Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

Facilities and available technology
The course took place in a classroom at the taxi association. There was a whiteboard,
a projector and screen, and wireless internet access. All students had mobile phones,
and internet at home.
The syllabus
The syllabus was based on functional and emergent language (for example, providing
information about the fare, offering assistance) with only brief grammar explanations
related to the context and usually as a summary at the end of a lesson or topic.
The content
As there was very little time for me to prepare the course, I did some research
online to find ready course material like coursebooks or videos with short dialogues
but there was not much there, other than a few useful phrases. Therefore, I decided
to structure the course around the typical stages of a taxi ride – from when the
passengers get into a taxi until they are dropped off. I wrote a few sentences which
I, as a potential passenger could think of, for each stage and also used some phrases
I found on the internet. I planned to have the taxi drivers add more sentences and
develop the dialogues fully. I was the English language expert but they knew much
better what kind of conversations take place during a ride.
At certain intervals, I asked students to create new dialogues from what we had done
so far in order to review the language. They recorded these on their mobile phones,
sent the files to me and exchanged them among each other for feedback in class.
Blended approach
I took a blended learning approach for this course, which will be described in
detail below.
Why a blended approach?
A thoughtful blend of synchronous and asynchronous communication and integration
of tools can enhance learning (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004).
Situative perspective
In the above context, the situative perspective of learning (Mayes and de Freitas,
2007) fits very well. It states that the socio-cultural setting influences the learning
and the learning outcome (ibid.). According to this socio-psychological view, ‘learning
must be personally meaningful’ (ibid.: 18). The activities should be ‘authentic to the
social context in which the skills or knowledge are normally embedded’ (ibid.).
This is certainly the case with my taxi driver students, with strong personal ties
between co-workers. They have been a learning community (ibid.: 19) for many years,
helping each other learn the trade and now learning and practising English together.
As stated above, they derive motivation from the fact that the course content is
meaningful and immediately applicable. This is also ensured by their contributions
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