Anci Cao & Shuheng He LING 583 03/14/2013 Professor Xiang Curriculum Research Project

CHINESE BLENDED LEARNING IN U.S. UNIVERSITIES OVERVIEW

Historically, foreign language education in an American university has experienced many curricular changes as a result of economic and political pressures (Kramsch, 1989). Initially, the need to understand other cultures and languages became a major force for these changes. (MLA, 2007) During the 1970s, concern grew for more student-oriented methodologies that moved away from the audio-lingual habit formation principle of the 1960s toward a communicative application of language learning (Savignon, 1998). The most striking approach was the Communicative Approach, also known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (OmaggioHadley, 2001). Language teaching under this view is intended to promote communication by engaging the learner in activities that mirror real-life scenarios in which the language teacher adopts the role as a facilitator (Knight, 2001). Since then, the foreign language curriculum has been redesigned to enable learners to communicate proficiently in a foreign language (Hewitt, Ryan, & Kuhs, 1993; Thompson, 1991). In the 21st century, the national standards for foreign language learning were about (1) competence in oral and written communication as it applies to foreign language acquisition; (2) geopolitical awareness as encompassing perspectives, practices, and products under cultures; and (3) lifelong learning in terms of motivation to continue the study of foreign languages and cultures beyond the classroom. (National Standards, 1999) The introduction of standards and guidelines has brought about dramatic changes in classroom instructions and methodologies. With the constant changing of the goals in foreign language teaching and learning, one of the new models of language teaching has been discovered, which was called blended learning. Blended learning, a combination of face-to-face and online instructions, is seen as one of the most important recent advances in education in the 21st century. (Thorne, 2003) This new type of teaching model brings numerous benefits that are in accordance with the current goals and principles of foreign language teaching. From Goertler (2011), blended learning is socialized into online discourse communities and offers possibilities for individualized instructions. It enhances input and also increases access to materials and resources including native speakers. In this case, students are more able to reach authentic materials and perform tasks through real life scenario activities, which can really help them improve oral and written competency. Furthermore, it

involves asynchronous and synchronous interaction (text-based and audio and video-based), providing the possibility of focusing on both accuracy and fluency of the target language. Moreover, it achieves broader goals such as information literacy, transcultural and trans-lingual competence and life-long learning. Along with the development of foreign language teaching and learning, U.S. colleges currently have thousands of foreign language colleges or schools that have foreign language degrees, foreign language programs, or foreign language courses, and more than 14 languages have been provided in different colleges. As China continues to expand economically, its cultural influence is also spreading throughout the world and one way this is being expressed is in the increasing interest in learning Chinese as a foreign language. The specific features make it a unique language. It is very different from many Indo-European languages, which makes it more complicated and difficult to learn it as a foreign language. The adoption of blended learning, which combines traditional face-to-face and online learning, could bring a number of advantages to teach and learn Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Despite these important advantages, there are many issues associated with such courses that potentially affect their successful implementation. However, some of the problems that are inherent to purely online courses can be avoided with a hybrid approach because students and instructors can meet in person to develop rapport (which often carries into the online environment), deal with problems, and handle administrative issues. When done well, this blended approach to learning can have all the advantages of both virtual and face-to-face environments. To blend well two modes together and achieve its original goal for more effective learning, this paper addresses some major challenges of implementing Chinese blended learning courses in American college settings, and explains how this type of courses can be designed to teach CFL successfully.

DISCUSSION
As a new form of language learning, blended learning would face a variety of challenges owing to the beliefs and principles of language learning and the characteristics of Chinese. From the former practice and research, some of them have been discussed, experimented and reached various results. The following part is a discussion about blended learning based on previous research, especially for Chinese as a foreign language, drawing on time allocation, content, coherence, interaction, feedback and participation.

