The design of a tutorial on English grammar for Business English (BE) using the SAKAI lesson tool for 2014-15 is presented below. BE is taught at the UdL, with 6-ECTS credits, corresponding to 150 hours of student’s workload. Each student meets 60 hours f2f during the semester, while students perform autonomous learning activities in the remaining 90 hours. Class observation showed that students mostly fail the grammar questions in the final BE exam, although a collection of external links (uploaded on Resources) has traditionally been provided to students to autonomously revise grammar points. Evidence shows that a better tutorial system is much needed which would enhance students’ grammar of English. The SAKAI lesson tool can help in this process due to its scalability.
Ten grammar topics were selected, and were ordered according to syntactic level: from nouns to connectors. Each topic was considered a lesson, with same design: three sections containing explanations, practice—both with external links—, and a test on the topic, produced by the SAKAI test tool. Lessons activate under the condition that a 5/10 mark is obtained in the test. In 2014-15, these lessons will be tested and improvements will be made to the lessons accordingly for 2015-16.