Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

■■ Add technological changes gradually. You cannot juggle with too many variables
at the same time.
■■ If you begin the adoption of innovation, be prepared for more work to come
your way.
■■ Integrate technology rather than simply use it.
■■ Find the appropriate tools for your course. Not all tools are for all courses.
If I found one way to foster oral communication skills, you will find your own
way to foster the skills you wish to work with.
■■ More up-to-date methodologies and tendencies will fall in place in your class
before you know it.
■■ Instructors soon discover that there is room for material design adaptation
and adoption.
■■ This is an opportunity for research and as such it needs to be well thought
out, referenced, documented, and implemented.
Blended learning over online learning and
face-to-face instruction
There are three main benefits for students that combined explain why the use
of blended learning was appropriate for this course, over online learning or
face-to-face instruction.
Blended learning offered them:
1. Flexibility in their learning environment, which addresses different students’
studying habits, schedules, and rhythms of studying. Some students do not
realise that they need more time than their classmate until they get the chance
to practise at home. One student said: ‘It allows me to practise comfortably
from home and at the speed of each learner’.
2. Personalised instructor feedback in and outside class. Some students are too
shy to ask questions or to engage in a feedback session with the instructor.
Blended learning provided non-face-threatening scenarios for all types of
students. One student said: ‘I valued the feedback given by the teachers.’
Another said: ‘The tool was useful since I could not recognise my mistakes
on my own or did not ask. The teacher always gave feedback on my expression
and on content in English.’
3. Recognition of the value of face-to-face instruction. Given the practice that
students had online they gained confidence in their language ability and proved
this ability in class, boosting their ‘language ego’. One student said: ‘It was not nice
to talk to a machine and it was nice to talk to a human being from time to time,
be it classmates or the teacher, to obtain immediate feedback and know that I
could say it!’
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