Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

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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 A military blend | 177
the management of the centres would be handed over to the AFBiH). Secondly, it did not require an internet connection which was not available at the time the blend was developed in the centres. Moreover, REWARD (Greenall, 2002) was readily available in Bosnia and Herzegovina; it could be linked relatively easily to the coursebooks; the content was attractively presented; it appeared straightforward to use in design terms for the students; and because there was little else on the market that suited our needs if we were to address sustainability. Self-study was comprised of eight ‘strands’ (my terminology) that were rotated across a two-week period with Fridays being left as ‘free-choice’ for the learners. The eight strands at pre-intermediate level are outlined in Table 1. The rationale for employing different strands was to provide the learners with a range of task types to appeal to a variety of learning styles and to maintain as far as possible their motivation. The materials for these strands were developed from published English Language Teaching (ELT) resources and coursebooks, or downloaded from ELT websites, and worksheets were created or the book itself used. Table 1: Self-study strands at pre-intermediate Strands Weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 Vocabulary Monday Listening audio packs Tuesday Campaign 1 workbook Wednesday Grammar Thursday Free choice Friday Complementarity 178 | A military blend Pre-intermediate self-study Strands Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 Video Monday Task work Tuesday Vocabulary wordlists Wednesday Reading Thursday Free choice Friday The content of the three modes was linked to a relatively high degree either by grammar, vocabulary or topic. For example REWARD (Greenall, 2002), which was used in the computer mode, was grammatically linked to the general English coursebooks Headway (Soars and Soars, 2006) and Going for Gold (Acklam and Crace, 2003) that were used in the face-to-face mode. Such ‘complementarity’ between modes has been identified as an important factor in blended learning course design and we felt it to be a guiding principle in our design too. This seems to be supported by the findings from a study into student retention conducted by Stracke (2007: 57). The results indicated that one of the three main reasons that learners left the blended learning course they were attending was ‘a perceived lack of support and connection/complementarity between the face-to-face and computerassisted components of the “blend”’. Timetabling/sequencing the modes During the design process a great deal of consideration was given to the arrangement of the timetable in terms of how to sequence the modes, the optimal amount of time to spend on the modes, and the optimal number of modes to
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Blended Learning in English Languag
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ISBN 978-0-86355-706-4 © British C
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Part 3 - English for Specific Purpo
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Acknowledgements We would like to t
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To address this deficit I proposed
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Introduction This introductory chap
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an almost identical definition in h
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■■ Learners’ expectations - l
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To achieve a ‘principled approach
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its weakness in speaking.’ Contra
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References Adair-Hauck, B Willingha
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Rossett, A, Douglis, F and Frazee,
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1 A collaborative online reading an
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engaging approach to teaching, wher
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page evaluation strategies, and col
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Conclusion Students received course
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2 Blended learning in English for A
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All in the blend Reports on the app
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level of agreement or disagreement
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Hyland, K and Hyland, F (1992) Go f
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Why blend? The decision to offer th
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to complete during the before, whil
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In addition, there are a number of
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Turgut, Y (2009) ‘EFL learners’
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■■ English for Academic Purpose
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Figure 1: Stages of the incorporati
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Table 3: Schedule for Unit 1 Week U
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Internet - links and WebQuests: Som
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References Allan, M (1985) Teaching
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My advice to intending EAP course d
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5 A blended learning teacher develo
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The face-to-face element Because of
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ookmarking because social bookmarki
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and instructional design of the onl
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Encourage learner autonomy and refl
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packages, setting up online account
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Clearly there are advantages to hav
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Lessons learned When deciding what
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References Osguthorpe, RT and Graha
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The learner and the context Althoug
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typically involve writing or applyi
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where possible, to bring them toget
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8 Blended learning: The IDLTM exper
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learning and characteristics, and k
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There is a fourth activity type in
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their own style of learning. At the
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Garrison, D and Vaughan, ND (2007)
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variety of teaching contexts (e.g.
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Figure 3: The homepage in a Module
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Figure 5: The projects page carries
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adding things in response to feedba
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Appendix 1 Extract showing first th
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■■ Cambridge ESOL was reporting
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■■ Including later units on, fo
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The rationale behind the blend The
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Figure 2: An example screen from a
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Page 115 and 116: ■■ Fine-tuning of online course
Page 117 and 118: Comments on Part 2 Brian Tomlinson
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Page 121 and 122: 11 Blended learning: Podcasts for t
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Page 125 and 126: Making recommendations My friend An
Page 127 and 128: Sustainability Blended learning oft
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Page 131 and 132: The face-to-face aspect of the cour
Page 133 and 134: The course covers listening, speaki
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Page 137 and 138: not so much for language improvemen
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Page 143 and 144: 14 A longitudinal case study of the
Page 145 and 146: In the next version (v3) of the cou
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Page 157 and 158: Teaching methodology The blended de
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Page 161 and 162: Lund, A (2008) Wikis: a collective
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Page 173 and 174: 17 A thinking-based blended learnin
Page 175 and 176: In each of the above parts, the lea
Page 177 and 178: Figure 1: Cycle of working with gra
Page 179 and 180: Model by JP, Form 10 Structure Mode
Page 181 and 182: Recommendation 2 Ensure that the on
Page 183 and 184: Sokol, A (2008) Development of Inve
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Page 187 and 188: In general, the students remarked t
Page 189 and 190: 19 Students’ CALLing: Blended lan
Page 191 and 192: The students were taken to the comp
Page 193 and 194: When considering blended learning,
Page 195 and 196: Introducing Macmillan English Campu
Page 197 and 198: In both scenarios, the ratio of con
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Page 203 and 204: Conclusion Claire Whittaker
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What will the interactional pattern
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Whittaker (Chapter 16) believed tha
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Summary This chapter draws on the l
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Appendix 1 - Questions for blended
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Contributors Peter Aborisade lectur
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Jody Gilbert taught in post-seconda
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Juanita Pardo-González (BA Hons in
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The British Council is pleased to o
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Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

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