[L544] CALL Software/Website Evaluation #1

L544 CALL Software/Website Evaluation #1

Spring 2014

Yoon-Kyoung Chae

Software/Website Title: EWE (Easy World of English)

Website URL: http://easyworldofenglish.com/readings/lReadings.aspx?c=2f1dbe126863ea88&l=8a8e34188c6d618a&ls=372e3b44d46a9c7d

Grade/Age Level: from secondary school students to adult learners

Language & Content:

1)   Intended purpose

Easy World of English (EWE) has been designed to help students and teachers alike. For students, this website can be a flexible online English language program that allows students to learn at their own pace, and there are extensive multi-level, reading, writing, grammar, and listening exercises to enable students to improve their English language skills. For teachers, this can be a resource to enable the students to further enhance their English language skills, and reading, writing and listening activities are developed for beginners, intermediate, and advanced English learners.
 

2)   Content

There are five main menus presented by different colored tab buttons at the top of the screen – Home, About Us, Locations, Our Mission, Contact Us. On the Home menu (or the first screen on the website), four submenus (four language goals; grammar, pronunciation, reading, and picture dictionary) are seen in the middle of the page for viewers to select what they want to learn. If viewers click each submenu, it goes into the multi-level contents of practices per each language goal. On About Us menu, it describes about the teachers and designers who developed this English learning online website. On Locations menu, it briefly shows the address of their off-line location, which can be inferred that there is an institution/organization that manages this learning website, or this website plays a role as a supplementary learning area for an off-line English language institution. On Our Mission menu, it addresses their intended purpose of creating this English learning website. It sets the interface of allowing users to send an email directly to contact with them on Contact Us menu. 

3)   External documents

There are no external documents included on this website. However, at the bottom of the first home page, there is a button that is connected to YouTube website for viewers to subscribe their YouTube channel. I thought they would keep updating or provide further exciting video clip resources through the YouTube channel. Unfortunately, when I clicked the button, it went to the YouTube but it said there’s no such a username. They probably deleted their YouTube channel or stopped updating there, but I think if they had kept their YouTube channel and updating the visual resources to support learners, which could have been a very great idea.

4)   Interesting?  Easy to use?

First of all, this English language learning website is absolutely free to users. There is a log-in box for viewers to join in the website, but I guess it is not necessary to do that in order to use the learning contents. Second, the layout of the website is so neat and well-organized that even visitors who came for the first time can catch the contents easily and quickly. But most of all, the greatest advantage of this learning website is abundant available/accessible learning resources to practice based on each proficiency level and each language skill (grammar, reading, pronunciation, vocabulary).

5)   Language goal(s)

The specified language goal of this website is extensive multi-level reading, writing, grammar, and listening exercises to improve learners’ English language skills. However, there is a slight gap between their intended purpose and actual practiced performance in that there is no lesson or practice for English writing on this website at all. Other than writing, it provides English language learners with abundant exercises for learner-own-paced learning of grammar, reading, listening, pronunciation, and vocabulary.

6)   Practice / Assessment / Feedback (with examples)

 I.      Grammar

Students would select their level and choose a lesson (per grammar topic) first, read the explanations carefully and listen to the examples by clicking on the orange speaker. Learners can practice their listening skills at the same time through this step. They would repeat this step (reading explanations and examples) as many times as needed. As an assessment, they would check their understanding by completing the lesson quizzes. It is recommended to repeat the quiz until their score is more than 80%. During the quizzes, it promptly shows the feedback about whether each answer learners just typed in or clicked on was ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’. After completing the quiz, it shows the score result with accuracy percentage and notifies whether the learner passed (“Congratulations, you passed.”) or failed (“Sorry, you failed.”) based on the cut-off point of 80% accuracy. It is also possible to review the incorrect questions, with correct answers provided afterward. The examples of Grammar quizzes are as follows.

