Design and Implementation of EFL Blended Smart Teaching Based on Rain Classroom

Abstract

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the Rain Classroom teaching platform has been used for online and offline teaching and learning in some universities of China, providing learners with virtual learning environment through the establishment of a connected classroom and learning community. However, there is very few empirical EFL research using this new pedagogy so far. In this study, a hybrid research method of qualitative and quantitative was applied to conduct an empirical study to verify the teaching effect. The questionnaire indicated that students were highly satisfied with this blended smart teaching mode (88.78%), and their motivation for learning English was improved significantly (85.17%). A pre-test and a post-test of English proficiency were conducted before and after the 16-week teaching experiment respectively. The results of post-test revealed that students’ scores are much higher than those of pre-test (p