Proficiency
The proficiency level is one of the main contexts to be considered for the course design. In traditional foreign language classes, teaching for different proficiency levels is not only distinct in content, but methods, tools and strategies as well. As a new form of language teaching, blended learning also needs to organize diversely for different proficiency levels. Goertlers (2011) German blended course in Michigan State University only offered a technology-enhanced format with most of the homework assignments being completed online in their first year curriculum. She defined the reduction of face-to-face time for beginning level as dangerous since the interaction in face-to-face classroom was significant for students to feel

being engaged and beginners relied more on teachers guidance and support. Therefore, the blended learning was only applied in second-year, the advanced German and the fourth-year content course. There was no significant difference in language gains between the blended and traditional class for the second-year course. The survey from the students and an interview with the teacher showed low buy-in on part of the students and the instructor for blended or any technology-enhanced teaching. (Goertler, 2011) However, the fourth-year content course did result in a positive impact on confidence, motivation, fluency, management, responsibility, and classroom atmosphere.(Goertler, 2011) Considering the impact of proficiency level on blended learning distribution, some may argue that blended learning or online learning is not applicable for beginners since face-to-face interaction is crucial for this level. However, it depends on how two modes being arranged and how materials and tools being selected. For beginners, more time on the face-to-face portion would be better and the online portion could serve as an extension (adding more activities in the same form as the face-to-face portion) or supplementation (using activities from other sources or devising additional activities just for the online portion) to maintain the sense of community and ensure automaticity. During the online portion for beginners, instructor needs to serve as a conductor to guide students to progress. For advanced level, more time for individual work online would be more beneficial since the online portion offers free, specialized and selfexpressive types of learning to help students achieve diverse goals. The teachers role for the advanced level would better be a facilitator and resources to help students find their own pathways to success.

Content and Tools

Content and tools selection is very essential for language learning. It is a great challenge for instructors to choose accurate, meaningful, effective and interesting materials from the ocean of information. Besides, the way to present them would also impact the outcome of learning. For blended learning, there would be more special challenges: which parts of content should be learned online, which parts should be learned in the classroom, and how to distribute them. The Internet provides plenty of materials and tools for language learning, which becomes one factor promoting blended learning. However, it is necessary to give more control on these online resources, to make sure the appropriateness and accuracy of the potential usable material. The previewing of the resources for the content, accuracy, usability and appropriateness by instructors can be a good way to control input for language learners. Besides the quality control of resources, instructors also need to consider suitable content as input and triggers owing to the characteristics of different languages and contexts for language learning. As mentioned in Nielson, Gonzalez-lloret, Pinckney (2009), Chinese is a tonal language, which means that many words are differentiated from one another simply by their tones. It is very important for beginning learners to have up-front training in tone recognition and production. Adequate resources to demonstrate and explain the tone system must be included in the curriculum, and students must have assignments with feedback on both their comprehension and production. It would be very helpful for using authentic listening materials to identify tones and requiring students to record their pronunciation and compare to native-speakers models or instructors feedback. (Nielson, Gonzalez-lloret, Pinckney, 2009) Additionally, distance students

will need access to interactive tutorials that illustrate how the sounds and characters match and how words are parsed. It is very necessary to have a virtual classroom with a whiteboard space demonstrating how the script works in real time during synchronous sessions. In addition, Chinese is character-based. The orthography does not systematically make the sounds of words apparent. More supportive presentation and exercises are needed to help students to link sounds with patterns and meanings. For the online mode, activities requiring characters typing can help students link the sounds and meanings; for the face-to-face mode, more interesting instructions about writing characters would help students link patterns with meanings. Also, there are many interesting animation videos online to explain characters with their origins. Adding those resources into the online mode would also benefit students understanding and memorization of characters. Besides, there is some existing software that can make students practice writing Chinese characters by touching the Ipad with their fingers.

