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.