چکیده:
The present study was intended to investigate the impact of blended and classroom teaching methods on Iranian EFL learners’ writing. To this end, a group of 29 upper intermediate and advanced EFL learners were randomly placed in two groups: an experimental group, namely Blended Learning and a control group, namely Classroom Learning after taking part in a placement test. Participants of the Blended Learning group received traditional teaching methods of writing plus learning through the web. Participants of the Classroom Learning group, however, were taught based on the traditional teaching methods of writing and received the materials, instructions, and feedback merely through traditional methods. In order to collect the data, participants’ first piece of writing was regarded as the pretest and their last one was the posttest. The results of the independent-samples t-tests showed that participants of the Blended Learning group significantly outperformed the ones in the Classroom Learning group in their writing performances. In conclusion, the results of the study revealed that employing a blended teaching method can create a more desirable condition to enhance the EFL learners’ writing performance and that doing research in this field can be a promising area for those interested.
خلاصه ماشینی:
In conclusion, the results of the study revealed that employing a blended teaching method can create a more desirable condition to enhance the EFL learners‘ writing performance and that doing research in this field can be a promising area for those interested.
Hence, as argued in Wold (2011), an effective instructional design model appropriate for online foreign language writing courses has not been found and designers of such a model should adopt models which use a combination of traditional teaching methods and techniques as well as techniques from CALL.
Background Along with the introduction of computers into classrooms, CALL has been widely used in various fields to facilitate the teaching and learning of different aspects of foreign languages, among which the persuasive applications include word processing, games, corpus linguistics, computer-mediated communication, www resources, adapting other materials for CALL, and personal digital assistants (Bahrani, 2011; Chang, Chang, Chen & Liou, 2008; Fidaoui, Bahous & Bacha, 2010; Liou, Yang & Chang, 2011; Romeo, 2008).
It should be the same with traditional foreign language writing courses, because blended learning have been found to offer a process-oriented environment for collaboration, communication, confidence building, and better attitudes towards writing that does not exist when working exclusively online (ChihHua, 2008; Clark & Olson, 2010; Colakoglu & Akdemir, 2010).
Empirical studies on blended learning in language classes fall into comparison (Barr, Leakey, & Ranchoux, 2005; Chenoweth & Murday, 2003; Chenoweth, Green & Youngs, 2001; Scida &Saury, 2006) and non-comparison studies (Bañados, 2006; Grgurović, 2011; Stracke, 2007).