Adaptation to emergency remote teaching: an ESOL course for older Chinese learners

ABSTRACT

This study examines the adaptation of an ESOL course for older Chinese migrant learners to Emergency Response Teaching mode as a result of the government-imposed restrictions to contain the spread of Covid-19. Through interviews and the analysis of learner diaries, we consider the experience of the school manager and teachers, and the strategies used by the learners, in relation to online delivery, with a particular focus on the measures taken to cater for a group of third-age learners with minimal previous language learning experience. Our analysis highlights the importance of collaborative decision making, team teaching, and a didactic approach that is sensitive to learners’ cultural backgrounds and that provides adequate L1 (i.e. first language) support. From a curriculum perspective, we discuss the importance of including content that is responsive to the evolving emergency context, and which strengthens learners’ ability (and inclination) to use the language-rich context of the public sphere for learning purposes. We also discuss the relative challenge of shifting grammar and vocabulary focused lessons to online delivery. Learners appeared to employ more frequently memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies and we discuss this in relation to their current emergency learning context and previous educational background.

KEYWORDS:

• Third-age language learners
• New Zealand
• emergency remote teaching
• distance education
• Covid-19
• learning strategies
• Chinese learners

Authors’ contribution

Both authors contributed equally to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This was a course for new migrants funded by the New Zealand government.

2. Pseudonyms are used for all participants.

3. A Chinese-language online platform for delivering exams.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuanyuan Xu

Yuanyuan Xu holds a Master’s of Applied Linguistics with First Class Honours and a teaching qualification from the University of Auckland, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Zhejiang Normal University in China. She has taught English as an additional language in China for three years, and she has taught Chinese in New Zealand for two years. She is about to start a career as a teacher of Chinese in New Zealand secondary schools.

Louisa Buckingham

Louisa Buckingham lectures on courses in applied linguistics in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics at the University of Auckland. She publishes on topics related to language and technology, academic writing, sociolinguistics and corpus-informed discourse analysis.