Innovating Oral Communication Through Blended Learning

Rey S. Medenilla
Director, Center for Curriculum and Materials Development,
University of Makati, Makati City, Philippines
rey.medenilla@umak.edu.ph

Abstract: Second language teachers are often challenged when learners are not
responding orally and actively producing the target language in classroom interaction.
Instructional materials available also do not encourage learners to speak up. This study
leads to the development of a technology-based instructional material to enhance the
module used in Oral Communication. It addressed the needs of students for an
interactive websites where constructivist approach was applied in learning the concepts
and skill in communication. Prior to the development of the instructional material, the
researcher conducted a preliminary analysis to establish the condition and realities in
oral communication classes. It was found out that language classes using authentic
instructional materials are highly favored by learners. The current modules being used
are insufficient and learners preferred their assignments to be accessible online. Thus,
this research was conducted to address those expressed needs of learners. From the
collection of multi-media materials that the researcher used previously and proven
effective in the classroom, these instructional materials was developed intending to
provide online assignment tasks. Incorporated in blended learning strategy, these
materials have been proven effective after successful implementation among the
researcher’s students in Oral Communication classes.

Key words: Blended learning, Learning Management System (LMS), Oral

communication, Second languge, Second languge acquisition.

Teaching oral communication skills to senior high school students challenges language
teachers mainly due to learners’ limited speaking skills in English or the second language
(L2). Consequently, the problem is aggravated with the slimming chances of exposure to
L2 due its rampant disappearance in the learners’ environment. In the Philippines, as a
case in particular, most English movies by which learners get their input of L2 have been
mostly “Tagalized” or “Tagalog,” the country’s widely spoken vernacular and
considered as the first language (L1). Andrew King, IDP Director for the Philippines
attested that the major factors in the declining English proficiency of Filipinos include
“the quality of teachers and their grasp of English is falling; English textbooks are full of
errors; and, the number of English television channels has dropped from four to one
(Wilson 2009).”

Aside from limited English exposure, the students in this generation can be considered
“millennial” or 21st Century learners who have different learning styles which usually do
not match the conventional methods of instruction. In this case, the mismatch is a
contributing factor why the students are not motivated to learn English. As considerable
number of studies have shown, students’ individual differences play an important role in
second language teaching (Galbraith & Gardner, Oxford & Ehrman, Skehan cited in Liu
& He, 2014), therefore, it is necessary for teachers to be familiar with the students’
learning styles to help them understand their own learning styles and maximized their
use.

But why are learners not motivated to speak in the target language? Thornbury (cited in
Honzatkova 2013) attributes learners’ failure in speaking to the shortage of opportunities
for practice of interactive speaking. Consequently, students, although their grammar and
vocabulary knowledge is quite wide, are not able to arrange them automatically into
sentences. Moreover, there may often be a tendency to formulate the utterances first in
the mother tongue then to translate them into the target language, which together with the
fear of making embarrassing mistakes impedes the fluent spoken performance. Similarly,
Šolcová (cited in Honzatkova 2013) falling back on her own teaching practice in a
language school, reports that most of the students consider themselves to be poor
speakers and consequently wish to improve their speaking skills.

On the other hand, teachers also struggle on the correct strategy to teach speaking.
Commonly, text materials, usually textbooks, are the only ones available for speaking
classes. Unfortunately, most of these materials are reading texts from literature that
either have been written in complex language or set in an unfamiliar context for most
students. As a result, in the classroom, instead of practicing speaking, these students
spend most of their time quietly accomplishing writing tasks. Speaking outcomes are
oftentimes overlooked because the instructional materials do not encourage students to
use the target language meaningfully and functionally. This condition aggravates the
initially low motivation of students to communicate which if not addressed will
eventually lead them not to use English in speaking at all.

The advent of technology paved the way to innovate the teaching of speaking using
relevant contexts and exposing students to authentic input that are usually absent in the
classroom. In fact, a study in Europe claimed that:
“…the internet really is a useful tool for teaching speaking especially because it
offers an immense range of topical and interesting materials to be discussed. The
experiment confirmed that the choice of the teaching material and the topic
influences the quality of students’ performance and the level of their motivation.
Its effect was positive when they were supposed to talk about a theme that was
close to them. On the other hand, it turned out that the themes and tasks offered
by the textbook are also attractive for the majority of students, although the
internet-based activities were appreciated slightly more (Honzatkova, 2013).”

