ESL Website Evaluation

ESL Website Evaluation

Website name: Englishpage.com

URL: http://www.englishpage.com/index.html

Reviewed by: Nur Munirah binti Mokhtar 2005478845

Class: 220U8B

1. What does the application attempt to “teach”?

The application is designed to look like a personal English language school for users. Obviously like school, it has everything about the language starting from organized tutorials, interactive multimedia resources, exercises and games. It attempts to teach several skills for students.

First, it will exposed learner to the mechanical aspects of the English language. Some of them are vocabulary, verb tenses, conditionals, modals, gerunds, prepositions and Irregular Verbs. Second, it will also prepare students on other skills of the language which are reading, writing and listening. For reading, this site provides “Reading Room” which is a link to free online newspapers, magazines and books. Users can also practice writing by communicating with other users in the “Student Forums”. Meanwhile, “Listening Lounge” is provided for listening practice in learning English. Thirdly, this application also prepares students on authentic ways of approaching and practicing the language. For instance, by self researching for authentic materials such as articles or songs and communicating with others in English.

2. What sorts of things is the application users expected to do with regards to the learning content?

There are four main learning contents in the application. First, there is the grammatical content of the language, authentic resource links, communicative content and dictionaries.

For the grammatical content, users are expected to study the content first, using the various tutorials available for each topic. Then, they are expected to test or practice their understanding through the quizzes that are custom made for every topic. They can also do this by completing word puzzles in the “Games” page. Meanwhile, the authentic resource links are meant for users to look for articles, songs, radio broadcast or books that can help them to familiarize themselves with the language. They can use these materials as a source for their essays or oral class tasks. These resources are also useful for students to get updated information on the current goings around them in the target language which is English. The communicative content available in this application is in written form. Hence, users are expected to communicate with each other in the forum to practice their language skills and help each other in mastering the language. Lastly, the dictionaries are for users to look up for meaning of words in their own language or in the target language itself. There is also a translating program which can translate English text into other language such as French or German.

In addition, English language instructors can use this program as a resource page to get quizzes, reading materials, listening materials and tutorial handouts.

3. What sorts of computer skills is the application users expected to have in order to operate/ access/ use the application?

This program is simple enough in every way and the instructions are clearly stated for every activity. Hence, users will only need a few basic computer skills to use it.

First, users have to be able to connect to the World Wide Web and look for the website www.englishpage.com. Then, users have to be able to understand the text and instruction on the page to get started. Next, users must be able to use keyboard to type and mouse or touchpad to click. That’s it!

4. While you are “playing” / “accessing”/ “assessing the application, does it remind you of anything you do in a classroom, or with a teacher, or with a fellow classmate, or in self study?

There are some activities in the application that reminds me of my days of learning English as a Second Language. They are use by my teacher, in the classroom and during self study.

First, it is the game section. My teacher used to use puzzles as a class game for English. But the puzzles that she used were not necessarily on grammar. They were on literature and vocabulary lessons too. Next, the communicative forum reminds me that I really love to communicate using the target language back then. I will try my best to communicate with my classmates who are good users of the language. This way, I can challenge myself to master the language. Although in this program, it started as a written communication, it can leads to oral communication among users as there are users who are willing to share their Instant Messaging ID for Yahoo or Skype that enables oral and even video communication among users. Hence, this is very much like what I practiced in my ESL classroom. Lastly the authentic resource links provide just what I once used to improve myself in English. During my self study, I do not stress my self by learning the rules or forms of the language by heart. I prefer a more relaxing ways by immersing myself in the language itself. Thus, I will spend time listening to English songs, radio broadcasts, news and reading story books for self study.

5. Can you pinpoint some theories of language learning and/ or teaching underlying the application?

The application might use several theories and teaching approach as its base. Among theories are the Behaviorist and Connectionism. Meanwhile, teaching approach involved in this application is the 3P’s and Communicative Language Teaching.

This program is somehow behaviorist as in the application; practice happens mainly through series of questions and answers regarding the target language. This is exactly as cited by Kearsly, (2009) regarding the behaviorist learning; “Practice should take the form of question (stimulus) - answer (response) frames which expose the student to the subject” (Markle, 1969; Skinner, 1968). Apart from that, behaviorist also “Require that the learner make a response for every frame and receive immediate feedback” (Markle, 1969; Skinner, 1968) as cited by Kearsly, (2009). Similar to this program, every correct answers for exercises are counted straightaway and be given percentage. However, students will also know straightaway on which questions did they flaw and they can try on the spot to correct their mistakes by choosing among the answer choices given. Hence, immediate feedback is ensured.

Another language learning theory that is incorporated in this program is Cognitivism. According to this theory, “people control their learning”, Wang, (1996). It is clear that in this application users are in control of what, when and how they want to learn. For example, they can do exercises at their own pace without being timed and choose from vast multimedia resources such as magazines or radio channels to improve their language skills.

In terms of teaching approach, first, this site adopts the 3P’s approach to learn language. They stand for Presentation, Practice and Production. In this application, “Presentation” of concepts and ideas about a topic is presented through tutorials links. Then “Practice” is done through sets of exercises and games. Lastly, students can “Produce” the language by interacting with other users in the forum page.

