Guest Blogger Rebecca Liu: Using WeChat for Teaching Chinese

WeChat is currently one of the most popular text and voice messaging communication services developed by Tencent, one of the largest Internet service providers in China. It’s similar to most social media, but its voice message function makes it outstanding. Because texting in Chinese characters is quite slow, WeChat allows users to send voice messages. To send a voice message, the user simply holds the button, talks, and releases the button to send the message. Even if the recipient of that message is not online, he/she can still listen to it when checking messages.

Both voice message and texting inspired me to use WeChat for Chinese teaching. Voice message is a real-life way to practice speaking, and texting is good for practicing pinyin (a phonetic system to pronounce and type Chinese characters) and recognizing Chinese characters (since the students will select the characters from an option bar that has all these characters with the same pronunciation). 

In my class, many Chinese dialogues are completed by using the phone. A simulated dialogue task is always assigned to students when they finish learning certain sentence patterns and vocabulary, and they work in pairs or groups using WeChat to create the dialogue. For instance, in one task, students work in pairs to create a “Mom, I forgot my stuff at home and please bring it to school” dialogue. In the dialogue, the “child” is required to text his/her mom what school materials he/she left at home, where he/she put it, and the color of it. And the child should make an appointment with the mom to bring the stuff to school, in which they will use certain sentence patterns to ask the location and time to meet at school. The students first text each other to practice typing Chinese, and they send voice messages to each other to practice speaking. These two activities function the same with writing a dialogue and practicing it orally with a partner, but using WeChat on the cellphone makes the two activities more fun for the students, and they are more motivated to complete the exercise. When they finish their dialogue, they send me a screen shot of the dialogue page, which is easy for me to grade. Using WeChat is also a cultural learning, since this App is widely used in China in the recent years, and it still enjoys a rising popularity. I am sure my students who are going to visit China this summer would not feel unfamiliar using WeChat to communicate with Chinese people. A simple practice in class may help them prepare better for a completely different culture that they will see in summer.

Further use of this App is to make it an oral assignment platform. I have been using this App after school recently with my two students who are going to take part in an oral proficiency contest. We practice dialogues by leaving each other voice messages. I send them a question, and they send me an answer. They told me they like the way of practice, because by clicking on my voice message, they can listen to my question over and over, which helps them understand the question and answer it. And they are glad that they can still practice Chinese with me after school. In the near future, I will use it for more students. I will leave them voice messages, which will be questions we practice in class, and the students answer the question by leaving me a voice message. I can listen to their answers and grade them easily. Similar question-and-answer systems are online, but WeChat is free of charge to use.

Another possible use of this App is to make it a skype tool between students at GA who learn Chinese and my former students from CNU High School in Beijing. Students can do video call with Chinese students from Beijing practicing Chinese with them once a week.

References:

1. http://world.time.com/2014/02/21/whats-all-the-fuss-about-whatsapp-chinas-wechat-is-a-worthy-rival/

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

3. http://www.wechat.com/en/features.html#live_chat