TASK 1
1. What does the application attempt to “teach”?
I have chosen the website a4esl.org which offers its users with wide range of exercises like grammar, vocabularies, and many more. With the aim of helping learners to learn English as Second Language (ESL), this website which was developed by The Internet TESL Journal (iteslj.org) has thousands of contributions from teachers all over the world from quizzes, tests, exercises and puzzles, etc. The basic knowledge to learn English like grammar and vocabulary seem to be crucial for ESL learners to master their language learning, thus, this website is the solution for them with just clicks away. Although the exercises provided are not as interactive like what other websites might have, a4esl.org guarantees its users to achieve the success they desired by using the drilling techniques in most of the provided activities in the website.
All of the features in the website are 100% user’s friendly and the menus are simple enough to enable the users to browse and access the website with ease compared to other website. Besides, learners can also access the exercises online and determine their achievement in the ESL learning process by taking the exercises provided. For example, each of the activities will show the learners the percentage that the learners achieved towards the end of every exercise. The full mark of every exercise is 100% and it will reduce if the learner answers one or more question(s) wrongly. This drilling technique is essential for second language learners as it will teach the learners to avoid from making same mistakes like what they did previously.
Besides the ESL learners, this website can also be used by teachers or trainee teachers as the guideline and templates for the educators to use in their teaching process. Teachers sometime may have difficulties on creating exercises for the students. Thus, this website will be the lifebuoy for the educators to get the idea or maybe manipulate some of the provided exercises into new ones for the students’ exercises. Parents can also use this website to give their children the basic knowledge of English in a different, fun and interactive way of learning instead of by using only exercise books. By having exercises like matching the pictures, words shuffle, and language games, there will be no way for the children to resist from learning the language.
2. What sorts of things is the application user expected to do with regards to learning the content?
There is nothing much for the ESL learners to do in order to learn the contents from this website. Unlike other ESL websites that I have browsed, most of them need to do things like registering into the website before the user can access the contents of the website, some required the user to pay quite amount of money so the user can view the full version of the exercise provided in the website, and so forth, which is burdening and create a ‘complex’ life out of the user. Unlike other sites, this website’s contents are all free and users can access the contents without having the need to register into the website. What is expected from the user to learn the content of the website is only by three major things which are good basic of English, vast general knowledge of other countries and basic skill in using the browser.
First thing to be taken into the account of learning the website is to have a basic knowledge of English language. For the low proficiency learner, the website content may cause them a very hard time especially when doing the provided exercises. Thus, ESL learners should have a good foundation of English language in order to access the contents of this website. To have vast general knowledge on others’ countries is also essential for the user of this website as the activities provided in the site may contain questions that related to other countries’ famous people, cultures, history and places. For example, Japanese ESL learners that use this website are expected to know the places in United States. Other example is, in order for the Japanese ESL learners to complete the crosswords puzzle entitled "Countries Where English Is Spoken", the learners have to have a good general knowledge of other countries because the questions will be on the places, the famous people and the language spoken from other countries.
The website is a collaborative project from the internet TESL Journal and thus, educators from all over the world can provide different activities that they want and the activities may contain the general knowledge from their respective countries. Moreover, the website also provides bilingual activities that enable the learners from most countries to learn English language. For example there are Arabic-English, Chinese-English, Norwegian-English and many more to be chosen by the learners which I think makes the website to be different from others.
3. What sorts of computer skills is the application users expected to have in order to operate/access/use the application?
To access a4esl.org, the user is required to have a minimal skill in using the computer because the menus and links provided only require the user to click and browse. Besides, the website has sorted all the activities and exercises according to several categories and difficulties for example Easy for beginner level, Medium for the intermediate learner and difficult for the advance learner. In addition, this website required no additional software or application as it only needs the basic software and application which are common to computer like JavaScript, HTML, and flash player.
4. While you are “playing”/”accessing”/”assessing” the application, does it remind you of anything you do in a classroom, or with a teacher, or with a fellow classmate, or in self-study?
Yes it does. I did experience a few activities that remind me of the activities which I did in a classroom during my school years and also during my experience as a practicum teacher. For instance, is the crosswords puzzle activity in the website. During my school years, my teacher always gave her students crossword puzzles as an activity during her teaching process. She inspired me to do the same to my students during my teaching process as a practicum teacher. This is because; such activity can enhance the students’ interest in learning English language besides to promote the students to learn new vocabularies via the crossword puzzles.
