WebLingu@: blended English language learning

Abstract

For the acquisition of a second language the World Wide Web offers an abundance of learning resources that can provide opportunities for meaningful, realistic, contextualized language activities. This paper presents the WebLingu@ project of blended English language courses, which have been designed and developed by the University of Siena Language Centre (CLA) on the FaD (Formazione a Distanza) platform. To exploit the potential of Internet resources, WebLingu@ consists of a multi-level English language resource constructed through the process of evaluation, organization and effective application of web activities. The basis for the blended course design is a wrap-around syllabus model (Mason, 1998), using the core of existing Internet resources wrapped or complemented with printed materials, online tutor support and limited face-to-face lessons. The integration of a collaboration workspace is a key factor for the development of a virtual learning community, which increases group cohesion and second language discourse production (Kasper, 1999). Overall, this paper aims to present a case study of online educational methods that support second language acquisition, as applied to online English courses at the University of Siena.