Exploring University EFL Students' Feedback on Using Blended Learning in Learning Phonetics/Phonology

Abstract

Blended Learning has been used in the last two decades in different fields of education including learning English as a Foreign Language. Part of implementing Blended Learning is the design of language courses that takes into consideration students' feedback in relation to using this relatively new approach. The present study explores university students' feedback in relation to learning English phonetics/phonology. The design of the study utilizes the quantitative approach. A questionnaire is constructed in order to elicit the students' preferences related to using Blended Learning in learning the subject of English phonetics/phonology. The questionnaire includes different topics selected from the students' specified syllabus. Seventy-two third-year students from the Department of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Mosul have participated in answering the questionnaire. These students used Blended Learning in the previous academic year 2021-2022. The results of the study show that the students prefer to learn audio exercises in the online of Blended Learning, while suprasegmental topics, like stress, seem to be less preferred. An inverse relation has been discovered between the complexity of the activity or the skillful training it requires and the students' online learning preferences; the more complex or skillful training the activity requires the less preferred to be learnt online by the students.