responsibility of all academics
with a role in teaching and assessment:

Equality, diversity and inclusion issues can sometimes be seen as something

additional to core work. Integrating equality considerations throughout
existing processes at qualification and module levels will ensure the work is
an integral part of these processes and will add real value by improving the
quality of decision making. (p. 5)
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  55

It is often possible to integrate the strategic aims expressed in institutional

documents within everyday teaching and learning activities without too
much disruption to existing curricula or teaching schedules. The focus for
teachers should therefore be on ensuring that diverse student needs are
being catered for, rather than unnecessarily adding to their workloads with
complete overhauls of programmes of learning that might already be
working well. The shift to online teaching offers a great chance for us to
think about ways of adjusting our teaching in efficient ways.

Diversity and Language Teaching

As briefly touched on above, there are several ways in which a foreign lan-
guage curriculum could be conceived of as intrinsically more ‘diverse’ than
one that is tied closely to cultures associated with the language of instruc-
tion or the region in which an HE is located. The cultural model of lan-
guage teaching capitalizes on this important aspect of language learning
and makes discussion of the cultural differences encountered in an L2
environment central to the learning process.
This background puts language teachers in a stronger position than
many regarding curriculum diversity but should not be used as an argu-
ment against thinking critically about curricula as they currently stand. No
region of the world is free of cultural biases and canons can be carried
across from the L2 material covered. If not executed carefully, and with
thought given to the internal diversity of a given region, any approach to
L2 teaching centred on the communication of culture risks giving the
impression that all L1 speakers of a language share a homogenous com-
mon culture. In the case of L2 teaching material aimed at beginners
(CEFR A1–2), it can be particularly difficult to address internal diversity
within a language or culture with a sufficient degree of nuance, when
working entirely with grammar, vocabulary and usage familiar to learners
at such an early stage in their studies of the language.
For example, it is common in many early stage materials for university
learners of Japanese (Japanese as a Foreign Language; JFL) to focus on
constructed conversations between L2 learner characters (often exchange
students or company employees) and Japanese characters, on topics related
to the cultural differences that exist between Japan and those learners’
home countries and regions. The most successful of these touch on aspects
of culture that transcend stereotypes or one-to-one associations of lan-
guage and culture; however, many run the risk of underrepresenting the
56  L. MANN ET AL.

diversity of life in Japan and other Japanese-speaking regions. Japan itself

is home to a splendid diversity of minority cultures and communities, to
say nothing of the Japanese diaspora spread throughout the rest of
the world.

Digital Diversity Versus Digital Inequality

In the online space, diversity has taken on new meanings. As discussed
elsewhere in this volume, online technologies have opened up new chan-
nels and modes of communication—and this is having a substantial effect
on how languages are used (and, by extension, taught). After achieving
truly global reach, social networking services and social media platforms
have both been credited with democratizing the communication of ideas
and criticized for the spread of ‘misinformation’. The year 2020 was one
in which the internet truly revealed itself as the central venue for debates
on the use of language, as well as freedoms of speech and publishing.
As language teachers, we arguably have a responsibility to help our stu-
dents navigate these emergent dynamics. Certainly, if we are to attempt to
make our teaching ‘authentic’, as discussed above, we need to grapple
with the question of how to teach languages in ways that also help stu-
dents comprehend the diversity of communicative modes and language
communities encountered online and, ultimately, become functional
members of those communities themselves.
There are various obstacles that teachers must overcome on the way to
achieving this goal for their students. To begin with, any rapid develop-
ment in the modes and idioms in which communication takes place neces-
sarily brings challenges of communicative competence for all language
users, but especially L2 learners who are still at an early stage in their
journey towards fluency. Just as language textbooks centred on the com-
munication of cultural information run the risk of oversimplifying discus-
sions of culture to fit the parameters of learners’ development in L2, so do
attempts at increasing learners’ awareness and understanding of social
media communication risk underrepresenting the complexities of such
arenas of language use and creating an artificial impression of the ease with
which it is possible to communicate in social media environments.
Another obstacle facing teachers aiming to create a digitally diverse
learning environment through engagement with social media is the extent
to which learners compartmentalize their technology use. While teachers
commonly believe that students are all highly technologically engaged,
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  57

‘fully-immersed’ users of social media, studies have observed that this is

not always the case. Rather, there exists, among students, a spectrum of
social media technology users, ranging from highly active and innovative
users, who are more likely to mobilize a range of digital resources at their
disposal, to ‘fairly simplistic’ users, who respond to specific instructions to
use a particular technology in support of their learning but who, other-
wise, do not experiment in this way (Sharpe et  al., 2019). As a whole,
students tend to use one platform for one form of communication and
change to another when the type of communication or intended audience
or interlocutor varies (ibid). This insight is fascinating from the perspec-
tive of internet pragmatics—and would seem to support the contention
that the internet is home to a diversity of new modes of language use.
However, it also implies that it could be challenging to create authentic
learning experiences within social media for students who would other-
wise tend to limit their interactions with such media to predefined (usually
extra-curricular) purposes.
Despite its positive nuance, diversity is, in many environments, accom-
panied by inequality. As in the physical world, disparities of access and
achievement exist across digital spaces. During the COVID-19 pandemic,
inequalities of access to devices and learning technologies among students
were cited frequently by politicians and the media in the UK as a source of
growing inequalities of attainment among students prevented from
attending classes in person by the pandemic crisis. Such material needs,
where they exist, are only part of the problem. As the paragraphs above
outline, there are a number of other factors that contribute to the diversity
of students needs that must be met by online and blended language teach-
ing. A key objective of all such teaching should therefore be to minimize
digital inequality. While this might not always be possible, or easy to
achieve, it should at least be possible to think about how to avoid reinforc-
ing existing inequalities when refining curricula for online teaching. It is
vital that new models of online teaching approach curriculum design care-
fully to avoid compounding structural inequalities with digital inequali-
ties. This point has been stressed by, among others, Advance HE, the
organization responsible for providing professional accreditation for HE
teachers in the UK (Moody, 2020).
58  L. MANN ET AL.

Case Study: Teaching Rap and Emcee Battles in East

Asian Studies
In this section, I (the teacher practitioner) will introduce a case study of
digital curriculum diversification from within my own professional prac-
tice, in the form of a short series of three translation tutorials centred on
fandom material related to hip-­hop in Japan. The series was designed as an
informal pilot for Japanese studies, during a period of entirely online
teaching resulting from public health restrictions. However, it was con-
ceived of with broader applications in mind—particularly potential uses
within Korean and other East Asian studies programmes.

Background of Classes
The series was designed to be rolled out within an existing series of tutori-
als entitled ‘Modern Japanese Text Reading’, aimed at third-year under-
graduates on the BA in Oriental Studies (Japanese) programme at the
University of Oxford. The tutorial series, which runs for one eight-week
term (October to December), is designed to give students, returning from
a Year Abroad in Japan with solid intermediate to early advanced (CEFR
B2) language skills, an opportunity to broaden and deepen their familiar-
ity with Japanese vocabulary, grammar and usage. Tutorials, each one
hour in duration, centre on a core text of some kind in Japanese, which
students are asked to translate and comment on in fine detail. In class, they
are offered oral corrective feedback (CF) from the tutor, as well as peer
feedback from their colleagues. The ‘Text Reading’ series has been in exis-
tence since 2011, when the BA curriculum underwent its last major rede-
sign—and has proved popular with students over that time. It runs
alongside and complements another long-standing series of classes enti-
tled ‘Modern Japanese: Unseen Translation’. The latter is considered to
be a ‘lecture’ and is delivered to all the students in the third year simulta-
neously (which, in practice, means a group of 10–12 students). The tuto-
rials, following Oxford conventions, are even smaller, consisting of groups
of three to four students.
Since the objectives of the text-reading tutorials and the translation
lectures are similar, I had previously endeavoured to align the materials
and approaches adopted in both, to ensure that the programmes of teach-
ing complemented each other. For example, in 2019, I introduced read-
ings in translation studies within the text-reading series and, in 2020,
organized a short follow-up translation seminar series that would run
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  59

alongside the translation lectures, after the text-reading series had come to
an end. This concluded with a guest lecture from a translator and scholar
of translation studies, whose work the students had translated in advance,
for discussion with the professional. These small refinements to the cur-
riculum moved it more in a direction of integrated, or joined-up, learning,
as well as adding to its ‘authenticity’ through direct links with professional
translation activities. Furthermore, other than the addition of a few fol-
low-­up sessions, there were no substantial changes to modes of teaching
delivery—and the scale of the changes that were made was small enough
that lengthy periods of planning were not required. Considering the two
series in parallel was particularly straightforward for me since, over time, I
have been responsible for teaching both.
In 2020, a decision was taken that all teaching for this area of the course
would be moved online, using a combination of the MSTeams platform
for synchronous sessions alongside an institutional version of Canvas, an
online learning management suite. For me, this initially seemed that it
would entail rather more work than had my earlier updates to the curricu-
lum, since I felt that it was important to try to make up for the lack of
wide-ranging student-led discussion that characterizes the tutorial system
when operated in face-to-face environments. The related issues of audio
time delays in video-conferencing and the pressure felt by some students
when being called on to give individual responses in virtual settings are
discussed elsewhere in this book—as are some suggestions for how to
minimize the impact of those problems. At the time, though, my first
thought was how I could motivate students to engage in the kind of aca-
demic discussions we had in our previous tutorials, while both they and I
were grappling with the complexities of a new environment and the mix of
synchronous and asynchronous digital tools at our disposal. It was at this
point that I started to think about diversifying the curriculum.

I dentifying ‘Diverse’ Learning Materials

To decide to diversify a curriculum is one thing. To actually go about
doing so is another. Presuming, as in this case, intended learning objec-
tives and overall outcomes are already dictated by the parameters of an
existing programme of learning, the first task that greets teachers, in prac-
tice, is to decide on a choice of materials and mode of delivery. I will
return to teaching delivery later. First, let us consider how to identify
‘diverse’ materials.
 60  L. MANN ET AL.

Curriculum diversity is sometimes linked to HE marketing. The latter

is itself linked to diversity within the student body, either as it stands cur-
rently or, in the context of student recruitment, how that might develop,
as a result of inclusive recruitment policies. A logical first step when con-
sidering content for a diversified curriculum is, therefore, to consult the
student body to gather their opinions regarding what to include. Especially
where large student numbers are involved, it might seem troublesome to
conduct regular student opinion-gathering and evaluation exercises. In
smaller scale teaching set-ups, however, this is much less of a problem—
particularly since the shift online has given us access to sophisticated sur-
vey software that, in some cases, is fully integrated within our online
‘classroom’ platforms.
In my case, after an initial synchronous conversation, I decided to ask
my students about their preferences concerning the genres of text they
would like to see included in a revised curriculum. They were instructed
to provide their answers through MSForms, a survey package that is
included with the Office365 package through which university email and
other services are provided. The results of that poll were as follows
(Fig. 3.1).
As this graph shows, students in the group expressed most interest in
learning more about Japanese poetry and song—a result which confirmed
the impressions I had formed through earlier informal talks with them
about the content of our classes. Qualitative responses to a teaching evalu-
ation exercise conducted earlier in the term also led me in the direction of
a more diverse range of Source Texts, including popular music lyrics. In

Which genres of text appeal to you most?

Video Content
Genre of text for study

Blogs
Essays
Songs
Poetry
Novels
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Number of selections

Fig. 3.1  Using MSForms poll to select text genre

 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  61

response to the question, “Is there anything you would like to learn more
about, through this term’s online teaching?”, one student responded:

I would find it interesting how poetry is translated as a lot of poetry is meant to

be subjective and to the readers interpretation as much as the authors. Also the
translation of song lyrics could be interesting to learn more slang and common
place phrases used casually between people.

Another student noted that the ‘content’ of texts (presumably including

its wider implications or significance) was of interest, even in the context
of translation tutorials:

The more different kinds of writing styles we can look at, the better. Also, though
I understand that translation is the focus, it would be interesting to spend a bit
more time thinking about the content of the writing, as well as figuring out
what it means.

Asking students is generally the best place to start when thinking about
improving or changing the content or delivery of teaching. Clearly,
though, the information I obtained by means of this small evaluation exer-
cise was not enough, on its own, to tell me exactly which materials to
include in my new curriculum design. Rather, it helped me to narrow
my search.
The decision to choose rap and hip-hop was supported by a number of
factors, as discussed further in subsequent paragraphs. To begin with,
though, it is important to note that I already had experience working with
rap songs through my own research in poetic sound textures in Japanese
and other languages and that this fact played a substantial role in my selec-
tion. Leaving aside the recent experiments with authentic learning based
on research discussed above, a lot of regular university teaching is tradi-
tionally research-driven—and there is no need to alter this in the process
of diversifying curricula. For those of us whose jobs include research, it is
sometimes possible to identify synergies between our research interests
and ‘diverse’ areas of teaching and learning to explore, when designing
curricula. The great thing about approaching design in this way is that
teaching can then feed back meaningfully into research, as university
teaching is traditionally supposed to. Additionally, thinking about the
potential of our research to span diverse materials and topics could be use-
ful when considering how to reach a wider audience—which is often of
62  L. MANN ET AL.

strategic importance to institutions and fundamental to career develop-

ment for academics.
My own interest in Japanese hip-hop centres on the nature of sound
textures in rap songs and their relationship with more widespread features
of the language. In 2020, this interest was at an early stage of develop-
ment. However, a small number of existing studies (in particular Kawahara,
2007) convinced me that rap in Japanese was of particular interest in
regard to its relationship with phonology and phonetics. I was also aware
of the large volumes of freely available online content related to rap, which
scopes over the songs themselves, transcriptions of lyrics and a huge array
of fandom and related social media discourse. At the stage of considering
a new ‘digitally diverse’ curriculum, therefore, it was not a stretch for my
thoughts to fall to rap, as a potential tool for language teaching.
A step away from the acoustic makeup of the lyrics, rap has unquestion-
ably also demonstrated its linguistic powers, in the realms of what could
be described as the pragmatics of authenticity. What I mean by this is the
power of lexical choice to establish and maintain authentic identities
among practitioners of rap. As I read more about it, I discovered that this
both intersected with my own interests in acoustics, by way of debates
over the ‘creation’ of rhyme in Japanese, and, furthermore, seems to have
held particular relevance for Japanese and other East Asian rappers and
jazz musicians—separated, as they are, from the diverse cultural contexts
in which those genres were forged by gulfs of geography and language
(Condry, 2006). Judging by some of their responses, issues of authenticity
seem also to have been involved in students’ experiences of the rap-related
material we studied. These responses are discussed further below.
A final factor in the choice to study rap was its recent use in therapeutic
contexts. A number of inspirational studies have situated the creation,
interpretation and appreciation of hip-hop songs as potent tools for
improving the mental health and well-being of young people from highly
disadvantaged backgrounds. As a therapeutic tool, rap has been deployed,
in particular, to support the needs of socially disadvantaged young men—a
group that is grossly underrepresented in higher education, as noted ear-
lier. Researchers of rap therapy have highlighted the potential of the genre
to break the cycle of disadvantage that leads to those low participa-
tion rates:

[Rap] provides an outlet for expression and offers possibilities … Hope is

critical for a young person surrounded by despairs and constant reminders
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  63

of failure. Without hope, youth from communities of concentrated disad-

vantage are more likely to become discouraged and as a result more vulner-
able … (Alvarez, 2011, p. 123)

In such environments, rap has been found to link to greater self-­expression,

higher levels of motivation and other therapeutic successes, the causes of
which are less clear but still expressed in terms that link to the affective
potential of language, such as “satisfying music-making”, for example
(Lightstone, 2011, p. 219). It is therefore not a stretch to imagine that rap
could bring about increases in motivation and self-esteem among stu-
dents, if introduced in educational settings.

 hoosing the Source Text

C
It was from among the therapeutic deployments of rap that I discovered
the sub-genre of the ‘emcee battle’. This is a form of rap that emerged
early on within the hip-hop tradition in the United States, in which two or
more participants verbally wrestle with each other, usually in ‘free-style’, a
highly improvised form of rapping. The overall effect is that of antiphony,
though therapists have also observed what they describe as “rhetorical
battles”—raps that retain “the flavor of a battle because the rapper was
communicating insults … but … in the context of a solo performance or
group performance with no clear target of who was receiving the verbal
attacks” (ibid., p. 227). The origins of the form have been linked to the
phenomenon of “ritualized insults” in African American oral culture
(ibid., p. 229). Like other verbal art forms emerging from heavily oral
cultures, the emcee battle is linguistically engaged to a high degree.
Interestingly, this engagement extends to the meta level, by virtue of the
content of the insults which often either focus on, or in some way refer-
ence, the opponent’s facility with language or ability to form aesthetically
acceptable sound textures (i.e. ‘good rhymes’). The example below is
taken from a therapy session and was composed by a patient:

Bang, the mothafucker’s down on the groun’

You hear the sound of the gun shots hittin’ his frown
I said the guy thought the mothafucker was checked
Thinks he can Leave ‘me in the park
His rhymes are wrecked
(From a battle between “Mel” and “Eddie” see: Lightstone, 2011, p. 227)
64  L. MANN ET AL.

