The Use of YouTube and WhatsApp in English Teacher Training Blended Programs in Iraq

Abstract

Training English language teachers in Iraq faces crucial challenges such as the lack of financial support because of the austerity policy during and after the war against ISIS, the frequent change in English curricula during the last 15 years, the crucial drop down in the quality of education. Those challenges have made ordinary (face-to-face) training problematic. This leads to the urgent need for a more developed way of training. Blended learning is a good alternative to face-to-face (classroom) training because it passes over most of the problems in the traditional training, and because this type of training needs different settings, this study is an attempt to analyze the available blended training tools and choose what suits the situation in Iraq. Because blended learning needs online tools that facilitate training, the researcher suggests a number of online platforms and chooses YouTube and WhatsApp platforms together. This choice is based on their availability and suitability to the Iraqi environment and the characteristics of each one of them. Training, evaluation, and the training material have been distributed between face-to-face and online parts of the training depending on the characteristics of each one.