Questões

It’s important to recognize that flipped learning was not developed with ELT contexts in mind. In a language lesson, we may find

students reading a text about, say, major infrastructure projects, but this content is merely a vehicle for some other language point like expressing high numbers or making comparisons. During a conventional English lesson, the teacher would be guiding students through the text, encouraging prediction and other strategies and setting achievable reading or listening tasks to check basic understanding, before introducing key language points in a staged presentation. This would be followed by controlled practice and freer production. It’s not easy to see how this pattern of brief but meaningful interactive activities maps onto flipped learning. ELT texts, even at advanced levels, tend to be too short to be worth exploring in depth, unlike a 30-minute lecture or video that students of other subjects may be watching. Of course, it could be argued that the true content of the lesson, ie the language point, could be the subject of flipped learning, with students watching a presentation on this subject before the class meets. However, this removes the language point from an engaging and meaningful context and furthermore, working alone robs students of the opportunity to ask questions and discuss emergent ideas about meaning, which are key elements of communicative learning.