In several developing countries with linguistic minorities where the colonial language is preferred for educational purposes, curriculum content is often presented in a language unfamiliar to a significant portion of children beginning school. When the language used for instruction is not understood, pupils do not have the opportunity to learn, and therefore neither ableto understand the content nor to interact with it by participating in class.Researchers raise concerns that those children who do not acquire adequately the language used for instruction will facedifficulties in becoming fully literate (McLaughlin,

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The aim of this paper is to provide language educators with key pedagogical principles facilitating the design or redesign of blended language learning courses. This paper is divided into two main sections. Based on supporting research evidence, the first section reflects on the importance of considering necessary conditions that allow the combination of different learning environments, faceto-face and online, in a flexible, integrated, and complementary way in order to provide an effective language learning experience. The second section examines the pedagogical organization of three courses of Italian as Foreign Language. These are examples of effective blended language learning curricula, in which the combination of face-to-face and online environments, and the balance of individual and collaborative activities maximize learning opportunities.Combined, both sections conclude that the blended format can create favorable conditions for language acquisition, when language educators make choices informed by research based principles. Such intentional choices require the exploration of learning opportunities from ad hoc combination of different components and activities.

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