Investigating the phenomenon of emcee battling in Japanese, I discovered

that it was a fecund repository of rhetorical language and that among its
practitioners were some of the most celebrated rappers in Japan, including
artists whom I had encountered previously in my own studies of rhyme in
Japanese. Despite being divorced from the original context of ethnic and
socio-economic marginalization, Japanese emcee battles retain the close
ties to language and, if anything, seem particularly focussed on the forma-
tion of linguistically virtuosic insults (and responses to insults) that criti-
cize opponent rappers’ abilities to make rhymes or, in other ways, improvise
a rap song that fulfils the linguistic requirements for ‘authenticity’. This is
also the case in professionalized and even televised emcee battles. Here is
an example of such an insult that was included in our tutorials:

o-mae sokkyo ̄ ja ne ̄ na neta o maru-anki?   hat’s not improv’ bro—you

T
just learnt it, yeah?
maru de yasumon no mekki          Just like cheap bling trash
Donki no Aruma ̄ni           Armani from Don Qui[jote]1
furı ̄sutaira ̄ toshite aru majiki ko ̄i      Unforgivable for a freestyler

A Google search revealed a fandom repository, hosted on the Japanese

blogsite HatenaBlog, containing emcee battle highlights, focussed on lyr-
ics the author considered to contain the best rhymes by the Osaka rapper
R-Shitei (puppykun 2019, see Fig.  3.2 for screenshot and ‘Useful
Resources’ for link). R-Shitei is one Japanese hip-hop star, recognized for
his virtuosity, whom I had encountered in my work on rhyme and rheto-
ric. As soon as I read puppykun’s blog, I immediately knew that I wanted
to use it in class. The following areas, in particular, appealed to me about
this text:

–– It focusses on the relationship between language and affect. The emo-

tional effects of rap documented by the research in rap therapy detailed
above appear, from the researcher’s descriptions, to link closely to lan-
guage. That impression is reinforced by the blog, since puppykun’s
descriptions of R-Shitei’s rap rhymes are so emotionally charged. At
several points during the responses to the material, the fan writes that a
rhyme makes him unaru (in this case meaning: ‘to groan, howl or
shout in admiration’). The phrase unaru shika nai (I / you can’t help

 A chain of discount stores in Japan and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.

1
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  65

Fig. 3.2  Fandom blog selected for hip-hop translation classes

but howl) has become common in the context of internet fandom com-
munication, to refer to content (food, sport, music, etc.) that is awe-
some or amazing in some way. The excitement expressed in the
blogger’s lexical choices was mirrored in several of the student responses,
as discussed below.
–– It effectively links diverse content (in the form of rap), with its fandom
reception, in a social media environment. This is particularly relevant to
language students today, given the recognition of social media as a
space in which innovative and “distinct” language types are developing,
as noted in the previous chapter (Lambton-Howard et  al., 2020).
Although relatively few students expressed an interest in studying blogs
when surveyed, the content of this particular blog was primarily related
to songs in Japanese—which constituted one of the two most popular
categories of text.
–– It contains digitally enriched text, with links added to multimodal
material, including video content and social media posts. In an online
classroom environment, this was ideal to introduce students to the vari-
ety of communicative modes that coexist to create the Japanese lan-
guage internet. After being briefed on the content during synchronous
66  L. MANN ET AL.

sessions, students were all able to access the blog asynchronously

through links posted in the virtual learning environment (VLE) and,
from there, were able to explore the external sites in their own time.
–– In its focus on rhyme, it links closely to my own research interests
on the relationships between form and meaning in Japanese oral
genres. This gives the text another layer of authenticity, in the
sense that, through participation in the classes, students are able
to become involved directly with new scholarship and contribute
to a developing understanding of the topic. This extra layer rein-
forces the notion that there are various types of authenticity and
that it is not confined to the use of materials not designed for
language learning—which, arguably, lose some of their authentic-
ity for learners at the point they are introduced, in any case.

Format of Lessons
When designing the tutorials, one of my biggest concerns was the diffi-
culty of the material. As noted elsewhere in this book, there is a high bar
for L2 learner comprehension of social media-sourced materials, especially
at CEFR B2. Each tutorial was therefore structured to offer students as
much feedback and assistance as possible in the time allowed, without
overloading them with information or allowing teacher-led discussions to
dominate the process. Like many online classes, the tutorials contained
synchronous and asynchronous elements that fed into each other, as
follows:

1. Selected pre-reading/viewing of multimodal content, linked

through VLE (asynchronous)
2. Informal metacognitive exercise—“what do you know about this
topic so far” (synchronous)
3. Teacher-led discussion focussed on the choice of material, encour-
aging students to think critically about the processes by which their
curriculum is formed (‘negotiated learning’). Teacher introduces
the background of the material, models key points for discussion
and learning objectives/expectations of learners (synchronous)
4. Student-led responses to 2 (synchronous)
5. Student-led translation and discussion of Source Text (synchronous)
6. Informal metacognitive exercise—“what did you learn today?”

(synchronous)
7. Further student preparation and discussions (asynchronous)
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  67

. Translation and other collaborative activities (asynchronous)

8
9. Repeat

The points above constitute a rough guide to the order of classes as

planned, rather than a precise summary of the execution. During the
classes themselves, we were guided, in large part, by the Source Text under
consideration—and student responses to it. The contiguous pattern of
synchronous and asynchronous learning did, however, ensure that tutori-
als following on from the first session were effectively ‘flipped’, that is,
material was provided in advance of the synchronous session. As in other
tutorials of this type, dialogic interactions between students, the tutor and
the material occupied the majority of the synchronous sessions. Discussions
of this sort help to highlight students’ areas of strength and weakness and
allow for ample peer feedback and metacognitive reflection.
In accordance with existing learning objectives, and the broader frame-
work of the degree, students were helped to build their vocabulary and
broaden their exposure to a range of Source Text types. They also learned
about the praxis of translation through individual role taking, as well as
group discussions on various linguistic issues, including, syntax, pragmat-
ics, stylistics and translation. Students drafted and redrafted their transla-
tions during and after the synchronous sessions, based on the discussion
submitting it to tutor for further feedback. During the discussions and
feedback exercises, we talked a lot about the processes of translation,
including workflow, audience and other issues relevant to professional
translators. This was intended to keep the series of tutorials close to the
overall ‘authentic learning’ agenda mentioned above.

S tudent Responses and Evaluation

As a first attempt to diversify the translation curriculum for the BA in
Japanese at Oxford, this series of tutorials was, I felt, generally successful.
During synchronous sessions, students were visibly more engaged than
previously. They presented as happy and interested and, from time to time,
positively excited about the material we covered. Their oral contributions
supported this general impression. Several students expressed an interest
in rap. One student, in particular, was enthused about the material to the
point that she was visibly struggling to contain her excitement. She later
informed me, during one of the informal feedback exercises, that she had
‘never been so engaged with anything’ before in her academic career to
date. In general, all tutorial participants actively engaged with the
68  L. MANN ET AL.

material, which provoked in-class discussions that ranged across a number

of topics within language and linguistics, including translation studies and
internet pragmatics. Below follows a selection of the questions that arose
during those discussions (with thanks to the students who asked and
answered them):

–– I feel it is really important to rhyme in our translations, can I do that?

–– Can we translate ㅁ as an emoji because we feel LOL has some negative
nuances. Maybe the most appropriate is , but this is actually typed
using the word 汗. Also we were thinking about LMAO for ㅁ, because
this might be more appropriate than LOL in this context?
–– Is it ok to use very colloquial language? Can we use bad language? We
believe that lexical choice is important to the expression of emotion.
–– Is such complex language rare in the rap of other regions?
–– Is it ok to replicate the gaming reference in rasubosu in the Target Text?
–– What does batoru wa raimu mean exactly? (This question led onto a
broader discussion of pragmatics-driven critiques of descriptions of the
boku wa unagi da construction in Japanese).
–– Are emcee battles a form of metalinguistic discourse? Verbal attacks are
opportunities for a display of linguistic virtuosity.

The combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning, which

has constituted the basis of all my teaching delivery since the move online
in 2020, worked satisfactorily in this case too. Students were well prepared
for synchronous sessions and able to move rapidly between lower and
higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (1956)—that is, from remembering
and recalling vocabulary and grammar to analysis, (self-)criticism and
other metacognitive processes. The multimodal interactions offered by
combined synchronous-asynchronous approaches cater for a diversity of
student learning styles and other needs. Experimenting with different
technologies and platforms is sometimes possible and often beneficial, as
noted elsewhere in this book, but the online environment, in general, is
diverse enough to encompass the variety of student needs normally
encountered in the course of our teaching. As Sarah Liu has written, “A
variety of learning styles are represented in your classroom, and the
resources available on the internet can cater to them all. This diversity
makes individualized instruction much easier and more effective since
each student can learn using the medium that they understand best” (2016).
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  69

A perennial issue facing language teachers in my department is that very

small class sizes necessitate a reliance on qualitative and anecdotal data
concerning learner outcomes and experiences. In order to verify the posi-
tive outcomes observed during this exercise in curriculum diversification,
there is therefore an ongoing need to deploy similar diverse content and
methods of teaching delivery in other contexts within East Asian studies—
particularly at institutions with larger cohorts of students. Another regret,
during this series, was that I did not find enough time to encourage asyn-
chronous student discussion by setting up and monitoring a purpose-built
discussion forum (such as is available through Canvas). In future incarna-
tions of this micro-curriculum design, I should also like to set aside time
to use online post-it board tools such as Padlet. These can be used just as
easily in the physical classroom as in a synchronous online session and,
since students post responses and ideas anonymously, offer opportunities
for CF that do not carry the stigma of singling out individual learners.

Conclusion: How Should We Diversify Our

Curricula Digitally?
This chapter has suggested that it is possible to combine the shift to online
education with the diversification of the curriculum, within language courses at
university. Through discussion of the arguments for curriculum diversity, the
role of language teachers, the particular intersects and challenges of the online
space and a micro-curriculum design in East Asian studies, it has suggested a
number of possible avenues leading towards greater diversity in online lan-
guage teaching. Let us recap some of the main sub-tips:

1. Special attention should be paid to diversity in the curriculum,

across a range of subject areas in higher education. This is because
failure to do so perpetuates existing canons of learning and because
this fact is sometimes not immediately obvious to teachers and oth-
ers in positions of responsibility within the system.
2. Choosing more ‘diverse’ teaching materials could help to boost stu-
dent motivation, increase student perception of teaching as ‘authen-
tic’, encourage greater participation from traditionally
underrepresented groups and help teachers to meet institutional
strategic targets.
3. ‘Authentic’ teaching and learning of languages in an online environ-
ment should be set up in such a way as to help students comprehend
70  L. MANN ET AL.

the diversity of communicative modalities and language communi-

ties that exist on the internet, with the objective of ultimately
becoming functional members of (at least some of) those
communities.
4. The internet is a place of diverse modes of communication that are
rapidly changing. This makes the construction of online curricula an
ideal point at which to consider how to incorporate material or
delivery methods that meet the needs of the increasing diversity of
students. However, the rapidity of developments in online commu-
nication brings with it a number of challenges, not least managing
the needs of early stage L2 learners, for whom much of the gram-
mar, vocabulary and usages they encounter might be new to them.
5. When considering content for a diversified curriculum, it is a good
idea to ask your students what they think—but this process might
not deliver all the information you need to set up a curriculum that
meets required standards of curriculum diversity, Intended Learning
Outcomes or other institutional targets. It is therefore necessary to
think carefully about the selection of material, considering a range
of factors that could combine to produce positive outcomes
for students.
6. Research-based teaching can coincide with curriculum diversity. It is
a good idea to think carefully about the ‘diverse’ potential of your
own research, if you are a researcher. This can not only help with
choosing a curriculum for teaching but could be useful when think-
ing about how to present your research to a wider audience or for
meeting public engagement targets.
7. Teachers should not shy away from including aspects of popular cul-
ture in their curricula. In the case study, the teacher observed appar-
ent improvements in student engagement and outcomes after the
introduction of online hip-hop fandom material into a Japanese
translation curriculum. The discussions that developed out of the
new material were linguistically engaged and involved a lot of what
is loosely termed higher-order thinking skills.
8. When designing any online curriculum, it is useful to think about
the coordination of asynchronous and synchronous learning. This
helps with efficient time management and caters for a diversity of
student needs.
 3  SECOND TIP: DIVERSIFY THE CURRICULUM  71

Some of the above tips might also be helpful for teachers working in
physical classrooms—or the large number of us who have to combine face-­
to-­face format with online teaching, in blended approaches. The next
chapter, Tip#3, will look at the possibilities for language teachers’ profes-
sional development when navigating further towards online spaces.

Useful Resources
You may find the following resources helpful when thinking about curriculum
diversity in online teaching:

Condry, I. (2006). Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the paths of cultural globalization.
Duke University Press.
Lambton-Howard, D., Kiaer, J., & Kharrufa, A. (2020). Social media is their
space’: Student and teacher use and perception of features of social media in
language education. Behaviour & Information Technology. https://doi.org/1
0.1080/0144929X.2020.1774653
Liu, S. (2016, June 15). Embracing digital diversity in modern teaching. teach.
com. Retrieved February 1, 2021, from https://teach.com/blog/
embracing-­digital-­diversity-­in-­modern-­teaching/
Peters, Michael. A. (2015). Why is my curriculum white? Educational
Philosophy and Theory, 47(7), 641–646. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.
2015.1037227
Open University. (2008, revised 2018). Equality, diversity and inclusion in the cur-
riculum: Guidance for faculties and approval bodies. Retrieved February 1,
2021, from http://www.open.ac.uk/equality-­diversity/sites/www.open.ac.uk.
equality-­d iversity/files/files/EDI%20in%20the%20curriculum%20final%
20-­%20Julie%20Young-­28Feb19.pdf
Sharpe, R., Wu, Q., & Pavlakou, M. (2019). Exploring patterns of technology use
in UK college students: A cluster analysis of learners’ digital practices. Research
in Post-Compulsory Education, 24(1), 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/
13596748.2019.1584436

References
Adebisi, A.  E. (2019, May 2). As a black student, I know why our grades are
worse: Universities don’t listen to us. The Guardian. https://www.theguard-
ian.com/education/2019/may/02/as-­a-­black-­student-­i-­know-­why-­our-­grades-­
are-­worse-­universities-­dont-­listen-­to-­us
72  L. MANN ET AL.

Alvarez, T. (2011). Beats, rhymes and life: Rap therapy in an urban setting. In
S. Hadley & G. Yancey (Eds.), Therapeutic uses of rap and hip-hop (pp. 99–114).
Routledge.
Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook I: The cognitive
domain. David McKay Co Inc.
Centre for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Diversifying assessment: A resource book-
let for the University of Oxford. CTL, University of Oxford.
Condry, I. (2006). Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the paths of cultural globalization.
Duke University Press.
Hillman, N., & Robinson, N. (2016). Boys to men: The underachievement of young
men in higher education—And how to start tackling it. HEPI.
Jernigan, C. (2016). Authentic learning and student motivation: Building instruc-
tor and student confidence through genuine interaction and authentic class-
room materials. In R. Breeze & C. S. Guinda (Eds.), Essential competencies for
English-medium university teaching (pp.  281–294). Springer International
Publishing AG.
Kawahara, S. (2007). Half rhymes in Japanese rap lyrics and knowledge of similar-
ity. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 16(2), 113–144.
Lambton-Howard, D., Kiaer, J., & Kharrufa, A. (2020). ‘Social media is their
space’: Student and teacher use and perception of features of social media in
language education. Behaviour & Information Technology. https://doi.org/1
0.1080/0144929X.2020.1774653
Lightstone, A. (2011). Yo, can ya flow! Research findings on hip-hop aesthetics
and rap therapy in an urban youth shelter. In S. Hadley & G. Yancey (Eds.),
Therapeutic uses of rap and hip-hop (pp. 211–251). Routledge.
Liu, S. (2016). Embracing digital diversity in modern teaching. Teach.com Blog.
https://teach.com/blog/embracing-digital-diversity-in-modern-teaching/
Moody, J. (2020). Moving assessment on-line: Key principles for inclusion, pedagogy
and practice. AdvanceHE Webinar.
Open University. (2008, revised 2018). Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the
Curriculum: Guidance for faculties and approval bodies.
Peters, M. A. (2015). Why is my curriculum white? Educational Philosophy and
Theory, 47(7), 641–646.
Sharpe, R., Qi, W., & Pavlakou, M. (2019). Exploring patterns of technology use
in UK college students: A cluster analysis of learners’ digital practices. Research
in Post-Compulsory Education, 24(1), 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359
6748.2019.1584436
 CHAPTER 4

Third Tip: Find Self-Generated

Opportunities for Professional Development

Abstract  The third tip, offered in this chapter, shifts the focus away from
enhancing student learning, towards the development of opportunities for
continuing professional development (CPD) for language teachers. This
chapter argues that, although pandemic conditions have limited physical
interactions between colleagues, the rapid shift to online environments
encountered by many language teachers during the pandemic has also
offered rich opportunities to explore adventurous, self-generated modes
of CPD—in particular practitioner research. The case study introduced in
this chapter demonstrates the power of such modes of exploratory practice
to facilitate complex processes of reflection and, through sharing with col-
leagues, overcome difficulties posed by new working practices or institu-
tional factors, to boost personal and professional well-being. Finally, this
chapter directs readers towards the huge potential of the internet and
social media themselves to provide arenas for self-generated CPD.

