Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

Table 2: Incorporations to the blend and student benefit by year
Year Incorporation to the blend Benefit to the students
2003 Use face-to-face instruction and enlarge
the laboratory through a course Webpage.
Practise the language outside for longer
periods of time and outside class.
2004 Manage an online voice laboratory. Practise privately to later show themselves
and classmates in the classroom they can
speak in English.
2005 Create online drills as homework
and quizzes.
Practise and thus gain self-confidence
and boost their language ego.
2006 Reproduction of video and audio files. Control of some resources to the students
giving them independence to practise in
the language.
2007 Create oral discussion boards
incorporation of synchronic
communication.
Respond in real time in non-facethreatening
scenarios.
2008 Use the blend for evaluation. Manage easily the recordings and keep
record of their performance in English
allowing them to track their progress.
2009 Use the internet and instructor production
of material.
Control the use and creation of resources,
fostering self-motivation.
2010 Word processing, email communication. Use technology they are familiar with as
part of the course.
2011 Written discussion boards. Create other environments in the course
to share with classmates and instructor.
The blend
Our blend can best be explained as the use and implementation of an ICT
environment or tool that expands the classroom walls to the virtual ICT synchronous
and asynchronous reality, thereby aiding and reinforcing classroom instruction and
enhancing learning potential. Beatty (2003: 8) asserts, ‘It is likely that in the future,
computer-based language learning tools will become pervasive and invisible’. This is
what I tried to do in the blended course. The blend is composed of several aspects
that are a fact of the course; they are inseparable now from the course. It is in a
sense what Chappelle (2001: 1) claims by stating that everyday language is tied to
technology (emailing for example); and as a result, language learning with technology
is a fact of life. Below, you will find a sample schedule that illustrates this ‘invisibility’
for the first unit of the course.
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