College English, a compulsory coursein all higher education curriculum in China, is undergoing reforms in bothcontent and teaching pedagogy. The College English Curriculum Requirements,commissioned by The Ministry for Higher Education (2007), advocate “acomputer-assisted and classroom-based teaching model” (p. 8). Wang and Wang(2011) point out that computer and information technology can assiststudent-centered and teacher-facilitated teaching models at the tertiary level.

Blended learning (BL) is defined as"a way of meeting the challenges of tailoring learning and development tothe needs of individuals by integrating the innovative and technologicaladvances offered by online learning with the interaction and participationoffered in the best of traditional learning" (Shantakumari and Sajith,2015, p. 1). And the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), is the most widely usedmethod of online teaching in blended learning. The emergence of MOOCs hasbrought a shock to college English teaching. It did make not a big breakthroughfor its single platform mode, lack of interaction between teachers and studentsand not being conducive to deep learning compared with traditionalclassroom-based teaching way, so the application effect of the MOOC inpractical teaching is not optimistic (Wang, 2017). Armando Fox, the curriculumdirector of the MOOC lab at the University of California, Berkeley, proposedthe concept of SPOC in 2013 by integrating MOOC resources and applying them tosmall student groups. The Small Private Online Course (SPOC), refers to aversion of MOOC used locally with on-campus students.The SPOC takes advantage of MOOCs " accessto high-quality materials and rapid feedback to students via autograding, tomaximize the leverage of the scarce resource—instructor time " (Fox, 2013,p. 1), realizing the integration of MOOCs and campus classroom teaching. Readingcourse and teaching need to be valued because there is no doubt that theenhancement of reading ability contributes to promote the integrativecompetence in multiple aspects. English Intensive Reading course takes up mostlesson in general, contains comprehensive knowledge of reading, vocabulary,grammar and writing compared with other English courses, and plays an extremelysignificant role for English majors in Chinese higher education. Therefore, it issensible to attach importance to English Intensive Reading and in modern highereducation.

This study expects to achievepractical significance as follows:

Firstly, little attention has beenpaid to the combination of SPOC embedded blended learning model and EnglishIntensive Reading course in the context of Chinese colleges in overseas studies(Kamala, 2013; Robert, 2010; Shantakumari and Sajith, 2015).

On the other hand, Chinese domestic researchesfocus more on the principles and design of this blended learning model (Chen andYang, 2015; He and Cao, 2015). However, they have attached little importance tothe investigations of students’ perceptions in an empirical way in content. Thefeedback of this model for English Intensive reading is limited.

This study aims to report the investigationof English-major undergraduates’ perspectives in China on the SPOC embeddedblended learning model for English Intensive Reading course. It regards SPOCembedded blended learning model for English Intensive Reading course as aspecific focus. Some feasible suggestions, and pedagogical implications can beprovided to help Chinese colleges and universities to improve blended teachingand learning for English majors on the basis of empirical study.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

Thisstudy includes the introduction of current conditions of SPOC and EnglishIntensive Reading course, the examination of undergraduates’ perceptions of themodel puts forward the prospect of blended learning in China.

Thisstudy is aimed at investigating the English majors’ perspectives on SPOCembedded blended learning model for Intensive Reading. To achieve this aim, itputs forward to two questions. One of them is students’ attitudes towards the modeland the other is students’ perceived benefits from the application of themodel. The study uses an empirical method to resolve the questions and design aquestionnaire and interview to examine English majors’ attitudes and theirperceived benefits.

190English majors from the School of Foreign Language, Wuhan University ofTechnology are randomly invited to complete an online questionnaire. Thequestionnaire consists of four parts: overall attitudes towards SPOCembedded blended learning model; overall satisfaction of students the model aswell as their evaluation; respondents’ study time online and suggestions onthis model. Both multiple-choices and open-ended questions are involved in thequestionnaire in order to investigate comprehensively. To avoid languagemisunderstandings and lead to accurate results, the questionnaire is designedin Chinese. The results of questionnaire and interview help to analyzestudents’ attitudes and perceived benefits and understand their perspectives ofthis model.

[1] Al-Busaidi, K.A. An empirical investigation linkinglearners' adoption of blended learning to their intention of full e-learning[J]. Behavior amp; information technology, 2013. 32:1168-1176.