The Next Steps

Through the email exchanging activities with their e-pales, students have built a good rapport with their Chinese peers. They are excited about the learning opportunities with the native speakers. With the technologies available for the distanced learning, they want to gain the authentic learning experience.

I will help my students collaborate with students in a school in China on a project using technologies. Previous research suggests that it increases learners' opportunities to use the target language, induces a series of negotiations of meaning (Blake, 2000 ), and improves the quality of written and spoken language (Sotillo, 2000 ). With collaborations that involve the native speakers, students will have real-life purpose and accelerated motivation to construct their knowledge and develop their language skills.