10

Demystifying Blended Learning

Freda Mishan

Introduction
Blending whether it be of families, fruit or learning appears to be a leitmotif of our
time, hybridization supplanting homogeny in the endeavour to achieve the optimum
result. The term blended learning (BL) gradually seeped into our consciousness
from the early 2000s, contemporaneously finding its way into language pedagogy
a field renowned for being early adopters (Crystal, 2001). It seemed, initially, to be
a new term, rather than a new concept, referring to the combining of face-to-face
and technology-based learning that characterized the integrated way technology was
already used in educational contexts. The approach of blending learning with faceto-face [...] teaching and learning is as old as CALL [Computer Assistant Language
Learning] itself Neumeier notes (2005, p.63). So is this yet another instance of old
wine in new bottles?
A trawl through the literature on blended learning reveals that its hallmark is a more
sophisticated attention to the basis on which technology is integrated into learning
environments in contrast perhaps, with the early gung ho CALL period and
arguably, as Stracke claims (2007), developing out of the perceived failure of dedicated
e-learning environments which lacked a face-to-face component. The emphasis in
blended learning is on the need for a principled mix of online and classroom-based
activities (Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012b, p.46, my italics).
The blended learning ethos might thus represent in effect the latest stage in the
development of CALL and arguably the culmination of its aspirations all along a
seamless integration of technology into language learning environments achieving the
optimum balance and coherence between the various elements and retaining sound
language pedagogy. Pedagogy features highly in the (abounding) definitions of blended
learning, Oliver and Trigwells being often cited: combining pedagogical approaches and

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methodologies irrespective of the technology used, to produce an optimum learning

outcome (Oliver and Trigwell, 2005, p.17).
This chapters quest is to examine the implications for language teaching of this
latest shift in the educational landscape. This involves, first, looking at the theoretical
basis for blended learning, with particular reference to language learning. A framework
for blended language learning (BLL) is then proposed and its implementation
illustrated using two case studies, following the model of other recent literature on
blending technologies for language learning, such as Motteram and Sharma, 2009;
Nicolson, Murphy and Southgate, 2011; Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a. The way in
which materials fit into a BLL structure is demonstrated throughout the chapter using
samples of blended language learning materials from various points on the face-toface technology spectrum.
BLs theoretical roots are seen as being social constructivism and cognitivism (see
Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a and Delialioglu and Yildirim, 2007), socio-constructivist
principles informing the collaborative elements in blended learning, and cognitivism
relating to activities such as the use of epistemological online tools, for example
glossaries and search tools. (Interestingly, presumably to take account of the use of
traditional drill and practice software quizzes and the like comes reference also to
behaviourist principles (Delialioglu and Yildirim, 2007; Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a).)
Blended learnings socio-constructivist roots clearly chime with those of task-based
language teaching, TBLT. The intrinsic task-technology fit has been comprehensively
described and illustrated elsewhere (e.g. in Thomas and Reinders (2010) Task-Based
Language Learning and Teaching with Technology), with the collaborative affordances
of Web 2.0 tools completing the synergy between task, tools and collaborative
knowledge construction (see Thomas, 2009, Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning).
Another methodology which sprang from these shared roots, Problem-based learning,
is given a blended learning framework in one of the case studies below.
To home in on the principles underlying blended language learning, Motteram
and Sharma describe language teachers as being armed with a sophisticated toolkit
consisting of Web 2.0 technologies, their knowledge of SLA [and] their understanding
of methodology and the needs and desires of their learners (2009, p. 7). As the
authors also point out, the tenets underlying blended language learning default, at the
basic level, to those for any and all language learning contexts insofar as they draw
on what we know about promoting second language acquisition. Crucial for this are
language input and purposeful interaction, opportunities for language focus for example
awareness-raising tasks or error correction, and, underlying the whole language learning
endeavour, motivation for engaging in it. Todays digital native learners come to the
blended learning context with formidable skill sets and digital literacies which facilitate
the achievement of these principles. These are arguably hardwired, (Prensky, 2001a,
2001b, see also a report on the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project with third world
youngsters, in Stokes, 2012), and include capacities for multi-tasking, tolerance of noncomprehension and information surfeit, problem-solving, networking/collaborating and
register-shifting for different communications media. These are crucially transferable
skills with particular resonance for language learning.

