When you see Chinese people typing on or talking to their cellphones, they are probably using Wechat which is a cross-platform instant messaging service created by Tencent in China and has become world famous with over a billion created accounts as of 2016. The Wechat app can be downloaded for free and is available for many systems including IOS, Android, Blackberry, etc.
Like many other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, Wechat provides a way to share and express in public. Users can put pictures, type words or do both to share anything with friends, and nobody else can see your posts unless you “allow strangers to see at most ten posts”. Wechat also supports different ways of instant messaging such as texting and sending voice messages which is one of my favorite features of it since it brings a lot of convenience to us. People can send what they want to say by just pressing a button to talk and releasing it when they finish. Besides, making videos, scanning QR code, adding contacts via other social media, finding friends nearby can also be done though Wechat. In mainland China, even shopping is available by using electronic cards.
Another feature I like most is group chat which allows up to 500 people to talk in a same group at the same time, and the most important thing is that anyone can start a group by dragging others in. I think this function can be applied into teaching in many ways. First, teachers can build a group with all the students in and communicate with them at any time. More convenient and instant than email, the group chat gives both teachers and students an opportunity to experience just like in class discussion and to learn more effectively. For example, if one student raises a question in the group, the teacher actually explains to the whole group so that other students who also have the same question benefit too, or even if the teacher is not able to answer immediately, any member in the group can help. Second, students themselves can set up different learning groups through wechat to better their discussion and facilitate communication. Therefore, I consider the group chat a very useful tool to be used in classes.
What’s more, there is an increasing number of educators and teachers starting to create their own public accounts though Wechat for many uses including sharing ideas on certain topics, recommending books, providing online lessons, etc. Therefore, students can easily follow these public accounts to learn something which may not be taught in their regular classes.
In addition, Wechat has another amazing function—translate, with many languages available including English, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, etc. When you press the target sentence for two seconds, several options pop up and the sentence will be translated after you choose “translate”. This is fantastic for students because they can communicate with each other with little language obstacles although the translation may not be completely grammatical correct.
However, Wechat has some disadvantages especially for adolescents. First, anyone in our contacts can comment on our posts and you are not able to delete them, which makes me concern that sometimes adolescents say something that are inappropriate or harmful to others so that it can be very frustrating and embarrassing if we cannot delete them. Second, as I mentioned, as for the translation, it’s a good way for students to communicate, but students could also learn something wrong especially in terms of grammar and get confused all the time.
Last but not least, there are also games available on Wechat, which may be a temptation and distraction for adolescents since they lack the ability to control themselves.
Hi Tianling,
Thank you for explaining a little more about Wechat, I have seen people use it as a texting app but didn’t really know about all the features you mentioned. When I wrote my critique on text messaging, I also thought of a popular texting app in Latin America and Spain, “Whatsapp”. Like Wechat, whatsapp has some features that regular texting does not, for example it lets you post a status, a picture of your choice and it doesn’t use much internet data. We as educators can take advantage of these apps’ popularity and promote continued learning outside of our classrooms.
Hello Tianling!
As a foreign language teacher, I see a lot of potential in Wechat – specifically the voice message feature you mentioned. I’ve struggled to find ways for my Italian students to have authentic conversations. With an application like Wechat, it seems reasonable that if a teacher were to connect his or her students with a classroom abroad using Wechat, the students could speak to one another in either the target language or similarly in English for ELL classroom with other countries.
Hi Tianling,
Having a single platform where students can communicate to discuss homework, class discussion, or solve problems is a wonderful idea as it is easy. Having the teacher create a group is, just as you pointed out, a simple way for him or her to convey a message to everyone at once. A couple questions, however, come to mind. If the teacher communicates with the students over Wechat, or any other texting platform, would it make his or her job harder in that they will be obligated to be in contact with the students at any hour of the day? (I guess they can set up rules for their group) Another question I had was, would having the teacher available through text create too much of a “friendship” between the teacher and the students, which can potentially affect their level of respect for him or her?
I need to check out the app!
Hi Laila,
Thanks for your comment. To answer your questions, I’m going to share some other features of Wechat. First, as you mentioned, there would be a lot of extra work for teachers if they don’t set up rules, so I think the teacher can make schedules like 5-6pm to be online. Also, teachers can use “Mute notifications” during their free periods so that they would not receive any reminders of this group and would check the unread group messages later at work time. Second, the teacher being a group member doesn’t mean that he/she is in students’ contact lists unless the teacher agrees to be added as friend of students’. This is another excellent part of wechat. In addition, even that the teacher is added as a student’s friend, he/she can set “Don’t share my moments” so that the student would not see any post of the teacher’s, or the teacher can create tags for students to make only certain posts be seen by students.
I’m very glad to help you if you have any questions trying this app!
Wechat enjoys increasing popular in teaching and learning in China. I once seen some students use Wechat to practice TOEFL speaking tasks. Since the limit time of each spoken message is 60 seconds in Wechat, students can practice time management of speaking tasks. Besides, teachers can provide feedback to students’ responses instantly or later.
Hi Tianling,
I really appreciate your detailed descriptions and insights about WeChat! For teachers, I definitely like the idea of sharing ideas with hundreds, maybe thousands, of other educators across the world. I am currently a part of several email subscriptions of this kind, but there’s just something about being able to scroll mindlessly through ideas at my leisure on my phone, while just killing time or on a break, à la Instagram, until I see a lesson idea or resource that sparks my interest. Thank you for your honesty about the disadvantages for adolescents as well. Creating a group with students, while setting up certain ramifications and restrictions, despite these disadvantages, merits further investigation and a possible attempt. I look forward to checking out WeChat!