Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

Comments on Part 1Brian TomlinsonThe four chapters in Part 1 all describe blended learning EAP courses for universitystudents. Their countries and contexts are very different but the chapters sharemany features in common. They are all reports of pioneering courses and report theirprocedures, problems, solutions and ongoing development in ways which should beof great help to any EAP university teachers intending to develop blended learningcourses for their institutions.All four courses reported seemed to have been developed as pragmatic solutionsto problems rather than as principled attempts at pedagogic innovation. In all fourinstitutions 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 needsand language levels of the students. As in most EAP courses throughout the worldthe main challenge was for a small number of teachers to help a large numberof 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 studentsto get to know each other, to become familiar with the objectives and procedures ofthe courses, to develop a shared community, and to be provided with the reassuranceand 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 studentswere 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 individualisedtasks and feedback and allowed the students to both work in their own time at theirown pace and to collaborate with other students on shared projects in ways whichthey could not have done in the classroom.The decision to introduce the four courses and the way they were initiallydeveloped might have been determined largely by pragmatic considerations butmany pedagogic benefits of blended learning courses and many principles andguidelines for their development emerged as the courses progressed. All the coursesreported positive motivation, provided the courses got the balance right betweenface-to-face and online delivery, they all reported the benefits of students beingable to receive ongoing feedback from both their peers and their teachers and theyall reported an increase in the perceived relevance of the courses. Of course, noteverything which was introduced was appreciated and benefited from by all thestudents. Some did not like talking to machines, some did not appreciate having topost their contributions for peer feedback and collaboration to meet demandingdeadlines, and some did not always appreciate the extra workload which blendedlearning courses can impose.Comments on Part 1 | 61