Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

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Comments on Part 1 Brian Tomlinson The four chapters in Part 1 all describe blended learning EAP courses for university students. Their countries and contexts are very different but the chapters share many features in common. They are all reports of pioneering courses and report their procedures, problems, solutions and ongoing development in ways which should be of great help to any EAP university teachers intending to develop blended learning courses for their institutions. All four courses reported seemed to have been developed as pragmatic solutions to problems rather than as principled attempts at pedagogic innovation. In all four institutions the main problems facing the teachers were the large size of the classes, the inadequacy of the class time allocated to the courses and the differing needs and language levels of the students. As in most EAP courses throughout the world the main challenge was for a small number of teachers to help a large number of students to become effective users of academic English in a very short time. The face-to-face elements of the courses reported in Part 1 enabled the students to get to know each other, to become familiar with the objectives and procedures of the courses, to develop a shared community, and to be provided with the reassurance and reinforcement best achievable in one-to-one and in group face-to-face interaction. The online elements of the courses added massively to the on-task time the students were able to devote to the courses, provided opportunities for far more exposure to, and use of, English than purely face-to-face courses could, allowed for individualised tasks and feedback and allowed the students to both work in their own time at their own pace and to collaborate with other students on shared projects in ways which they could not have done in the classroom. The decision to introduce the four courses and the way they were initially developed might have been determined largely by pragmatic considerations but many pedagogic benefits of blended learning courses and many principles and guidelines for their development emerged as the courses progressed. All the courses reported positive motivation, provided the courses got the balance right between face-to-face and online delivery, they all reported the benefits of students being able to receive ongoing feedback from both their peers and their teachers and they all reported an increase in the perceived relevance of the courses. Of course, not everything which was introduced was appreciated and benefited from by all the students. Some did not like talking to machines, some did not appreciate having to post their contributions for peer feedback and collaboration to meet demanding deadlines, and some did not always appreciate the extra workload which blended learning courses can impose. Comments on Part 1 | 61
My advice to intending EAP course developers would be to take advantage of the experiences reported in the chapters in Part 1 and to design blended learning courses so as to achieve both principled learning objectives and practical solutions to problems. I would suggest that all blended learning courses should aim to: ■■ Maximise the students exposure to English. ■■ Provide experience for all students of a variety of academic genres as well as opportunities for individual students to gain further experience in those genres relevant to their academic specialisms. ■■ Increase the likelihood of student affective and cognitive involvement by providing choices of texts and tasks (Tomlinson, 2013). ■■ Cater for differing levels and aspirations by providing choices of texts and tasks. ■■ Provide opportunities for students to make discoveries for themselves about how features of English are used to achieve intended outcomes (Tomlinson, 2013). ■■ Maximise the opportunities for students to communicate in English. ■■ Provide opportunities for students to use English to achieve intended communicative outcomes in relation to the genres which feature in their academic specialisms. ■■ Provide opportunities for students to seek ongoing feedback from peers and teachers on their communicative performance. ■■ Provide opportunities for teachers to monitor the progress of their students in ways which enable them to provide constructive criticism and responsive teaching when it is most needed. What is perhaps most important though is that every course has to be different because every course is composed of different students with different wants and needs. Those wants and needs are not just linguistic; they are attitudinal too and I would advise blended learning course designers to not only provide choices within a mode but wherever possible to offer choices to students of which mode(s) to work with. For example, some students could be posting a presentation for others to listen to in their own time, some could be giving a presentation through video conferencing and others could be presenting face-to-face to a group of fellow students. Versatility and flexibility are to me the key benefits of blended learning courses and they should be exploited as much as possible. Reference Tomlinson, B (2013) ‘Second language acquisition’ in Tomlinson, B (ed) Applied Linguistics and Materials Development. London: Bloomsbury, 11–30. 62 | Comments on Part 1
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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
Page 7 and 8: Acknowledgements We would like to t
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Page 11 and 12: Introduction This introductory chap
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Page 17 and 18: To achieve a ‘principled approach
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Page 25 and 26: 1 A collaborative online reading an
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Page 31 and 32: Conclusion Students received course
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Page 35 and 36: All in the blend Reports on the app
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Page 55 and 56: Internet - links and WebQuests: Som
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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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environment and to meet the student
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■■ Fine-tuning of online course
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Comments on Part 2 Brian Tomlinson
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Learning a new language and reflect
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11 Blended learning: Podcasts for t
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to the content (see below). Additio
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Making recommendations My friend An
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Sustainability Blended learning oft
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Kukulska-Hulme, A and Shield, A (20
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The face-to-face aspect of the cour
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The course covers listening, speaki
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latest, most secure and flexible pr
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not so much for language improvemen
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the reader/listener as customer) an
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2. ‘Technology is only important
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14 A longitudinal case study of the
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In the next version (v3) of the cou
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of a blend in Collis and Moonen’s
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of telecoms engineers, but it was w
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15 Using a wiki to enhance the lear
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The ‘history feature’ which can
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Figure 4: Student created listening
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Teaching methodology The blended de
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Figure 8: Student reaction to probl
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Lund, A (2008) Wikis: a collective
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hazard a guess that it was over con
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the management of the centres would
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There was a steady increase in the
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3. User experience - feedback on th
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17 A thinking-based blended learnin
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In each of the above parts, the lea
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Figure 1: Cycle of working with gra
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Model by JP, Form 10 Structure Mode
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Recommendation 2 Ensure that the on
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Sokol, A (2008) Development of Inve
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Moreover, as a result of increased
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In general, the students remarked t
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19 Students’ CALLing: Blended lan
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The students were taken to the comp
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When considering blended learning,
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Introducing Macmillan English Campu
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In both scenarios, the ratio of con
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attending scenario 1 courses. The o
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Conclusion Claire Whittaker
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Table 1: Neumeier’s (2005) framew
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Reasons given in the literature for
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Software Author and Chapter New Lea
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Keedwell’s (Chapter 13) blend on
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Table 7: Learning theories, languag
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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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