The construct of effective online language teaching: Instructors' perspective

Online foreign language education is experiencing exponential growth. However, researchers express concern about converting face-to-face instruction into online by the means of mechanical transformation of printed-out materials into the web format without implementing appropriate language pedagogy that considers the specifics of online venues. Research investigating these issues is of the utmost importance.;This dissertation explored implementation of communicative form-focused instruction into online Russian courses by two instructors and the influence of the audio conferencing channel, the course format, and instructors' backgrounds, approaches, beliefs, and experiences on their practices.;The study was guided by the theoretical framework based on sociocultural approaches to learning and utilized qualitative methods. To address the research questions, two rounds of interviews and a reflective session with the instructors were conducted and the data from twelve hours of recorded, archived, and transcribed instructional audio conferencing sessions performed in 2004 and in 2008 were collected, coded, categorized, and analyzed. The first round of interviews aimed to investigate instructors' pedagogical approaches, epistemologies, beliefs, and teaching methods. Focus on form episodes taken as units of analysis from course transcripts were scrutinized with respect to their goals, initiators, linguistic targets, and instructional moves. The changes in frequencies and qualities of the instructional moves occurred in 2004 and 2008 data were summarized and examined. The second round of interviews with the instructors was based on the found instances of focus on form in student-teacher interactions and aimed to identify the reasons for changes in frequencies and qualities of instructional moves over the four years. The reflective session attempted to investigate instructors' perception of online language teaching and its place in language teaching.;The results suggest that the environment of audio conferences and the hybrid synchronous/asynchronous course format require some transformations in implementations of teaching methods but do not call for a paradigm shift in the core system of pedagogical beliefs and approaches. This investigation provides insight on the complex nature of the audio conferencing language lessons and informs research on the constituents contributing to the construct of effective online language instructions. This study has direct implications for the field of teacher education.;Keywords. online education, online language teaching, Russian instruction, focus on form, instructional moves, audio conferencing, audio conferences, synchronous CMC, oral CMC.