Looking at another angle, this site also reflects what is done in the Communicative Language Teaching approach. Generally, it is “An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom.” David Nunan (1991:279) as cited by Renshaw (2007). Consequently, this application has provided its users with extensive links to various forms of authentic language activation sites. As a result, users can immerse themselves with realistic materials using the language apart from predetermined exercises.

6. How well is the constructivist theory of learning applied to the chosen websites?

The application does not really apply the constructivist theory of learning in it. Only some features do reflect the theory in this site.

First is the links to current issues that is represented in the language such as online newspaper and magazines. It reflects constructivism as it believes that “learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.” Cohen et.al (2008). Hence, this is where issues around the world trigger users to use the language for comprehension purpose.

Second, this website also “provokes the use of students’ previous knowledge to improve their language skills”, (Cohen et.al,2008). This is practiced through the availability of communicative features that enables learners to use existing knowledge of the target language for the reason to refine their skills. For example, the forum and authentic external resource page are among the features that allows the use of previous learnt knowledge.

For other parts of the site, mainly it reflects the Behaviorist and Cognitive theory of learning.

7. In the 1980’s and early 90’s there was a major debate on ‘whether the computer was “master” or “slave” to the learning process (Higgins and Johns, 1984). In relation to your evaluation – was the computer a replacement or merely and obedient servant to students?

From my evaluation, computer can only be a mere servant to students. The reasons behind my claims are caused by its inability to evaluate subjective type tasks done by students and the inability of computers to fulfill students’ affective needs.

In general, subjective type tasks are when it needs “an evaluator uses his or her personal understanding and values to arrive at a judgment about the quality of a piece of “ work, (Scharton, n.d.). However, the computers to date do not have its own brain to evaluate a piece of work using personal understanding like teachers do. Obviously, computer is not the master of the learning process here. For instance, a computer can never evaluate neither oral tests nor written essays thoroughly. The learners needs to refer to teachers or other experienced in the subject area for evaluation. Computer, is just a slave to provide the ideas for the subjective tasks.

As it is a non living object with no feelings; computer cannot provide a realistic affective support for learners. Affective support here means that learners needs someone to “Provide them with explicit feedback on how well the goals or objectives were met. You want to keep the feedback positive as the goal is to reinforce their drive to perform better, not to beat them down in utter defeat.” Clark (2000). Computer can only tell learner whether they are performing or not but it cannot provide the encouraging or inspirational words with the correct intonation to encourage them to work harder towards achieving goals. Some examples of the most that a computer can do to affectively influence learners are saying “well done” for a correct answers and “try again” for the wrong ones. Thus, it is clear that computer is only a slave for students to brush up on skills and to search for information. In short, students are still the “master” of their own learning and not the computer or other people.

8. Would you like to use the application in your future work? Why (reasons)?

Undoubtedly, I will use this application once I became a teacher. It is very useful as a tool to enhance the teaching and learning process in the classroom.

First, it can give me some ideas for my grammar class. For example, there are so many tutorials that have been organized for better understanding of the topic. Hence, I do not have to spend much time on organizing the content or finding examples for my lesson as I can just follow what is stated in the tutorials.

Second, there are various exercises that I can directly print out from the computer. It is more economical in terms of time and money as I don’t have to look up for books to buy to get grammar exercises. In addition, the puzzles available in the games section is a good class game at the end of each chapter.

Thirdly, there are many links to other authentic resources of the target language such as radio channels, songs, online newspaper, magazines and storybooks that I can use in my classroom. They are all up to date and fun to use rather than the textbooks or chalk and talk. Moreover, with audio visual aids, students will learn better resulted from the involvement of total physical response and communicative language teaching in the classroom.

9. Suggestions/ Recommendations.

Here are some suggestions that I think is vital for the site. Primarily, I would really love to see this site if it is more colourful and attractive. The monotonous colour scheme is really demotivating especially for visual learners. Second, the games section should really include other types of games rather than just word puzzles. I recommend this site to include interactive games that have sounds and attractive colours in it such as hangman, word search, pacman etc. Lastly, I wish that this site could put equal focus on all skills of learning the English language. For now, the emphasis is mainly on Grammar. Other skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking should also be emphasized as all of these will contribute towards the success of this program and the its users.

References:

1. Cohen.E et.al. (2008) Constructivism Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from http://www.funderstanding.com/content/constructivism

2. Chun.D.C. n.d. Language and Learning. Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from (http://www.freewebs.com/dzchun/Unit%201.htm

3. Karsley.G (2009) Operant Conditioning B.F. Skinner. Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from http://tip.psychology.org/skinner.html

4. Renshaw.J The PPP Approach to Communicative Language Teaching. Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from http://www.englishraven.com/method_PPP.html

5. Renshaw.J The Communicative Language Teaching Approach. Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from http://www.englishraven.com/method_communicative.html

6. Scharton.M. Interpretation:
   Subjective vs Objective Evaluation. Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from http://www.english.ilstu.edu/scharton/Interpretation.html

7. Clark.D. A Few Good Learning Theories. Online article. Retrieved on February 4,2009 from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/learning/theories.html