Blended Learning Approach In English Language Teaching

Abstract

In the 21st century, information and communication technologies) have developed rapidly and influenced most of the fields and education as well. Then, ICT have offered a favorable environment for the development and use of various methods and tools. With the developments in technology, blended learning has gained considerable popularity in training and education in recent years. This form of teach which combines face-to-face teaching with some technological aids has been widely used in teaching and learning. Although there have been attempts to define the term blended learning, and to understand how to make blended learning work best, considerable further research and experimentation are needed.

Key words: E-learning, Information Technology, Smart Learning, MOOCs, chunking

Introduction

Blended learning or hybrid learning describes a learning environment that either combines teaching methods, delivery methods, media formats or a mixture of all these. It also refers to the integrated learning activities such as a mixture of online and face-to-face learning. In other words, BL is a mixture of e-learning and traditional types of learning. It is mentioned as the integrated combination of traditional learning with web-based online approaches, the combination of media and tools deployed in an e-learning environment and the combination of a number of pedagogical approaches.

Team Teaching

The term team teaching refers to a method of classroom teaching in which a number of teachers combine their individual subjects into one course. They then teach the subject as a team to a single group of students. The team may be of two or three teachers or it may be five or six teachers. The team collectively takes up the teaching duty, shares the total responsibility jointly. This type of teaching helps in solving the problem of scarcity of able teachers in some areas. Team teaching is a comprehensive term with many faces. In most widely applied sense, it means giving two or more teachers a joint responsibility for the education of group of pupils larger than what is generally considered a normal size of class.

Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies; summarizing, question gathering, clarifying and predicting. Each of these strategies helps students to construct meaning from text and monitor their reading to ensure that they in fact understand what they read. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue. The job of the teacher in reciprocal teaching is to provide modeling, scaffolding, feedback, and co-operative in making efforts of understanding the material that is being thought. It involves a high degree of social interaction and collaboration, as students gradually learn to assume the role of teacher in helping their peers construct meaning from text.

Metacognitive Strategies

Writing skill is one of the important tasks in Education like listening, speaking and reading skills because writing skills are essential for our entire life. One needs to know proper skills of writing to write effectively. The learner while writing needs to be conscious and so for this the learner needs to develop or have Metacognitive strategies and use it while writing any piece of document which will help the learner to understand what he is writing and reflect upon it. Hence, the use of Metacognitive strategies will pave the way for development of the writing skills. The students with the help of Meta cognition were being able to control and regulate their cognition and cognitive processes. Students with higher metacognitive awareness are more strategic and successful in developing their writing skills. The present study helped the learners to develop writing skills in English through the effective use of Metacognitive strategies. It also helped the students to be aware of Metacognitive strategies when writing in English to overcome with writing difficulties. The use of Metacognitive Strategies helped the students in better and effective education. Metacognitive Strategies helped the students in planning, monitoring and evaluating in Writing. Metacognitive Strategies developed better listening, speaking and reading skills. Metacognitive Strategies helped in better Educational outcomes.

MOOCS

The development of a nation is depending upon the education level of its citizens. The vision behind the Indian educational structure, as laid down by our constitution, stressed upon ‘education for all’ and ‘quality of education’. We have noticed a lot of initiatives taken by the Government in education like Universalization of Elementary Education and then Right to Education Act 2009 to fulfill these two aspects. But, these two initiatives are taking place only in the school education level. We need to have a system of instruction that would cater to the need of these students, both in terms of availability and quality of the educational content. The Massive Open Online Courses serves the purpose, with the ‘Massive’ stands for outreach of the courses as it provides educational opportunity to the student’s at large scale. The term ‘Open’ gives anyone and everyone an opportunity to join the course, no biasness or restriction on the students on any bases. Online connectivity ensures that the students are given full freedom to have a self-paced learning environment that suits the individual differences.

Innovative Practices

As we enter the third millennium, education via the internet, intranet or network represents great and exciting opportunities for both educators and learners. Educators have witnessed the rapid development of computer networks and improvement in the processing power of personal computers. In addition, the internet and World Wide Web (www) have made the computer a dynamic force in distance education, providing a new and interactive means of overcoming time and distance to reach learners. Electronic learning (e-learning) is an evolving, dynamic and rapidly changing educational opportunity that is a product of the advanced information technology environment. E-learning is essentially the network enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. The internet is the largest, most powerful computer network in the world. It encompasses several million computers with internet addresses that are used by millions of people around the world. As increasingly more colleges, universities, elementary and secondary schools, companies and private citizens can have access to the internet, more possibilities are opened for distance educator, to overcome time and distance to reach students. Through the internet, all sources of information on different subjects at different levels are available anytime, anywhere.

Mobile Learning

Mobile devices in business are becoming ubiquitous (even in unexpected places such as retail and hospitality), and it makes sense to deliver learning to employees on a platform that is integral to their personal and professional lifestyles. Mobile is suited to short bursts of information, which allows you to integrate on-demand learning into your performance support system.

Social Media For Learning

People often learn as much from one another as they do from the course materials. And better than 50 percent of the workforce (and growing) is plugged into social networks as a way of life. Organizations already are incorporating social media into their core training strategy, including: Using YouTube for training videos, creating blogs for additional learning information and Creating wikis for learning resources.

Chunking

Most memory experts acknowledge that the capacity of short-term memory is about four items, but it can be expanded by chunking the information. Chunking means creating small units of information that can be combined into larger more meaningful ones. Overall, chunking helps people take in more information, and remember more of it. In today’s learning environment, chunking usually is manifested as short bursts of learning anything from 60 seconds to 60 minutes.

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