Keywords  Continuing professional development (CPD) • Action

research • Exploratory practice • Teacher reflection • Self-generated •
Teacher beliefs • Personal and professional well-being

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 73

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9_4
74  L. MANN ET AL.

Initiating Positive Change Through Participation,

Action and Reflection
In this book so far, we have aimed to demonstrate how widespread disrup-
tion, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, has instigated a need for rapid
and sometimes challenging changes in our methods of delivering language
teaching. In particular, we have highlighted the benefit of inspecting the
building blocks of our curricula, with a view to reassembling them in ways
that are more suited to our circumstances and which give agency to a
diverse range of learners in their interactions with socio-pragmatically rich
repositories of language online. Overall, then, the focus has been on how,
within the parameters of our experience, the shift online has shaped learn-
ing and what, we believe, the virtual space could offer in this regard, going
forward. Teaching and learning processes—or how we help our learners
learn—should always be our first priorities, so it seemed natural for us to
begin our discussion in this way. However, when faced with any new envi-
ronment or set of challenges, it is also important not to lose sight of the
fact that, as teachers, we form our own personal and institutional networks
practice, and of practitioners. Many discussions that we have had with col-
leagues during the COVID pandemic, often through the same platforms
we have turned to for teaching, have highlighted the ‘problems’ the shift
online has brought about for teachers—and, while by no means all, many
of these relate to the seemingly herculean task of recreating classroom
teaching in the virtual space. The lack of physicality, the problems of giv-
ing feedback the increased workload involved in preparing materials—
again and again the problems and obstacles of which we hear give the
distinct impression of teachers’ feeling at a loss of how to apply their exist-
ing knowledge and experience in unfamiliar circumstances, feeling isolated
and alone, or feeling that they have a responsibility to ensure that they can
teach students what needs to be taught. These feelings themselves are
both valuable and heuristic for anyone thinking about how to organize
learning in an online world. Modes of teaching and learning that result in
greatly increased workloads for teachers or that isolate and exclude teach-
ers who lack particular skills or expertise are likely to be just as detrimental
to successful outcomes as one that excludes certain groups of students. It
is thus vital that discussion of online teaching and learning, in every disci-
pline, involves communities of teachers every step of the way.
In the next two chapters, we will attempt once more to flip a negative
into a positive by highlighting the power of marrying existing research in
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  75

language pedagogy and teacher training with practitioner community dis-

cussion of the nuts and bolts problems facing language teachers navigating
a shift online, including the ever-present question of how to deal with
feedback and assessment. In this chapter, we turn our attention to the
potential of a rapid change in approaches to teaching delivery to create
opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) among lan-
guage teachers.
Language teachers have had to quickly attain an understanding of
sometimes unfamiliar technological means for online or digital delivery,
while responding to logistical challenges, as well as exploring different
approaches to language teaching and learning, and making the necessary
adaptions to their syllabi. Institutional demands for a smooth shift to
online teaching have sometimes put pressure on teachers to respond
quickly to their new educational environment. As Maslach and Leiter
(1999) put it, teachers are the most valuable part of the educational sys-
tem and so their professional well-being must be a priority. The more
traditional opportunities for training and CPD such as live seminars and
workshops have, of course, met with the same difficulties as those of face-­
to-­
face teaching. Instead, other tools for professional development,
including practitioner research and scholarship, have come into their own.
In this chapter, we will introduce a recent case study from the Faculty of
Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in light of frameworks for
professional development such as action research (AR) and exploratory
practice (EP), while stressing the importance of understanding teacher
psychology when building strategies to support communities of language
teachers working online.
Finally, while in general we have avoided recommending particular
technologies or online resources in this book, we feel that it would be
remiss of us not to mention that opportunities for teachers’ CPD through
social media such as Twitter are huge—and ever-growing. If you have not
done so already, you might find that involving yourself in such an online
community could be the thing that makes the biggest difference to how
‘included’ you feel in the constantly changing world of online teaching
and learning.

Continuous Professional Development and Teacher Psychology

In this book, we use the terms professional development (PD) and con-
tinuing professional development (CPD) interchangeably.
76  L. MANN ET AL.

Professional development is defined by Day (1999 in Hayes, 2014,

p. 7) as follows:

Professional development consists of all natural learning experiences and

those conscious and planned activities which are intended to be of direct or
indirect benefit to the individual, group or school, which contribute,
through these, to the quality of education in the classroom. It is the process
by which, alone and with others, teachers review, renew and extend their
commitment as change agents to the moral purpose of teaching; and by
which they acquire and develop critically the knowledge, skills and emo-
tional intelligence essential to good professional thinking and practice with
children, young people and colleagues throughout each phase of their
teaching lives.

Guan and Huang (2013) point out that PD for language teachers
entails many specific details:

Language teachers’ professional development emerges from a process of

refreshing and reshaping teachers existing knowledge, beliefs and morals,
and practices and reflections rather than just simply imposing fresh language
teaching theories, methodologies and teaching materials on teachers. Thus,
language teachers’ professional learning is a complex process which requires
knowledge in varied disciplined fields of psychology, sociology, methodol-
ogy, etc. Besides, teachers’ cognitive and emotional involvement individu-
ally and collectively, the capacity and willingness to examine teachers’
professional convictions and beliefs, and the strong eagerness for profes-
sional improvement and change are all needed in the process of language
teachers’ professional development. (p. 211)

It is generally believed that a better understanding of teacher psychol-

ogy and their circumstances can help us identify what support language
teachers need, in order to flourish in their professions, to benefit them-
selves and their students.
Mercer and Kostoulas (2018) highlight the importance of further
research in teacher psychology by explaining their aim of their study in the
following terms:

We wanted to draw attention to teachers as valuable individuals across the

professional lifespan and encourage a greater understanding of the issues
facing language education professionals across the globe and across different
career stages. We also believe in the central importance of teachers as key
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  77

stakeholders and one of the most influential factors in successful learning

(Hattie, 2009); understanding them as a population and as individuals must
become a priority for the field if we wish to have a comprehensive under-
standing of processes of language learning and teaching.

Kumaravadivelu (1994, 2006) argues there is a need for a change in the

foundations of pedagogic action by teachers. It is more than just integrat-
ing research into existing practice but involves the transformation of the
curriculum by teachers, according to their needs and those of their stu-
dents. Kumaravadivelu further suggests three Ps for effective practice.
Lessons and programmes should build on the particular needs of the stu-
dents; what is practical in the context and what is possible in the task of
securing greater engagement and success in language learning. We believe
that this is especially true for the current circumstances and will remain so
in whatever blend of online and face-to-face tuition will be appropriate in
the future. The application of the three Ps can be revisited through various
continuing professional development (CPD) initiatives, in the light of the
changing situations in which each teacher has found himself/herself.
Thus, the availability and accessibility to CPD activities have proven to be
crucial. Where traditional methods of staff training and sharing best prac-
tice prove difficult, the onus falls on the individual teacher to develop his/
her practice through reflection and research and to find new methods of
disseminating her findings.
Slimani-Rolls and Kiely (2019, p.  30) argue that CPD “should not
just be responsive to individual teachers’ needs only; it should also support
the needs of the workplace in which teachers operate and their wider role
in realising, institutionally and nationally, the educational expectations of
the school system,” and they continue by saying that current offers for
language teachers in terms of CPD have either some insufficient character-
istics; or are top-down or inadequate, mainly ignoring teachers’ own
“capacity and responsibility” for their own development (p. 33).
There has been a wide literature on how teachers can and should
actively be involved in their own development with the notion of ‘reflec-
tive’ practitioner (Dewey, 1933; Schön, 1987; Farrell, 2001; Lee, 2007).
Schön (1983) introduced two concepts to refer to different aspects of
reflection in teaching: knowing-in-action and reflection-in-action. The
former, a “repertoire of examples, images, understanding and actions”
(Schön, 1983, p. 138), which may be largely intuitive, is something that
teachers draw on when confronted with an experience which is new or
78  L. MANN ET AL.

surprising, giving rise, in turn, to reflection-in-action. Schön described a

final aspect of the reflective process, which he called reflection-on-action.
Watanabe (2016) argues that today we use the term ‘reflection’ primarily
in Schön’s sense of reflection-on-action which describes a considered and
deliberate going back to past events, actions and feelings with the aim of
improving future actions. This is also called reflection-for-action
(Farrell, 2014).
Using practitioner research, to understand what is really happening in
the learning process, teachers can contribute by providing an account of
their practice, to complement the theory-based accounts of academic
researchers.

Action Research
Action research (AR), as a tool for professional development, occurs when
teachers are encouraged to carry out small-scale research in their own
classrooms and thus undertake a role as teacher-researcher (Atay, 2006,
2008; Burns, 2010; Edwards & Burns, 2016; Wyatt, 2011). Kemmis and
McTaggart (1988) distinguish action research from the normal practice of
teaching and point out that action research includes both problem posing
and problem solving, and is a type of research that helps to change and
improve a situation. Thus, practitioners can make conscious pedagogical
changes and improvements by implementing AR in their professional
development. As we modify our curricula and their delivery to accommo-
date the shifting sands of the pandemic and its aftermath, so we must
search for methods to conduct action research outside the traditional
classroom and carry out our investigations through online or digital means
or via a combination of both.
Action research practitioners need to reflect on their actions to enhance
their practice, and improvements happen as a result of reflection and
greater understanding of the initial problem (Schön, 1983; Kemmis &
McTaggart, 1988; Selener, 1997; McNiff, 2002).
Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) emphasize that action research is
designed to embed an ongoing process of reflection and action through
the different stages such as: reflect, plan, act, observe and reflect.
Later, we see that Kemmis et al. (2014) expand this approach, explain-
ing that educational practices are characterized by assemblages of not sim-
ply ‘doings’, but also language (‘sayings’) and relationships (‘relat-ings’),
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  79

and the particular conditions within which they develop and which help to
constitute them.
Satariyan and Reynolds (2016) propose a five-phase reflective process
within the action research cycle, which can be seen in Fig. 4.1.
Action research is about practitioners engaging in critical reflection. In
this way, practitioners can review applications, determine their effective-
ness and make decisions about future revisions and implementations.
When teachers, for example, think about an initial lesson plan, it is impor-
tant for them to first reflect on topics or issues of concern needing improve-
ment. Next, during the planning process, they need to reflect on a plan to

Fig. 4.1  Satariyan and Reynolds’s reflective model for action research (2016)
80  L. MANN ET AL.

deliver. During the next phase, teachers need to reflect on and monitor
their practice in action. After the teaching session is over, they must reflect
again on the implementation of their plans and assess the effect on stu-
dents’ progress. To complete this action research cycle, teachers need to
reflect for the future and consider refinements or to reaffirm their practice
(Satariyan & Reynolds, 2016, p. 23).
The same authors suggest the following specific questions for each
stage of the cycle which we believe is very useful in terms of starting to
work on a teaching and learning-related issue, puzzle or topic.

1. Reflection about an issue or topic

• Think broadly about different issues or topics of concern or need-

ing improvement.
• Narrow this thinking and identify an issue or topic of importance.
• Consider reasons for choosing this issue or topic.
• Research the issue or topic.
• Identify questions or actions.

2. Reflection on the design (plan)

• Who will be involved?

• Think about methods/tools to collect the data.
• Organise resources to use.
• Consider a timeline.
• Ensure ethical matters.

3. Reflection in action (implement/act)

• Monitoring the research in action.

• What is working well?
• How can I do this differently?
• What else can I do to make this more effective?

4. Reflection after the action (interpret/evaluate)

• Could I be more effective in analysing the data?

• Have I generated sufficient evidence from the data?
• Are my data robust?
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  81

• Revisit your research questions or hypotheses.

• Think about the overall quality of the research.

5. Reflection for future improvements (changes/recommendations)

• How do I continue to improve what I have done?

• What questions emerged from the data?
• How can I further develop my practice?
• How do my conclusions differ from what I thought I would learn?
• What actions could I implement for the future based on
my findings?
• How do I share my learning, and why is it important to share it?
• How can I inspire others to do the same? How may I influence
their learning?

Being aware of these steps and being able to ask the right questions at
every step help teachers to investigate their beliefs, their pedagogical prin-
ciples and practices, not only for the past and current practices but also for
future sustainable practices.

Exploratory Practice
Exploratory practice (EP) is a form of practitioner research that centres
both on the teachers and students. Over the past 25 years, the develop-
ments of principles which underpin exploratory practice have been devel-
oped with and for practitioners in language education (Allwright, 2005;
Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Hanks, 2017). Allwright (2006) proposes
EP as “a professionally viable alternative research paradigm” (p. 5) empha-
sising the importance of student inclusion in the search for a better under-
standing; an aspect that distinguishes EP from AR.

Principles of Exploratory Practice

1. ‘Quality of life’ for language teachers and learners is the most appro-
priate central concern for practitioner research in our field.
2. Working primarily to understand the ‘quality of life’, as it is experi-
enced by language learners and teachers, is more important than,
and logically prior to, seeking in any way to improve it.
82  L. MANN ET AL.

. Everybody needs to be involved in the work for understanding.

3
4. The work needs to serve to bring people together.
5. The work needs to be conducted in a spirit of mutual development.
6. Working for understanding is necessarily a continuous enterprise.
7. Integrating the work for understanding fully into existing curricular
practices is a way of minimising the burden and maximising sustain-
ability. Allwright and Hanks (2009, pp. 149–154)

Slimani-Rolls and Kiely (2019) highlight four principal reasons why the
EP framework could be a potential tool for effective and sustainable CPD.

First, it is an approach located in the specific context of language classrooms,

and built on the complexities of practice in that context. Second, it empha-
sises engagement with the social and emotional aspects of effective language
teaching, and as a teacher development initiative, it starts with a fundamen-
tal concern, a teacher’s puzzle. Third, it is inclusive and envisages teacher
learning which involves listening to, working in collaboration with, and
learning from students. Fourth, it comprises an ethical and sustainable way
of supporting practitioner research: as the research process is based on and
integrated into the activities of the curriculum, and the goal is understand-
ing this curriculum, there is little risk of class time being used for non-­
teaching purposes, or for trying out innovations which do not align with the
practices of students and teachers. (p. 14)

Teachers are always in a good position to develop a better understand-

ing of what is happening in their daily interaction with students, even in
these unexpected times or, perhaps, more so, as circumstances force us to
take stock and reconsider our practice. Allwright (2005, p. 358) describes
it as “we needed to bring understanding back to the foreground in our
work, to insist that we were dealing with the notion of understanding, not
problem-solving … an important distinguishing feature of EP (especially
in distinguishing EP from Action Research)”. To support this, EP pro-
poses that teachers integrate the search for understanding into their nor-
mal teaching activities by using Potentially Exploitable Pedagogic Activities
(PEPAs) to investigate a ‘puzzle’ in the classroom. Slimani-Rolls and Kiely
(2019) give a series of examples of previous studies that show how theory
and practice are combined. Moreover, Dikilitaş and Hanks (2018) share
stories of language teachers, teacher educators and curriculum developers
who have been involved in the processes of planning, implementing and
evaluating EP as part of continuing professional development (CPD).
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  83

Clearly, EP is an amalgam of pedagogy and research which helps teach-

ers form a deeper understanding of their daily teaching routines. Thus, we
believe EP can be an important tool for CPD, through which teacher
learning is encouraged and teachers, students and institutions can benefit
from immensely.

 ase Study: Professional Development and Language Teaching

C
in the Faculty of Oriental Studies
The Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford is one of the
world’s leading centres for research and teaching on the languages, history
and cultures of Asia and the Middle East. Among subjects in the humani-
ties, Oriental Studies is unique in introducing students to civilisations that
are radically different from the Western ones that form the basis of the
curriculum in most British schools and colleges. As noted in the
Introduction, the courses offered by the Faculty of Oriental Studies cover
a wide range of topics including history, literature, material culture and
religion, but in all cases are built around the teaching of languages. This
means that language teachers within the Faculty are central to all its teach-
ing activities.
The role of language teachers has been especially large during the
COVID pandemic, when face-to-face teaching had to be moved online
almost overnight—and having knowledge and experience of professional
development and reflective practice proved to be vital in this regard. As
noted earlier, many CPD approaches are designed to support the teacher
to achieve a better understanding of the teaching and learning process
whilst working with students to create an efficient learning environment in
the classroom. This time, the challenge was to transfer these skills to inves-
tigate and understand a digital language teaching environment and not
the usual classroom setting, besides coping with IT and the acquisition of
related skills.

