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Annual  Review of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Volume 2, 2005

 

 

AN EVALUATION OF THE WEB SITE: SELF-STUDY GRAMMAR QUIZZES

 

ABDULAZIZ ALTORAIQE

 

          The aim of this report is to evaluate the web site (http://a4esl.org/q/h/grammar.html) and its didactic methodology. The section of this site that will be addressed is the one with three levels of Self-Study Grammar Quizzes. The web site will be evaluated through the Checklist for Judgmental CALL Evaluation suggested by Scholfield.
Pedagogical Characteristics
          The site in general is dedicated to ESL/EFL students in which different types of quizzes are offered using various formats.
The site offers its services to both students and teachers. The learners have many activities covering a wide range of topics that can help them test and progressively reinforce what they have learned. The teachers can use the existing activities for their teaching, or they can create their own activities with the help of the materials available to them on the site.
          The site uses standard US English to construct its authentic activities. The activities used are appropriate for the intended level of language and provide simple structures to make it easy for the learner to understand.
          These activities are categorised into three difficulty levels i.e. easy, medium and difficult. The site concentrates on the grammar and vocabulary. Because the site does not offer learners the facility to write the answer and there is no speaking or listening involved, it mainly focuses on reading skills. The learner can choose the target structure he/she wants to practice from the list of structures available. However, there is no comprehension measurement since the right answer is already given in the quiz. Although these activities can be used communicatively, they neglect other important aspects of language, such as semantic and pragmatic considerations, since they primarily focus on reading activities. It seems audio-lingually oriented because of the activities used and the intense focus on form rather than meaning.
          Activities available on this site are intended to reinforce the material or as a practice of language that has been presented in the classroom. It is also a way of checking learners’ understanding of the target structures with the focus being on accuracy rather than fluency. Moreover, activities are not based on the communicative approach of teaching since they lack the communicative techniques such as games and role play. The activities are in multiple-choice format with one right answer and are extremely focussed on particular points of structure. The feedback section only exists in the Java and Flash versions. Such feedback is not helpful because it does not provide further explanation for wrong answers. It is advisable to provide access to some online links to help learners correct and notice their errors (Chapelle 1998 ). Borg (1999) suggests that error awareness helps learners to monitor and to self-correct their use of language. There is not even a feature to select or type the answer which is a computerized format of a traditional type of teaching exercise. If students try once and fail, this type of exercises encourages the learners to go directly to the right answer and not to try other strategies. Additionally, giving only two answers increases the chance of guessing the right one.
Construction/Design Characteristics
          This site is designed in an HTML format that can be explored using any internet browser available. Browsing this site does not require much computers skills since available links are simple to access via a mouse click. The activities are organised in a menu under specific topics and according to levels of difficulty. Places for responses are shown as blank and the student is given three options from which to choose. Selecting answers is done either orally or on a separate piece of paper as the site does not enable the student either to type the answers or to click them. The correct answer is hidden under a field labelled ‘Answer’ which can be hit by the student. In its HTML format, the site lacks multimedia output such as sounds, graphics and video; however, these are easily available in other versions of the site i.e. the Java or Flash versions. Furthermore, the screen layout is rather condensed and requires a thorough reading to find the target topic. The written fonts are black with blue references to the target links which makes it easier to distinguish links from titles. The text size is small with inadequate line spacing which does not facilitate reading. The page layout is very basic with no use of graphics, pictures or tables.
          Instructions are concise and quite clear They are listed at the beginning of each task; yet, their font and colour are the same as that of the text which stops the learner for a while until he/she finds the required instruction line. The site does not offer a help section which could be consulted by the learners concerning the activities, nor does it have a search facility to save the learner’s time when looking for a particular activity.
          There is no facility to save learners’ unfinished work in order that he/she may resume their work at a later time, nor is there a tracking system that tells the student when s/he has finished a section. The scoring system is only available in the Java and Flash versions, as is the feedback for chosen answers. The content of the site is fixed and is not open to editing. However, there is a section designated for teachers where they can create similar activities to those available on the site with the help of online materials provided by this site.
          This site would have been more useful if it had considered using a multimedia, scoring and tracking system, communicative techniques such as games and diverse types of activities rather than adhering only to the multiple choice format.


References


BORG,S., 1999. Teacher's theories in grammar teaching. ELT journal, 53 (3),157-167.

CHAPELLE,C., 1998. Multimedia CALL: lessons to be learned from research on instructed SLA. Language learning & technology, 2 (1), 22-34.

SCHOLFIELD,P. Evaluation of CALL software[online]. Available from:
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~scholp/calleval.htm#check [Accessed 18 Sep 2005].

About the reviewer


Abdulaziz Altoraiqe is a first year IPhD student at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, School of Education,

Communication, and Language Sciences.

a.a.altoraiqe@ncl.ac.uk