Innovation in Language Learning

With the development of today’s information communication technology (ICT), traditional language teaching methods in educational institutions are faced with unprecedented challenges. How to incorporate ICT into language teaching classrooms, making it an asset instead of a liability, needs to be well explored. This essay, based on the first-hand experiences of a MOOC (Massive Online Open Course)experiment conducted in a Chinese EAP (English for Academic Purposes) classroom at Harbin Institute of Technology, a key engineering university, discusses the possibility of combining modern technology with traditional approaches in order to enhance the efficiency and quality of language learning. The experiment started in 2014 as one of several projects supported by the university to launch some existing quality courses online. English for International Communication, the course of which the author is the head teacher, was the only humanity course which received a grant alongside 7 courses of science and engineering. This essay is an account of the project from investigations, hypothesis, designing and preparations, to video recording,  lesson making, and actual implementing processes. The author summarizes the difficulties facing language teachers in making MOOC lessons, suggests ways of solving such problems, and points out areas for further research.