Realizing the impact of technology and the internet to second language teaching, the
researcher developed a blended learning instructional material to innovate strategies in
teaching oral communication skills towards increased motivation to use the second
language. The instructional material developed in this research which is called Blended
Learning Assignment and Speaking Tasks (BLAST) is a learning tool and strategy for
blended learning modality. It is a website designed as a Learning Management System
(LMS) specifically intended for accomplishment of homework and speaking tasks.
Likewise, it augments students’ need for exposure to native speaker’s English; provide
easy access for assignment and speaking practice; let the students explore related
resources; and, facilitate convenient paper-less submission of output.

Moreover, falling back from his experience teaching second language students for more
than two decades, the researcher has observed that English particularly in the Philippines
is commonly taught with emphasis on “form” rather than “use.” Students are not actively
involved because oftentimes learning materials are workbooks which requires written
responses. Consequently, instead of producing language orally, students are turning in
writing output in the target language. To address this dilemma, the special project was
conceptualized as an innovative instructional material which deviated from the traditional
method and infused authentic input for interactive communication.

Only recently, when the Outcome-Based Education (OBE) was mandated by the
government through the Commission on Higher Education through the Circular
Memorandum Order No. 46, emphasis on expert education shifted to building learning
competencies including life-long learning. For many years, teaching English is highly
dependent on books and learning is confined just within the four walls of the classroom.
Teachers resort mostly to direct teaching with students seldom interacting and using
technology. In some occasions, if ever the teacher chooses to use technology,
audiovisual material is most common and its purpose in mainly to supplement learning in
the classroom. The mode of teaching is dominantly face-to-face while on-line learning is
not so popular.

The 21st century witnessed the benefits of technology in education most particularly in
language learning. The traditional face-to-face instruction has now been enhanced by the
incorporation of online instructions that learners can access on their own outside the
classroom. Blended learning (BL) in higher education witnessed improvement in the
performance of students. Patchan et al. (2015) purport that “maximum benefits were
observed when students used the online instructional technology to prepare for their face-
to-face class – that is, students with this blended instruction learned twice as much
content in the same amount of time in comparison to students with face-to-face
instruction alone, without creating an atypically high workload.”

To enhance the current module being used in Oral Communication subject for Grade 11,
this study introduced BL as a mode of learning. Through an instructional program
dubbed as Blended Learning Assignment and Speaking Tasks (BLAST), the
aforementioned problems in language teaching were addressed. Not only have the
students had an easier access to assignments, but also they have been able to explore the
topics. The experience provided for in the BLAST Website, facilitated the demonstration
of expected outcome in terms of oral communication.

The Blended Learning Assignment and Speaking Tasks (BLAST) is grounded on the
instructional design known as the ADDIE model which stands for Analysis, Design,
Development, Implementation and Evaluation. The ADDIE model is a generic process
traditionally used by instructional designers and training developers.
ADDIE’s five phases: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation,
represent a dynamic, flexible guideline for building effective training and performance
support tools (Instructional Design, n.d.).

Method

This study applied the descriptive-evaluative method of research to appraise carefully the
worthiness of the website project BLAST. The descriptive method is a fact-finding study
with adequate interpretations of findings. It describes what actually exist such as current
conditions, practices, situations or any phenomena. On the other hand, evaluation is the
systematic acquisition and assessment of information to provide useful feedback about
some object (Trochim, 2006).

Evaluative method as applied to instructional design is the systematic determination of

merit, worth, and significance of learning or training process by comparing criteria
against a set of standards. The integration of the mentioned research methodologies was
applied in the study particularly in the analysis and implementation phases of the project.

Project design

This project dubbed as Blended Learning Assignment and Speaking Tasks or BLAST
Website is a combined or hybrid type of instructional design or more commonly called
Blended Learning (BL) (Figure 3). Both face-to-face (F2F) and on-line learning are
combined to result to outcome-based and student-centric instruction. The stages of the
development of BLAST followed the ADDIE model of instructional design as defined
below:

Analysis Phase—This stage was focused on the analysis of learners as regard their
experience in using the module in Oral Communication. The researcher identified the
preferences of the students in using the Oral Communication through a survey conducted
among 20 respondents. Survey items included the following: five (5) statements
pertaining to the favorability of the current module; five (5) items for inclusion of
assignments tasks and five (5) items on innovating the module through online learning.
The instrument was adapted from a research with similar topic and characteristics of
respondents (Al-Hamlan, S. & Baniabdelrahman 2015); also, face validated by three
experts. In addition, interviews were also undertaken among the three (3) teachers and
three (3) IT experts to gather their input relevant to the development of the project.

