Impact of Blended Learning on the Speaking Skills of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners at Sohar University, Sultanate of Oman

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The objective of the paper is to examine the factors that determine the persistence of learners in distance education.It also gives attention to finding out the influence of intrinsic factors, institutional factors, motivating factors and curtailing factors of students who pursue their graduation programmes through the distance education mode on their persistence to continue the programme.The sample has been taken from a diverse student population in Chennai.The analysis is based on the results obtained using the partial least squares regression method.The study has several policy implications for educational administrators who play an important role in charting out policies to retain students from the first year to the second year, or across years that follow.