Although the flipped classroom has been a hot topic in the education circle and many applications have been explored in various disciplines around the world, some limitations have been reported to impair the efficacy of the instructional model. Among them, the most cited ones include (1) significant work on making engaging lecture videos, (2) challenging job to design active, collaborative learning activities in class, (3) heavy reliance on students' pre-class preparation, which students do not always abide by; and (4) not the best instructional strategy for all lessons or learners. Since the flipped classroom concept is still relatively new in Taiwan, little empirical research has been done on flipping an EFL basic writing class. To overcome the above-mentioned limitations and to fill the gap, the author/instructor experimented with a partially flipped classroom design by integrating the course materials of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) into a college freshman English writing class in central Taiwan. The purpose of the small-scale exploratory study was to investigate the effects of such a flipped instructional design on overcoming the limitations stated above and on the learning efficacy of students' sentence skills. A pretest, posttest, survey, and interviews were used to measure the effects of the flipped instructional model. Both quantitative and qualitative results showed that the flipped instructional design improved not only the said drawbacks but also students' learning outcomes.