ESL website evaluation

   The ESL website that has been chosen to be evaluated is USA Learns: http://www.usalearns.org/student-home

            This website attempts to teach English towards beginner and intermediate adult learners. This website consists of three components which are First English Course, Second English Course and Practice English and Reading. For the first course, it is meant for the beginners of English language user. It contains 20 units and some of the topics are about family, places, celebrations, countries, clothes, colours and etcetera. This website also teaches the learners new vocabularies relevant to the topic taught. Each topic will introduce the vocabularies once or twice. For example, in the first course, under celebrations topic, the vocabularies introduced are:

·         To-do-lists

·         Invite

·         Buy

·         Gift

·         Cake

·         Make a cake

·         Decorations

·         Put up

·         Clean

·         Eat

·         Drink

After all of the vocabularies are introduced, the learners will be tested right away about the introduced vocabularies by using multiple-choice questions. I believed that it is meant for the students to be able to recap and memorize the introduced vocabularies.

            There are exercises included in this website to test the students’ understanding of what have been learnt. Among the exercises provided are reading exercise, spelling exercise, comprehension check, dictation, meaning match and matching game. It also helps the learners to exercise their speaking skills through the ‘Say it!’ activity. This website uses multiple ways of testing the learners’ understanding so that it will not bore the learners to answer only one kind of test or quiz. Therefore, I think that this website tries to imply ‘learning through fun ways’ in its lesson. It uses pictures and videos so that the information will intact in the learner’s memory box.

            There are immediate feedbacks for each question. If the learners answer the question correctly, ‘Correct! Now press Next’ will appear. However, when the answer is wrong, ‘Incorrect. Try again’ will appear. Then the learner will be given another chance to answer the question. If the learner’s answer in the second attempt is wrong, ‘The correct answer has been checked. Now press next’ will appear. Then learners will proceed to the next question. However there are some exercises that need modification in order to fit the face-to-face class setting. The score of every tests or quizzes are recorded. The website also shows you progress in each activity whether you complete the activity or still in the ongoing state.

            Students or visitors are needed to create a free account in order to log into the website. The membership is free for life but truthfully the content of the website can be finished within three months if the learners continuously, without fail going through the lessons.

            In my opinion, all of the lessons in this website are doable in face-to-face setting. There is no feature that cannot be done in real classroom setting. However, some of the quizzes need to be modified into the face-to-face setting classroom. For example, the matching game, the teachers may want to print the pictures so that the game can be executed in class without the use of computer.

             I would say that this website is the mirror to our Malaysian textbook. Upon logging into the website, users will be given a menu to choose the topic that they want to learn just like the textbook. It is a user-friendly website and it is easy to be used.

            There is little doubt that students will not be able to learn anything from the website. This is because this website has structured the content very carefully. The input given in each topic is not too much therefore the learners can focus on the topic until the input is successfully registered in their brain before preceded to the next topic. Moreover, various tests will be given to the learners before the next topic is introduced. These various test will facilitate the learners’ absorption of the input and it will also help them to showcase their output little by little.

            I think I would love to use this website in my teaching later on. As mentioned above, this website is similar to the textbook that we are using. It is just that the content is a bit different from our textbook since this website is made by foreigners. However, I like how the website associates a lot of pictures and videos in the lessons. If I were to teach form one or two students or the lower proficiency level students, this website would be a very good help in the teaching and learning process. Another good thing about this website is that, it is also available as an app therefore the students these days who are very well acquainted with technologies can download this app and use it to learn English wherever and whenever they like.