ESL WEBSITE EVALUATION (10%)

Nur Anis Harliani Binti Mohd Sidek (2014211406)     ED2418A

ESL Website: Dave’s ESL Café ( http://www.eslcafe.com/ )

1.      What does the website or MOOC or app or tool attempt to “teach”? Are exercises or activities included in the website? What are the types of exercise or activities included? Are there immediate feedbacks? Are there different levels of difficulty for different proficiency levels? {You can any other comments you deem necessary)

 Dave’s ESL Café is the digital meeting place for ESL and EFL teachers and students from all over the world. For teachers, they focus more on job forums, forums in general, training forums as well as resume posting. But, under the option of idea cookbook, which is not literal recipes, but actually guidance for the educators whereby for language, there is some information on how to have fun with your students, how to teach grammar, holiday idea to be used in the class, ideas for teaching ESL/EFL to young learners and how to help your students improve in listening skills as well as many others. For students, however, it is a different thing altogether. The website attempts to teach the grammatical aspects of English Language more as they provided several options such as Grammar Lesson where there is a lot of input provided like adjective clauses, conditional sentences, confusing words, conjunctive adverbs, conversational language, countries, adjective forms and nationalities and many others. There is also information about idioms, phrasal verbs, slang and of course quizzes and students’ forums.

              Despite the extensive language knowledge, they only have one type of exercise or activities to help students in learning and test their understanding, which is quizzes. The questions are a lot but if they provided several others type of exercises, things might be more interesting and appealing to the students. The learners will have to answer the quizzes’ questions by choosing the correct answer based on the options given, to complete the gap in the sentences. After they click the submission or check button, they will receive immediate feedback on the correctness of the answers as well as the percentages of their performances, which are good things for the learners. It will be quite interesting if the website also provides the hint button and also timer, to challenge the students. As for the varieties of difficulties across proficiencies, some of the quizzes do have the easy, medium and difficult questions even though they are not stated. This can be seen as the sentences become longer and some contain difficult words. However, a few of them did not have such levels so, they are not that standardized. If they have questions of different proficiency levels, it will be a highly effective evaluation segment for language learners especially for the non-native. Aside from questions that focus on purely grammar knowledge, there are also questions about geography, history, idioms, words, and slang, as well as people, reading comprehension, science, world culture, writing and others. So the options for quizzes are diverse and interesting although the level of difficulties is not that clear.

2.   What are the learners/visitors required to do with regards to learning the content of the website or MOOC or apps?

          In order for learners or visitors to learn from the website’s content, they just have to open the website and use it however they want to. There is no need for a login or sign up to be done as it has a free access to everyone who wishes to use the website in the teaching and learning of English Language. Visitors or learners don’t have to pay for anything except if they want to purchase a Dave’s ESL Café Sponsored Announcement. Some of TEFL or TESOL certifications are being offered as part of English teacher training certificate programs regardless of where the educators come from. Of course, it is not entirely free and some payments, as well as steps, need to be taken for this purpose. As it is, any notes or information about language teaching and learning can be used and shared by everyone. This eventually makes it easier and less hassle for others. This is because many of the interesting learning tools or materials require one to either sign up, log in, pay a certain amount of money or even download certain software.

3.        Does the website or MOOC or app or tools present learners with something that cannot be done in a face-to-face classroom? If yes, how so?

          It is true that in some ways, using website does present learners with something that cannot be done in a face-to-face classroom such as according to British Council (2013), it allows for learners to independently improve their language while at the same time helping teachers by reducing some of their workloads. Due to some difficulties in creating meaningful spoken language practices, using tools like the website for ESL learning mediating the process whereby language can be put out there and giving for immediate feedbacks that enable someone to know whether they have understood what they have learned or not. It also supports the 21^st Century Learning since it involves technology and internet integration in education, whereby it manages to insert some enhancement in language knowledge.