Coherence
Blended learning refers to a combination of face-to-face and CALL modes, in this particular type of course, a smooth and intense connection between the two modes would have a significant impact on the learning outcome, since learning should always be a coherent process. If an obvious gap between the two modes exists, they cannot cooperate well with each other to achieve the common goal for the whole learning. Without smooth blending, students would consider the online portion as a redundant part and could not make good use of it; even though some students do participate in the online portion actively, they would fail in integrating the language and skills from two modes as a whole system to improve their production. Therefore, the online portion would become a burden or negative factor for learning instead of a promotion as its original purpose. A coherent combination never means to be placed together mechanically, but smoothly blended with natural transitions so that they could promote mutually and support students development together. Therefore, smooth combination should be considered during the course design process. After defining the context, instructors need to decide what kinds of materials and tools to use for blended learning according to students personal information, the physical settings, the types of the course, other stakeholders requirements and so on. With the related content and similar types of tasks, it would be easier for students to switch between two modes and combine the outcome together. For example, instructors should ask students to report or show their pair work outcome from the online portion in the classroom; students need to practice or discuss the input from the online activities during the classroom time. The beauty of the blended approach is that the most difficult aspect of teaching onlinefostering a sense of communitycan be achieved in the physical classroom. (Nielson, Gonzalez-Lloret & Pinckney, 2009, p4) The online portion should equip students with new input or revision to reinforce the sense of communities so that the face-to-face time would be more effective and efficient. A blended class can be extremely efficient when concepts are introduced in person and then practiced and reinforced at a distance (or vice-versa, i.e., introduced at a distance and then discussed and clarified face-to-face). The material used in two modes could also be a tool for smooth blending. If the materials of the CALL mode are parallel with those in the face-to-face mode or in the same sequence, it is much easier for students to relate the content together and find the necessity of the CALL mode. Grgurovic (2011) utilized the materials for two modes from the same series, which means an

embedded connection between two modes. Also, Cheng (2011) designed the online portion based on the same textbook for the classroom time. Besides, for better utilization of the timeliness and authenticity of online materials and tasks, the content of the online mode could refer to more topics about the real life and help students realize the connections between what they learn and what really happens throughout our world.

Interaction
Language learning happens through interaction. The meaningful interactive activities that mirror real-life scenarios could better promote the communication skills of students. The interaction in blended learning is one of the biggest issues. As it claims, blended learning is aiming to provide more opportunities to self-learning. What we want is that the online course could support students self-learning through much more interactive activities. However, distance courses must compensate for inherent disadvantages that come with a virtual classroom. Most obviously, it is difficult to create a sense of community in an online class where students and instructors never meet one another face-to-face. While this lack of community affects all types of classes, it is particularly troublesome in foreign instruction, where learning occurs through interaction. (Nielson, 2009) Bo Hu (2010) claims that the lack of the social and teaching presence in online courses is one of the biggest challenges. Due to the decrease of face-to-face courses, there is less and less opportunities for peer-peer and teacher-students interactions, which plays an important role in language acquisition, especially for beginning learners. Most students in this stage feel that faceto-face interaction could better facilitate them practicing language and being more confident in the target language. However, in this specific setting, even though there are some discussionboards, Skype sessions, teleconferences available for students to interact, students are still in pursuit of a more natural and communicative way to learn languages rather than the mechanical type of communication. Actually, the Internet provides many opportunities for communication not found in a traditional face-to-face classroom. A distance-learning course should take advantage of the computermediated communication (CMC) and create opportunities to connect language learners with other learners and fluent speakers of the target language. (Nielson, 2009) Instructors should encourage students to use both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools. There is a wide variety of tools available for the CMC. The interactions can occur synchronously (i.e. chat rooms) as well as asynchronously (via email, bulletin boards, forums and blogs), and they can be through texts, audios, or both. Synchronous CMC is a valuable tool for the online classroom because it promotes a sense of community, helps build the relationship, and it allows for abundant participation and interaction, especially for those students that are usually shy in a traditional classroom. In addition, students using the CMC tend to produce languages that are lexically and syntactically more complex than that produced in traditional classrooms, and the text-based SCMC promotes self-monitoring and self-repair, because students have more time to prepare and reflect on their responses than they do when they are speaking. It offers an efficient way to foster both language accuracy and fluency. It is very crucial to limit the communication to a single set of tools which help maintain order in the virtual classroom and prevent students from losing the track of one another when logged into mutually

