Sessions

Possibility and Challenges of Online Language Exchanges

The spread of Covid-19 has made it difficult for university students to study and travel abroad, which may affect students’ motivation to learn English negatively. Hoping to motivate first-year Japanese students to learn English in a class of a private university in Japan, I conducted five online language exchanges with the Japanese students and university students learning Japanese in the U.S. The Japanese students wrote a journal about the contents and feedback in English after every exchange. After the five exchanges, the students also answered a questionnaire survey with closed and open questions. The closed questions were made in terms of oral comprehension, production, and interactions from CEFR Companion Volume (Council of Europe, 2020), cultural understanding, foreign language anxiety, motivation, and pragmatic competence. The results showed that most of the students were able to improve their listening and speaking skills, understand different cultures, reduce foreign language anxiety, be motivated to learn English, and maintain a conversation. The open question also showed their positive opinion toward the exchanges. In the presentation, I will discuss the possibility and challenges of online language exchanges for the new normal era after Covid-19 based on analyzing the students’ journals and the questionnaire survey.