ESL WEBSITE EVALUATION

http://www.eslcafe.com/

1. What does the website attempt to “teach”? Are exercises included in the website? What are the types of exercise included? Are there immediate feedback? Are there different levels of difficulty for different proficiency level?

Hi! Welcome to my blog! For this entry, I will evaluate an ESL website. The website that I have chosen is Dave ESL Cafe. It is quite famous among ESL learners and teachers. I knew this website from my lecturer during semester 4. This website is unique as it caters the need of both ESL learners and teachers. This website also provides learning and teaching materials for all language skills like listening, reading, writing and speaking. It means there are a lot of exercises/quizzes that the learners can do to improve their proficiency skill; from grammar, general knowledge, reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing. Learners will get the immediate feedback after answering those exercises/quizzes. There are no absolute different levels of difficulty for different proficiency level but the exercises/quizzes are categorized from the most basic knowledge in language to the most difficult one. So, the learners can choose which exercises that they want to answer or revise. And for teachers, this website offers various teaching materials. There are games, listening and speaking activities, spelling, vocabulary, ice breakers and etc.

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

The layout of this website is simple and clear. There are few labels like “Stuff for Teachers and “Stuff for Students”. So, if you are a teacher, you can simply click on the label “Stuff for Teachers”. Under the category, there is a sub-content that I think very useful to ESL teachers which is “Idea Cookbook”. It contains a lot of teaching materials/ideas/activities that teachers can use in the classroom. However, the teachers also can extract any exercises or quizzes under the label “Stuff for Students”. There are quizzes, grammar lesson, list of idioms and their meaning, phrasal verb and etc. Besides, learners can join the students’ forum. Learners can choose any topic that they want and join the discussion. Moreover, they can even start a new discussion with an interesting topic and connect to the people all around the world! That is why this website is called ESL Cafe!

3. While you are going through the website, does it remind you of anything you do in classroom, or with a teacher, or with a fellow classmate, or in self-study?

When I was doing my first microteaching which was for listening skill, I went through this website and found a lot of listening materials and activities. I was so impressed because I didn’t have to go through other websites. There are a lot of topics to be chosen and as teachers this is very helpful as the teachers have to make use different topics for each class. It is to attract students’ attention to learn plus to broaden students’ knowledge on something that they never thought of. I think this website provides simple, basic knowledge about daily life that learners usually don’t really care or know. For example like the eating habits they don’t really aware of. Although education first comes from home, the teacher also needs to emphasis the healthy eating habits. The best thing about this website, the teacher can download or extract cooking recipe and demonstrate in the class. The teacher also can ask the students to search other cooking recipe from the website and present it to the class...well..using other media tools like video or even a song like ‘Coklat Kek’ by Dr. Fazley! J

 4. Does the website present learners with something that cannot be done in a textbook/workbook? If yes, how so.

I would say that there are exercises from this website that can be found or done in textbook/workbook. However, i think, with this kind of generation where they cannot be separated from computer, they would be more interested to do exercises on internet. This might applicable to students that have internet access at home. In addition, the exercises are put under categories like grammar, history, idioms, people, reading comprehension, world culture and so on. Besides, the list of idioms are also complete where I think, cannot be found in textbook. For listening activities, this website provides the texts and also the audio. Well, English textbook usually comes with CD-ROM where the teacher can use in class. However, I never saw my teacher used it during the lesson.

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

The theory that I can pinpoint from this website is how the developer presents this website for the visual learners. The layout is simple, not haywire. The labels can be seen clearly and they are at the top and also at the left side of the website. It also comes in yellow, blue and red colour and when visitors click on the “Quizzes” label, there will appear a colour phrase “ESL Quiz Center”. Another theory is about the immediate feedback that the learners will receive after answering the quizzes or complete any activities. It is known that the learners will be aware of their own mistakes and will become more positive to search for the right answer. The students will try again until they get the correct one.

6. An important criterion for evaluating a CALL program, task or activity is the potential for language learning. Does the website fulfil this criterion? If yes, how so?

I would say yes. Although the activity for learners to answer quizzes only, the best thing is they can get immediate feedback and the range of topics that this website provides is quite awesome. Plus they have “Students Forum” where i think really works for ESL learners as they can share their own opinion/story on certain topics. I guess this website cherishes learning through experience and sharing is caring. As for teachers, there are hundreds of ideas to teach ESL that can be used in class. The activities are various. Some needs the teacher to use computer assisted language learning but some just needs the teacher to bring real life materials to class.

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

I would really like to use this website in future if I would to become a teacher. When I go through the “Idea Cookbook”, I really like the teaching ideas/activities that the website offers. I feel like conducting the activities with my students because it is not teacher centred, it comprises many themes or topics and it seems fun as the students will not find it in the ordinary textbook. I will also ask my students to go through this website and ask them to engage in one of the discussions in “Students Forum” and share what they have got with the class. Besides, the quizzes are meant for beginner level and this is very applicable to Malaysian students who still need help to improve the language proficiency.