The implementation of task-based teaching in an online Chinese class through web conferencing

In this study, a group of elementary level Chinese students conducted two online sessions-one jigsaw task and one information-gap task - delivered by a web conferencing platform (Blackboard Collaborate). A mixed methods approach was adopted in that a) the teacher's and learners' multimodal interactions were recorded and analysed quantitatively in order to illustrate participation patterns, b) Varonis and Gass's (1985) model was used to identify instances of negotiation of meaning in learner-learner interactions through an interpretive analysis of the data.