Innovation in Language Learning

The educational model of the University of Veracruz is divided into four main areas: The basic formation area, the area of free choice, the disciplinary training area, and the final formation area. Within the basic formation area, the courses of English level 1 and English level 2 are mandatory for all the careers. Students have two opportunities to accredit each course. If a student is not able to pass the courses in these two opportunities, he/she will have to take a last opportunity exam. If this exam is failed by the student, he/she will be dismissed from school.

To help students in this situation, we have implemented a remedial program of support called PAFI (for its acronym in spanish Programa de Apoyo a la Formación Integral) for “last opportunity students”.

This paper presents the implementation of two remedial PAFIs for students in risk of failing their last opportunity exam. The first one consisted of 10 sessions of two hours where students worked 1 and half hour in a face-to-face modality and half an hour with materials on line. The second one consisted of 12 face-to-face sessions of two hours.

After comparing the results for both PAFIs, we found that the group working with blended sessions performed better than the group that worked with the face-to-face modality.