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209

The fitness of our learners to engage with it is proof that blended learning is a
logical and natural evolution of our learning agenda (Thorne, 2003, p. 16): it is part
of the normalization of technology whereby technology is already intrinsic to leisure,
work and learning practices, in the West at least. Most teachers are probably blending
learning to a greater or lesser extent already; themselves and their students deploying
technologies ranging from basic PC desktop tools to Web 2.0 applications and mobile
phones in their educational contexts.
Blended learning in the United States, often termed hybrid instruction is
associated in the main with tertiary education (see, for example, Oliver and Trigwell,
2005; Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a). In third-level institutions, virtual learning
environments (VLEs) incorporating a range of technological applications are a common
feature, and BL tends to be seen as a model conceived and implemented at curriculum
level. BL has been particularly embraced for distance learning programmes such as
the Open University (see Nicolson etal., 2011), which has long used a combination of
audio-visual materials and face-to-face sessions.
Staying with third level, blended learning can also be seen as the overarching
approach influencing the flipped classroom movement which inverts traditional
pedagogical practice by providing the input (lecture) material online for self-access and
using classroom time for face-to-face in-depth enquiry and debate. From the language
teaching perspective there is a certain irony in the flipped classroom concept in that
pedagogical practices in other subjects appear to be discovering what has been the
key to successful language teaching practice since the inception of the Communicative
approach: The flipped or inverted teaching structure presents instructional content
[...] delivered outside class, and engagement with the content skill development
and practice is done in class, under teacher guidance and in collaboration with peers
(Ojalvo and Doyne, 2011). Teachers face the challenge of meaningful interaction with
students that leads to learning (Thoms, 2012, p.2150). While not novel to language
practitioners, by refocusing on the quality of the face-to-face interaction, the flipped
classroom concept can be seen as a valuable safeguard to this facet of blended learning
(for the language learning as well as other contexts).

A framework for blended language learning

As will have become clear from the above discussions, a truly blended learning
curriculum would consist of learning activities ranging across the face-to-face
technology spectrum and integrated in a principled way. In an attempt to provide a
blueprint for curriculum and tasks in the language teaching context, a conceptual
framework is proposed below (along the lines of ones conceived by Laurillard, 2002;
Neumeier, 2005; Bonk and Graham, 2006; and Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a), in which
activities and materials are conceived as adhering to dimensions that cross-match with
the face-to-face technology continuum. The continuum is essential, it should be
noted, in representing the increasingly blurred distinction between these two modes

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(Neumeier, 2005, p. 165); the continuum is reflective of the varying paradigms of

interaction with technological tools (Figure10.1).
This schema conceives of face-to-face and technology as modes each with
corresponding sub-modes; those for face-to-face teaching, for example, range from
traditional teacher-learner transmission mode to learner to learner dyad/group work.
The technology mode can involve learners working online or offline, interacting
synchronously (e.g. on mobile phones or instant messaging) or asynchronously (as
with email) as well as individually or in pairs/groups.
The materials dimension represents materials from the point of view of how they
are presented to learners, rather than how they are generated or delivered (after Mayer,
Mode
f2f

Technology
Submodes

Teacher learners
Teacher learners
Learner class

Tools (samples)
SNS, wiki, web page, LMS,
mobile phone, bulletin board,
blog, Skype, YouTube

Online/offline
Synchronous/asynchronous
Individual/dyad/group

Learner class
Individual/dyad/group
Materials
Static

Printed hand-out/
image
Webpage

Dynamic

Textbook

PPT

Prezi

Recorded audio-visual
e.g.YouTube Skypecasts
Recorded audio
e.g. podcasts

Learners Materials

Models of integration
Sequencing
Structure
Interactions
Scaffolding

Figure10.1 A framework for blended language learning.

