Abstract:

We have created an English language course that blends in person instruction enhanced with wiki interactive tools. The decision to offer this course as a blended course has been made for the following reasons: to motivate the students to read, speak and write, which is cited in literature as one of the benefits of using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis; to create a space for them to share their experiences; to encourage informal communication; and to provide additional channels for interaction and opportunities for collaboration. The foreign languages departments of 2 National Research Universities are equipped with a multimedia labs, which are used to deliver the course. We would like to describe an academic course we are teaching to the second year students at three universities, discuss how it is blended and address some of the issues that have emerged in the process of designing and teaching it. The level of our students’ English language proficiency ranges from A2 (pre-intermediate) to B1 (intermediate) according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2002). In the initial offering of the course, there were 2 control groups and 2 experimental groups. The control and experimental groups were taught by the same program. Throughout the course, the learners working within the framework of traditional paradigm followed the typical communicative approach routine. The participants of the experimental groups were instructed to view the material posted on the wiki and to do homework 4-6 times a week. Among the benefits of course: ease of access to the course materials and work written by the students’ peers, an opportunity to receive feedback on their writing from their peers in addition to that given by the teacher; to gain more confidence in their writing thanks to the opportunity to compare their ability to write to that of their peers and to talk to. Survey results revealed that the control group without wiki tools wanted online tools while the blended group complained of technical problems and repetitive nature of the exercises. The analysis also revealed that the group with blended learning outperformed the control groups. While the results were encouraging, continued improvement is indicated and discussed. Blended learning course organization can effectively promote the development of reading and writing skills in the context of EFL studies at the university.

Keywords:

EFL, teaching English, higher education, blended learning, wiki.