Language Teachers’ Committee

We, the language teachers at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, attach strong
importance to professional development, which we believe is best achieved
through teacher-led activities and reflective practice. Indeed, the promo-
tion of best practice was the rationale behind the formation of our
Language Teachers’ Committee (LTC) in 2006. This committee meets
once every term and the chairperson reports to, and is a full member of,
84  L. MANN ET AL.

the Faculty Board, the principal governing body of the Faculty. It organ-
ises workshops to support teaching, by sharing language-related research,
experience and skills. The purpose of the LTC is to help the spread of
techniques geared to good practice of language instruction, throughout
all the different languages taught by the Faculty, and to act as a means by
which language teachers can make requests to the Board. The duties of
the committee are to:

1. discuss, share, identify and promote good practice in lan-

guage teaching;
2. identify issues and concerns affecting the teaching of languages in
the Faculty;
3. consider faculty-wide norms for language teaching across the vari-
ous courses; make recommendations to the Faculty Board on any of
the above (LTC Standing Orders 2019–2020).

As part of the LTC, two colleagues act as co-organizers and arrange

LTC workshops termly, to facilitate the dissemination of aspects of good
practice in language pedagogy throughout all languages taught by the
Faculty, and to act as a means of communication between the language
teachers and relevant bodies in the faculty governance structure.
After the shift to online teaching in spring 2020, nobody expected that
the new academic year in the autumn would continue online or on a
hybrid basis, that is, a combination of face-to-face and online teaching.
Thus, we decided to focus, in our November 2020 LTC workshop, on
what the language teachers had already learnt about online language
teaching and learning and asked them to reflect on their experiences.
The workshop was attended by eighteen language teachers (including
teachers of Arabic, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, Hebrew,
Tibetan and other languages), five colleagues with other teaching respon-
sibilities within the Faculty, the Chair of the Faculty Board and IT special-
ists from the Faculty and the wider university. Accounts from this diversity
of participants both form the core of this case study and illustrate the vari-
ous stages of practitioner research as a part of CPD. These include initial
reflection, having a puzzle or problem to solve, understanding a challenge
generated by the current situation, researching, gaining insights, eliminat-
ing negative practice and focussing on and sharing good practice, with the
intention of gaining valuable insights for the future. It was an online meet-
ing for about two hours and the attendance was very high. Reasons for the
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  85

high attendance might have been the fact that the topic of the workshop
was very relevant to the situation we were in and the opportunity for shar-
ing experiences during such a challenging time proved invaluable. We
believe that another reason for high attendance was the underlying prin-
ciple of these workshops that they are not top-down CPD activities and,
on this occasion, all related parties (language teachers, faculty chair, aca-
demic colleagues and IT experts) were invited and present in order to
share, listen and reflect on each other’s experiences with the mutual goal
of easing the process of delivering excellent education during the pan-
demic. The aim of the LTC workshop online learning and teaching was:

• to create a platform to share and reflect on what we have learned

about online teaching.
• to create a support bubble to enable participants to discuss anything
about online teaching even if we think it is not very ‘meaningful’
• to encourage teachers, faculty chair and other participants to engage
in reflective practice, providing examples and discussions from real
practice and to support each other
• to form a sustainable and collegiate route to understanding more
clearly what happens in our (digital) classrooms and develop our
pedagogy accordingly.
• to enhance the understanding of practice in our new virtual or hybrid
teaching environment, to raise awareness and to see if any similar
experiences or relevant research exercises exist, carried out by peer
colleagues or researchers and to create a readiness to try out new
practical teaching-learning techniques

Accordingly, in order to raise awareness and to give colleagues who

wanted to provide written feedback the option, we sent out a question-
naire (see Appendix) two weeks before the workshop. The aim of the
questionnaire was also to give teachers the opportunity to start reflecting
on their own teaching. Teachers’ responses in the questionnaires were col-
lated and summarised thematically. This was achieved by first transcribing
comments made during the workshop verbatim and then analysing and
coding transcripts to identify any emerging themes revealing teachers’
beliefs regarding their online language teaching experiences; the chal-
lenges they have had and any reflections they wanted to share. Here are
some examples of teacher reflections, regarding how they have responded
to and learnt from online teaching, from the initial move to online
86  L. MANN ET AL.

teaching in the Spring of 2020 until the November of that year (almost
four to five months of an intensive instruction):
T1:
I’d like to ask everyone about their experiences with feedback—is there a
difference depending on the way you carry it out? What is the difference
between online and offline feedback and is it more work?
T2:
I find giving feedback is a lot easier in a classroom setting. The dynamic
is different. In particular with, say, pronunciation, because of the glitches in
the technology—we say something, and it takes a few seconds. In the classroom
I can correct students when they say something wrong immediately.
T3:
I feel, overall, online teaching is less effective. But it differs in terms of
what kind of class you are teaching. Language is more challenging than set
text. You are actually enabled to give more feedback in the online environ-
ment; however, if you give them large volumes of written feedback, students
will stop asking questions live because you already told them a lot. There needs
to be a balance between giving enough feedback and too much supplemen-
tary information. Also, … touched on this before, but there is a huge divide
between people in terms of technology, such as access to apps and so on. For
example, there is huge amount you can do if you have access to the full …
software but it is so expensive. Besides, students actually do get really tired of
looking at the screen all the time and are not as steeped into social media as
we think.
T4:
I find in general it takes much longer to get through the content especially
handwriting and pronunciation. Luckily, the sophisticated stylus and tablet
pen I have been given works well—but students’ devices don’t always work in
the same way (compatibility issues). Online, I definitely rely more on written
communication. Maybe more chances to interact “say” more but in different
ways (e.g. chatbox,). Students prepare more. Easier to do flipped teaching.
T5:
I agree with …. what he says about pronunciation. Reading in class is a
good opportunity to repeat and say what students said. Also, under normal
conditions, I like to talk about their life to practice vocabulary, for example
what did they do on the weekend—the problem is that they don’t do anything
now! One further point is that, while we do miss the physicality of teaching,
for me, I teach in very small groups and actually this is more intimate when
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  87

online—with small groups (in larger rooms in real life), so sometimes there is
the opposite effect to what we think.
T6:
I question the validity of language exams when open book system is used. I
hope online teaching is not here to stay, full stop. [Disruption because of con-
nection problems]
T7:
We have had discussion in our subject group about exams and we have not
come to any decision, but it is worth noting that even asking students to write
an open book essay rather than a closed-book in person essay is in fact a huge
upheaval to our assessment system. So, I guess I am not convinced that lan-
guage assessment is a special case?
T2:
Absolutely. There is no problem with open-book language exams or trans-
lation—it actually makes no difference. People who are already adept waste
their time by using dictionaries. The real problems come with set texts.
T8:
Actually, in-class examinations are a problem for me. I find that in
normal times, it would be inspiration or a catalyst for students to study.
Especially for students in the first year, they don’t have the motivation neces-
sarily if they are able to look things up. I think using dictionaries, etc. in the
final year is no problem because it is similar to real-life situations but I do
miss being able to do the tests in class earlier on because they can be
inspirational.
Faculty Chair:
Just earlier this week, we had a discussion with the Chairs of
Examinations—about what will happen if we plan for face-to-face exams
and then we have to go online again. For language exams, it might not be a
big issue—for set-texts, it is more of a problem because students can just copy
and paste their answers. We could include more questions about grammar or
content, to counterbalance that, if we do go online. Modern Languages have
decided to have more assessments throughout the year. We have not had decided
this as a Faculty but it is something to discuss.
T9:
Yes, I agree with …. I actually changed the rubrics myself last term, to cut
down on the translation and include more other kinds of exercises, e.g. précis
and comprehension. This encourages students not to use the dictionary but
rather what they used throughout the year. I have prepared lots of written
things—hand-outs, prepared steps for everything. Technology does not really
88  L. MANN ET AL.

help us, as language teachers, as much as it does help those people teaching
‘content’, or whatever you want to call it. We can’t record our lectures and
so on. So, it was very difficult at first. It is getting a little bit easier as we
get used to it and I think next term will be better. Also, I got feedback from
my colleagues and the students were happy. I feel it would be good if we can
find out if there are any decisions made about how exams are working early,
so we can keep that in mind if there are any big changes.
T10:
When technology started to be used in the classroom people said “rather
than choosing a technology to teach, we should think about how to teach using
technology” but maybe we actually need to think about both. When I first
started to teach online, I initially tried to make my teaching as natural as
possible (i.e. as much like one classroom as possible) but I am not convinced
that it works now. Regarding assessment, I think that the nature of acquir-
ing information has changed. Anyone can find out anything anytime now
using the internet, so the nature of assessment also needs to change—from
testing whether students have acquired knowledge to how or how well they are
able to acquire it. In …. we do lots of continuous assessment, not formal
assessment. If these become a proper formal assessment this might be a good
thing—students might actually study harder.
T11:
What I feel would be most useful for our students in this kind of situation
(Covid-19) would be an archive—an archive of materials they can access at
any time. But we need support from the IT staff.
IT staff member:
We are here to support you … let us please know what exactly you want,
and we can work on it together.
T12:
I try to integrate some creative methods to make my online lessons more
interesting, for example; an element of surprise such as starting the online
lesson with music but no camera on …. or I put a picture with a message in
the target language during the break and before everybody is back and we can
start with the next lesson, students have a moment to reflect.
T13:
I like that idea, adding fun elements even during the online teaching.
However, I feel teaching online requires much more preparation … and
occasionally I feel overwhelmed …
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  89

T14:
During my face to face teaching, I have always felt that I have a good
rapport with my students. Now, I have lost that side a little …. I sometimes
feel lost and that I do not get through to my students …
We have grouped all the responses into themes and tried to summarize
how the teachers have responded to each ‘problem’ (challenge). We listed
the immediately required skills and then summarised lessons learnt before
giving tips, advice and suggestions, for future reference.
Themes:

• Importance of student feedback.

• Use of technology.
• Teaching pronunciation and speaking.
• Assessment (online exams).
• (New/innovative) Teaching methods for online teaching.
• Preparation for the lessons (interaction patterns: pair work,
group work).
• Rapport (difference between face to face and online).
• Student beliefs versus teacher beliefs.
• Professional development support bubble.
• further challenges of online teaching:

Screen fatigue, setting house rules (camera on/off, muted), teaching a

language with a different script, handwriting practice, alternative white
board usage, changes in the methods to teaching, changes to learning
goals and outcomes, formal/informal language learning and teaching, less
involvement of the five senses, such as writing from the board (mainly
visual), students need to be very organized and require self-regulated
learning more.
Challenges encountered in summary:

• A sudden shift to online teaching. Almost no preparation.

• Getting used to working from home (juggling with other
responsibilities).
• Arranging the necessary equipment.
• Technical uptake (Zoom, Teams, Canvas) and practice.
• Limited colleague discussions/lack of peer support bubble.
• Lesson planning for online lessons/preparation time too long.
• Constantly working (lesson preparation, following and answering
emails from the institution and students).
90  L. MANN ET AL.

• Monitoring student progress remotely.

• Establishing house rules (camera on/off).
• Establishing levels of engagement with students/RAPPORT.
• Making sure students actively engage during the lessons/motivation.
• Dealing with a substantial amount of written work to mark/feedback.

Immediately required skills:

• Initially, a decent amount of computer skills.

• Later, greater emphasis on IT skills and making use of creative ways
of presenting material.
• Logistics, organisation and planning are all more important than ever.
• Arranging a timetable for students from different time zones.
• Having the skills and confidence to speak on screen and give the
students the confidence to speak in an online class.
• The awareness that online teaching is different from face-to-face
teaching; thus, giving yourself (and the students) a break when it
is too much.
• Establishing a different but healthy rapport with students (they
might feel lost too).
• Be professional but share emotions too.
• Constant adaptability, empathy and compassion.

What we have learnt and some tips:

• You will eventually get used to technology and might even become
an expert. If any person can do it, YOU can do it as well. Be patient.
• Share with your students the fact that this is a different way of learn-
ing and teaching and together you will find what works best for all of
you. Don’t forget you will base it on your professional knowledge.
• Your intuitions are important.
• Make the most of the online lesson times. If necessary, ask the stu-
dents to prepare a reading comprehension text or a translation exer-
cise (if pedagogically meaningful) beforehand so that active online
lesson time is not wasted.
• Be aware that lesson planning for online lessons is different from
face-to-face lessons. Allow extra time. Things can often take longer.
But also have backup plans such as a song, video clip, a story to tell,
a question for a debate, a news extract.
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  91

• Not everything is bad. Enjoy the autonomy you have with your les-
son and catch-up lessons.
• Keep things simple and don’t over complicate using different appli-
cations. Choose what works best for yourself and your students.
• Communicate with the students before, during and after the syn-
chronous sessions.
• Building rapport is even more crucial than ever. Spend some active
time in your online lessons to genuinely talk to your students using
eye-contact and facial expressions.
• Provide all necessary hand-outs before the live online session on a
joint platform for all students to review before/after the lesson.
• Learn from your mistakes, be patient and adapt.
• Trust yourself and work/reflect on your challenge. You can make use
of action research or exploratory practice as a tool for CPD. You can
write about, present or share your experiences with other colleagues
on different platforms/conferences.
• Form a peer support bubble to discuss any issue or best practice for
reflection. Your colleagues are ready to help.
• Become member of any national or international teaching associa-
tions to reflect on updates in the field. You are not alone in this.

One of the topics brought up in the LTC workshop was the challenge
with online rapport building. Murphy and Rodriguez-Manzanares (2012)
stated the following general characteristics for a teacher to have in order to
build a good rapport with students; they are “Disclosure, honesty and
respect”, “Recognizing the person/individual”, “Interacting socially”,
“Caring and bonding”, “Supporting and monitoring”, “Sharing, mirror-
ing, mimicking, matching”, “Availability, accessibility, and responsive-
ness” and “Communicating effectively” (pp. 172–173).
Although there are many studies on rapport in the classical context,
relatively few studies have assessed the relationship between student and
teacher during online courses.
Lammers and Gillaspy (2013) suggest the following strategies, stating
that they can be applied in both traditional and online lessons. These may
include such strategies as “learn names quickly, provide students with
some level of control, show students that you care about them and their
learning, treat students with respect, never put down a student with a
negative comment, be approachable and available, treat all students
equally, and have realistic expectations” (p. 8).
92  L. MANN ET AL.

Conclusion
The challenges of the pandemic have demonstrated that teachers who
understand the importance of professional development have the tools to
deal with unexpected challenges. They will have built and continue to
build, during their career, a bank of sustainable resources. They will have
been better equipped in coping with the unknown and moreover, will
have been more able to develop constructive approaches in their teaching,
which will stand them in good stead for future challenges.
Simply making technologies accessible cannot guarantee effective learn-
ing outcomes without facilitating its usage with online pedagogic pur-
poses (Liu et al., 2007). Furthermore, Delahunty et al. (2014) indicate
that readiness to embrace online education may be strong at the bureau-
cratic level, however this might not necessarily be the case for those at the
face of implementation. Thus, teachers at the front line might feel a lack
of support affecting their beliefs and attitudes towards the necessary
changes in their teaching practice.
In our workshop, we could clearly see how teachers combine personal
reflection, research and practice in addressing online teaching and learning
challenges. Our case study shows how individual teachers employed
diverse ways to understand their students and themselves and transformed
their usual classrooms into online learning environments, while providing
rich accounts of their teacher beliefs within the wider concept of CPD. Here
are some more sub-tips for you to take away from this chapter:

1. We especially believe that different cycles of AR and EP as tools for

CPD can help language teachers to continuously reflect on their
practices, monitor their progress and help with their decision-mak-
ing processes before, during and after their teaching.
2. Institutional support, peer support and teacher reflection have
proven key for overcoming challenging times like those experienced
during the pandemic. The general atmosphere within each institu-
tion is important but, in particular, relationships with colleagues are
seen as having a considerable motivational effect (Cowie, 2011),
notably in stressful circumstances.
3. We encourage every teacher to conduct systematic mini research
projects in their online, or offline, classrooms. The shift online is
currently providing many opportunities for new research of this type.
 4  THIRD TIP: FIND SELF-GENERATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL…  93

4. We further encourage them to share their findings with colleagues,

both within the same institution and more widely, through publica-
tions but, most importantly, to reflect on their own findings, to
develop and grow as practitioners and, in the process, boost their
personal and professional well-being.
5. We encourage all teachers to get involved in online communities
dedicated to CPT in our sector (such as @CPD4T on Twitter).
Following groups such as this can be an excellent way to feel included
in the broader online teaching community and can boost confidence
and professional well-being immensely. This ties in closely with an
important part of the rationale for this book—to help practitioners
understand that they are never alone.