Live radio/ Mobile texting/

TV
chat
Wiki, SNS
Online chat

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211

2005, cited in Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a). This puts the focus on the learning impact
of the material, while at the same time normalizing (ignoring) the technology used to
generate it. Using this perspective, texts range along the continuum from static through
to dynamic. A printed handout, therefore, is considered static whatever its source
(newspaper, web-generated etc.). Somewhat less so are Powerpoint presentations,
with Prezi presentations more dynamic, progressing to audio- and audio-visual
material and finally to live texts being produced synchronously and interactively; SMS
messaging, online chat and so on.
This brings us to the learner-material dimension which appears on the schema
as a two-way symbiotic relationship. This is because materials at the dynamic
end of the spectrum in particular, are learner-produced and learner-influenced. More
fundamentally, this symbiosis corresponds to a reader-response concept (after Iser,
1980 and elsewhere), in which the meaning of a text (it could be added for our
context, anywhere on the static-dynamic continuum) is not fixed and immutable but
is interpreted by the reader/viewer.
The core dimension that gives coherence to the blended learning task, and by
extension, the curriculum in general, is the model of integration (drawn on Neumeier,
2005) that is, the framework/s for the sequencing and interleaving of the submodes.
Integration is the key to the success of the truly blended learning curriculum. Where
one of the blended elements such as a blog or discussion forum is perceived as
an add-on perhaps, quite simply, in terms of participating in it not being assessed
students may eschew participation. Instances of this can be cited from experiences at
the authors own institution, the University of Limerick, Ireland. In the first example, an
undergraduate module in French language and society, weekly blog writing tasks (in
French) were included with the intention of promoting critical reflection, collaboration,
and target language output, but participation could only be enforced by including a
minimum blog word count (words per posting or WPP) in the module grade. Similarly,
a postgraduate language teaching practice module which piloted a blog for group
interaction and reflection, ended up dead in the water until, subsequently, it was
factored into the module grade. The model of integration needs, furthermore, to be overt
to the learners; complementarity, the interrelationship between the components of BL,
needs to be made transparent (Stracke, 2007). Together with the sequencing of the
interwoven modes, attention also needs to be paid to appropriate on-going scaffolding
throughout; something that was sometimes neglected in the because we can school
of CALL (Meskell, 2007). For instance, as pointed out by Towndrow and Cheers (2003)
open prompts such as discuss this topic on an online communication channel (bulletin
board, SNS, Twitter etc.), imply an assumption that the mere affordance for interaction
will inevitably promote it. Provision of scaffolding has also to take account of changing
classroom configurations and the shifting hierarchical relationship that has come about
due to technical and pedagogical innovation. These shifts can even be manifested
physically in the classroom set-up the ideal blended classroom would consist of
moveable desks and chairs, a centrally placed projector/screen and available PCs/laptops
(Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a, p.107) with a collaborative VLE set up for class work.

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Blended learning tools

Any and all technological tools can be integrated with face-to-face tuition in the
creation of a blended learning environment. Case studies on blended learning report
myriad combinations, combining face-to face with the more traditional technologies
such as the telephone (as, for example, described in Brash and Nicolson, 2011); online
multimedia software (as reported in Baados, 2006); online Web 2.0 tools (discussed
in Motteram and Sharma, 2009), online corpus tools (these would include Wordle, see
below, and traditional corpus tools, see Case Study 1 below) and latterly, with mobile
phones.
In the now burgeoning practice of m-learning (mobile learning) the innovative range
of uses of the mobile falls clearly into a blended learning framework. An overview of
mobile language learning by Kukulska-Hulme and Shield (2008), for instance, revealed
that although mobile phones are self-evidently intended for (two-way) communication,
they were predominantly used in m-learning contexts for delivering content, thus
effectively constituting a distance medium for delivering material; a classic BL mode.
Examples of this include a case study by Kennedy and Levy with beginner Italian
students, where the teachers supplemented their face-to-face classes with SMS
messages to students containing bite-sized lessons triggering vocabulary related to
what was being studied in their classes (Kennedy and Levy, 2008), and a research
study in the same area, vocabulary learning, conducted with English language learners
in Japan (Stockwell, 2010).
A useful addition to the mobile phone repertoire is the collaborative tool txttools
(other software includes ConnectTxt and polleverywhere) which allows the user to
send and receive texts to and from multiple users, with the responses being collated
directly into graphic form. Third-level education has been an early adopter, with text
tools being used to gather real-time student response to lectures or other input mode,
to garner in-lecture queries or feedback, for instant pop quizzes and so on, generating
a natural and integrated learning blend.
The technologies involved in blended learning are not limited to communications
tools; presentation tools such as Powerpoint and Prezi are being harnessed for learning
blends. Freely available online, Prezi is fast overtaking Microsofts Powerpoint as the
default presentation tool (at time of writing) and is far more appealing to student-aged
users. It is more dynamic than its predecessor and has an organic, living feel to it
which tends to diminish the distance between presenter and audience making it more
in tune with the fluid nature of the BL environment. A presentation tool with a similar
organic feel is the word cloud generator Wordle. Wordle offers corpus linguistics
in its most basic form (Brindle, 2012, p. 25), being a crude frequency counter that
generates output of any inputted text as a word cloud and where the size of the word
is proportional to its frequency in the text. Wordle (www.wordle.net) is freely available
online and simple to use, and Wordle tasks can be built into the BL framework as
a technology submode. Among its many possible applications, Wordle lends itself
to a sort of quick and dirty genre analysis; for instance if a comparable newspaper

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213

story from each of two different newspapers types (broadsheet and tabloid) is fed
into Wordle, a graphic illustration of the contrasts will be shown (as in samples in
Figures10.2 and 10.3), from which learners can extrapolate the lexical conventions of
each type of newspaper and make generalizations regarding genre. (For more on the
use of Wordle for language learning, see Brindle, 2012.)

