Chinese University Students’ Experience of WeChat-Based English-Language Vocabulary Learning

The outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide in 2020 has posed tremendous challenges to higher education globally. Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is among the many areas affected by pandemic. unexpected transition online teaching increased for improving and/or retaining students’ proficiency. WeChat, popular social application China, was widely used TEFL at Chinese universities before COVID-19. However, it remains unclear whether use WeChat can facilitate university English-language lexical proficiency during To fill this gap, aim present study two-fold: (1) initially explored relationship between variables including academic years, genders, and faculties/disciplines, their proficiency; (2) evaluated effectiveness WeChat-assisted learning (WALL) program facilitating outcomes vocabulary. One hundred thirty-three students Northern China participated WALL three weeks. As results indicated, independent had no correlation with More importantly, decline test scores after using program, compared initial scores. Moreover, difference reported be medium. findings further proposed questions on applying vocabulary large-scaled transition. expected provide insights tertiary institutions, practitioners, student stakeholders troubleshoot potential problems regarding implementing WeChat-based pedagogies.