exclusive chat systems (e.g., one student is on Yahoo Messenger while another is using Google Chat). (Nielson, 2009) Instructors should create assignments that require students communication. Apparently, it is not enough to make CMC tools available for students. In order to have students engaging with one another, communication must be the focus of many assignments. (Nielson, 2009) Instructors should assign conversation partners and make sure that there are times when they can meet virtually for communicative activities. For instance, information gap activities can be a great option, where each partner has the information that the other needs, so they are forced to communicate with one another in the target language. Instructors should encourage students to communicate with more fluent speakers of the target language. Teachers can give students opportunities to engage in meaningful activities by establishing collaborative projects with native and other speakers of the language, in which students can receive rich input from expert speakers and engage in real communication. Instructors can use already existing sites of contacts to connect the class with other classes of Chinese speakers. Some useful sites to find tele-collaborative projects are: E-pals, PenPal World, and My Language Exchange (Nielson, 2009). Assigning a native or fluent speaker as a teachers assistant could also be very helpful in the online classroom.

Feedback
Obviously, it is essential to provide feedback in language learning. Both explicit and implicit feedback would bring about different impacts to language learners. It could scaffold students to notice the gap, and modify their own output, which better build up learners interlanguage. In blended learning, feedback given in classes of two different modes contains their own features. However, some studies indicate that there still remain some problems when giving feedback in distance. Bo Hu (2012) states this problem by emphasizing the role of teachers in blended learning. In the distance learning environment, it is unavoidable that teachers could not provide as punctual, effective and useful supports to students as in the face-to-face classrooms, even though teachers can use emails to contact their students and provide comments and feedback online. Many of the students still feel the help and support from teachers are not sufficient and effective. Additionally, Bo Hu (2012) also claims that during the online communication between teachers and students, a more teacher-initiated contact is rare and lacking in this type of course, which actually is essential to not only better track students progress, but also provide more opportunities to support learning. Much research approved that no matter how efficient the online courses could be, the face-to-face courses could not be replaced. Admittedly, it is impossible to avoid these challenges when more interactive environments are initiated in online learning. There are still a number of solutions to resolve these issues. Given the fact that the online courses can be completely asynchronous, self-paced, and individualized, it could be very beneficial for instructors in online environments to tailor instruction, feedback, and assignments to each student. Additionally, the online environment lends itself well to feedback because students errors are archived for analysis. In a face-to-face class, conversations are ephemeral an error disappears as soon as it is made. In an online environment, both

synchronous and asynchronous chat is preserved via transcripts, and audio discussions can also be recorded, which can be very helpful for post-discussion error analysis. (Nielson, 2009) In this case, if we can design the course well to take advantage of face-to-face courses and online courses, the blended learning courses can be very effective. It will fulfill one of the most important principles in foreign language teaching, focusing on both accuracy and fluency. Here are some useful tips to keep in mind when designing the course. Instructors should provide feedback during communicative exchanges and after analyzing students output. (Nielson, 2009) On one hand, during the text-based CMC in online courses, it is possible for instructors to provide feedback to the students by re-typing the erroneous utterance in their response to the student, when they see students have made an error as in writing. It is also a good way to provide a recast. When students do not seem to notice the correction, the instruction can use input enhancing techniques to direct learner attention to the form (e.g., bolding a word, adding color, etc.). On the other hand, students and instructors in an online classroom spend considerable time creating and posting output. Instructors can identify patterns in the learners inter-languages by reviewing these chat transcripts, blog posts and forum discussions; and tailor assignments with input focusing on the form proper to a learners developmental level. It can greatly meet individual needs. In addition, learners can analyze their own text chat interactions to discover their language learning patterns and correct their linguistic and pragmatic mistakes. Moreover, instructors can record themselves providing comments on written exercises to offer more interactive feedback. Instructors should promote peer-feedback. Encouraging student constructive critical comments on peers content and language work can be important to create a learning community. Students can provide feedback on other students blog entries, discussion board contributions, recorded sound files, etc. Also, it is definitely a good way to improve interaction among students and students. (Nielson, 2009) Instructors should provide feedback actively and frequently. Based on some research, students still feel the help and support they receive from teachers are not sufficient. Significantly, it is vital for instructors to remember to provide feedback more actively and frequently. If the instructor maintains an active presence in the classroom, students are more likely to do so as well. (Bo Hu, 2012)

