Paper long abstract:

Online teaching and learning have become an essential part of today's educational institutions. One of the advantages online courses provide is an opportunity for higher education institutions to organize a blended learning curriculum. It helps students study for their degrees without leaving work posts. The focus of the paper is to discuss the results of an action research which is designed to understand what problems students and teachers encounter during an online course. Participants of the research are graduate students who study English for Academic Purposes (EAP). This course has been developed to support students' ability to write assignments and to give instructions to students on how to improve their writing performance. Pedagogical approaches, online behavior and time management are needed to help students   achieve their EAP course goals. Thus, to find out problems that students and teachers face, a questionnaire for the participants has been developed.  The problems that students mention in the questionnaire are various, including the reading load; time-management; extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. This paper will present a literature review on online teaching didactics; analysis of the questionnaire; and recommendations for improved online EAP teaching for graduate students within blended learning programs in Kazakhstani Higher Education Institutions.