Design phase—The project’s instructional, visual and technical design strategy was
determined at this stage. Also, the project’s name, content of the pages, the looks and
feel, graphic design, and user interface were determined. The researcher decided to
design a website as the instructional tool dubbed as Blended Learning Assignment and
Speaking Tasks or BLAST. The format used was the 5E’s Model for instructional design
to incorporate constructivist approach in learning.
BLAST has five stages of learning: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate.
These stages featured lessons using multi-media resources that students interacted with
and used as basis of assignment and speaking tasks.

Development Phase—At this stage, the actual material was created incorporating the
collection of all resources, and technical requirements. Input from users, teachers and IT
experts were considered in order to come up with the instructional design of the project.
In this stage, sample lessons using different multi-media resources were pre-tested to the
users. and their feedback were considered in terms of suitability and impact of the new
learning strategy.

Implementation Phase—The researcher launched the website through the Hostinger.ph

for the online access of students. Twenty (20) students serving as the respondents used
the website. Learning was processed in the class during the face-to-face sessions. The
stand-alone version of the material was also implemented in the F2F encounter to get the
first hand data of students’ experience with the new tool for consideration in the further
improvement of the project.

Evaluation Phase—The website’s functionality, usability, and portability were evaluated

in this phase by the students, teachers and IT experts using the BLAST Website
Evaluation Tool based on ISO 9126. The three criteria were included since those were
found to be assessable by students and educators characteristics are difficult to measure
except by trained IT professionals (Valenti et al. 2002 cited in ASCILITE 2004). Other
assessments comprised formative and summative assessment conducted in the classroom
among students.

The related literatures and studies reviewed in this study supported the viability of
blended learning to SLA. Specifically, it established the relevance of the following
concepts and its relation to BL: (1) the role of constructivism in education in general and
second language teaching in particular; (2) communicative competence as a construct
emphasizing functional knowledge and control of language principles; and, (3) the
potential of BL towards L2 interactive communication pedagogy, (4) the role of Learning
Management System (LMS) as a Web- based platform for BL.

During the process of the development of the BLAST, a review of the existing Oral
Communication Module based on the curriculum provided by the Department of
Education was conducted for identification of the content of instructional material to be
developed. Then, the result of the need analysis of students and teachers vis-à-vis the
subject were considered leading to the decision of choosing blended learning strategy for
the project.

BLAST Website was used as an LMS platform for assignments and speaking tasks for
students. This platform serves as virtual classroom that allows learners to access various
e-learning resources uploaded by the teacher. It is also where students can interact with
the teacher and other students for discussion of topics in relation to the subject. The
content was organized following the 5E’s model of constructivist learning. Though such
instructional strategy is more popular in science subjects, it has been found effective in
encouraging self-directed learning which is also a helpful learning strategy for acquiring
a second language. So the researcher considered adapting the 5E’s model of learning in
organizing the content of BLAST Website.

BLAST Stages of Learning involve these steps:

1. Engage. This is the beginning stage of learning which involves anticipated activities
and focusing students' thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities. Students
become mentally engaged in the concept, process, or skill to be learned.

2. Explore. This phase of the 5 E's provides students with a common base of experiences.
They identify and develop concepts, processes, and skills. During this phase, students
actively explore their environment or manipulate materials.

3. Explain. This phase helps students explain the concepts they have been exploring.
They have opportunities to verbalize their conceptual understanding or to demonstrate
new skills or behaviors. This phase also provides opportunities for teachers to introduce
formal terms, definitions, and explanations for concepts, processes, skills, or behaviors.

4. Elaborate. This phase extends students' conceptual understanding and allows them to
practice skills and behaviors. Through new experiences, the learners develop deeper and
broader understanding of major concepts, obtain more information about areas of interest,
and refine their skills.

5. Evaluate. This phase of the 5 E’s encourages learners to assess their understanding
and abilities and lets teachers evaluate students' understanding of key concepts and skill
development.

Respondents
The respondents were twenty (20) Grade 11 students enrolled in English 5B - Oral
Communication subject in the Senior High School Program of the University of Makati
Academic year 2015-2016, three (3) teachers handling Grade 11 English 5B, and three
(3) multi-media experts. These students were selected from two classes, 10 from the
section taking up Business elective and the other 10 from the section taking up Sports
elective.

