Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

Figure 1: How the modes complement each other
Face to face – lead mode
Present, practice and
extend (plus skills work)
Face to face – follow-up
Review, personalise, and
assess/test
Materials and software
Computer mode
Practice (controlled) and
extension activities
Self-study mode
Practice (controlled) and
extension activities
With regard to materials, a combination of general (Headway, Soars and Soars,
2006 and Going for Gold, Acklam and Crace, 2003) and military English coursebooks
(Campaign, Mellor-Clark and Baker de Altamirano, 2005 and Breakthrough, Kosalkova
et al., 2005) were used in the face-to-face mode. Although coursebooks have been
heavily criticised in the literature for being reductionist, bland, safe, and constrictive
(Tomlinson cited in Toms, 2004; Brumfit cited in Sheldon 1988; Williams, 1983), in
this blend they were chosen as a step towards ensuring standardisation in terms of
course content across the centres, to support the relatively inexperienced officer
instructors and to help them develop pedagogically. The criteria for selection with
regard to the general English coursebooks at lower levels were how ‘easy’ they were
perceived to be to teach and the quality of the teacher’s book in terms of the support
it provided for relatively inexperienced instructors, plus the quality of the add-ons,
for example workbook, resource packs. Availability also played an important role in
the selection process. At higher levels the choice for the general English coursebook
was left to the teachers and I cannot recall the criteria that they used. With regard to
the military English coursebooks the choice was so limited that there was no call for
extensive selection criteria.
In the computer mode the learners worked independently with one learner to one
computer using REWARD (Greenall, 2002) software. It was my belief that the learners
would benefit from working individually at the computer as in a previous blend
where they had worked in pairs, using different software, there had been a tendency
for one student to be ‘active’ (controlling the mouse/keyboard and completing the
exercises) whilst the other remained ‘passive’ (watching on, rarely collaborating,
and at times even leaving the room). Therefore I was trying to prevent this in the
revised blend. REWARD (Greenall, 2002) was chosen primarily for two reasons.
Firstly, it only required a one-off purchase, thereby ensuring to a large extent postproject
sustainability in terms of cost-effectiveness. (Sustainability was of paramount
importance in the design as the UK-funded MESP had a fixed end date after which
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