Mapping Blended English Learning in Higher Education: Transversal Skills in Focus

Transversal skills represent an important addition in shaping students’ academic career. They enable them to get involved in authentic academic research and increase their cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal abilities. In faculties of sciences, students are more concerned with hard skills at the expense of foreign languages. However, this image is undergoing a big change. With the implementation of Pacte Esri 2030, students in Moroccan universities are required to acquire transversal skills in order to improve their linguistic and academic competence and performance. Accordingly, this paper examined the use of blended learning in teaching English for Specific Purposes in the faculty of Sciences, Mohammed I University by mapping the challenges that master’s students encountered in their learning process, and the learning/teaching strategies used to achieve optimal results. This paper made use of a qualitative analysis based on questions addressed to master’s students from different sections. Results showed that master’s students emphasized both technical and human aspects when learning English for Specific Purposes within a blended learning framework.