Figure10.2 Wordle word cloud generated from tabloid newspaper story 4 December
2012 (headline Royal twins? Kates condition hints at multiple birth not included). Full
text in Appendix 1.

Figure10.3 Wordle word cloud generated from broadsheet newspaper story 4 December
2012 (headline William returns to bedside of pregnant Kate, not included). Full text in
Appendix 1.

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Blended language learning case studies

As has been pointed out above, the blending of learning operates at levels ranging from
the task up to the curriculum (Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a conceive these roughly as
micro and macro levels respectively). The two case studies which follow illustrate how
blended language learning can operate in language teaching, in the teaching of English
as a foreign language, EFL, in the first case, and the second in the learning of Irish.
They demonstrate how two different methodologies, data driven learning (DDL) in
the first and Problem-based learning (PBL) in the second, are implemented via a BLL
framework.
In Case Study one, the focus is mainly on the micro level, the task, or what Gruba and
Hinkelman term the blended task (2012a, p.103), in order to reveal the functioning of
the mode-materials blend. As a microcosm of the BLL paradigm itself, a blended task
can be situated at any point (or series of points) along the mode continuum, ranging
from predominantly face-to-face, to learners having online access throughout the task
with little or no teacher mediation.
This case study offers two snapshots of contrasting blended tasks carried out with
the same group, an Advanced (CEFR level B2/C1) EFL class following a semester-long
programme at the University of Limerick, Ireland, in Autumn 2012. The overarching BL
framework used for the module was in one sense a classic case of the expediency
that has been seen as frequently underlying the approach (see, for example, Whittaker,
2013). In a drive for cost-effectiveness, module contact hours had been cut from four
to three, the fourth hour being non-face-to-face self-access.
In the first task, it is shown how a consciousness-raising task, in this case datadriven as it involved examining raw corpus data (see description of DDL below) was
given a blended learning framework. The core course book for the programme, the
Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) book Objective Advanced (ODell and Broadhead,
2012) was the starting point. Presented with the verb patterns:
Do you wish you .... . (meet) me earlier?
I wish I .... . . (have) more time [... ].
I wish .... . (inform) you of our decision. (Ibid., p.24)
It became clear that the learners needed to clarify patterns and match these to
functions and meanings. As a first step, the teacher generated a concordance for the
search string I wish ... from an online corpus (the British National Corpus, BNC), see
Figure10.4.

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215

1 I wish youd stay, just for once!

2 I wish I had more time for reading; it means a lot to me.
3 I wish you all Long Life
4 I wish I could see you for myself all the same.
5 I wish to talk to you about your husbands death.

Figure10.4 Sample of concordance lines for search string I wish generated from the
BNC online corpus/concordancer (www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk).
From this concordance, the teacher produced a worksheet (to be made available to
students both electronically and in hard copy) consisting of (43) concordance lines
containing I wish, and with the following rubric (Figure10.5).
In this concordance from the BNC, look for patterns used with I wish.
Make SETS of examples for each pattern, identify the structure, and its
function and tense/time reference.
e.g. examples: I wish he would give up smoking.

I wish you would call me Miguel.
Structure: I wish (s.o) would + verb . ... ...
Function: a wish regarding someone else

Figure10.5 Rubric for I wish classification task.

The worksheet was made available on the university learning management system
(LMS) as well as in hard copy, and links to the BNC and other free online corpora (such
as Lextutor, www.lextutor.ca) were also posted on the LMS for further consolidation
work. It was intended that the next part of the task would take place at the opposite
end of the BL continuum with learners conducting the task electronically and online
(generating further concordances from other corpora or refining the search term/s),
studying individually or in pairs. In the event, a number of students adhered to working
on the hard copies alone, confirming previous BL case-study findings (Delialioglu and
Yildirim, 2007; Stracke, 2007) and evidence that the preference of some learners
for print materials noted by those authors in 2007 still holds true. The next stage of
the task consisted of face-to-face work, when students came together in class and
compared their findings in peer groups. In the consolidation stage, students presented
their functional sets for class discussion, see samples in Figure10.6. The concluding
stage was at the technology pole of the mode continuum, with the full sets placed on
the LMS for individual study.

