Investigating The College English Teachers' Roles In Blended Learning Environment

Based on the activity theory,a nine-week longitudinal study was carried out on 140 participants from a same maritime university.Questionnaires,interviews,and classroom observation were conducted in the blended learning environment to investigate the learners' conception about the college English teachers' roles at the beginning and the end of the course as well as its change.The major,findings are as follows.(1)At the beginning of the course,the managerial roles online and the cognitive roles in face-to-face instruction were considered more important from the learners' perspectives.(2)At the end of the course,cognitive roles,affective roles,and managerial roles were considered important in the online and face-to-face classroom learning process from learners' perspectives.Moreover,different learners have different conception about teachers' roles.(3)The learners' conception of teachers' roles has changed during the online and face-to-face classroom learning process.The reason is that the learners have rethought the teachers 'roles based on their own learning experience as well as teachers' actual teaching behaviors.From the theoretical perspective,the present research provides more empirical data for the studies of the college English teachers' roles in the blended learning environment,and a new perspective by using activity theory as the theoretical framework.From the pedagogical perspective,the current research investigated the teachers' roles from the learners'perspectives,which casts light on effective English teaching in the blended learning environment at tertiary level.