Online teaching of Chinese as a second language in an extended COVID-19 situation. How to engage students in active learning

Due to the continued Covid-19 epidemic, the Italian universities courses carried out face-to-face had to remain online with a severe impact for language courses, where classroom interaction has an essential role for language acquisition. In order to enhance interaction and students’ participation, the teachers chose a mix of asynchronous and synchronous teaching tools to engage students in language activities, with a focus on synchronous activities. This chapter analyses the use of asynchronous and synchronous tools to promote students’ active language learning, including the use of video-lessons and other materials to promote students’ self-learning, the assignment of real-life tasks to stimulate students’ production and the use of synchronous communication platforms, virtual classrooms and chatrooms to enable student-teacher and peer-to-peer interaction. The choice of teaching methods was based on the existing literature. This chapter covers their application and presents some findings and final remarks based on teaching experience and on questionnaires filled out by students.