Mohd Jabir It is pretty much effective which is an integral part of blended learning & flipped learning/teaching approaches curriculum design in teaching EFL in higher education.

Md. Jabir,

To answer your question: I found interaction, engagement and attention span of learners are key factors for the lab teacher to struggle with, as present day learners go by 'likes' and not 'need'. So, teacher has to do the need mapping, time management, and clearly setting the objectives for learners to know why, how and when a goal is achieved during the session.

Afterall sense of achievement for individual learners can be really rewarding and the teacher has to work for it.

Working in a moderately equipped language lab of an engineering college (in India), I enjoy innovating newer ways to learn with my first year students who have varying levels of exposure to English language. So, I keep modifying the activities depending on learner abilities, develop my own content and keep raising the difficulty level as per learner needs. Also, setting some strict rules like 'no phone use' during lab hours, putting time limitations for internet use while searching (on the lab computers), peer teaching proved helpful in my context.

Though our college curriculum prioritises speaking skill, in my experience listening and reading (receptive skills) are more important to enable learners in two things: gain patience in accepting, comparing, planning, modifying ideas before vocalising/ writing them. And feel freedom in creating, expressing, analysing ideas more by themselves*.

*[sans ChatGPT and allied during the tenure of the lab hours]

Best wishes for your study,

Koyel Mallick