Task 2 : ESL WEBSITE EVALUATION
The website that I am going to evaluate is
a website developed by the Internet TESL Journal (iteslj.org) with exercises
contributed by many teachers, which is Activities for ESL Students (a4esl.org).
First off, this website offers ESL students
exercises to teach them grammar and vocabulary. There are 2 types of exercises
included in the website which are multiple choices and filling in blanks. For grammar
and vocabulary exercises, on the easy level, there are some exercises in the
form of multiple choices that does not give the student the ability to click on
the chosen answer, but rather the website gives the answer hidden in an answer box.
But, for other multiple exercises, immediate feedbacks whether the student’s
answer is correct or wrong are available. And yes, there are grammar and
vocabulary exercises meant for different proficiency levels. The levels are
divided into three which are easy, medium and difficult.
As aforementioned, learners need to do the
exercises according to their proficiency levels. At the end of each set of
exercise, students will be told of their performance and from there, students
can opt whether to try the exercise again or to move on to the next set of
exercise. Unfortunately, there aren’t any accounts that can keep record of the
students’ performance.
While going through this website, I realise
that the exercises are pretty much similar to what I did in the classroom with
the teacher. Instructions are simple (although sometimes unclear) and the
exercises are quite straightforward. I think this is because most of the
exercises on the website are contributed by teachers themselves.
The website, however, does not present to learners
with something that cannot be done in a textbook or workbook. In my opinion,
since the exercises are contributed my teachers, it would most probably reflect
what they have in the textbook, thus, the exercises having similarities to
textbooks and/or workbooks.
The website uses exercises, mostly in the
same pattern of questions for a number of topics, to teach and/or reinforce
understanding of students. By this analysis of the website’s general MO, I can
say that the developer and contributors focus on repetition and drilling to
enhance students’ comprehension. One of the language learning theories that I can pinpoint to this website
is the Cognitive Learning Theories which is learner-centred, thus, making
learning from this website a discovery learning and making the learner aware of
the language’s nature.
The website fulfils the criterion of having
the tasks and/or activities that are potential for language learning. There are
levels starting from easy to medium to advance that the learner can choose
which helps the learners to gradually move to be better in the language. also,
there are multiple types of activities that are contributed by teachers around
the world and the website also contains bilingual activities that could help
beginners to understand the language more efficiently.
I would, and had personally use the
application myself in my work, because the activities that are prepared on the
website are simple to understand and fitting to a number of levels of students.
Furthermore, the website’s activities are very helpful to students because of
how simple the questions are made, so that the students are not confused.
