Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

There was a steady increase in the amount of class time spent covering militaryEnglish from elementary to upper-intermediate, accompanied by a decrease in theamount of time dedicated to general English (see Figure 3). Moreover, at higher levelsthere was less class time and more computer and self-study time as the belief wasthat students at these levels were capable of a higher degree of autonomy, especiallyif they had attended the preceding courses which should have prepared them insome way for it. Despite these changes there was still a high degree of ‘horizontalintegration’ where there is ‘some continuity in learning tools across programs andcourses as [this] is clearly advantageous from the student’s point of view’ (Levy andStockwell, 2006: 30).Figure 3: Hours per week spent in the modesSelf-studyComputerClass – Military EnglishClass – General English2520151050ElementaryPre-intermediateIntermediateUpperintermediateMethodologyOne of blended learning’s strengths is the methodological variety that the differentmodes can provide. In our blend the general English coursebooks supportedthe largely communicative approach to language teaching and learning that weadvocated with elements of task-based and problem-based learning being providedby the military English coursebooks. Problem-based learning is a relatively newmethodology to ELT and it allows ‘students to work together in order to find solutionsto real world problems’ (Boyle and Mellor-Clarke, 2006: 3) which are situated in theirprofessional field and to which there are no fixed solutions. Self-study promoted atype of autonomous learning where the primary objective was that learners were‘engaged in self-directed work’ Littlewood (1996: 433). However, a criticism may belevelled at the design of this mode as the choice of materials was prescribed apartfrom the ‘free choice’ session on Fridays. This in essence restricted the learners’level of autonomy, if autonomy is defined as ‘the ability to take charge of one’s ownlearning’ (Holec cited in Benson, 2006: 22). A number of relatively simple changescould be made to the design to amend this, such as increasing the number of taskswithin each self-study strand and by including more ‘free-choice’ strands.180 | A military blend