Recognized for its practical approach to education, English language learning has gained prominence in the People’s Republic of China’s education system over the past years. At the university level, China has undertaken the task to effectively teach English and assist students in cultivating intercultural competences in a multicultural world. In recent years, the advent of new technologies has resulted in many changes to traditional education in terms of when, where, what, how much one wants to learn, such that it created the potential for collaborative teaching in a setting of diverse users to support several learning styles. Online/distance learning has become ubiquitous worldwide, where it now serves as the principal source of matriculation growth in higher education. With the rise in demand in the emerging global market for international experience and cross-cultural competences, universities can transform domestic students into “global citizens” through online education serving as a virtual alternative to study abroad experience. In this respect, this paper explores the virtual alternative of online/distance education to the traditional cross cultural English teaching at the university level in cultivating cultural understanding in China’s Universities English program. This paper will seek to shed light on the structures involved in the implementation and evaluation of online/distance learning, focusing on the things that differentiate online/distance learning. Accordingly, the study also describes a newly created virtual online/distance cross-cultural English program implemented at Dezhou University, Shandong, China, “China & the World Cultural Understanding”. Subsequently, can international online virtual class help students to learn the cross-cultural skills in English firsthand and obtain the knowledge beneficial for future jobs in a global market?

 

Cross cultural english tecahing, virtual alternative, online/distance learning, English program, China, Dezhou University, China & the World Cultural understanding