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Set 2
Structure: wish (s.o) had + past participle (=past perfect)
Function: a regret (regarding the past)
I wish Id stayed at home to clean the oven after all.
I wish Id taken the money now!
I wish I had known her.
Set 3
Structure: wish (s.o) subjunctive/past
Function: a wish/regret (to change the current situation)
I wish I werent so far away from her.
I wish I had more time for reading.
I wish it was Friday.

Figure10.6 A sample of extracts from functional sets for I wish.

This exposition of this first task demonstrates, first, how the concept of blended
learning gives a coherent framework to tasks that are multi-modal. It also illustrates
the inherent flexibility of the blended learning paradigm and how BL is intrinsically
learner led. Where learners are given more autonomy they will revert to their learning
comfort zone, be this working online, onscreen or with traditional print-based materials.
Most importantly though, it shows the demarcation between the BL framework and
the pedagogical approach in this case, consciousness-raising, inductive learning
of language patterns, using concordance (corpus) data. The term DDL, data driven
learning, is used for this approach (originated by Johns, for example 1991) and involves
learners examining raw corpus data to infer syntactic rules in what was, at the time of
its development, a radical inversion of the PPP (Present, Practice, Produce) model.
For the second snapshot we fast forward to end of semester where part of the
module assessment was conducted as an online grammar quiz accessed by students
independently. The University LME was used to deliver the test, with students given
a time-limit (5days) in which to access and take the 15-minute quiz. Security was built
into the system via this time limit and by the fact that students were precluded from
re-taking the test. The question checking the above language patterns with I wish,
is reproduced in Figure10.7. As with the first task described, this mechanism, online
testing, is intrinsic to blended learning environments (see Gruba and Hinkelman, 2012a)
and it was perceived by students as a natural progression of their module blend.
To summarize, the progress and process of the blend in this series of tasks is
extrapolated from the above framework for BLL (Figure10.1) and mapped as Figure10.8.
Task numbers match those of the materials used for each. These are marked along
the static-dynamic dimension and also given a presence on the bidirectional learnersmaterials dimension.

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Demystifying Blended Learning

Figure10.7 Extract from class quiz testing item I wish.

Mode
f2f

Technology
Submodes

1 Teacher learners
3 Learner class

Tools

web page, LMS

2 Online/offline, synchronous/asynchronous,

Individual/dyad/group
4 Online: Individual, synchronous

Materials
Static

Dynamic

2 Printed hand-out
1 Textbook/PPT
4

3 Restructuring hand-out

Quiz

Learners Materials
2 learner concordances
4 learner quiz

Models of integration

Sequencing
Structure
Interactions
Scaffolding

Figure10.8 Case study one blend procedure mapped on the framework for blended language learning (Figure10.1).

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Developing Materials for Language Teaching

The second case study, the teaching of Irish, uses a blended learning framework to
implement a Problem-based learning methodology thus illustrating what could be seen
as a synergy between the two, deriving from their shared socio-constructivist roots,
described above. PBL in a sense concretizes socio-constructivist principles conceiving
of learning as a process of constructing knowledge in social environments, and hence
learning as a collaborative construction of knowledge. In PBL, the trigger for learning
is a problem which learners work on in groups to research (online and offline), reason
through, and solve in a staged and structured way, with the crucial aspect of selfreflection on the learning process built into the structure. The problem is (ideally)
designed in such a way as to encapsulate some or all of the learning outcomes for the
programme of study. PBL originated in the field of medical education (Barrows, 1986)
and has been adopted across the disciplines, principally in higher education, in areas
as diverse as Business, Engineering, Software design, Teacher Education, English
Literature and, as in this case, language learning (see also Mishan, 2010).
The milieu for this case study was a University setting, the University of Limerick,
Ireland where the Irish Language Promotion Unit, Aonad na Gaeilge, is tasked with
growing the use of the Irish language in line with its status as the official language of
the Republic of Ireland.1 Piloting the teaching of Irish to University personnel through
the use of mentors, twinning expert speakers with novices, Aonad na Gaeilge decided
to give the participants a focus by using a PBL methodology within a BL framework
as the mentors were situated at a distance from the University. For the PBL trigger,
participants were asked to collaborate on the design of a language and cultural holiday
for families in the West Kerry Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking region).
The BL framework was appropriate for this project in that contact ranged across
the whole mode continuum, bracketed, so to speak, with initial and concluding faceto-face sessions. Starting with a two-day face-to-face familiarization and brainstorming
event, most of the rest of the collaboration and mentoring was via Skype at the
opposite end of the continuum, concluding with two final face-to-face feedback
sessions. Two PBL groups were composed, each having its own characteristic and
slightly different blend. This illustrates an aspect of blended learning that has been
considered so central as to make it a defining feature; its flexibility in terms of catering
to different teaching and learning styles (see Heinze and Procters definition: Blended
learning is learning that is facilitated by the effective combination of different modes
of delivery, modes of teaching and styles of learning, 2004, p.11). For both groups,
Skype sessions were central to the interaction due to geographical distance. One group
made Mp3 recordings of these which were made available on the cloud computing
software SoundCloud. This was supplemented with an email from the group mentor,
in which he noted any language points arising from the Skype interactions. This gave
participants an opportunity to go over new language individually and assess their own
improvement in confidence, accuracy and so on, from week to week. The second
group retained a more traditional approach, with the mentor correcting any errors
produced during the Skype interactions. All participants were also asked to complete
a language diary. As a BL mode, Skype was seen by the lead researcher2 as being
crucial to the success of the programme. The pilot was considered very successful,

