Abstract

The affordances provided by technology for increasing efficacy of foreign language education
have been a major research area within applied linguistics over the past thirty years or so (see Hubbard,
2006 for an overview). In a Japanese context, there are culturally based issues with foreign language
education at the tertiary level, such as large class sizes and low student motivation, that present edu-­
cators with specific challenges where technology may provide effective mediational means to improve
practice and learner outcomes. In this article, we describe an eight-­week teaching intervention that
was designed, through digital and web technologies readily available to teachers, to improve the
communication skills of Japanese university students of English. The strategic interaction framework,
developed by DiPietro (1987), was enhanced by use of digital video and a freely available wiki site.
Performances were digitally video recorded and uploaded to a private wiki and participants used this to evaluate, transcribe and self-­correct their performances. The instructor then used the video and text to focus post­performance group debriefing sessions. The results suggest that a wiki, digital video, and strategic interaction-­based experiential learning cycles can be effectively integrated to mediate Japanese university EFL students’ oral communication development. Technical and pedagogical re-­commendations are offered.