The Increasing Need for Blended-learning Models in Courses of English for Specific Courses in Romanian Universities

Abstract

Unlike many academic subjects, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching and learning presents challenges from the start: a new language, new vocabulary, unrecognizable words, unfamiliar sounds, grammar explanations, and of course the expectation for students to actually say something and many other problems related to learning for authentic communication in English as well as offering students a specialised English course. As a result, today ESP teachers are searching continually for new resources and materials that can offer genuine instructional assistance throughout the language-learning process. Over the past few years, blended-learning (BL) has been a popular topic in English Language Teaching (ELT) but it has expanded in many other academic subjects due to its usefulness. Recent studies indicate that blended-learning technology into ESP classes produces two significant results, namely (a) students learn quicker and better through a virtual learning environment (VLE) which is learning flexible, offering them autonomy and self-pacing according to their interests and needs and (b) teachers have more time to do what they do best, i.e. use the rich resources of the classroom to provide interesting lessons. Even so, some teachers choose to only use BL techniques, while others argue that it is problematic and offers nothing new. In both cases, more discussion on BL is required by stimulating debate and action research. In this context, this paper describes how effective the blended-learning methodology is in the context of an ESP course for adult students in long-life learning education system within an engineering faculty, how well the technological support works both on the part of the teacher/tutor and that of the students, issues about its implementation and partial results in the piloting of its first module.