A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLENDED LEARNING AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACH

Abstract

This article presents a brief history of blended learning and emphasizes its importance in English language teaching and learning contexts dealing with it as a way of empowering the efficiency of educational activities by promoting learning and its outcomes with the implementation of literature review as a research method to gather the essential data, evaluate, and analyse the existing research studies to develop a solid theoretical framework of blended learning and its importance in English language teaching. Blended learning is regarded as a comparatively new trend in education that integrates traditional way of instruction with computer technologies. The article also reveals that blended learning approach could be implemented effectively to improve students' speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills along with their pronunciation, vocabulary knowledge, and grammar. It has an undeniable positive impact on learning contexts and more importantly, it could increase students' motivation, autonomy, engagement, and involvement in educational activities both offline and online resulting in a sense of responsibility and independence.