Learning language becomes highly interesting when it moves from the traditional classroom and conventional ways of teaching and learning, especially since we are currently dealing with the digital generations of learners and also teachers. Therefore, they will be more motivated to learn the language as quite a few students consider ESL learning, as difficult as learning mathematical formula and equations.  Not only that, in a real classroom, it’s hard to do these in limited learning hours.  Aside from that, the learners could learn and practice their language in online forums where there are people from all over the world, with a different understanding and learning tips could assist in language development.  Further on, using a creative and interactive computer-based technology website as tools help in motivating the learners with severe reading disabilities to overcome their disabilities. All in all, it is a comprehensive input method that is hard to get in a face-to-face interaction, especially since some students may refuse to speak in the language.

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

             For this website, I believe that some of the language learning theories underlying it are Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis (1982), Piaget’s as well as Vygotsky’s Theory (1962) in terms of scaffolding. For Krashen, language acquisition was interconnected with the comprehensive input from the use of technology devices and tools, as it only happens when the affective filter is low. Some of the negative filters on the learners’ learning ability are anxiety, boredom, demotivation and many others whereby the higher they are, the fewer students’ motivations will be. To quote Krashen, “the presentation of this input should be done in a way that does not put the acquirer ‘on the defensive’,” (Krashen, 1982, p 125) that is when the high amount of affective filter block the input from the brain. Educators should take note of the importance of learners’ mental conditions in language acquisition and development as their passions are involved. As it is, they could affect learners’ performances positively or negatively.

 If the environment; both inside and outside or educational settings, did not motivate students to learn, has a high filter and also did not allow for the presence of comprehensible inputs, then learners will not be bothered with the lessons or tasks given as an enhancement. Additionally, according to for Piaget and Vygotsky, a new technological tools of online peer learning that focused on online community in the forms of forums fits Piaget’s constructivist theory including the quizzes, whereby a learners’ ability to interact with their immediate environment including the use of technology will lead to better learning abilities, therefore, educators and also the learners need to scaffold other ESL learners with opportunities of effective learning strategies, especially the one that fits current generations’ preferences. As a Muslim scholar that I couldn’t remember has mentioned, “Teach and guide your children according to their era as theirs might not be the same as yours”. This also supports the notion of 21^st Century teaching and learning that want the integration of technologies and internet in education, especially for language learning and development.

5. An important criterion for evaluating a CALL program, task or activity is the

potential for language learning (i.e. will student learn something?) Does the

website or MOOC or app fulfill this criterion? If yes, how so? If no, why?

For this website, yes, it does assist and enable the students to learn language knowledge, particularly the grammar aspects. They listed out some grammar knowledge with their explanations and also examples to help them understand the lesson. Of course, with the several quizzes provided, the learners will be able to test their understanding right after they learned the grammatical aspects which can enhance their memory retention of the knowledge. The forums in Dave’s ESL Café become the effective platform for a group discussion (or blended learning) to be done either among their peers or with other learners around the world. They can learn new methods of comprehending grammar knowledge, such as a tip or two, as well as increasing their background knowledge of the world and its culture. The students might also be able to increase their confidence level in using the English Language for communication and comprehension purposes which are some of the important skills to be learned and developed in online learning that deviates from the traditional learning.

6. Would you like to use the application yourself in your future work?

            I have to admit that I might use this website in my own teaching whether as a government, private or tuition teachers but from the overall analysis of the website, it is more suitable for those with average to lower level learners as it is not as challenging for those who are in an advance level. Perhaps if the website’s administrator revised some of their quizzes and specify the difficulty’s levels, as well as increasing the grammatical and other ESL teaching and learning knowledge, then this platform can also be used by those with a high language proficiency. Aside from that, hopefully in the future, the website can include other samples of effective ESL teaching and learning methods as well as the materials for others to refer and revise to suit the teachers or students, and also creating other interesting language games for a highly interactive and interesting learning platform of English Language. The website indeed has potentials and it is not the best, but there are rooms for improvements and in a way, some students especially the average to the lower level ones can benefit from it.