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Demystifying Blended Learning

with positive feedback with respect to both the methodology, PBL, and its blended
implementation.
In Figure10.9, the BL stages for Case Study two are mapped on the framework for
blended language learning. Stage numbers in the materials dimension match those of
the materials used at that stage. These are likewise plotted onto the learners-materials
dimension to represent this two-way relationship.

Mode
f2f

Technology
Submodes

1 Mentor learners

Tools
Skype, email, websites

5 Mentor learners

Online, synchronous, group/dyad

Online asynchronous and

offline: individual

Online, asynchronous, group/dyad

Materials
Static

Dynamic
3

print materials, websites

2 Skype
Recorded audio: Mp3 recordings/SoundCloud,email
4 emails, Skype

Learners Materials
2 learner Skype, Mp3 audio, emails
3

4 learners Skype, emails, websites, print materials

(PBL problem, language and culture holiday design)

Models of integration
Sequencing
Structure
Interactions
Scaffolding

Figure 10.9 Case study two blend procedure plotted on the framework for blended
language learning (Figure10.1).

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Developing Materials for Language Teaching

Being community-based, this second case study in particular illustrates the use
of BLL as a bridge between the community and language learners at a third-level
institute. It also demonstrates two often-cited advantages of BL, flexibility (including
that of learning and teaching styles, see above) and access, that is, giving access to
learning that would otherwise not be available due to distance etc. (e.g. Nicolson etal.,
2011; Whittaker, 2013). Both case studies have revealed, it is hoped, the potential of
blended learning to enrich and make multidimensional, the tripartite interplay between
teachers and learners, materials and technology.

Conclusion
What then of the future of blended language learning? Blended learning is likely to
remain an important concept in language teaching since its overall focus is concerned
with the search for best practice, i.e. the attempt to identify the optimum mix of course
delivery in order to provide the most effective language learning experience suggests
Sharma (2010, pp.45758). Gruba and Hinkelman conclude that the ultimate success
of blended learning would be that it be normalized out of existence (2012a, p.159); the
degree of comfort with which learners of the digital native generation operate in the
BL context would suggest this may well come to pass. Yet niggling reservations about
BL linger; the justification for the approach is commonly given on operational rather
than pedagogical grounds cost-effectiveness, flexibility, convenience (this is the case
in at least two recent volumes on the subject, see summary in Nicolson etal., 2011,
p.3; Whittaker, 2013; see also Stracke, 2007). Whatever its future, blended learning
is doubtless not the last permutation we shall see in language teaching of the everchanging technology-language learner relationship.

Appendix 1: Word Clouds

Original texts fed into Wordle www.wordle.net
1 The Sun, Sunday 4 December 2012 (online edition)
Headline: Royal twins? Kates condition hints at multiple birth
text fed into Wordle:
KATE and Wills could be expecting TWINS, it emerged today.
The Duchess of Cambridge is spending a second day in hospital being treated for a
morning sickness condition linked to mums who have multiple births.
Mothers-to-be who suffer from the hyperemesis gravidarum condition are THREE
times more likely to have a multiple birth than other women.