The usefulness and improvement of one-to-one online oral English courses in China

Online one-to-one oral English can be considered a new form of English learning, which has been increasingly adopted by adult English learners in China. This study examines learners’ perceived usefulness and their learning outcome of one online one-to-one oral English course for adult learners to find out positive aspects that contribute to usefulness of such courses and what can be further improved. 18 adult learners from different cities in mainland China participated in this study and each of them received three lessons. Data are collected through pre and post oral English tests to examine the learning outcome, questionnaire is used to examine positive and negative components, and semi-structured interviews are conducted to probe into the learners’ perspectives. Quantitative results show that participants made progress in complexity and they regarded this course as a pleasant learning experience. Qualitative results revealed several factors that contribute to learners’ learning: (1) opportunities to express personal views; (2) timely scaffolding; (3) efficient feedback, while improvements should be made by providing (1) homework with timely feedback and correction (2) real-time video course as choices; (3) online study groups. Four constructs “perception”, “action”, “relation” and “quality” of van Lier’s ecological theory are used as an analytical tool and theoretical framework to provide insights into the results. A mode with four constructs is built to show inner relationships of the results and an improved course model for one-to-one online oral English learning is provided in the end. Copyright © 2019 University of Antwerp.