5. Can you pinpoint some theories of language learning and/or teaching underlying the application?
There are two theories of language learning underlying this website which are the structural theory and the cognitive theory. According to J. Scandura, the structural theory, the focus is to propose single, goal-switching control mechanism with minimal assumptions about the processor and allow more complex rule structures. For instance, the activities in this website are sorted into categories according to their level of difficulties like easy, medium and difficult which I believe is one of the principles of the structural theory. The simplest or the easiest activities are put as the first option followed by more difficult activities on the next options.
Next theory of language learning that this website uses is the cognitive theory which is famously created by Jean Piaget. For this website, it uses the cognitive theory of classification which the learners will identify sets of objects according to their appearance, size, or other characteristics, including the idea that one set of objects can include another, under the concrete operational stage. For example of this theory on this website can be seen clearly on the vocabulary section, Noun. For the activity of that section, learners are asked to identify and classify the animal pictures before clicking on the answer.
6. How well is the constructivist theory of learning applied to the chosen website(s)?
From my understanding, the constructivist theory of learning is a type of theory that agrees that the learning process is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based on their current or past knowledge. Thus, this website basically gets along very well indeed with the theory based on the activities provided in this site which requires the learner to use their schemata to answer the questions with the help of the clues and examples given.
The theory also urges the learner to use their general knowledge or experiences which basically make the student develop their very own readiness to learn something. For example of this principle that can be related to the website, most of the questions which used general knowledge according to the difficulties make the learners feel connected with the scenario and indirectly become interested and motivated to do the activity as the topic of the questions are within their general knowledge. Hence, the website applied the constructivist theory of learning very well and effectively as it will promote motivation and interest to the learners to learn.
7. In 1980s and early 1990s, there was a major debate on ‘whether the computer was “master” of or “slave” to the learning process (Higgins and Johns, 1984). In relation to your evaluation - was the computer a replacement for teachers, or merely an obedient servant to students?
I couldn’t agree more on the statement ‘whether the computer was ‘’master’’ of or ‘’slave‘’ to the learning process’ (Higgins and Johns, 1984) because as people from the computer generation, we tend to rely on the computer on our learning process including everyday chores and that makes the computer is neither our slave or we as the master to the computer itself. However there are pros and cons of using computer in our learning process. For the advantages, computer can be an interesting way of learning as it promotes interactive and fun way of learning atmosphere for the students. Besides, the computer also helps teacher in building interesting lesson plans whenever the teachers got problems in developing interactive and fun way of teaching and learning. As for the disadvantages, computer can never be as same as from our human nature that has the empathy towards each other when it comes to understanding the learners’ level of proficiency during the learning process.
Alas, I believe that computer is a useful tool which has its own advantages and disadvantages. There is no term like a ‘’master’’ or ‘’slave’’ in using computer in learning process as it helps the learners and also the teachers during learning process. As for the learners, it helps them to enhance their interest in learning while for the teachers, computer will help them in developing interesting lessons so that the lessons will be interesting and can grab the students’ attention which they will have more fun learning atmosphere during the learning process.
8. Would you like to use the application yourself in your future work?
Yes? Give reasons:
No? Give reasons:
Yes, totally. I would love to use this website in my future work as an educator for my future students. Though the layout of the website is simple and the menus are kind of straightforward, the website’s contents are very useful and interesting enough for me. I bet others will love it too because it is easy to access and very users’ friendly. Thus, I highly recommend for the ESL learners to use this application/website as the reference and materials for them to sharpen their knowledge of English language. Moreover, as an educator, this website will surely help me if I encounter problems in preparing interactive lessons for my future students. Thousands of materials can be choose in the website and all of those are readily sorted according to the level of difficulties which will make life of an educators and learners easier.
Suggestions/Recommendations.
I will give the credits to this website for its efforts to make language learning a fun thing to do besides it also helps teachers to prepare interesting lesson plan for the students during classroom teaching. I do recommend all educators to use this website to improve their teaching because this website not only focus on learning English language alone but also provide the us the general knowledge about other countries too. As for the suggestions to improve this website, I believe that this website should have more vibrant colours because it is believed that vibrant colours and animations can help the learners to remember what they have learned more effectively. Overall, I am pleased with this website because it has everything that a language learner needs to improve their learning process as the website provide such an interactive and fun learning atmosphere to the users.
REFERENCES
Activities for ESL Students (http://a4esl.org/)
Structural Learning Theory (J. Scandura) (http://tecfa.unige.ch/themes/sa2/act-app-dos2-fic-structur.htm )
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