The Need Analysis Instrument

For the Analysis Phase, an instrument called “Survey of Student’s Preference for Oral
Communication Module” was formulated. It was used to assess the respondents’
preferences for the Oral Communication module. The said instrument was based on Al-
Hamlan, S. & Baniabdelrahman (2015) need analysis research among Saudi Arabian high
school students pertaining to course module in their English subject. The instrument was
certified for face validity by two language experts and a psychometrician.

The items were divided into three criteria:

Criteria 1 - Statements that are not favorable for innovation (Items 1,4,6,9, & 15)
Criteria 2 -Statements that are favorable for assignment (Items 2,5,7,8 &10)
Criteria 3 -Statement that are favorable for blended learning (Items 3,11,12,13, &14

Items in Criteria 1 include the “Negative items”. These are added to avoid the error of
“blind” responding by the respondents [ CITATION Sev92 \l 1033 ]. Criteria 2 & 3 are
regarded as “positive” items or favorable items. The distinction of these items by criteria
was taken into account in the computation of mean scores of responses for quantitative
conversion of the descriptive ratings.

The research instrument was used to evaluate the BLAST Website based on ISO9126.
Only four characteristics were used: functionality, usability, portability, and efficiency
because most of the students were not used to online learning; if all the other criteria of
ISO 9126 were included, they might not be able to assess the project well.

Results and Discussion

This chapter presents the data, analysis and interpretation of results following the
objectives of the project study. It discusses the description, structure, capabilities and
limitations, and the results of the evaluation of the project.

Need Analysis Results

Table 6 presents the summary of the students’ responses in term of the mean scores of the
positive items or favorable responses. It shows that the positive items or favorable
responses for innovation gained an overall mean of 3.51 or Strongly Agree. This rating
means that majority of students prefer some innovation in the module of Oral
Communication. Among these innovations are the infusion of multi-media materials,
assigning homework and allowing online learning to learn the module in the subject.

Table 6.
Summary of Mean Scores of Positive Items or Favorable Response
Items Mean

1. Assignment will help me learn the module. 3.75

2. Online resources will help me understand the module. 3.35

3. Assignments should be given to students. 3.15

4. Topics in the module should be given as assignments. 3.0

5. I can learn the module if assigned as homework. 3.3

6. Online assignment is possible for the subject. 3.75

 7. Topics of the modules can be found in the internet. 3.55

8. Combining classroom with online learning is beneficial for the 3.8

students.
9. The module content will be clearer if supplemented with related multi- 3.55
media.
10. The module can be taught innovatively. 3.9

Over-all Mean 3.51

Moreover, Table 7 summarizes the mean scores of the negative items or unfavorable
responses. Data shows that the total mean of the items that are not favorable to innovation
is 3.46 or Strongly Disagree which means that most respondents disagree with the idea
that the current module is sufficient and does not need enhancement. Most of them
believe that there is a need to supplement the module with other materials since using the
internet is not difficult for them.

The combination of the result on favorable items and unfavorable items revealed that
current module needs enhancement. Supplemental materials online given as assignment
will help the respondents maximize their use of the text module to improve themselves
and acquire the skills for Oral Communication.

Table 7
Summary of Mean Scores of Negative Items or Unfavorable Response

Items Mean
1. Learning the module in the classroom is 3.2
sufficient.
2. Assignments will make the module difficult to 3.45
learn.
3. The materials in the module are enough for me to 3.4
learn.
4. There is no need to add more materials 3.3
to the module.
5. Online learning is difficult for students. 3.55

Total 3.46

Evaluation of BLASTas an Instructional Material

Referring to Table 8, the BLAST website as an instructional material supplementing the

module was rated Very Acceptable with an over-all weighted mean of 4.56. The
Functionality criteria garnered and average weighted mean of 4.48; the Usability criteria
received a weighted mean of 4.65; the Efficiency criteria got an average weighted mean
of 4.70; and lastly, the Portability criteria had an average weighted mean of 4.43. It can
be gleaned from this result that the BLAST is highly appreciated in terms of
functionality. Overall the instructional material is highly favorable to the users with the
total Mean= 4.60.