Participation
As is known to all, the language learning process requires constant effort and attention in order to achieve an ideal outcome. One of the efforts students need to make is to participate in the class. One of the biggest advantages of this type of course that involves traditional and online courses is to meet individual needs. If students could not take good advantage of this, even do not participate in the class, they might not be able to continue studying more advanced Chinese courses or even could not catch up with their current Chinese learning. However, the participation in online courses could be a big challenge as for the nature of assignments in online courses, since they are often time-consuming for both students and teachers requiring more self-management (Cheng, 2011). On one hand, based on studies of Cheng (2011), students need to take more time and energy working on online courses than in

face-to-face courses. First of all, students need to spend more time on their own to practice and reinforce their knowledge from the classroom rather than doing plenty of exercises in face-toface classrooms. Especially for Chinese, with totally different writing and tonal system and many distinguished features, requires more exercises and drills to successfully acquire. Secondly, the activities can be finished in face-to-face classrooms groups now need to be completed individually. On the other hand, the design and teaching of the course costs two to three times more work hours for teachers to complete. (Cheng, 2011) Needs for extra time for self-study really call for high-level self-management. Unfortunately, avoiding boredom and catching up with the lesson schedules on time could be difficult for many college students. Blended learning provides many supplemental opportunities of learning online which requires students high level self-management and control. On one hand, it is essential to inform students of the importance of involvement, spending time and effort to the online learning in order to let them know the design of the blended course is to meet individual proficiency and learning styles. Therefore, taking advantage of it could be very useful to them. On the other hand, it is also necessary for teachers to better control the distance learning process (Cheng, 2011). Even though some parts of the online learning are supplementary for students to finish, it is necessary to be mandatory with the parts providing great reinforcement of the target knowledge and more chances for communication. Some of them can even be incorporated in syllabus as one of the requirements. Moreover, blended learning would unavoidably encounter the technical issues of distance learning courses (Bo Hu, 2012). For instance, there were occasions when students could not complete the assignments in time due to having no or a broken Internet connection. Students computers may not play the sound files well because the requirement of certain software and the difficulties in uploading or submitting assignments. Also, their work may lose due to the website malfunction. These types of problems could easily frustrate students and disrupt their learning process. In terms of teaching Chinese, many educators have adopted a pen-less approach to Chinese learning, where students type words phonetically and then choose from a selection of characters. Advanced software is able to show tonal markings and characters pronunciation. It can help learners to distinguish characters, improve listening comprehension skills, and aid in the pronunciation. However, some of the students might not know how to type Chinese characters. Therefore, Cheng (2011) mentioned that his design for the online Chinese courses only included the low intermediate and heritage learners because they have already learned how to type Chinese. In order to solve these potential problems, some suggestions are given as follows. Taking measures to prepare the students. As is known to all, technical support is very important, but an immediate solution can rarely be achieved. Therefore, taking measures to prepare students for such scenarios has proved to be most effective. (Bo Hu, 2012) For example, students were advised that technical problems are likely to occur and assured them of sufficient support and moral understandings from the teachers. Additionally, it was suggested to students that if technical problems occurred, not to waste time trying repeatedly to solve them but use their planned hours to do alternative tasks. Printouts of some of the online materials were also made available to the students. Precautionary measures also included training on how to use the interface to access learning materials and assignments; how to download and use the sound files; and other common matters that students may experience during their distance learning. In terms

of Chinese language learning in particular, training on how to type in Chinese characters, how to change computer settings to read Chinese texts and how to use online dictionaries can also be provided to students at the beginning of the blended course.

COURSE DESIGN
Based on the challenges and suggestions stated in the discussion part, the following illustrates a blended Chinese course design in American college settings.

Context
This is a Chinese as a foreign language course in college settings. All students in this course are American college students in the intermediate level of Chinese. The course would consist of four skills with required textbook (Integrated Chinese) and supplementary materials. It is an open enrolled course and the course has to be offered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Other stakeholders are administrators and instructors of the department and university. Owing to the budget problems and the trend for blended learning, a reform of blended learning in Chinese is required in the college.

