Web Evaluation #2 English for Everybody

I found an interesting website to evaluate for the web evaluation number 2 known as “English for Everybody” at http://www.english-online.org.uk/backindex.html. The intended purpose of English for Everybody is to help teach any willing student the English language through the use of instructional explanations, activities, multimedia, and quizzes. The content of this website is broken up into 8 different sections:

Multimedia English Courses – English Language courses – Learning resources and services –English for Special Purposes – English for Mobile Devices -  EFL exam practice – Ask the Prof.
Reading practice – English Language games

Each section contains different areas of focus or methodologies geared towards English language learning. The multimedia English courses section offers video tutorials along with a video transcription and accompanying exercises as well as a section on pronunciation that includes audio. The English language courses section offers 3 sections of courses divided by beginner, intermediate, and advanced and contain written lessons, vocabulary, and accompanying exercises and quizzes.  Learning resources and services section has a few links to related sites and English language newspapers. The English for Special Purposes section is further divided into sections of investing, marketing, the office, and computer. Each section offers vocabulary, grammar, and quizzes. English for mobile devices section offers links to the mobile version of English for Everybody with slightly less functionality. EFL exam practice is divided into several sections that describes the layout of a variety of language assessment tests such as TOEFL, IELTS, KET, etc. Ask the prof section is a forum offering users the ability to ask questions and interact with native speakers. The reading practice section offers links to authentic English texts and the English language games section links to a list of several games that help improve English and some just for fun.

The website includes a variety of external documents with links to authentic texts and pages devoted to explaining the layout and method of some of the interactive courses offered. The most interesting aspect of this site is the amount of content including, quizzes, multimedia videos, audio, interactive websites, games, tests, and vocabulary training. This site has so much content that it is difficult to say precisely what language goal would be successfully targeted using this website, but I think some basic grammar and vocabulary could be effectively learned and even though there is a section on pronunciation, I do not believe speaking and listening would be effectively learned using this site. Through the use of interactive quizzes, games, and tests English for Everybody does offer immediate feedback and assessment, but it is limited to programmed responses. I think the layout and structure of the website is easy to use, but it would benefit from an update in graphic design.

The strength of English for Everybody is in its large amount of content and pages offered freely to anyone with internet access. The information is helpful and maybe beneficial to intermediate and advanced users, but I think that some of the beginner courses were not scaffolded in a way to really benefit true beginners. I think more interactive activities and images would be helpful for beginners to start from scratch without having to constantly look up some of the more difficult vocabulary not defined in beginner examples. All in all it is a useful website with a lot of content and instruction in grammar, vocabulary, and usage.

Corpus linguistics

“We thus commit ourselves to teaching what is often untaught and may, indeed, be unteachable in terms of conventional language teaching methodology.”

This seems like a common theme in CALL research, the concept of going beyond conventional language teaching methodology. I think this is one of the bonuses of CALL in that it can make use of conventional and unconventional methods. Most conventions started off as unconventional, so I think CALL helps ease the process when necessary.

 In response to Johns (1991) and Richards & Rogers (2001) articles, I think that data-driven learning was a big step in language education and provides a rich resource of examples and usage of countless words and phrases.  It also serves to give concrete data to a subject that almost everyone has an opinion of, “[d]ata-driven learning aims to contextualize and demythologize language.  It is a result of technology and the ability to organize words and language features quickly and easily.”

The idea of teaching students to use the corpus databases and encourage learner autonomy is, as both articles suggested, very beneficial, especially for more advanced learners that are able to find and pick out collocations themselves. I think the internet has opened up huge and navigable corpora for many students to have immediate access to. Social networking is one aspect of web 2.0 that provides a rich, accessible, and easily navigable corpus of real-world language use. The interactive aspects available allow the student to interact with the author immediately, something that the authors of these articles probably did not foresee. This type of interaction can allow for further understanding of the usage and meaning behind the language in question. This is very helpful for motivated, high level students such as those described in the University of Birmingham, but I am interested to find ways in which lower level students can also benefit from these resources. Overall, I think corpus based learning can effectively build confidence for students, particularly in the skills of reading and writing.

I have never used any methods, as far as I was aware, that made explicit use of a lexical syllabus or the most used English words. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has, and how the experience was.

