Engaging Students through Blended Learning Activities to Augment Listening and Speaking

Abstract

Present study examines pedagogically the effect of blended learning activities to augment listening and speaking at tertiary level. Teachers provided content online that allowed measuring the students' engagement, satisfaction, teacher's role, and content and examination. Using the tools online on Blackboard®, discussion on forums and listening activities, the teacher provided the blended learning activities. The three-step strategy (3SS) framework was adopted for language learning.It provided students strategies that generated, supported and manipulated the blended learning activities for learning in the face to face sessions. The study investigates how blended learning activities motivate the engagement of students, their satisfaction, the role of the teacher, content and assessment from the students' point of view. The study uses a population of 38 students from two sections of a listening and speaking class (control G1 n = 20 and blended G2 n = 18), a placement test, examination results and responses from a questionnaire as instruments for examining the effect of blended learning activities on the students' engagement, satisfaction, teacher's role, content and examination. The results using descriptive statistics demonstrate positive effects of using blended learning activities in supporting the improvement of students' learning on listening and speaking at elementary level.e. In brief, using the evidence from the study reveals that exposing foundation year students to blended learning activities have positive effects on students' engagement, satisfaction, teacher's role, content and examination when learning English. The paper situated itself in the discussion of providing enriched language learning content online for supporting and measuring learning through the objective measurement of the content from the opinion of the students.

‘I Couldn’t Join the Session’: Benefits and Challenges of Blended Learning amid COVID-19 from EFL Students

“…a platform accessed via an internet connection, encourages students to exploit the potential of other websites to improve their English language proficiency and stimulates them to search for learning materials to fulfil their academic aims. Similar results were found by Alsowayegh et al (2019) who reported that students were motivated to search other social media accounts, and was also found by Al Bataineh et al (2019) who reported that blended learning improved students' digital skills. This result was also confirmed by other researchers (Bukhari & Basaffar, 2019;Hamad, 2017) who found that students were motivated to learn independently.…”

“…It also proves that online tests have had a positive impact on improving the students' punctuation, spelling and grammar skills. This result adds to the string of findings that blended learning supports EFL students' language skills (Al Bataineh et al, 2019;Alsowayegh et al, 2019;Bukhari & Basaffar, 2019;Gulnaz et al, 2020) and the finding of Al-Qahtani (2019) who reported that virtaul classes enhanced the language learners' communicative skills. This result also corresponds with the result from Alowedi (2020), who found that blended learning provides additional learning opportunities to EFL students.…”

“…Participants in the previous studies employed blended learning via a single platform. For example, Blackboard was used by Alsowayegh et al (2019), Alowedi (2020) and Hamad (2017), whereas Moodle was used by Al Bataineh et al (2019) and the Cambridge Learning Management System was used by Gulnaz et al (2020), and the two studies did not mention the name of the platform (Bukhari & Basaffar, 2019;Ja'ashan, 2020). However, the participants in the current study used two platforms Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and Zoom, and five reported the use of Microsoft Teams once.…”

“…The classic view of blended learning pedagogy is shared by many EFL scholars (Al Bataineh, Banikalef, & Albashtawi, 2019;Alsowayegh, Bardesi, Garba, & Sipra, 2019;Bukhari & Basaffar, 2019;Gulnaz, Althomali, & Alzeer, 2020). These scholars view blended learning as describing situations in which students meet their instructors in a face-to-face setting as well as engaging in activities posted online, such as online test, tasks and assignments.…”

“…In a study conducted at King Abdulaziz University, Alsowayegh et al (2019) used experimental research methods. They explored the effects of using blended learning via Blackboard to supplement EFL students' listening and speaking skills.…”