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To reopen educational institutions and return to the classroom, we all need to modify how we act to successfully face the challenges of the new normal resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and entailing our insights into and the after-effects of the pandemic. More specifically, the new normal might encompass online education we are getting used to during the pandemic and the age-old onsite education as well. Thoughtfully integrated, online and onsite learning combine to create blended learning. However, the pertinent literature reveals that English as a foreign language (EFL) students and teachers differently perceive and react to blended learning in diverse contexts. This study was designed to explore student and teacher perceptions of and reactions to blended learning in the Department of English, Jahangirnagar University in the new normal. Fifty undergraduates of EFL and eight teachers of the department participated in the study. To collect data from them, the Student Questionnaire and the Teacher Questionnaire were used. And the data were processed by applying the SPSS programme module. The findings revealed that the majority of the students and the teachers had mostly positive perceptions of blended learning, although the former did not have sufficient exposure to online learning and the latter lacked adequate insights into online teaching. Further, both the students and the teachers expressed mostly positive reactions to blended learning in the new normal, though the former deemed online examinations inadequately smooth and reliable, and the latter had insufficient experience of online instruction and assessment. The study categorically recommends reforming the curriculum, adopting relevant instructional strategies, developing suitable materials, customizing the assessment, integrating and installing technology, training the teachers, upskilling the students for blended learning, improving the infrastructure, and adjusting the management.
Teaching comprises all types of disciplines and teachers need to look outside the confines of English as a Second Language. The acquisition of knowledge comes in a variety of the learners’ educational potential. English as a Second Language in teaching and learning, focuses on active learner’s involvement and reduction of coercion. Indeed, Gibran’s thoughts remain true that “wisdom leads one to discuss his or her potentials. To realize this, teachers in all educational levels have to portray a less dominant classroom role in accord with the importance of classroom interaction in the teaching learning process.
N.A. Flaunders retorted that “in the average classroom someone is talking for two-thirds of the time, two-thirds of the task is direct influence.” What does this mean? Students’ participation or interaction in the classroom has a significant content to enhance their linguistic competence and its core basis is how to use the language as the most important factor in the classroom. Comprehending the information caters one to establish a fair and well-balanced condition that teachers are facilitators, and the learners are to stay in the frontline.
In today’s classroom setting, the adoption-adaption of teaching strategies focuses on the learners’ ability to have a strong command or fluency of the language. ESL is learned around the globe and the learners’ interests are the primary goals in the teaching and learning process. Colin Blakemore once said that “True knowledge, as Plato argues, must be within us all, and learning consists of solely of discussing what we already know.”
In an ESL classroom, discovery of knowledge is not a new game. Teachers do perform their tasks and the learners serve not as passive listeners but as active recipients in the transformation-sharing of all the five macro skills namely speaking, reading, writing, listening, and viewing. In fact, if commitment, knowledge of subject-matter for independent learning, and management of learning are packaged in one big box, both the teachers and the learners will operate a mutual process of generating a lively culture and quality of educational life.
With the aforementioned views I had experienced in teaching ESL, the teacher’s passion for teaching and attitude in dealing with the learners create a strong impact on the learners cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.
The paper analyses specific characteristics of language that influence the development of culture and societies. The problem of the connection between language and culture has occupied the minds of many famous scientists: some believe that language is a part of the culture as a whole; others think that language is only a form of cultural expression. Undoubtedly, language constitutes a vital component of the cultural background underlying social development. Language is an essential means of communication and interaction. However, language is at the same time sovereign about culture as a whole and can be separate from culture or compared to culture as an equal element (i.e., that language is neither a form nor a component of culture).