Blended foreign language learning in primary schools: A systematic literature review

Virtual classrooms are undoubtedly part of the many changes that have been imposed on elementary school in the 21st century, especially in language classes (Ministry of National Education, 2007). The development of students' oral and communicative skills in a second language requires the design of a communication scenario and this scenario can effectively benefit from the tools implemented in blended language instruction (BLI) (Cutrim Schmid & Whyte, 2014; Guichon & Tellier, 2017; Nissen, 2006; Whyte & Cutrim Schmid, 2018). The aim of this study, carried out as part of the GTNum RAVEL French project, is to understand how the didactic situations of BLIs, which are partly based on virtual classrooms, work, in order to identify their specific features and highlight the links with student language learning. The methodology used is that of a systematic narrative review including quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods studies (Grant & Booth, 2009) in which the works that study the effects of BLI on the development of students' communicative skills will be listed. Several bibliographic databases (e‧g., ERIC, MLA International Bibliography) as well as various journals related to the topic will be questioned. The concepts constituting the documents included in the literature review are the following: foreign language teaching, BLI, elementary school and oral skills development. From these concepts, a series of keywords in English and French were identified in order to construct a complete research equation. The screening and selection of documents included in the systematic review will be carried out with inter-judge agreement to avoid any ambiguity on the choice of studies included (Zaugg et al., 2014). These first two steps in the composition of the corpus will be finalized in March 2021. In a second phase, an inventory of BLIs will be proposed in order to offer teachers and researchers a review of available resources. Finally, the tools, scenarios and pedagogical components that effectively facilitate the development of language practices will be identified and a synthesis will be proposed.