Goal
The goal of this Chinese blended learning course is mainly to lay a foundation for students in the intermediate level to continue studying more advanced Chinese successfully. The hybrid course serves to students individual needs and provides more opportunities for students to communicate in Chinese through a variety of online materials and activities. In addition, for the purpose of improving students oral and written communicative competence, this course integrates different types of communicative activities in both traditional and online modes which helps learners to better communicate outside of the classroom. This innovative type of course would also aim to establish students positive attitude to the target language, culture, as well as their own learning.

Principles
An effective language course needs to be student-centered and communicative-based since languages are for communication. The content needs to cover the most frequent language, so that learners would obtain best returns for their efforts. Also, a course should include a roughly even balance of meaning-focused input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output and fluency activities. The course needs to be designed with consideration about learners preference with comprehensible and adequate input and enough practice in output. Timely feedback is also essential for learners improvement. Besides teaching the language, strategies for self-learning must be involved in the teaching, so that learners could continue their learning without the instructors.

Course Outline
Time: F2F: 50 minutes each class; meet on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 15 weeks in total CALL: Mandatory Attendance: Preview, Review Session and Homework/ Optional Attendance:

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Online supplementary activities Teaching Resources: Textbook: Integrated Chinese, Level 2 Part 1, Lesson 2- Lesson 8; Workbook: Integrated Chinese, Level 2 Part 1, Lesson 2- Lesson 8; Online Supplementary Learning Material: Flash, Video, Audio, Texts Equipment: CALL: Online Discussion Forum (Blackboard), Video Conference, Chat Room, Email, Voice Board, etc. Face to face: Computer, whiteboard, Projector, pictures etc. Procedures: 1. Students watch captioned videos related to the new lessons, and answer questions on videos, to gain some cultural and background information on the new topics. 2. Students preview new grammar and vocabulary points through the flash and quiz and new texts through videos, and finish follow-up exercises; students post questions on online forum and answer others (at least 3 times/semester). 3. The instructor leads students to discuss the topic and questions from the video, and summarizes questions online and gives response and further instructions in the classroom. The instructor also needs to lead the practice about new vocabularies, grammar points and conversations through various communicative activities. 4. Students finish grammar and vocabulary exercises online and on workbooks. 5. The instructor leads students to practice grammar and vocabulary through communicative practices. 6. Students complete reading comprehension questions based on dialogues in their textbook, and finish exercises on their workbooks; watch supplementary videos containing target language points. 7. Build on the vocabulary, grammar, sentence structures, and topics have been brought into the class, the instructor leads the integrated speaking practice in the classroom to reinforce their knowledge. 8. Students finish online quiz exercises and composition assignments through the Blackboard. 9. Students attend the online video conference for the listening and speaking practice (at least 10 times/ semester). 10. After finishing one unit, students need to complete a test online based on listening, reading and writing questions. Assessment: Attendance (both sessions): 10% Assignment: 20% Unit tests: 10% Midterm exam (oral test): 20% Final exam (integrated test: oral and written test):40%

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Needs Assessment
Rationale
Teaching and learning is not only asking students to absorb pre-selected knowledge from teachers, but an interactive process which need students to participate. Therefore, analyzing needs before design a course is extremely important for the orientation toward the teaching learning process. (Graves, 2000)This needs assessment is for designing a blended course for college settings in the United States and consists of two parts. The first part is a survey before the course design to gather information about students basic information, language learning needs and blended learning. The second part would be a pre-designed blended trial lesson to collect information after students experienced blended learning, which is to evaluate the course efficiency. The Survey 1. Aim: to students needs and preference 2. When: before the course design 3. Models: Grgurovi (2011), Nunan(1988) and Placement Survey in Chinese Program at UIC 4. Instrument: online questionnaire on SurveyMonkey (convenience to complete and conduct statistical analysis) 5. How: email students in Chinese classes the link of the survey 6. Content: The first part of the survey is to know learners basic information , proficiency levels, motivation factors, expectations, target contexts, their learning needs and preference; the second part is for blended learning with information about equipment, learners competence and preference about CALL to analyze the feasibility of blended learning. 7. The URL: Part 1 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FCH7CHH Part 2 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FJ6RVDS The Trial Lesson 1. Aim: to know the applicability and effectiveness of requiring grammar and vocabulary mostly learned by students online; to experiment which one is more effective: the flash or video. 2. When: before the course design; at last of the semester of Chinese class. 3. Limitation: limited trial population and learning content. 4. Procedure: a) The instructor needs to choose two new grammar points and six new vocabularies in same level. One grammar point and three vocabularies would be embedded into a conversation in a video; the others would be explicitly instructed in a flash with text and voice; two parts would be both implemented with online texts exercises. b) After posting them on Blackboard, the instructor needs to start up a forum for students to post questions after learning the grammar and vocabulary online. c) The instructor needs to collect the questions on the forum and explain the common and important ones in next classroom instruction and to lead students practice about the grammars and vocabularies d) A quiz will be offered; the result will be analyzed by comparing with traditional instruction as well as comparing the results between the flash and video instruction. e) A volunteered post-interview about how students think about this trial lesson would be proceeded at the end; the questions for the interview:

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i) How do you like or dislike this trial blended lesson, especially for the tools and content for the online portion; ii) Which tool for online grammar and vocabulary learning tends to be more appealing to you? Which tool for online grammar and vocabulary learning tends to be more useful to you? iii) Do you think this type of learning is more effective or not? Why?

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REFERENCES
Cheng, Zhaohui (2011). Online Chinese teaching and learning: A case study. Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching, Volume 2 Number2, 50-66 Goertler, S. (2011). For a smoother blend: Lessons learned from blended instruction. In S.Huffman & V. Hegelheimer (Eds.), The role of CALL in hybrid and online language courses. Ames, IA: Iowa State University. Grgurovic, M. (2011). Blended Learning in an ESL Class: A case study. CALICO Journal, 29(1), 100117. Graves, Kathleen (2000). Designing Language Courses: A guide for teachers, Heinle & Heinle Publishers Hu, B. (2012) The Challenges of Blended Learning: Critically Evaluating the Chinese Language Case. European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning, 80. Hewitt, C. B., Ryan, J. M., & Kuhs, T. M. (1993). Assessment of Student Learning in Foreign Language. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED358162). Kramsch, C. (1989). New Directions in The Study of Foreign Language. ADFL Bulletin, 21, 411 Knight, F. (2001). The Development of EFL Methodology in C. N. Candlin & N. Mercer (Eds.), English language teaching in its social context (148-166). London: Routledge. MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages (2007).Foreign languages and Higher Education: New structures for a changed world, The Modern Language Association of America, http://www.mla.org/flreport McGrath, I. (2003) Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching, Edinburgh University Press National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project (1999). Standards for foreign language learning in the 21'' century, 2"d ed. Yonkers, NY Author. Nielson, K., Gonzalez-Lloret, M., & Pinckney, K. (2009). Learning foreign languages at a distance: Characteristics of effective online courses, University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language Nunan, David, The Learner-Centered Curriculum: A Study in Second Language Teaching, The Cambridge Linguistics Series, Cambridge University Press Omaggio-Hadley,A. (2001). Teaching language in context, 3rd edition. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

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Placement Test Survey in Chinese Program at UIC

Rivera G. M. & Matsuzawa C. (2007) Multiple-Language Program Assessment: Learners' Perspectives on First- and Second-Year College Foreign Language Programs and Their Implications for Program Improvement, Foreign Language Annuals, Vol. 40, No. 4,569-583 Ricardo-Osorio J. G. (2008), A Study of Foreign Language Learning Outcomes Assessment in U.S. Undergraduate Education, Foreign Language Annuals, Vol. 41, No. 4 , 590-610 Savignon, S. J. (1998). Communicative competence: Theory and Classroom Practice, 2nd edition. NY: McGraw-Hill. Thompson, I. (1991). The Proficiency Movement: Where do we go from here? The Slavic and East European Journal, 35,375-389. Thorne, K. (2003). Blended learning: How to integrate online and traditional learning. London: Kogan Welles, E. B.(2004). Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, PROFESSION 2004, 128-153