The current paper reports on the Fall 2010 semester research in which the American author participated in three live videoconferences via SKYPE with students in the Taiwanese author’s class. Their work over several semesters has shown that their overarching methodology, which stresses student-centered instruction with authentic English instructional materials grounded in Internet social media, produces increases in student motivation, confidence, ability, and satisfaction, and that the students consider the interactions to be highly authentic and interesting because they apply social media to the EFL classroom that they already use for interaction with their friends (citations to be added after blind review). They have several years of experience using Internet communication channels to allow EFL students in Taiwan to interact with American native speakers. The authors are a male American Mass Communication teacher at a Midwest American liberal arts college who is a native speaker of English, and a female Taiwanese EFL teacher at a large private university in Taiwan. Many Taiwanese university students have had extensive previous training in English translation, reading, and writing, but little in verbal and listening skills in the context of authentic engagement with the target culture and native speakers of English. This is particularly true in courses which students perceive as difficult, such as English conversation courses. There was no full paper created for this conference.Ībstract: All teachers face the challenge of fostering positive and authentic learning experiences to motivate students. This file is the PPT from the presentation.
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