Critique 1: (http://iteslj.org/cw/)
The activity I would like to evaluate is Crossword Puzzles for ESL Students (http://iteslj.org/cw/). I felt the idea of using crosswords to help learn vocabulary is great! I’ve done so in my classroom, but I timed my students. I would suggest that others do so as well; it gives an extra level of motivation. I found a few problems with this particular site. First, I found the easy levels to be quite difficult and I’m a native speaker. Under “Parts of a House” puzzle there were several clues that I couldn’t determine the answer. For example, “it’s outside the entrance” was the clue. The answer is: porch. I have never lived in a house that had a porch and I would have never guessed this answer. I think that if this is true for me, what would it be like for an ESL learner? Needless to say I really feel that the clues need to be clarified and some completely changed. Second, I really do not appreciate the “hint” aspect; what the website does is give you the first two letters of the word. I don’t feel that this is the appropriate way to aid the learner. Why not take the hint section to elaborate on the already proposed clue? For example, the hint for the previous example could say, “many houses have them screened in.” I did find that the advanced levels were good for teaching idioms and other explicit nuances of English. Unfortunately there are not as many to choose from, and the teacher would have to ensure that all of the words/phrases in the puzzle had already been taught. I would suggest using: www.puzzle-maker.com where you can make your own. That would make it much more specific to the vocabulary that you want your students to learn.
Critique 2: (http://www.wordq.com)
I would like to evaluate WordQ
Critique 3: (http://www.elllo.org/english/Songs.htm)
I decided to critique the ELLLO (http://www.elllo.org/english/Songs.htm) website. Research states that materials for students to listen to should have the appropriate affective, cognitive and linguistic dimensions. So I will critique the website according to those standards. As far as the affective dimension, I think this website gets an A+. I know when I was learning Spanish I really enjoyed listening to songs in Spanish, and I wanted to try and understand the words. I think that this will be true for many learners and activities with the lyrics could be a great way to build motivation. The next dimension is the cognitive one and I don’t think this website or any song listening activity would be very good. After looking at the songs on the website I noticed that it follows the same general trend that songs are not very easy to understand. I actually had a hard time trying to infer meaning from many of the songs on the website. With this true, the song becomes more about understanding what word is said and much less about what the words mean together. And trying to figure out what words are said goes right into the last dimension, linguistic. Songs do not follow the same suprasegmental or even syntactic level of normal English. With that being said, using songs as a material becomes a poor representative of what English actually is. Overall, I think that the website does a good job of splitting the lyrics up into readable chunks, and that it could help excite the learner. It also may provide some world knowledge and slang terms that would not otherwise be learned. However, I do think that this website should be used as a fun motivational-building activity, and not as an actual tool to teach English.
Critique 4: (www.eslhome.com/esl/esp)
I wanted to discuss www.eslhome.com/esl/esp. This website was mentioned as a great site for selecting content based materials. Teaching content specific material is difficult and time-consuming for the teacher so having one website that provides many links to other websites is excellent. The website had many great resources, but I found several aspects of the website problematic. The website hasn’t been updated in over a year, and as frequent as English changes this is a serious issue. Some of the links cost, like the business handouts website, but the prices seemed reasonable. The website was kind of unclear; I wish that beside each of the links there was some sort of description on what to expect or maybe how to use it. One of the categories they used was EAP, and then there were links for tons of different subjects. That seems to be a broad category that could have been broken down much better. Some links are to newspapers that change every day, and although it’s good to have variety it’s just not clear what the students should be able to get out of it. Prior explicit instruction or specific tasks would have to be given in order for much of the links to be effectively used. Also, some of the topics given only had one (or no) websites underneath it. For example, the Military English category only had one website. Also, when clicking on specific links, some of them did not go where they were supposed to. For example, when clicking on the “IPA for teens” it just went to a description of an undergraduate linguistics program for Tulane University. Overall I think the website is a great resource, but the teacher would have to guide the students through it in order for it to be useful.
Critique 5:
I believe it is all in how the teacher utilizes clickers in if they become useful or not. I choose to believe that there are more advantages than disadvantages, and those seemingly disadvantages can be shifted to advantages. In any teaching environment, including ESL, it is essential to know what your students are mastering and not mastering. With the use of clickers you could have a quick and efficient way to assess a baseline to what students understand throughout the lesson and/or at the end. In a bigger classroom many students can get lost, and clickers would be a way of ensuring that everyone has a voice. It would provide a way for full participation to occur without anyone feeling like they have been called out. In an ESL classroom feedback and the immediacy of it is key; clickers would provide just that. A student could take an assessment and immediately know if they understood the lesson, and what they need to work on. “Knowledge is Power” so if the student knows where they are then the control is in their hands to improve that. The unfortunate problem with clickers is that they are currently limited to one response answers. Especially in a communicatively based language-learning generation multiple- choice does not support the uniqueness or complexity of language. I do think this can and will change; an addition of full keyboards could completely obliterate this issue. I personally like the idea of designing an application that could run on students’ cell phones and/or computers as a practical solution. I definitely think I could use clickers in my future research. I think with interviews and DCTs it would be more time efficient and the standard deviation of error would diminish as the researcher would not have to calculate everything by hand.
Critique 6:
The book I am reviewing is “Technology-Mediated Learning Environments for Young English Learners: Connections in and out of School” edited by L. Leann Parker. The audience for this book is educators of elementary aged children who are immigrants from other countries. The book is a compilation of articles and reflections from various authors. This book would be good for teachers who have primarily Hispanic low-income students, and desire to understand what their needs are. Chapters in the book are extremely research driven and provide incredible rationale for why multilinguals and bilinguals should be treated differently. Some major issues were found in the book. One is that many times words are mentioned with the assumption that the reader understands them. However, I found myself (an educator) having to look up words, like “hypermedia,” to know what they mean. Another issue I had was that there is no real instruction on how to implement technology activities. Basically the articles state they should be used and occasionally state examples. What they fail to do is explain how to find the examples or how to actually use them in a classroom. For example, the author would state “get pen pals,” but not explain what exactly that would look like inside the classroom. I also didn’t like that no real “new” activities were given. The authors basically talked about past research projects that utilized certain computer activities and then stated how those activities should be used. It also really bothered me that the audience was so specific, and the book doesn’t really acknowledge that. Also, the book claims to focus on activities in and out of school, but there is only one chapter that address what a learner can do at home. And in that, the author says to use video game consoles, and internet. Many low-income learners do not have that opportunity so that frustrated me. Overall the book provides great data and ideas, but fails in instructing a teacher on how to use them.
Below is a PowerPoint presentation given on this book:
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