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 CHAPTER 5

Fourth Tip: Think Carefully About

Assessment

Abstract  This chapter engages with the interactions between the online
language learning and assessment practices. Although the questions raised
here pertain principally to the shift to online learning environments dur-
ing the pandemic, similar questions will continue to be raised in relation
to language assessment in the future, as internet translation technologies
improve and digital alternatives to traditional face-to-face and closed-book
assessments become the norm, as we believe they will. Foregrounding the
special status of assessment within educational settings more broadly, this
chapter argues that the strength of online teaching and learning for lan-
guages lies partly in the many outlets it provides for less formal feedback
and dialogue between various participants in the learning process. The
conclusions of this chapter mirror earlier discussions in highlighting the
opportunities for reflection offered by a shift in assessment environment
from face-to-face to online, as well as the need for careful planning and
preparation. Also as previously, this chapter argues for the need for flexibil-
ity and willingness to discuss issues with students, in order to avoid com-
pounding existing inequalities.

Keywords  Assessment • Feedback • Formative • Informal • Formal •

Quality assurance • Corrective feedback • Dialogic • Feedback
conversation • Inclusive assessment

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 97

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9_5
98  L. MANN ET AL.

Exams, Learning Objectives and Feedback

in the Online World

Outline
This is the final tip in this book. Previous chapters have discussed the need
to think carefully about moving materials and modes of teaching delivery
online. This chapter will focus on the vital role played by assessment in
tying all the other strands of online learning together. Its primary objec-
tive is to help language teachers think about how different types of assess-
ment support learning—and how these can work online.
This chapter will be made up of four sections. The first outlines the
centrality of assessment to higher education. The second is a short discus-
sion of the complex relationships between formative assessment, feedback
and learning. The third introduces some of the particular challenges in
moving formal university assessments online, as well as some potential
solutions. There will also be room to discuss some of the opportunities
offered by online assessment here. Finally, as before, the last section will be
dedicated to summarizing the key points, to help you think constructively
about your own experience and practice.

Should We Care About Assessment?

The straightforward answer is yes. We must care about assessment.
Assessment is an essential part of education and an essential part of our
system of education. However, assessment itself is anything but straight-
forward. It is one area of education that is so fundamental to how we
work—and woven into other aspects of teaching and learning in such
complex ways—that it can never be completely erased from our minds
and, perhaps for this reason, it seems unable to escape controversy. Most
people we encounter in our daily lives as teachers seem to believe that we
care about assessment too much, rather than too little.

 oo Much (or the Wrong Kind of) Assessment?

T
Back in 2007, Boud and Falchikov famously announced that: “We are
now in a position to step back and challenge the controlling effect of
assessment that focuses students on the performance of assessment itself,
rather than on what studying in higher education is arguably for, that is,
providing a foundation for a lifetime of learning and work in which there
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  99

is little formal assessment or formal instruction” (2007, p. 6). This state-

ment was written towards the beginning of what can justifiably be
described as an explosion in research on assessment techniques for higher
education. Writing in 2016, Galvez-Bravo noted the exponential growth
in research on assessment in higher education that had taken place over
the previous decade or so (p. 94). During that period and since, research-
ers have gathered a large pool of empirical data on the relationship between
assessment and student attainment, intended to inform HE policy-makers
and lead them in directions that are better suited to the long-term needs
of learners. In general, this means that over-doing assessment is not good.
A number of studies have concluded that “a large number of assess-
ments … may be over-doing the time spent measuring performance and
can lead to surface and partial learning, rather than focusing on deeper
learning or real attainment of knowledge and learning outcomes” (ibid.,
p. 95, quoting from Boud 2007; George, 2009). The question of how
much assessment is too much is a subjective one but it is clear that assess-
ment procedures focussed primarily on student performance, traditionally
held to be ‘rigorous’—and including some still in use within the university
sector today—risk being seen as detrimental to real student outcomes and
levels of attainment.
Teachers are also sometimes inclined to see assessment—particularly
formal assessment—as less valuable than other aspects of learning and, at
worst, as an over-bureaucratized process that exists primarily to waste their
time. Assessment often takes second place to teaching methods in teach-
ers’ reflections on their practice (ibid., p. 94, quoting Price et al., 2011;
Gibbs & Simpson, 2004). The NASUWT, a major teaching union for
school teachers, is critical of what it sees as the excessive burden placed on
its members by systems of assessment currently in place in English schools:
“Teachers have identified assessment as one of the most significant drivers
of excessive teacher workload and many practices do not provide effective
assistance to pupils’ learning” (Assessment in England, n.d.). Those of us
working in universities will no doubt also have experience of examination
marking and other areas of assessment becoming sources of workload anx-
iety; either our own experience or that passed onto us from colleagues.
While challenges to formal assessment are sometimes seen as a part of a
progressive agenda within educational discourse in the twenty-first cen-
tury, arguments over assessment undermining the centrality of other
aspects of teaching and learning have a long history. Already by the 1870s,
after a substantial growth in student numbers and the introduction of
100  L. MANN ET AL.

written examinations, some at the University of Oxford were already con-

cerned about the detrimental effect formal assessment was having on the
much-lauded ‘tutorial system’:

The colleges are, in fact, so many rival schools, the main object of which is
to beat one another in the competition for the classes. Hence the teaching
is subordinated to the examinations, instead of the examinations to the
teaching. The aim of the undergraduate is not so much to acquire a knowl-
edge of his subject as to gain a place in the class list. And the object of the
tutor is not so much to teach as to gain a class for his college. (Thomas
Fowler’s report to the Selborne Commission, in Brock 2000, p. 35)

 ssessment and Quality Standards

A
Though widely critiqued, higher education assessment is seldom, if ever,
deemed worthy of total abolishment. The pedagogical benefits of assess-
ment procedures for learners and teachers are noted in particular by the
accrediting bodies responsible for the development and maintenance of
professional and quality standards for higher education. For example, the
Irish National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in
Higher Education highlighted the following benefits of assessment as:

–– to —demonstrate learning achievements at points in time. This is

assessment as staff and students usually describe it;
–– to get and give feedback that is timely, actionable (feed-forward) and
useful to students to improve their learning;
–– to give feedback to staff to improve their teaching; and
–– to empower students to self-regulate their learning and critically eval-
uate their performance now and throughout their lives.

In a similar vein, the QAA, the body responsible for quality assurance in
higher education in the UK, states:

Assessment is a fundamental aspect of the student learning experience.

Engagement in assessment activities and interaction with staff and peers
enables learning, both as part of the task and through review of their perfor-
mance. It is a vehicle for obtaining feedback. Ultimately, it determines
whether each student has achieved their course’s learning outcomes and
allows the awarding body to ensure that appropriate standards are being
applied rigorously. Deliberate, systematic quality assurance ensures that
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  101

assessment processes, standards and any other criteria are applied consis-
tently and equitably, with reliability, validity and fairness. (QAA, 2018, p. 2)

Crucially, assessment procedures are also central to the QAA’s scrutiny of

institutions on behalf of the Office for Students, and the allocation of
Degree Awarding Powers DAPs. Such scrutiny is effectively an assessment
of assessment—or ‘meta-assessment’.

–– Assessment information for staff and students for the proposed pro-
grammes including assessment arrangements (for example, policies,
procedures and regulations) for marking, moderation and feedback;
proposed arrangements for external input on standards; academic
malpractice arrangements; recognition of prior learning.
–– Examples of assessment information produced for staff and students
for the proposed programmes including examples of assessment
details for the first/next cycle of delivery (for example, briefs, specifi-
cations, marking criteria/rubric).
…
–– Material that shows how the provider sets academic standards for its
awards and uses academic standards in curriculum planning and in
the summative assessment of students for awards and credits. (QAA,
2019, pp. 43–44)

While highlighting the benefits of assessment, overall, accrediting bodies

such as these also argue that greatest benefits of assessments for students
are to be expected in environments where assessment procedures are
closely aligned with teaching and learning, as discussed further below.
Another important intersect between assessment and HE quality assur-
ance relates to academic dishonesty. Given the QAA description of assess-
ment above, as something which “Ultimately … determines whether each
student has achieved their course’s learning outcomes … Deliberate, sys-
tematic quality assurance ensures that assessment processes … are applied
consistently and equitably, with reliability, validity and fairness”, it is obvi-
ous to even a casual observer that widespread cheating within assessment
exercises has the potential to undermine the national and international
standing of institutions of higher education, as well as having a detrimen-
tal effect on the well-being of staff and students. It also seems clear that
students’ conceptions of what constitutes dishonest practice are likely to
be affected by the form in which assessment takes place. In a world
102  L. MANN ET AL.

without individual assessment at all, it would be effectively impossible for

a student to cheat. In environments where formal assessments yield to
growing numbers of informal assessments based on collaborative engage-
ment, there appears to be a knock-on effect on students’ understanding of
cheating, as Passow et al. (2006) reported:

we found that students don’t see cheating as a single construct and their
decisions to cheat or not to cheat are influenced differently depending on
the type of assessment. Therefore, faculty and administrators should care-
fully define for students what does and does not constitute cheating for each
type of assessment, such as exams, home-work, term papers, projects, labo-
ratory reports, and oral presentations. Explicit definitions of “cheating”
seem especially appropriate because of the recent emphasis on collaborative
learning, which communicates to students that working together is often
encouraged by faculty. (p. 679)

It is important to note, however, that university departments and even

individual academics have a role to play in the development and mainte-
nance of structures of assessment. As significant as national and interna-
tional quality assurance guidelines may be for establishing the academic
credentials of an institution, there is generally sufficient scope within the
frameworks they create to allow for adjustments for subject specialization,
institution-specific concerns and, pertinently here, the question of face-to-­
face versus online teaching environments. Indeed, barring certain excep-
tions for courses such as medicine and architecture, the format and scope
of assessments are two elements over which university policy-makers,
including teachers themselves, generally have significant autonomy when
mapping their qualifications to regulatory frameworks set by national or
international accrediting bodies. Getting to grips with how to assess our
subjects in ways that are sector appropriate is a challenge that requires
thought for all academics—and particularly those new to teaching and
new to higher education in the UK, as Byrne and Butcher (2020) have
noted (n.p.). Meeting the sector’s quality standards is one of the several
challenges discussed later in this chapter. First, though, let us look at the
relationships between assessment, feedback and learning.
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  103

Assessment, Feedback and Learning

Types of Assessment
The remainder of this chapter will explore the relationship between assess-
ment and the shift to online teaching and learning for languages pro-
grammes at university. To make that exploration clearer, it is worth
dedicating a few lines at the outset to remind ourselves of the different
types of assessment with which we work. The following paragraphs are
dedicated to this, but come with the caveat that specific assessment proce-
dures are spread across a spectrum, rather than a taxonomy of discrete
groups, and may contain features of more than one of the descrip-
tions below.

–– Formative Assessment

This is the sort of assessment that is designed to monitor students’

progress through a given programme of study. The important first step in
bringing about formative assessment is to determine a student’s base-­
line—the starting point of knowledge and skills from which a student
begins his or her programme of learning. This is often formal—such as a
reading test. The UK’s National Foundation for Educational Research
(NFER) offers an excellent description of this type of assessment, as
follows:

Formative assessment takes place on a day-to-day basis during teaching and

learning, allowing teachers and pupils to assess attainment and progress
more frequently. It begins with diagnostic assessment, indicating what is
already known and what gaps may exist in skills or knowledge … As the
learning continues, further formative assessments indicate whether teaching
plans need to be amended to reinforce or extend learning.
Formative assessments may be questions, tasks, quizzes or more formal
assessments. Often formative assessments may not be recorded at all, except
perhaps in the lesson plans drawn up to address the next steps indicated. (An
introduction to formative and summative assessment, n.d.)

–– Summative Assessment

Every lesson has to have an element of summative assessment; other-

wise moving on will create confusion among learners. This is the type of
assessment that tests students’ ability to recall and use knowledge that they
104  L. MANN ET AL.

have acquired during the entirety of a particular course or module of

study. Again, the NFER description is worth quoting at some length here:

Summative assessment sums up what a pupil has achieved at the end of a

period of time, relative to the learning aims and the relevant national stan-
dards. The period of time may vary, depending on what the teacher wants to
find out. There may be an assessment at the end of a topic, at the end of a
term or half-term, at the end of a year or, as in the case of the national cur-
riculum tests, at the end of a key stage.
A summative assessment may be a written test, an observation, a conver-
sation or a task. It may be recorded through writing, through photographs
or other visual media, or through an audio recording. Whichever medium is
used, the assessment will show what has been achieved. It will summarise
attainment at a particular point in time and may provide individual and
cohort data that will be useful for tracking progress and for informing stake-
holders (e.g. parents, governors, etc.). (An introduction to formative and
summative assessment, n.d.)

–– Informal Assessment

Informal assessments are assessments that are centred on content and

individual student performance (Weaver 2020). In essence, they concen-
trate on individual students’ performance in reference to a particular task
or aspect of learning and should be “used to inform instruction”, rather
than, for example, “to compare a student’s performance with others at
their age or grade” (ibid.)—the latter being the domain of formal assess-
ments. Another important feature of informal assessment is that it is often
integrated into other teaching and learning activities and is often used as
the basis from which formative feedback is offered to learners (Wright,
n.d., p. 1). In this respect it is closely tied to formative assessment, dis-
cussed above. We will return to its usefulness in informing other aspects of
teaching and learning later in this section.

–– Formal Assessment

Formal assessments are systematic tests or other structured assessment

procedures aimed at gathering empirical data to identify students who
have reached a particular milestone or benchmark in their level of knowl-
edge or skills. They are thus closely aligned to the idea of ‘standardized
measures’ (Weaver 2020). In the modern period, standardization has in
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  105

many instances broadened to form the basis of national or international

standards, which themselves underpin the quality assurance standards for
universities discussed previously. This also ties formal assessment to the
notion of summative assessment—which is also commonly dependent on,
and historically related to, standardized measures.
In the United States, the development of standardized assessment mea-
sures for schools is closely tied to the work of Horace Mann, in the
1830s–40s (Buckendahl 2016, p.  457). During this period, students’
results were published in newspapers for the scrutiny of society at large—
underscoring the ‘public’ nature of this sort of testing. Much the same can
be said of the system of degree examinations at Oxford and Cambridge,
both of which have, at various points in history, involved the open publica-
tion of results. In Cambridge the system of degree classifications based on
examination has its origins as far back as the sixteenth century, with the
practice of ranking “the highest achieving BAs of each year” in the so-­
called Ordo Senioritatis, “an order of merit … to facilitate succession to
university posts” (Stray 2001, p. 36). The public ranking of candidates by
performance in formal assessments (known as ‘the Cambridge system’)
was much slower to catch on at Oxford—even after examinations were
formally introduced by statute in 1800 there was reticence to permit the
public shaming of low-performing candidates (p. 43), as well as general
uneasiness concerning intensive ranking that discouraged the use of
numerical marks (p. 44).

–– Low Stakes and High Stakes

Another distinction between forms of assessment made by some teach-

ers and researchers is that of high versus low stakes. Building on the gen-
eral principle that the process whereby students verbalize nonverbal
knowledge is a formative one, Peter Elbow (1997) highlighted the bene-
fits of developing a ‘low-stakes’ approach to assessing learning across a
wide spectrum of subjects. Some of these benefits intersect with the gen-
eral characteristics of ‘formative’ assessment or ‘informal’ assessment, out-
lined above. However, others are more distinct; for example, that
low-stakes writing enables students to engage meaningfully with a disci-
pline before they have access to all the discipline-specific language and
tools of analysis found in fully fledged students and researchers:
106  L. MANN ET AL.

Low stakes writing helps students involve themselves more in the ideas or
subject matter of a course. It helps them find their own language for the
issues of the course; they stumble into their own analogies and metaphors
for academic concepts. Theorists are fond of saying that learning a discipline
means learning its discourse, but learning a discipline also means learning
not to use that discourse. That is, students don’t know a field until they can
write and talk about what is in the textbook and the lectures in their own
lingo, in their informal home or personal language—language that, as
Vygotsky famously observed, is saturated with sense or experience. (Elbow
1997, p. 7)

These comments have particular significance for the online environment.