II.    Pronunciation

The pronunciation section is divided into several units – the Alphabet, Minimal pairs, Numbers, T&D sounds, Special endings (suffixes), and Verbs (regular, irregular, phrasal, two word verbs). Students first choose the section they want to practice, listen to the pronunciation, and repeat the sounds out loud as many times as deemed necessary. The audio files of pronunciation of every word sound very clear and correct. Regarding assessment and feedback, however, there is no quiz or quick test about students’ pronunciation product or their discrimination of correct sounds from wrong ones. The examples of Pronunciation practice materials are as follows.

III.      Readings

Reading section has been divided into three levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Upper-intermediate. Each level is composed of 20 readings that have been carefully selected so that students can become familiar with many common topics, phrases, expressions, and general vocabulary used in The United States. Learners first select their level and choose a lesson, listen to the story by clicking the picture on the player, and repeat step 2 as many times as needed. Vocabulary and expressions are provided with easy definition in English. Conversation activities that teachers can use as the follow-up class activity are also shown on the bottom. The guide of Reading section says students can complete quizzes A, B, and C as a quick test, but there is no button for quizzes there. Followings are some examples of Reading section.

  IV.     Picture Dictionary

The Picture Dictionary is composed of commonly used vocabulary words illustrated with pictures and accompanied by their pronunciation. The Picture Dictionary is divided into forty-seven themes, which have been carefully selected. These themes range from banking and money to transportation and nature. By providing both images and sounds, it might be able to facilitate the students’ vocabulary learning process. Students first select a section and choose a theme lesson. Next, they listen to the pronunciation and check spelling by clicking on every picture. It would improve learners’ pronunciation by repeating and memorizing the words as many times as needed. However, like Pronunciation and Reading section, there is no assessment or feedback for students to check their understanding and accuracy about their learning. The example screens of Picture Dictionary are as follows.

7)   Strengths

a.    Well-organized learning materials per each level and topic

-   Even first visitor of student can easily catch the content and structure of the website, and can find appropriately what they want to learn according to their proficiency level and various different topics.

b.    Provision of pronunciation audio file

-     All the learning materials proceed with audio files of pronunciation that are clean, correct, and accurate. Therefore, students are able to study as a combined or integrated approach, such as grammar with listening or reading with listening skills. It would be very effective especially for acoustic (auditory) type of learners who acquire new knowledge better with sounds.

c.     Various types of quizzes

-   Different types of quizzes are provided based on the learning topics. Four different types of quizzes presented are, 1) Typing whole answers (word-level or sentence-level), 2) Fill in the blank, 3) Matching, and 4) Multiple choice.

8)   Suggestions for Improvement

a.    More assessment needed

-     There are not many quizzes used as a tool of assessment and feedback on this website. Only grammar section offers some quizzes, and there are no quizzes at all in other sections. Website developers need to update the materials in terms of this, because their guide of this learning website mismatches with the contents – they mentioned students can check their understanding on the quizzes they provided, but no quizzes were there on Reading, Pronunciation, and Vocabulary section. In Grammar quizzes, in addition, they can enrich the number of sets of quiz so that the students can check their learning in various contexts.

b.    Practice exercise during explanation lecture

-     While students are taking a look at the explanation materials to get the point about the topics, it might be better to be provided quick short practice exercises for them. If they got wrong, they can repeat that part again in particular and have a clear understanding about it before they jump into a quiz of the topic as a whole.

c.     More items for advanced level learners

-   This learning website might be a bit easy for the advanced learners. For instance, considering the contents of Reading section, it offers three levels of Beginner, Intermediate, and Upper Intermediate. Vocabulary section (Picture Dictionary) also provides basic English words. More contents are needed to develop for advanced-level learners if they wish this website could be used by more English language learners online.

d.    Utilization of YouTube channel

-   There is a button on the bottom of the first page that says ‘Subscribe on YouTube’. When I clicked it, it says YouTube cannot find the user. I guess they probably tried to use YouTube channel as a supplementary tool, but they stopped it now. It could be a great communication path to use YouTube channel as a way of providing new (video) lesson, giving feedback (e.g. frequent Q&A), or offering abundant video resources for students to practice in real-life contexts.