Paper short abstract:

The study reports the effects and challenges of "ACTION TUAT!", a multimodal communication website designed for international students. The study indicates that the learners should move back and forth between the real-life language activities and contextualized language learning of the website.

Paper long abstract:

The study reports the effects and challenges of ACTION TUAT! (https://tuataction.com/) a multimodal communication website designed for international students and researchers. Multimodal communication here refers to the meaning-making interaction leveraging a multiplicity of modes, verbal as well as non-verbal signals like body movements, gazes, visual information, and tools. The study indicates that the learners should move back and forth between the real-life language activities and contextualized language learning of the website.

Globalization demands the members of the science communities to interact with each other in a multimodal and multilingual manner as they conduct research collaboratively. In such situations, it is common to regard Japanese language use as one of the resources for their communication. However, this is not a widely practiced perspective in Japanese language education and international student support.

The website gives viewers opportunities to realize the usefulness of multimodal communication to make conversations more interactive and meaningful when they interact with people around them in Japan. Its video clips show a series of daily conversations with a focus on the multimodal communication taking place on a university campus.

The study evaluated and analyzed the use of the website, using three methods: 1) Google Analytics to investigate the user features and track their website activities; 2) qualitative text data obtained by questionnaires from Japanese language learners, and 3) descriptive data from the interviews with three Japanese language learners.

The results show that the users highly rated the multimodality and interactivity of the website. However, the link between contextualized language learning on the website and real-life language activities has room for improvement. Additional user-supplied materials can enhance their integration.

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