Students’ narratives related to their experiences about learning English through the applicability of the Blended Learning Approach

Abstract

During the pandemic, education in Colombia had to face great challenges by having to apply new pedagogical models in order to give continuity to classes, however, once the crisis caused by Covid-19 was overcome and classes were returned to Face to Face, there are doubts about the knowledge that the students managed to learn because of the different obstacles that each one had to face. This project seeks to identify the other knowledge that during the pandemic the students who were in the fifth grade of primary school obtained during the implementation of the teaching models based on the Blended Learning Approach in the development of English classes and how these knowledges influence their current learning process. The field work was carried out through a narrative investigation, with which taking into account the participants' narratives we are looking for their own perceptions about their knowledge acquired during that period of time under the new teaching and learning models. For the collection of these perceptions, instruments based on a focus group, a drawn narrative and an individual interview were applied, in this way to achieve, through dialogue and expression, obtain the points of view that they obtained as a result of their own experiences. Among the main results, it can be highlighted that the participants agreed that the knowledge that was directly related to the English subject was not obtained according to the intentions of the teachers; On the other hand, they highlighted that they did obtain other knowledge through the implementation of the new tools required for the participation of the classes or the performance of the tasks assigned by the teachers. Most of the participants expressed that although they were not able to obtain the curricular knowledge that corresponded to the subject, they obtained other knowledge that they use today for some academic activities.