Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

My advice to intending EAP course developers would be to take advantage of theexperiences reported in the chapters in Part 1 and to design blended learningcourses so as to achieve both principled learning objectives and practical solutionsto 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 asopportunities for individual students to gain further experience in those genresrelevant to their academic specialisms.Increase the likelihood of student affective and cognitive involvement by providingchoices 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 howfeatures 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 intendedcommunicative outcomes in relation to the genres which feature in theiracademic specialisms.Provide opportunities for students to seek ongoing feedback from peers andteachers on their communicative performance.Provide opportunities for teachers to monitor the progress of their students inways which enable them to provide constructive criticism and responsive teachingwhen it is most needed.What is perhaps most important though is that every course has to be differentbecause every course is composed of different students with different wants andneeds. Those wants and needs are not just linguistic; they are attitudinal too and Iwould advise blended learning course designers to not only provide choices withina mode but wherever possible to offer choices to students of which mode(s) to workwith. For example, some students could be posting a presentation for others to listento in their own time, some could be giving a presentation through video conferencingand others could be presenting face-to-face to a group of fellow students. Versatilityand flexibility are to me the key benefits of blended learning courses and they shouldbe exploited as much as possible.ReferenceTomlinson, B (2013) ‘Second language acquisition’ in Tomlinson, B (ed)Applied Linguistics and Materials Development. London: Bloomsbury, 11–30.62 | Comments on Part 1