As discussed in Tips#1 and 2, the internet is a haven for new modes of
communication, which bring with them opportunities for L2 students to
engage in ‘authentic’ communication in the target language. This com-
munication can—and in some contexts must—take place in everyday, non-­
scholarly language and, thus, fits in well with the definition of low-stakes
writing outlined above by Elbow. While there is often a high bar to
engagement in these arenas for students in terms of language proficiency,
with the right guidance, they are able to participate in a diversity of emer-
gent linguistic contexts that transcend traditional classifications of formal
or informal.
Crucially, this low-stakes learning (assessed by low-stakes assessment)
can support student success in more formal contexts:

Low stakes writing improves the quality of students’ high stakes writing. By
assigning frequent low stakes pieces, we ensure that students have already
done lots of writing before we have to grade a high stakes piece—so that
they are already warmed up and more fluent. Their high stakes pieces are
more likely to have a clear, alive voice. And it’s no small help to their high
stakes writing that we have seen a number of their low stakes pieces. For
then, when they turn in a high stakes essay that is awkwardly tangled or even
impenetrable, we don’t have to panic or despair; we can just say, “Come on.
You can say all this in the clear, lively voice I’ve already seen you using.” (ibid.)

Overall, Elbow advocates “inviting students to use low stakes writing to

fumble and fish for words for what they sense and intuit but cannot yet
clearly say”. In the online environment, it is possible to prepare students
using low-stakes writing organically, since the online discussion tools (such
as those built into Canvas) mimic existing casual communication
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  107

platforms familiar to students. The challenge is encouraging students to

use these in the less familiar context of higher education.
A similar concept, particularly relevant to the teaching and learning of
languages in higher education, comes in the form of ‘generous reading’,
developed in the context of English as a second or additional language
classrooms. Generous reading is a type of assessment based on ‘uncritically
reading’ students’ written submissions as “a bridge to more formal writ-
ing” (Spence 2010, p. 634). Where multiple languages and cultures come
together, as they often do in the languages classroom, one approach is to
undertake a sort of literary analysis of students’ written work and, rather
than judging it according to any single standard, try to make sense of it on
its own terms:

Students who speak more than one language draw from multiple cultures
and language practices as they write (Coady and Escamilla 2005), which
influence choice of topic, words, organization, and many other aspects of
writing. Most methods of writing assessment assume a homogeneous con-
text for every piece of writing, yet in our increasingly diverse student popu-
lation this is not a valid assumption. Students bring many, varied contexts
into their writing and until their context is recognized, assessing their writ-
ing using predetermined criteria is counter-productive and discouraging.
(ibid., pp. 634–635)

Physical distance separating teacher and learner is often thought to be an

obstacle to the construction and maintenance of a good rapport between
the two. However, the non-traditional, multimodal environments offered
by the internet and VLEs are complementary to varieties of assessment,
such as ‘low-stakes writing’ and ‘generous reading’, which understand stu-
dents’ written responses as highly context-dependent. If teachers can suc-
cessfully capitalize on students’ familiarities with certain online
environments and communicative idioms, they should be able to create
effective lower stakes assessment tasks through which to boost students’
communicative skills and confidence levels.

Alignment
Researchers of assessment in higher education are in broad agreement that
assessment leads to better outcomes, if and when it is in alignment with
learning objectives and other aspects of learning (Biggs 1999, 2003; Race
et al. 2005; Boud & Falchikov, 2007; Galvez-Bravo 2016). Assessment,
108  L. MANN ET AL.

many authors argue, is much more beneficial when it has ‘clear goals’ and
is conducted in close alignment with specific targets identifying ‘skills and
competencies’ we wish our students to acquire (Angelo & Cross, 1993,
p. 8). Clear alignment of goals, methods, assessments and feedback also
underpins so-called assessment for learning, or AFL (see Gardner 2012).
Such an approach clearly requires teachers to think about learning out-
comes when designing assessments. This is not as simple as it sounds. At
the time Angelo and Cross were writing, university teachers still often
expressed “their instructional goals in terms of course content”, in vague
terms such as ‘linear algebra’ or ‘introductory-level Japanese’ (ibid.).
While it seems to us that things have moved on since then, particular insti-
tutional circumstances still mean that, from time to time, assessments are
not clearly aligned with learning objectives—or that learning objectives
are so vaguely expressed as to hinder the development of any impression
of alignment with assessment. In our own professional lives we have
encountered substantial resistance to the written formulation of learning
objectives and rubrics. In universities this is sometimes because it is seen as
a box-ticking exercise that restricts academic freedoms and is generally
unbefitting the breadth and rigour of higher education. However, school
teachers addressing online forums have expressed similar concerns about
the limiting effect of learning objectives—see, for example, Mr. Pink (@
PositivTeacha)’s article ‘Learning Objectives: a waste of time’ (2017), or
Andrew Jeffrey’s ‘Is it time to re-think the use of Learning Objectives?’ (n.d.).
Whether we choose to write them down or not, as individual teachers,
we nearly always have a clear understanding of what we want our students
to learn and how competent we would like them to become, from the
level of the individual class, right up to the level of summative assessment
and awarding of qualifications. So long as academics and teachers retain
the ability to create, modify and, if necessary, re-create learning objectives,
any feeling of being trammelled by them should be put aside. Rather, we
should make it one of our core tasks to think frequently about what we
need our students to learn and how to go about assessing it. This is all the
more true when previously face-to-face assessment is moved online, as
discussed below.

Online Alignment
The task of aligning learning objectives and assessment tasks online brings
with it its own challenges and opportunities.
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  109

The first major challenge for sudden shifts of assessment exercises from
face-to-face to internet-based environments—such as those some universi-
ties experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic—comes in the form of
the same kinds of institutional inertia that discourage overhaul of the cur-
riculum, as discussed in Tip#2. In the case that learning objectives are
already set at the beginning of a programme of study, there is a strong
argument that learners have ‘signed up’ to those learning objectives as part
of their choice to pursue that university course. If the learning objectives
change substantially while students are on course, they may have grounds
to complain that the degree they will receive was not the one on which
they had initially enrolled. This is a point that was raised as a matter of
concern for HE teachers’ professional practice by Advance HE in 2020
(Moving assessment on-line). Pedagogically speaking, it could also be con-
fusing to learners to rapidly change learning objectives when they are in
the middle of a programme of study. This applies whether or not they are
fully informed of the nature of the learning objectives, since any substan-
tial changes to learning objectives will naturally alter the content of classes.
Other causes of institutional resistance to changing learning objectives
include staff workload and another issue falling under the term ‘align-
ment’—in this case the strategic alignment of curricula and assessment
procedures across departments and divisions of the university. There is
often a need to align learning objectives between, for example, different
languages within ‘Modern Languages’ programmes at a particular univer-
sity. Furthermore, in some cases, this even extends beyond a single institu-
tion where the aforementioned standardized measures (e.g. CEFR) are
involved. In such cases, even excluding the role of external examiners and
other quality assurance apparatus, learning objectives are effectively stan-
dardized between higher education qualifications, as they are between dif-
ferent languages taught for GCSE, A-Level, International Baccalaureate
and so on.
Another major challenge in the alignment of learning objectives and
assessment online has to do with the transposition of certain physical and
sensory capabilities that accompanies the shift from face-to-face to digital
learning. It is fairly obvious that, just as in teaching generally, there are
some tasks that cannot be effectively carried out by students working
online—and there are others which they can do very much more easily. It
is for this latter reason that the move online in terms of assessment brings
many opportunities for language teachers. We will think more about some
of these later in this chapter.
110  L. MANN ET AL.

Given that it can be so problematic to completely overhaul learning

objectives to incorporate them within a new programme of online learn-
ing and assessment, one thing teachers can do is to think carefully and
critically about the learning objectives that are currently in place and to
what extent they can be properly measured by any online assessment tasks
under consideration. When they run into an objective that is difficult to
measure through an online assessment, they could consider amalgamating
that objective with another one (ibid.), dividing it up into different sub-­
objectives or assessing it through a different type of task altogether.
An example that recently crossed our desks was that of how to judge
whether students can translate fluently and accurately from the non-­
European languages we teach, to English, under timed and closed-book
conditions. It is virtually impossible to assess this online in the same way
that we formerly assessed it in person, since we have no way of controlling
access to dictionaries and other online language resources, for students
working electronically offsite. We spent a lot of time and energy discussing
how to overcome this problem. However, the problem in this case is simi-
lar to that raised above by Angelo and Cross, about learning objectives
being defined in terms of the scope of an entire course and, therefore,
being too vague in relation to the skills and knowledge to which they cor-
respond. Rather than worrying about how to assess whether students can
translate texts fluently and accurately, in a form similar to in-person trans-
lation examinations that no longer exist, it is thus better to think critically
about the learning objective itself. It does not need to be deleted or altered
in essence but could it be split up? What are the key skills of translation
that were actually being assessed in the face-to-face exercise? If there are
difficulties testing under examination conditions online, could some of it
be brought into in-class assessment or, if that is not possible, measured
within other areas of the formal assessment cycle?
If in doubt, it is probably better to err on the side of more in-class and
qualitative assessment. Qualitative and metacognitive assessment exer-
cises—such as asking students how they have translated a text— not only
supply us with important data on whether learning targets are being met,
when other avenues are closed; they might also seem less threatening for
students. Where we are asking our students to adapt to new assessment
environments from face-to-face to online, it is only fair that we give them
as much reassurance as we can that this will not result in worse outcomes
for them, or the need to work harder than they did previously.
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  111

 eedback and Formative Assessment

F
Both the Irish National Forum and the UK QAA guidelines cited above
justified the need for assessment, among other things, in terms of the
opportunities it can provide for feedback. Feedback—referring to the
entire spectrum of responses, corrections and constructive suggestions
passed on from teachers to students after work has been assessed—is
closely linked to assessment since it depends upon it to exist. As Yuan and
Kim (2015) have put it: “Those who provide feedback are assessors, and
those who receive feedback are assessees” (p. 409). Traditionally associ-
ated more with formative or informal assessment than summative or for-
mal assessment, the provision of feedback is now often desirable, or even
mandatory, across a wide range of HE assessment exercises.
Feedback, itself, is now well-trodden ground within research on teach-
ing and learning and has attracted its own polemics. As briefly touched
upon in the Introduction to this book, researchers in the past have harshly
criticized certain traditional modes of feedback in language education as
ineffective or, worse, harmful to student progress (Truscott, 1996, in
Eslami 2014, p. 445). While later studies of Corrective Feedback (CF)—
which lets learners know, in some way, that they have used the Target
Language incorrectly—are, on the whole, more supportive, they are still
far from agreed on the most effective means of offering feedback on lan-
guage work to L2 learners (Boggs 2019, pp. 1–2). Possible causes of con-
tradictory findings concerning the efficacy of feedback of this kind include
differences in the ‘philosophical’ approaches adopted by different groups
of studies, as well as essential differences between varieties of CF—namely
direct CF, indirect CF and metalinguistic CF (ibid). The first of these
points out mistakes in Target Language usage and corrects them. The
second lets students know that there is a mistake but does not correct it.
The third points out the mistake explicitly and offers information on the
nature of the mistake—why it is wrong. Surprisingly, even the additional
information supplied by this metalinguistic does not guarantee better out-
comes for students, as Boggs notes: “studies comparing metalinguistic CF
to other forms often fail to find significant differences between treatment
groups” (Bitchener, 2008; Bitchener & Knoch, 2008, 2009a, 2009b)
(ibid., p. 2).
Other studies invoke yet another distinction in types of feedback,
implicit and explicit. Implicit includes “‘no overt indication that an error
has been committed’ … whereas explicit feedback does” (Ellis 2007,
quoted in Yoshida 2010, p. 293). Recasts of students’ responses by the
112  L. MANN ET AL.

teacher are examples of ‘implicit’ feedback, whereas metalinguistic expla-

nations, in this case, fall under the category of ‘explicit’ (ibid.). Various
studies have indicated that, unsurprisingly, the effectiveness of both variet-
ies is dependent on teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of feedback, includ-
ing such basic questions as whether students have noticed that feedback
has taken place and whether teachers have noticed that students have
noticed (Kartchava 2019 dedicates space to a review of the history of
scholarship in this area, citing Mackey et al., 2000, 2007; Moroishi, 2002;
Roberts, 1995; Yoshida, 2008, 2009, 2010; and, ultimately back to, e.g.,
Schmidt, 1983, 1990).
Similarly conflicting messages have, over time, emerged out of research
on areas of feedback outside applied linguistics or language teaching. An
example cited by Shute (2007), in her famous and then-comprehensive
review of research on feedback, was that of ‘elaboration’, or the explana-
tions that accompany feedback when it is delivered to students. At the
time, there was no agreement concerning whether it was beneficial to stu-
dents to explain why their responses were correct or otherwise:

consider the hundreds of research studies published on the topic of feedback

and its relation to learning and performance during the past 50  years …
Within this large body of feedback research, there are many conflicting find-
ings and no consistent pattern of results.

Consider just one facet of feedback: elaboration (i.e. explanatory infor-

mation within a feedback message). Some studies report that elaborative
feedback produces significantly greater learning among students com-
pared with feedback containing less information (e.g. Albertson, 1986;
Grant et al., 1982; Hannafin, 1983; Moreno, 2004; Pridemore & Klein,
1995; Roper, 1977; Shute, 2006). However, other studies show that
increasing the amount of feedback information has no effect on learning
or performance (e.g. Corbett & Anderson, 1989, 1990; Gilman, 1969;
Hodes, 1985; Kulhavy et al., 1985; Merrill, 1987).
Academic scrutiny of competing types and formats of feedback has pro-
vided teachers with a wealth of data with which to inform their practice.
However, it is easy to see why teachers could be overwhelmed by the
variety and complexity of studies, as well as the conflicting conclusions
they have produced. For one thing, the precision of terminology concern-
ing types of feedback that is required to design studies is not always neces-
sary, or practically useful, for language teachers working in everyday
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  113

situations. It is also important to remember that there is a broad spectrum

of learners and learning styles; so perhaps, with inclusivity in mind, we
should be thinking about how many alternative forms of feedback and
assessment we can provide, rather than which ones are best, or most effec-
tive. Anecdotally, among our departmental colleagues and elsewhere, we
have observed language teachers who seamlessly shift between and com-
bine all the types of assessment and feedback mentioned in the last few
paragraphs, within their day-to-day practice. The ‘feedback conversations’
that are produced in this way bring learners and assessors closer together.
We envisage this process as follows.
Such seamless conversations have a lot in common with Yang and
Carless’ (2013) description of dialogic feedback, as: “more than conversa-
tion or exchange of ideas, it involves relationships in which participants
think and reason together … Our emphasis on dialogue is an explicit
attempt to circumvent the limitations of one-way transmission of feedback
which frequently arises from the dominant structural constraint of written
comments on end of course assignments” (p. 286). This in itself is linked
to the notion of sustainable feedback—“dialogic processes and activities
which can support and inform the student on the current task, whilst also
developing the ability to self-regulate performance on future tasks”
(Carless et al., 2011, p. 397).
Forming an essential component of teaching (as famously suggested by
Bransford, Brown and Cocking 2000), these feedback conversations also
integrate elements of reflective self-evaluation by students, discussed
extensively by Carless et  al. (2011, passim)—but importantly also stu-
dents’ evaluations of other aspects of the learning process, such as teach-
ing, which is rarely a main focus within studies of feedback. In the case of
non-anonymized feedback exercises, peer feedback may also be included
in this sort of dialogue. As can be seen in Fig. 5.1, multiple modes of feed-
back, themselves dependent on the existence of a respectful working rela-
tionship between teacher and learner and a ‘trusting atmosphere’ (Carless,
2013), can be integrated within a single dialogic feedback exercise. The
same general format can apply as easily to synchronous online learning as
it can to physical classroom environments and, indeed, even “in virtual
spaces created using various technologies” (Yuan & Kim, 2015; based on
Carless et al., 2011).
To give an example, in flipped Japanese text-reading and translation
classes at CEFR B2-C1, we have observed a number of synchronous
online feedback exercises in the academic year 2020–21, following the
114  L. MANN ET AL.

Evaluation of teaching Teacher assessment & feedback

Learners--FEEDBACK CONVERSATION--Assessors

Student self-evaluation Peer assessment & feedback

Fig. 5.1  Feedback conversations in language teaching

assessment of a student’s asynchronously submitted assignment, which

correspond to the pattern of the dialogue below:

Teacher: This sentence was very good—but why did you say “can eat”
here? (Indirect)
Student: Because it is potential form.
Teacher: Is it potential form? (Indirect)
Student: No. It is passive. But it looks the same.
Teacher: Correct. It is passive.
Student: So, it means “eaten”?
Teacher: No. It means “eat” (Direct) Remember that one of the uses of
the passive form in Japanese is to denote honorific speech
(Metalinguistic)
Student: Oh. It is honorific. So the subject was the man after all, but I
thought it was potential because it looks the same (Self-­
reflection / evaluation). We didn’t spend as long going over
honorifics as some of the other areas. Could we do some more
practice? (Evaluation of teaching)
Teacher: Yes. We will build some of that into what we do in future weeks.

