A fliped classroom experience to analyze language interaction in a group of students of English as a foreign language

Abstract

This paper reports a research project carried out with eighth graders at the Pierre de Fermat School in Bogotá. The main objective was to analyze how this EFL group put into evidence language interaction through a flipped classroom experience in a blended learning environment. The type of research design was action research and the instruments used to collect data were video recordings, students’ production tasks in a virtual environment and a journal. Considering the data gathered, this research attempted to evidence how eighth graders, by participating in activities based on task-based instruction, interacted in the language classroom and beyond it within a virtual environment. The findings suggest that learners interacted in different and meaningful ways when exposing them to a blended-flipped scenario, unveiling signals and features that demonstrated students were able to sustain a conversation by using different resources with their interlocutors. Negotiation of meaning, social communication as well as learning strategies, real world contexts and materials, and collaborative work were the most remarkable patterns of interaction found in the context of this research project. The implementation of technology also played an important role which pretends to open up a path for further research on the implementation of ICTs on language teaching and learning.