A blended learning approach to reading circles for English language learners

Abstract

In order to explore the potential benefits of a blended learning approach to reading circles for students of second language reading, a website with several Web 2.0 technology resources was created for students at an intensive academic English language program in Hawai‘i. Over the course of two terms at this school, traditional reading circle activities were carried out at the same time as online reading circle activities. Qualitative analyses of the students’ online reading circle activities and interactions reveal the beneficial growth of student agency and show that students are able to use both synchronous and asynchronous multimodal communication, especially the co-annotation of digital reading texts in Google documents, to co-construct the meaning of reading circle articles and stories, thereby distributing the complex and burdensome cognitive processes involved in reading in a second language. These findings suggest that a blended learning approach to reading circles for second language learners further augments the known benefits of these educational practices. Blended learning and reading circles complement each other.