As noted in an earlier section, HE researchers are in general agreement

that assessment should be aligned to learning objectives. Since feedback
develops out of assessment exercises, it should therefore follow that the
alignment of feedback with intended outcomes for learning should also be
desirable—and, whether online or offline, assessments and feedback
should be considered in terms of their alignment across an entire
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  115

programme of study and beyond, towards related areas of study and long-­
term goals. As Boud and Falchikov (2006) put it: “such an approach can-
not be pursued by attention to assessment activities alone, the influence of
this way of thinking needs to permeate all aspects of teaching, learning and
assessment. A careful planning of activities is needed not only so programs
work towards fuller application of these ideas, but that at all levels signifi-
cant engagement with each is required” (p. 410). This integrated approach
is well-suited to online language education.

The Opportunities and Challenges of Moving Formal

Assessments Online
During the COVID-19 pandemic it became essential for all HE institu-
tions in the UK to move assessments online. As with online teaching gen-
erally, though, there was a wide spectrum of previous experience with
online assessment across the sector. Long before 2020, many institutions
had rolled out online assessment as part of their strategic policy commit-
ments for a variety of other reasons including increasing numbers of stu-
dents in employment, inclusivity, environmental concerns, as well as
efficiency and administrative rationalization.
Online assessment certainly offers significant opportunities in the last
two of these areas—and the more institutions that move over to regular
internet-based assessments, the less likely it is that the genie will ever get
back into the bottle. A recent conversation with the Chair of Final Honours
School Examiners about the sudden move online within our Faculty at
Oxford in 2020 yielded the following comments: “There are advantages
of online exams. Most students and assessors are more comfortable with
typed writing than with handwriting. Electronic communication also
makes papers instantly available to the various markers and externals while
postal mail may produce delays … Now we do not have to worry about
such things … [It] also bypasses logistic challenges of organising the trav-
els and stay of external examiners” (Bangha, I. personal communication).
The remainder of this section is dedicated to the challenges of moving
formal assessments online, along with some potential solutions to the
challenges. Since formal and summative assessments tend to operate
within parameters set in alignment with institutional and even sector-wide
frameworks, it should go without saying that what can be said for assess-
ments in general apply, in large part, to language assessments too.
116  L. MANN ET AL.

–– Challenge 1: Disruptions to formal assessment resulting from mov-

ing to online learning

The extent to which formal assessment is built into the structural integ-
rity of education system—as well as the power that structure has over
individual learners—was underlined in the UK, in 2020, by the A-Level
results crisis. The cancelling of formal examinations for GCE A Level as a
result of the COVID-19 brought with it a panoply of worries for all par-
ticipants in the teaching and learning process. Universities simultaneously
worried that not enough new students would take up their places
(Coronavirus: Universities ‘face collapse in student numbers’ 2020) and
that the replacement of in person external assessment with teacher assess-
ment would result in rampant grade inflation—and massively over-­
subscribed undergraduate courses (Coronavirus: What’s happening with
university admissions? 2020). Schools and teachers worried about the con-
tent they needed to cover and the extent to which their recommendations
would be followed. Most of all, students and their parents worried about
the effect the Ofqual algorithm would have on their results, university
places and the rest of their lives (Kolkman 2020).
Within universities themselves, the public-health-driven interruption of
the ‘normal’ system of formal assessment in 2020–21 has been at the heart
of a lot of anxiety. Earlier in this chapter we noted that rapid changes in
learning objectives while students are on course can result in anxieties—
and worries about assessment are central to this. Students are rightly con-
cerned about the effect cancellations and changes to assessment
arrangements, alongside other disruptions to learning, have on their aca-
demic outcomes. In the case of online assessment, digital inequality is also
a concern, as it is in other areas of internet-based teaching and learning.
The Russell Group Student Unions wrote a joint letter to Vice-Chancellors
in January 2021, urging them to take a holistic approach to formal assess-
ment that does not penalize students for their relative level of prepared-
ness in an online-offline environment where learning and assessment have
fallen out of alignment. Their message is clear. Disruption is damaging
and any changes to assessment can result in unfairness.
It is, however, our belief that no detriment policies are not simply about
algorithms resulting from banked assessments, but are a collection of poli-
cies that ensure the full magnitude of the pandemic and its effect on edu-
cation are fully considered. The integrity of all academic standards and
outcomes should be upheld. No student should be disadvantaged by the
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  117

impacts of COVID-19. No student should be disadvantaged by any miti-

gating measures introduced. All students should, as much as possible, have
a level playing field to demonstrate their academic achievement (2021).
If universities are not seen to ensure that assessment and learning are
aligned, even during periods of substantial disruption to face-to-face con-
tact, they risk growing dissatisfaction and, even, legal action from student
bodies. Successful management of online assessment could help to miti-
gate this.

–– Solution: Flexibility and precision with regard to learning targets

Part of the challenge outlined above is really the need to convince

major stakeholders of the potential effectiveness of online learning and
assessment, even in formal contexts. Formal assessments would have
encountered far less disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic, had
they been administered entirely online, as part of online or blended pro-
grammes of study. Resistance to change in general is discussed further
below. However, there are also real challenges faced by institutions aiming
to move from offline to online assessment. Since assessment and learning
are so closely linked, even small changes to one can affect the other—and
it is particularly problematic to make substantive changes to learning
objectives while students are on course. As we saw in the case of the trans-
lation examinations earlier, thinking carefully about alignment can be the
key here.
If teachers and assessors are open minded about how to link assessment
tasks with learning objectives, a lot can be achieved in a short time. Since
languages themselves are complex and varied phenomena, with equally
complex arrays of pathways to acquisition, language teachers, in general,
already have the flexibility they need for this. However, before beginning
the process of thinking about and discussing this with colleagues, they
must already have clear perceptions of precisely what they want their stu-
dents to learn. In the end, we all want them to have acquired the degree
of fluency across all four skills in the target language defined by the pro-
gramme of study, but we have our own ways of working towards this.
With a clear plan and a precise understanding of the knowledge and skills
our teaching is designed to develop—and we need these to design curri-
cula in the first place—we are much better placed to think about the effects
of the removal of a physical examination environment on our ability to
assess them. This mixture of flexibility and precision enables us, as seen
118  L. MANN ET AL.

earlier, to combine or separate learning objectives, in order to ensure that

we assess what we want our students to learn—which is also what we have
agreed to teach them.
All of the above is in the domain of university teachers who also design
assessments. However, the process clearly also necessitates discussion
between key stakeholders, including non-assessing teaching staff (where
they exist), policy-makers and quality-assurance bodies and, particularly,
students. Discussion, negotiation and informed consent are important—
and it should help to minimize student anxiety and dissatisfaction with the
process. As discussed above, when creating online assessments, it should
be our goal to adjust how we assess learning objectives in the new environ-
ment and not to adjust the learning itself. When in doubt, though, it is
better to err on the side of compassion and understanding for our stu-
dents—for whom any adjustment can be stressful.
A slight shift in emphasis from one learning objective to another is
unlikely to bring about a significant decline in standards. In fact, simply
having the opportunity to think critically about the alignment of assess-
ment and learning objectives could help us to align them better. Better
alignment can be linked to better outcomes. Handling changes to assess-
ment with thought and understanding thus has the potential to kill two
birds with one stone—protect students and universities from the effects of
disruption in the present and improve teaching and learning for the future.

–– Challenge 2: Resistance to change

Within departmental and subject group discussions at our own institu-

tions, we will all have had experience of making adjustments to modes of
assessment. Within such discussions, we will probably also have encoun-
tered resistance to change in some form or another. Resistance to change,
including bureaucratic inertia, is arguably a force for good. It protects
institutions from the effects of rash decision making and minimizes the
disruption to learning caused by sudden systemic change. However, exces-
sive resistance to change, in forms such as the rigid adherence to face-to-­
face examination regulations in online settings, is not helpful—and it
seems to be a particularly serious problem in the area of formal assessment,
as discussed below. Though organizational structures vary between insti-
tutions, changes to teaching and learning frequently come into being
through horizontal and vertical discussions within and between stake-
holder groups. This is the right way to approach the changes to assessment
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  119

procedures necessary to make them suitable for online deployment since,

as seen in Challenge 1, robust discussion and informed consent are helpful
to avoid misalignment of assessment and learning objectives and, ulti-
mately, to mitigate the effects of disruption for learners.

–– Solution: Convince your colleagues of the importance of alignment

Close alignment of assessment and learning objectives, along the lines

of Biggs’ (1999, 2003) ‘constructive alignment’ is not only part of an
evidence-driven approach but also makes good practical sense for teachers,
who need the feedback that well-aligned assessments produce, to hone
their teaching over time.
One of the major features of the University of Oxford’s teaching and
assessment regimes, across a range of subject areas, including languages, is
the notion of ‘set texts’. These are texts that learners study in fine detail,
usually in tutorials, and that they are later required to analyse, translate or
otherwise comment on, in an examination setting. The origins of this sys-
tem are in the systematic study of classical languages and literatures, out of
which many of Oxford’s interpretative and pedagogical traditions have
grown. Set-text examinations have taken place, since the nineteenth cen-
tury, mostly in a closed-book format, in formal, supervised settings. Asking
students to take the same examination but in an online, open-book for-
mat, amounts to asking them to copy and paste their own notes in the box
provided. Although it looks like the same examination, it is clear that this
new task does not assess the same learning objectives the previous one did.
On the surface, sticking close to existing procedures might seem easier, or
friendlier to students; however, this might not be beneficial in the long
term. Besides the lack of useful data it provides for assessors, this degree of
poor alignment is liable to leave students feeling that the work they are
doing is pointless, or take the pragmatic choice not to work too hard on
that area of their learning (see Biggs 1999, 2003).
So how do we remedy this? One simple method is to shift emphasis,
including assessment weighting, to another area of the existing examina-
tion syllabus. This was quickly discussed and adopted within our working
groups, as an interim measure. However, leaving any sort of set-text trans-
lation question in place in an open-book online examination, alongside a
set of rubrics and learning objectives designed with closed-book assess-
ments in mind, is clearly not a long-term solution. What is really necessary
is a language assessment that builds on existing learning objectives and
120  L. MANN ET AL.

finds ways to judge if they have been met by students that are appropriate
to the online context. There are many possible alternatives that could be
considered here, such as a digital humanities approach requiring students
to develop knowledge of coding and mark up texts for digitization, using
the various types of information they have accrued about those texts. This
approach would incorporate skills that academics and professionals use in
activities that extend beyond pedagogical settings—and, thus, tend
towards the sort of ‘authentic’ learning outlined in Tip#2. Larger changes
of this sort require time for planning and discussion with stakeholders and
informed consent of students, as well as time to embed themselves, as
noted below.

–– Challenge 3: Grade inflation

This is a concern that lies at the heart of the previous two challenges.
Organizations such as the QAA and others that promote quality-assurance
in formal assessments do so, in part, by ensuring that academic standards
do not decrease over time. Concern about grade inflation was one of the
causes of the adoption of the algorithmic method for assessing A-Level
students in 2020—and it is a cause of anxiety and debate for universi-
ties too.

–– Solution: Inclusive Assessment

As we have argued already, change does not need to accompany a decline

in standards or grade-inflation; on the contrary, if we do not change
enough when we need to (such as when converting our assessment tasks
for deployment online), we risk inadvertently ending up in a situation
where we are no longer testing what we aim to teach, thereby decreasing
the standard and quality of our languages degrees. Invalidating assess-
ments—by, for example, sticking rigidly to earlier examination formats
when moving online—is one of the best ways to ensure that our qualifica-
tions are not worth what they used to be.
For a number of years, University of Plymouth has taken a leading role
in implementing programmes of inclusive assessment—or a “flexible range
of assessment modes made available to all” (p. 15). In essence, this means
the extension of alternative assessment practices designed to cater for a
diverse student body to the entire cohort of learners, rather than just to
those with documented special circumstances. Waterfield and West, writ-
ing on behalf of Plymouth, frame their arguments for inclusive assessment
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  121

in precisely the terms outlined above concerning validity, laying part of the
blame for resistance to change at the door of quality-assurance bodies:

traditionalism in assessment practice, reinforced by agencies such as the

QAA, privileges the notion of the reliability of procedures, and therefore
robustness is pursued at the expense of fully considering the validity of
assessment in meeting the task of testing skills and knowledge. The risk, as
Elton (2005) has observed is of “doing the wrong thing righter”, and as
such missing the opportunity to actually enquire into what is being assessed
or indeed, what is worth assessing. (2006, p. 14)

In practical terms, inclusivizing assessment need not involve wide-ranging

changes to existing practices (although this will depend on the procedures
in place in a given university or department). It could mean something as
simple as offering a choice to all students to offer their work for assess-
ment in a different medium, or in a multimodal portfolio (online assess-
ments make this much more achievable). We can also loosen time
constraints or adopt a more qualitative approach to assessing certain areas
of the curriculum. A number of flexible approaches adopted in Plymouth
met with considerable success, in terms of overall student performance
and staff satisfaction (see pp. 217–262).
By way of example in our own practice in non-European languages at
Oxford, some of us have adopted elements of flexible assessment within
the so-called collections system. Collections are college or faculty-based
formal assessments at Oxford, traditionally operated termly, which com-
bine elements of summative and formative assessment. Online platforms,
such as Canvas, combined with productivity tools like Office 365, have
enabled us to offer flexibility, while retaining a ‘set-text’ approach. Students
are still required to develop a deep familiarity with one or more texts in the
Target Language. However, we can now offer them a wider choice of
procedures and exercises with which to assess that familiarity, incorporat-
ing approaches that fit a range of learning styles and needs. Multiple choice
and digital word-matching or cloze procedures can be juxtaposed with
longer writing tasks, including collaborative writing tasks using document
sharing, essays and grammatical commentaries. When this was put to the
test in a college collection, in 2020, the results were impressive. The small
group of students exceeded the teacher’s expectations in their ability to
navigate the tasks offered and came out with excellent final grades. We did
not offer optional audio-visual, or combined multimodal submission
122  L. MANN ET AL.

pathways, though these are being adopted within other areas of the uni-
versity (e.g. the Centre for Teaching and Learning).
If the sort of flexibility outlined above is offered to all students at the
stage of formal assessment, this can minimize unfairness for students
caused by disruption to assessment procedures, as well as potential admin-
istrative cost savings for institutions. It must nonetheless be monitored
and administered with students in mind, and with a view to minimizing
digital inequalities.

–– Challenge 4: Uncertainty and the need for blended online-offline

assessment

When asked about the main challenges of the period 2020–21 for
assessment, the Chair of the Examiners for Final Honour Schools in
Oriental Studies at Oxford reported: “The major challenge with the exams
is the fluidity of the situation. In the autumn we were hoping that all or
part of the exams can be held in person but it turned out by February that
it is very uncertain so we just plan as [sic] everything will be online.”
These comments reflect a common anxiety felt during the COVID-19
pandemic in education—that of uncertainty. Schools have had to create
programmes of learning that cater for students that are unable to pursue
their education at home, alongside those that are being taught exclu-
sively online.

–– Solution: Move the Classroom Online?

There is no easy solution here, since changes to assessment inevitably take

time and effort to implement. However, as in the case of inclusive assess-
ment, matters will improve as online systems bed themselves in—and both
students and teaching staff become more familiar with them. In this book
we are not arguing that all teaching and learning should take place online
in future. As we saw in the Introduction, some education professionals feel
very strongly that online learning can never replace classroom interactions
and the traditional hard work of teachers. As effective as the rhetoric of
juxtaposition can be, in reality, there is no need to contrast online teaching
and classroom teaching, since they are far from mutually exclusive. As seen
in Tip#3, the two can be made to complement each other well, within
programmes of blended language education, given appropriate thought
and planning. Many online tools, such as Padlet (discussed briefly in
Tip#2), work just as well in face-to-face environments. As regular
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  123

classroom-­based teaching and learning takes further inevitable steps in the

direction of digital networking and social-media (see Tip#1), the real
impact of public-health crises and other disruptions to learning and assess-
ment arrangements will be lessened, as well as the psychological effects for
participants, should some degree of physical distancing become necessary.

Conclusion: Plans for the Future?