Table 8
Students’ Evaluation of BLAST

Criteria Mean
Functionality 4.48
1. Ease of Operation 4.6
2. Ability of the system to perform the tasks required 4.4
3. Ability to interact with another system 4.6
4. Prevents unauthorized access 4.3
Usability 4.65
5. User can comprehend how to use the system easily 4.7
6. User can learn to use the system easily 4.7
7. User- friendly Interface 4.7
8. User can use the system without much effort 4.5
Efficiency 4.7
9. Ability of the system to respond to events 4.7
10. Ability of the system to utilized resources efficiently 4.7
Portability 4.43
11. Ability of the system to be run/operated in different environment 4.3

Over-all Mean 4.56

In the next table, Table 9, responses of English teachers on the benefit of BLAST is
presented. It shows that the evaluators rated the BLAST as easy to operate with a mean
rating of 4.67, which is highly acceptable. For comfort and convenience of use, it earned
a 4.60 mean rating, highly acceptable. It likewise earned a 4.67 mean rating for being
user friendly which is interpreted as highly acceptable. Furthermore, the evaluators gave
a rating of very acceptable for accuracy of the content with a weighted mean of 4.47, for
the updatedness of content with a mean rating of 4.40 and 4.47 for its content
presentation which is very acceptable.

In terms of “conformance to the desired result” the mean rating of 4.53 shows that the
user find the project is Highly acceptable. Similarly, for criteria “absence of failure of
the application”, with Mean=4.47, is very acceptable for the audience. The evaluators
gave a mean rating of 4.53 for accuracy in performance with a verbal interpretation of
highly acceptable.

The BLAST gathered a weighted mean of 4.73 which is highly acceptable for its ability
to perform and fastness of results and on portability it was rated with a mean of 4.73 for
its ability to adapt to a new environment and 4.67 mean rating for its installability and
portability compliance which is interpreted as highly acceptable with an overall weighted
mean rating of 4.60, described as highly acceptable.

Table 9
English Teachers’ Evaluation for the BLAST

CRITERIA MEAN
A. Functionality
1. Ease of operation 4.67
2. Provision for comfort and convenience 4.60
3. User- friendliness 4.67
B. Content
1. Accuracy of the content 4.47
2. Updatedness of Content 4.40
3. Presentation of Content 4.47
C. Reliability
1. Conformance to desired result 4.53
2. Absence of failures 4.47
3. Accuracy in performance 4.53
D. Capability
1. Ability to perform 4.73
2. Fastness of the results 4.73
E. Portability
1. Adaptability to new operating environments 4.73
2. Installability of the software 4.67
3. Portability compliance of application 4.67
Overall Weighted Mean 4.60

Table 10.
International Standard for the Evaluation of Software Quality for IT experts

CRITERIA MEAN
A. Functionality 4.6
B. Content 4.0
C. Reliability 5.0
D. Availability 5.0
E. Effectiveness 4.6
F. Layout/Design 4.83
G. Creativity/Graphics 5.0
Overall Weighted Mean 4.69

Table 10 shows the ratings of the Information Technology (IT) experts on the Software
Quality of the BLAST based on ISO 9126 - the International Standard for Software
Quality with criteria as: Functionality is rated 4.6, highly acceptable; Content is rated 4.0
which is very acceptable; Reliability and Availability are rated with 5.0 which are both
described as highly acceptable; Effectiveness is rated 4.6 described as highly acceptable,
Layout and Design with 4.83 and described as highly acceptable; and, Creativity and
Graphics is 5.0 described as very acceptable. All of the indicators were rated highly
acceptable except for content which is very good. Although all of the indicators have an
overall weighted mean of 4.69 which is highly acceptable

Project Description

The researcher developed a website benchmarked mainly from popular Learning

Management System (LMS) such as Schoology, Moodle, Edmodo and the likes.
Features from other social networking cites also inspired in designing the infrastructure
of the website system. Simplicity is maintained to achieve user-friendly interface and
allow easy access of multi-media resources.

Following the 5 E’s model of constructivism as stages of learning, to wit: Engage,

Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate, materials were organized to achieve the
outcome for each stage. The instructor serves as the administrator and the students
register in order to access the learning materials. The website was created as venue for
further enhancement of the module topics discussed in the class. It is primarily addressed
to augment the limited exposure of second language learners to target language. Majority
of the video resources are supplemental to the modules for better understanding of
concepts and allowing learners to be self-directed and explorative in his learning.

Project Structure

Figure 2 follows with a presentation of the Flow of the interactive system. This represents
the screen transition of the application through the main menu buttons.
It further shows the 5 E’s namely Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate
Account Owners Page

This is the page that will appear once the user has successfully logged-in. The instructor
will see all the navigation buttons but the student will see them only one at a time.
Figures 4a and 4b show this page.

Engage Page

This is the first learning station that the student will work on. The video resource is used
to introduce the learner of language in use in context. The topic is Non-verbal
communication in the context of a talk show. Right away the student is exposed to the
complexity of language in use for exposure to authentic input. This is the stage where the
learner is expected to recall his prior knowledge on the topic and be able to interact by
responding to a question checking for what is already known to the learner. This page is
shown in Figures 5a and 5b.

