Teaching Online: What Does Blended Learning Require?

Abstract

This chapter provides an argument endorsing blendedlearning and teaching for foreign language (FL)/second language (L2) courses, in lieu of total online learning andteaching or total face-to-face learning and teaching (FFLT). Two main arguments are posed, citing concrete examples. First, that in total online learning and teaching, one of the greatest challenges is to reduce the psychological and social distance between teacher and student that leads to a dysfunctional parser (a mental language processor) for FL/L2. And secondly, online learning and teachingencourage more input, hence clarify communication---by making not only currently incomprehensible input comprehensible but also hard-tobe-comprehended output easy-to-comprehend---- through “self-negotiation of form and meaning,” and the parser’s strategy of being “first (prosodic phrase) come, first interpreted/processed.” This chapter proceeds to strongly recommend that FL/L2 teachers make simple audio files to provide their students with spoken input to prevent students from employing the L1 strategy of “first come, last interpreted/ processed.” Furthermore, this chapter shows what kind of spoken input is to be recorded in audio files for students in Elementary Japanese II and Intermediate Japanese I.