Assessment is an essential element of teaching and learning. Despite
attempts to reform or remove it, formal assessment is still a major feature
of higher education, across a range of subject areas, including languages.
As in other areas of teaching and learning, the shift to widespread online
assessment, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, has offered language
teachers a special opportunity to think about their practice. This could be
a great advantage to both teachers and learners after the pandemic is over.
Here is what we would like you, as language teachers, to take away from
this chapter:

1. Though widely discussed and critiqued, assessment (in its various

forms) is essential to our current system of higher education. It is
monitored and regulated by bodies such as the QAA—but a large
part of the burden of responsibility for ensuring it meets students’
needs still lies with teachers.
2. It is a good idea to think about assessment as part of the learning
process for students. This way it feels like an important use of time
and resources—and it could help us to ensure we think about
whether we are testing what we want students to learn. Formative
assessment, in particular, generates essential feedback, without
which it is difficult to teach effectively. This is just as true in the
online environment as in the physical classroom.
3. Researchers have observed many varieties of feedback in use in lan-
guage classrooms and elsewhere. Each of these has its own benefits
and challenges—and these can be distributed differently in an online
environment. Language teachers that we have encountered among
our own colleagues often combine multiple forms of feedback into
dialogic exercises that can take place in person, through synchro-
nous online meetings, or multimodally. These mesh well with the
idea of dialogic feedback in general—and could be useful for teach-
ers wondering about good ways to offer feedback from formative
124  L. MANN ET AL.

assessment tasks online. They also often contain important evalua-

tive data from students. If you find yourself having similar dialogues
in your online classes, it is a good idea to obtain the correct permis-
sions to keep a record of such conversations.
4. There are a number of challenges associated with moving formal
assessments online. This applies to all subjects and not just to lan-
guage education. While there are no silver bullets here, the best
outcomes are likely to be obtained through careful thought and
planning, as well as discussion with key stakeholders (including stu-
dents, of course). As with assessment generally, alignment of exami-
nations and learning objectives should be central to discussions of
online assessment—as should the need to avoid certain groups of
students being unfairly disadvantaged.

Once online assessments are fully embedded as part of learning within all
higher education language programmes, we will no doubt see the emer-
gence of new challenges and opportunities for developing learning. Until
then, our immediate plans should include the not-so-new objective of
ensuring learning objectives and assessment tasks are in good alignment.
If that means changing the nature of assessment tasks when we deploy
them online, we must not shy away from doing so. In the Conclusion that
follows this chapter, we will look back over the various tasks of teaching
and learning languages online discussed in this book.

Useful Resources
You might find the following sources helpful when thinking about how to orga-
nize and manage language assessments online:

Boud, D., & Falchikov, N. (2007). Introduction: Assessment for the longer term.
In D. Boud & N. Falchikov (Eds.), Rethinking assessment for higher education:
Learning for the longer term (pp. 3–13). Routledge.
NFER. (n.d.). An introduction to formative and summative assessment. https://
www.nfer.ac.uk/for-­s chools/free-­r esources-­a dvice/assessment-­h ub/
introduction-­to-­assessment/an-­introduction-­to-­formative-­and-­summative-­
assessment/
QAA. (2018). UK quality code for higher education advice and guidance: Assessment.
https://www.qaa.ac.uk/quality-­code/advice-­and-­guidance/assessment
QAA. (2019). Degree awarding powers in England: Guidance for providers on
assessment. https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/guidance/degree-­awarding-­
powers-­i n-­e ngland-­g uidance-­f or-­p roviders-­o n-­a ssessment-­b y-­q aa.pdf?sfvrs
n=ddddc181_2
 5  FOURTH TIP: THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT ASSESSMENT  125

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 CHAPTER 6

Conclusion: Don’t Lose Faith

Abstract  This chapter restates and reinforces the overall thesis of this
book; that the shift to online teaching and learning of languages in HE
settings during the COVID-19 pandemic has brought—in some cases
hitherto largely unnoticed—interactions between technology, physicality,
digitality, communication and learning. In particular, it highlights the
positive outlook of this book as a whole, expressed primarily in terms of
the opportunities offered by the online space to enhance student experi-
ences and progress. It also reiterates the particular challenges of teaching
and learning languages in the online space encountered by the participants
cited in this book—not least a perceived difficulty in building rapports
with students in digital settings devoid of all physical proximity. As the
pandemic recedes and, yet again, a new set of demands are placed on lan-
guage teachers working in HE, the skills of analysis, flexibility and imagi-
nation—already key components of our professional toolkit—will be vital
for all teachers, as this chapter (and book) concludes.

Keywords  Online language learning • Learning technologies •

Challenges • Physicality • Digitality • Social media • Curriculum •
Diversity • Continuing professional development (CPD) • Assessment •
Screen fatigue • Analysis • Flexibility • Imagination

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 127

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9_6
128  L. MANN ET AL.

As this book has aimed to demonstrate, for those of us interested in online

teaching in general, or online language teaching in particular, there are
many perspectives out there to chew over and digest. Teaching through
the internet is far from a new thing and, even before the rapid move online
that accompanied the outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK in early 2020,
many teachers will have read about and used digital technologies in their
work. Indeed, in many areas of our professional lives, deeper integration
of digital and internet-enabled technologies has been presented as more of
an inevitability than a choice, for many years already. Despite this, even
after the dual cataclysm of COVID infection and the resulting nationwide
school closures, teachers are not wholly convinced of the efficacy of teach-
ing and learning online and many in public life were, in mid-2021, hailing
the return of ‘regular’ face-to-face teaching in UK schools as an exciting
and relieving milestone.
The most cynical readers will perhaps take the view that commentators’
opinions on the deployment of internet resources in support of teaching
and learning may be predicted by the degree of those commentators’
involvement with digital teaching or, in worse cases, vested interests in
that sector. It is difficult to deny that learning technologists and other
education professionals whose jobs depend on the roll-out of technology
are unlikely to recommend scrapping the use of internet-enabled tech-
nologies in teaching. However, as we suggested already in the Introduction,
there are existential anxieties on the other side of the debate; namely those
caused by the potential displacement of human teachers by digital tech-
nologies. While it has not yet come, there will be a day in the relatively
near future when intelligent machines are capable of handling large pro-
portions of a teachers’ workload, as they already do for bank clerks and
call-centre workers. There is already concern that we will see increased
reliance on pre-recorded lecture materials and on-demand teaching con-
tent, as universities cater for demands for greater flexibility from some
student groups—although it remains to be seen whether ‘value-for-money’
arguments for in-person teaching will trump these.
Overall, this book has presented a largely optimistic view of teaching
and learning languages online, with a focus on positive thinking and care-
ful planning, as well as openness towards what the internet could do to
improve our teaching and, more importantly, for our students’ learning.
We did not choose to approach the topic with such openness because any
of us is a professional learning technologist. In fact, one of the reasons we
chose to write this together at this time was because we do not work at
 6 CONCLUSION: DON’T LOSE FAITH  129

institutions with decades of experience in teaching language only or mainly

online. This meant that, like many of our colleagues, we were thrust into
unfamiliar environments in 2020 and 2021, during which there was a
scramble to digitally ‘distance’ our teaching. While sometimes uncomfort-
able, being in that position did enable us to think relatively freely, and in
broad terms, about our approaches, as well as giving us space to consider
the future. We concluded that, however uncertain that future may be, it is
very unlikely not to include internet language teaching. As language
teachers, we want to help shape that future—and cannot really see how it
would make any sense not to.
When confronted with extreme enthusiasm for any emergent learning
technology, a healthy scepticism of the sort described above is both natu-
ral and potentially beneficial, in particular where it becomes the starting
point for thinking about what constitutes good practice. However, insti-
tutional policy and other factors can at times leave teachers feeling that
they must try to ‘fit’ existing teaching practices into a string of ever-­
changing technological environments or replicate the arrangements of
face-to-face learning online. Not only does this result in a lot of additional
work for teachers; it may also not always lead to optimal outcomes for
anyone involved. The truths, if they may be so-called, about how learning
happens online (or in any other environment for that matter) will not be
arrived at through discussions of whether one technology is better than
another, or can replace it, or can replicate its functions. Rather—as clichéd
as this may sound—we must respect the complexity of both teachers’ and
learners’ interactions with technologies of all kinds, including those which
existed before the internet, and interrogate that complexity with a view to
examining its working parts and their interrelationships. This should lead
us to realize that many educational practices exist and function only with
the support of others. When one is removed, this sometimes renders oth-
ers motionless. This sentiment is given eloquent expression in the work of
Jon Dron (2021), who has argued that the groups of processes of educa-
tion and learning are phenomena largely constituted by technology and,
therefore, never wholly separate from it. The greatest difference to the
functioning of these interrelated groups of processes (‘assemblies’ and
‘orchestrations’ in Dron’s words) is made by the ways in which they are
configured by participants, including teachers:

[It] is not surprising … that studies find no significant difference between

the outcomes of online and in-person learning. There will invariably be
130  L. MANN ET AL.

many other aspects of the assembly, especially the skill of a teacher to teach
to a style, that, at least en masse, are far more significant than methodical
alignment with a learning style. You cannot simply, say, remove printed
words from a learning resource to accommodate visual learners: the entire
orchestration has to change, and the way this is done will typically affect
learning far more than the style that it accommodates. (2021, n.p.)

The approach adopted by this book has been to encourage teachers to

think both de-constructively and re-constructively about their practice, as
more and more of their work moves online. Taking apart what we do and
reassembling the parts, honed and oiled, for a new context surely seems
more like a sustainable solution than many of the sticking-plaster fixes
university teachers were forced to produce under pandemic conditions—
although, as this book aimed to demonstrate, it is possible to learn from
these too. Taking apart and questioning our practice do not mean revolu-
tion—or throwing any proverbial babies out with their bathwater. As the
teaching community becomes more and more familiar with online learn-
ing technologies, a fudge of different opinions and approaches is more or
less inevitable anyway. At every institution, ‘rules’, including those we dis-
cussed in the assessment chapter, must also always be subject to interroga-
tion and, in general, are copious enough to accommodate a range of
interpretations and pragmatic solutions. Making a similar point, Dron
raises the example of a colleague who felt bound enough by the rules to
hold an exam, but free enough within them to change the content of that
exam to the point that it was, in many respects, no longer an exam in the
traditional sense (2021, n.p.; Huntrods & Dron, 2017). Similar elasticity,
it could be argued, has been one feature that has sustained the University
of Oxford for centuries and, on more than one occasion, saved its con-
stituent institutions from a variety of ruinous fates.
This book has suggested four areas in which the internet can offer lan-
guage teachers possibilities to explore, experiment and grow. The first was
in the area of social media integration within the languages curriculum,
where, it was argued, it could be central to the development of new socio-­
pragmatic teaching models, as well as providing opportunities for virtual
immersion and exposure to diverse patterns of language use. The second,
an extension of the first, was as a vehicle for increasing curriculum diversity
by capitalizing on social media’s widespread engagement with popular
culture. The third was as an arena for professional development, action
research and exploratory practice (which underpin our own work in
 6 CONCLUSION: DON’T LOSE FAITH  131

creating this book). Finally, the internet was explored in terms of its rela-
tionships with assessments and the far-reaching implications that these can
have for the teaching and learning of languages.
As well as opportunities, many challenges posed by the online environ-
ment have been recounted in this book. Indeed, it has been the explora-
tion of the challenges we have encountered as teachers that has given this
book its current shape. To sum these up briefly, they have to do primarily
with the intersects of physicality, digitality and communication. There is
screen fatigue and social media fatigue—the mental and physical discom-
fort felt after protracted periods spent entirely focussed on digital activi-
ties. There is the issue of home working, also affecting many outside the
education sector, whereby the previously separated physical spaces of work
and home life have become intermeshed. There is the lack of physical
infrastructure in which to engage in relaxed communications with col-
leagues—this is particularly significant when one considers how important
sharing problems can be to a happy and successful teaching life. There is
the issue of how to handle breakout rooms which aim to recreate the more
relaxed physical environment of a single table, or huddle, of students.
While this does seem to promote freer participation among students, it
can be technologically challenging to monitor multiple groups at once to
ensure that students stay on task, or use L2 to the extent that is expected
or required. Additionally, it is worth noting that the online space has
problems of its own, or that are more clearly defined within it. Some of
these have also appeared in the course of our discussion—one being the
relatively high language proficiency bar for entry into some online com-
munities and another being a large number of students’ (perhaps surpris-
ingly) simplistic engagement with digital technologies in learning contexts.
One particularly intractable obstacle that has been raised at several
points during this book is the building of rapports with students online,
particularly where students have begun new programmes of study, before
having a chance to travel to their institutions physically. It now seems
hopeful that the future will permit us opportunities to interact with stu-
dents in a physical environment at least some of the time, so there is a
chance that this problem will go away naturally. Nevertheless, it is proba-
bly worth dedicating time and thought to how to build those relationships
of trust and confidence that engender academic excellence, among stu-
dents working online in future, in order to avoid unfairness in situations
when some students are unable to attend physical classrooms for one rea-
son or another, but are enabled to pursue courses of study by means of
132  L. MANN ET AL.

online learning. If such students are at a constant academic disadvantage

when compared to their peers, the institution will have unwittingly added
to an already formidable array of potential routes for broader socio-­
economic inequalities to permeate higher education.
Tackling problems such as these will be among the tasks that lay ahead
for teachers, after the pandemic eventually subsides and universities take
stock of the full effects of changes in working practices, as well as teachers’
and learners’ expectations vis-à-vis the processes in which they are involved
daily. For language teachers, squeezed already by existing trends in stu-
dent recruitment and participation, this could mean looking more and
more to the world of social media and digital culture, where changing
patterns of language use and new language communities offer huge poten-
tial for boosting the affective and motivational dimensions of learning. By
shifting some of their focus towards those communities—which already
consist of L1 and L2 speakers—teachers should more easily be able to
conceive of ‘online language teaching’ as far more than a soulless simula-
crum of face-to-face teaching.
The final tip that this book has to offer is, therefore, not to lose faith.
Faith, that is, in our experience and training as teachers. However the
future of online teaching develops, we can be certain that, in order for it
to survive, it must have teachers and learners at its core. As for the skills
that will be required, they are already at the core of a teacher’s skillset;
analysis, to break down the successful process of teaching and learning
into their elemental parts, flexibility, to adapt to changing technologies
and environments and, finally, imagination, to put the parts we have back
together in ways that suit that new context and meet learners’ needs.

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 Appendix

Online Language Learning and Teaching—Challenges and Reflections:

What have we learnt so far? November 2020  (Sample form for
workshop).
Name:
Language taught:

1. How did you change/modify your curriculum?

2. What do you think is lacking in online learning compared to
face-­to-­face learning?
3. IT issues—Have you had any challenges with your IT skills? If
yes, how have you overcome them?
4. Pronunciation teaching related matters

• How do you do it?

• What is the difficulty? How difficult was it?
• Have you used windowed mask?
• How can we improve it?

5. Script teaching related matters

• How do you do it?

• What is the difficulty? How difficult was it?

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature 133

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9
134  APPENDIX

• How do you use the board? White board or tablet?

• Have you ever used tablet synching to the Team?

6. Interaction matters

• How do you do the pair-work?

• What are particular challenges you have in teaching pragmatics or
interaction?
• Do you ask your students all to be muted?
• Do your students turn off their computers? What do you think
about this? Have you ever asked them to turn on computer? (We
need student’s feedback for this issue! Some students talk
about privacy)

7. Any other issues or suggestions regarding online teaching …

Thank you so much for your time.

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 Index

A D
Action research (AR), 75, 78–82, Decolonization, 50–51
91, 92, 130 Diversity, 4, 6, 11, 14, 24, 30, 35,
Alignment, 11, 107–110, 114–119, 40, 48–57, 60, 68–71, 84,
124, 130 106, 130
Apps, 9, 10, 24, 25, 27, 32, 34, 37, 86 Drama, 27, 28, 34
Assessment, 3, 11, 12, 21, 23, 34, 51, 53,
54, 75, 87–89, 98–124, 130, 131
Authenticity, 53–54, 59, 62, 64, 66 E
Emcee battles, 48–71
Exploratory Practice (EP), 75, 81–83,
B 91, 92, 130
Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic
(BAME), 51–53
Black Lives Matter, 50 F
Feedback Conversation,
113, 114
C Formal assessment, 88, 99,
Continuing Professional Development 100, 102–105, 110,
(CPD), 11, 75–78, 82–85, 91, 92 111, 115–125
COVID-19, 2–4, 8–10, 12, 20–22, Formative assessment,
33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 57, 74, 83, 98, 103–105, 111–115,
88, 109, 115–117, 122, 123, 128 121, 123–124

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 143

Switzerland AG 2022
L. Mann et al., Online Language Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91418-9
144  INDEX

I R
Internet of Things (IoT), 4 Rap, 48, 54, 58–69
Internet resources, 128

S
L Social Media, 8, 10, 11, 20–44, 48,
Language Immersion, 35–37 56, 57, 62, 65, 66, 71, 75, 86,
Language Teachers’ Committee 123, 130–132
(LTC), 83–91 Summative assessment,
Low Stakes and High Stakes, 105–107 101, 103–105, 108,
111, 115

P
Pragmatics, 21, 33–35, 39, 42, 57, 62, Z
67, 68, 119, 130, 134 Zoom fatigue, 22, 23