Developing a Pedagogically Meaningful E-tutor Training Program for Cyber Face-to-Face Language Teaching

This study explores essential processes for developing a pedagogically meaningful e-tutor training program for online synchronous language teaching. The pedagogical values of synchronous cyber classroom for language teaching are addressed and detailed descriptions of an online training program conducted for language teachers in a synchronous classroom teaching environment are presented. Forum postings regarding how teacher participants engaged with these processes and reflections on their own experience are categorized and analyzed to provide evidences for their professional development and competence acquirement. Findings suggest that following the e-tutor training program, all the participants were able to apply the online classroom management skills and online pedagogy learnt to real online teaching practices. Furthermore, they expressed a positive attitude towards the promising future of online synchronous language teaching.