VII
Abstract
This course is designed to facilitate the learning process of English as a foreign
language in synchronous online classes and make it less complicated to learners that
face challenges due to their young age, distance environment, L1 and other individual
learning difficulties. It is a 15-week course delivered one-on-one with each individual
student for 60 minutes per week and aims to teach and practise the four skills of
communication with low-intermediate students aged 9-11 years old. This is done
through scaffolded adaptation of the activities that were previously implemented in
an online school based in China about topics of the learners’ interest in terms of
vocabulary, reading, listening, speaking and writing in addition to pronunciation,
enunciation and intonation by using different tools of technology and other online
educational games and activities. Consequently, the purpose of these activities and
games is to enhance learners’ receptive and productive skills through focused
listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as developing strong verbal and non-
verbal communication with others in the target language.
The course has been piloted with 6 learners. The learning outcomes of the Chinese
young learners indicate that the goals of the course have been successfully achieved.
Keywords: Distance learning, Virtual classroom, Video conferencing, Task Based
Language Instruction, English as a foreign language, TPR, CLT