Explore Page

The Explore Page, as shown in Figures 6a and 6b are where another stimulus video is
provided for the learner to indulge deeper on the topic so he will be encouraged to
explore other source of information and learning resources or try out or experiment to
acquire the target skill in the process. This is the stage where the learner starts
formulating hypothesis and realizing the rationale of learning the skill for an outcome.

Explain Page

In this page, as shown in Figures 7a and 7b, the learner will see another video stimulus
explaining the concept. Using what related information that he had a chance to process,
this is the stage where he will be instructed on the specific skill he has to develop. A
second material in the form of a graph is introduced here to allow the learner to use his
speaking skill in interpreting visual information. The learner, while trying to relate the
new material with the ones previously introduced, is expected to resort to higher order
thinking skill in the process.

Elaborate Page

Figures 8a and 8b are screenshots of the Elaborate Page. Here, the learner practices the
skill he developed in the previous stages he went through. An interactive speaking
practice video is supplied where the instructor provides the input to guide students in
developing speaking skills interactively.

Evaluate Page
In this page an assessment is given to the learner to check his knowledge of the topic.
Performative assessment is also introduced in the form of written output which will be
instrumental for the performance in face-to-face session in the classroom. The learners
are asked to transform a poem into a speech choir script to be performed in the class.

Conclusion

This study tried to answer the questions about the development of a technology based-
project to enhance the module in Oral Communication. It also tried to address the needs
of students for an interactive websites where constructivist approach was applied in
learning the concepts and skill in communication.

Based on the results, the following were the significant findings of the study:

1. Most of the respondents believe that assignments lead to understanding the concepts in
Oral Communication modules.
2. The Oral Communication subject can be taught communicatively if authentic materials
are incorporated in the module.
3. Many respondents agree that teaching Oral Communication in HSU is feasible through
blended learning
4. Most respondents believe that the current modules in Oral Communication can be
further enhanced with incorporation of multi-media materials accessible online.
5. Innovative strategy using technology is needed in order to teach Oral Communication
since most of the respondents are willing to study on the internet
6. Blended learning is fitted for Oral Communication since relevant resources are
available online which can be used as interesting springboards for discussion in the class.
7. Majority of the respondents agree that online resources enrich the modules in Oral
Communication.
8. Using a website allows learners to accomplish assignment and speaking tasks more
interactively.
9. Adopting the constructivist model of learning promote higher order thinking and
encourages learners to be engaged in the module and practice active learning.
10. Teachers should explore the resources in the internet that can be used in the class to
enhance the curriculum of Oral Communication.

On the basis of the summary of findings of this study, it can be concluded that:

1. Many students welcome innovation of teaching Oral Communication subject through

blended learning.
2. The module in Oral Communication can be further enhanced by giving assignment to
students which will give them an opportunity to use the internet.
3. The Oral Communication subject should provide opportunity for students to practice
authentic speaking by exposing them to target language using authentic input accessible
online.
4. The Website as a platform for giving assignment and speaking tasks is a viable tool
to innovate the teaching and learning of Oral Communication.
5. The inclusion of online learning for HSU subjects introduces students to 21st century
learning and helps prepare them to higher education and the challenges of Asean
integration.
The conclusions gleaned from the findings of this study prompted the researcher to offer
the following recommendations:

1. The researcher highly recommends the implementation of blended learning to HSU

students on a gradual basis in order to prepare them for 21st century learning and
Outcomes-based Education in the tertiary level.
2. Curriculum designers as well as teachers should develop modules for Oral
Communication and other English subjects in the HSU that incorporate authentic input
from internet multi-media resources.
3. Teachers should be encouraged to innovate instructions for Second Language
Acquisition through technology education, trainings and incentives.
4. Teachers and IT experts should collaborate in developing technology based
instructional materials using the vast resources of the internet.
5. Augmentation of teachers’ know - how in technology by providing appreciable
training in using computer applications for innovative teaching should be in place.
6. University administrators should prioritize improvement of facilities for maximum
utilization of technology and the internet.
7. A comprehensive research and development effort for the University to assure
instructional innovation involving the faculty, IT experts and the community should also
be considered.
8. The resarcher should model the use of blended assignments and speaking tasks
(BLAST) considering he now has a better grasp of the process involved in instructional
design that he could be able to share with other teachers and future researchers who
intend to effect change in education.

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