Summary and Response to Anderson's Article (2003)

        Terry Anderson’s purpose in writing this paper, "Getting the Mix Right Again: An Updated and Theoretical Rationale for Interaction," is to create a theoretical rationale as well as a guide for creating distance education courses with the aim of being effective for a variety of students and learning needs. Anderson believes that interaction is the key to mindfulness in learners, awareness of other perspectives, and essential to the creation of learning communities. Not all interactions have educational value. In education, interaction is typically constrained from the student's perspective to the relationships between student-student, student-teacher, student-content. Anderson (2003) states, “high levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.” Student-teacher interaction has the highest perceived value among students while teacher-teacher interaction is crucial to the university based research production and evaluation model. ”

  Because of the low levels of most interaction types, the lecture format is not the best effective or efficient. Traditional distance education programs using independent studies allow for high student-content interaction and audio-video conferencing encourages mostly mid to low level interaction while web-based coursed using text functions provide high interactions among students. Net-based learning communities utilizing synchronous and asynchronous are rich in interaction. With the goal of creating efficient, educationally effective, and cost effective programs, student-student and student-content interaction can act as a substitute for student-teacher interaction. Recently, student-content interaction may be the most effective and available for many students because, "[t]he cost and restrictions on value of content interaction is falling much faster than interaction involving the other two forms of interaction (Moore’s and Metcalfe’s Laws), and thus is expanding in all areas, putting a premium value and cost on human based interaction: student-student, student-teacher, and teacher-teacher” (Anderson, 2003, pg. 10). 

     I think that Anderson has suggested a viable theory that I believe has been proven in the real-world. This article predates most of the web 2.0 boom and just missed out on the types of e-learning that allows for quality student-student, student-content, and student-teacher interaction without the timing issues mentioned in the article. Web 2.0 allows for a hybrid of all the methods mentioned in the article, creating a best of both worlds scenario. Distance learning may still not be perfect, but traditional classrooms have never been perfect either. As far as creating an efficient and cost effective distance learning course, I believe this theory acts as a quality foundation for the advancements made after the publication of this article.

LingQ - software/website review

   LingQ is a multi-language learning system as well as a language learning community. The methodology of the website is based on the founders experience learning 11 languages as well as research from Stephen Krashen. The goal of this site is to build a community of learners that form a language exchange and social network. The main approach to learning language from LingQ is to listen to podcasts and other audio/video resources found on the internet that are provided by other members and LingQ resources.
      Many members feel that they can have genuine experiences with the target language using sources of target language audio, video, and interactive language exchange without having to be in a country that speaks the target language. Vocabulary words can be saved, categorized, and placed in flashcards. Personal tutors (other members) are available to interact with learners and offer practice and feedback. The most effective application of this system seems to be reading and listening. It is easy and free to use, but in order to unlock all features there is a fee of $10 per month.
    For a highly motivated learner, this might be a helpful website. Because the personal tutors are those also wanting to learn a language and not necessarily trained in language education, it is difficult to judge how helpful that interaction and feedback would be. For some, it could be very helpful, and for others it might not be effective. The social element is interesting and provides a low stress platform for members to interact within a community. I understand the need to charge for some services, but I think a system like this would benefit the most by being free.
    Being a somewhat paid service, it is hard to believe all the testimonials and reviews on the homepage. I would feel more informed about the language learning system if I spent more time using it or speaking with someone who actively uses LingQ. I registered as a free user and was surprised by the amount of resources available as a free user. There are a good bit of audio links and files included with transcripts for locating and saving difficult vocabulary. The main problem with this system is a lack of structure. It is open to beginners as well as advanced levels of learners, but all students need to be focused and organized to get the most benefit out of the program. I think this is the biggest issue users will face. A lack of organization and a  lack of clear progression indicators create an easy situation for new users to gradually quit using it.
   All in all it is an interesting concept that I would like to learn more about. The web design is clean and user-friendly allowing for easy transition between various language learning tools, but without a better defined path for learners, I think this is not going to be one of the most effective ways to learn a language.

Egbert and Warschauer

Egbert starts  off with a discussion on the possible definitions of CALL and then goes on to make his own:

"I will define CALL with a set of practical guidelines to help teachers and learners understand and implement CALL in  language classrooms."

Situating CALL within established areas of language learning such as learning environments and TESOL and NETS standards is a good way to get people comfortable with the concept. I find Egbert's practical approach to CALL reassuring and summed up well with this quote:

"Books, for example were thought to damage memory. It is only natural that a tool as new, complicated, and powerful as the computer would cause an even bigger fuss. When teachers and learners have accepted computers as just another learning tool, as they have accepted the book, practitioners in the field will worry far less about how to define CALL."

       Warschauer is interesting because of his specific approaches and more direct application of CALL in classrooms. His perspective is based on socio-cultural principles and, like Egbert, encourages CALL to be grounded in quality learning environments. Warschauer's lecture touched on some important topics that I find useful. One is the concept of using a foreign language as a tool to talk about local concepts and ideas that are important to the perspective of whoever might be using that tool. This concept forms a viewpoint of looking at English language teaching from a global perspective rather than a native perspective.
      His points on computer assisted tutorials are also encouraging and are good examples of the numerous possible uses of CALL. Another good example was an application for reducing stress in discussion classes with the use of  text-based chat programs used alongside oral discussion.  I have tried something similar and had positive feedback from students and a lot of text interaction that carried over to oral interaction.

I feel that Egbert and Warschauer both set a good standard and have developed an easy to understand framework for utilizing CALL.