I was assigned to do this task since the first week of this semester
Managed to finish it few days back and now would like to share it with all of you who are viewing this blog of mine
so here is my evaluation of the educational website called LearnEnglish Kids constructed by the British Council
To help you to get the better picture of this evaluation, please visit the website
Do hope that this humble judgment would be useful for others in making the education world better
THANK YOU for reading!!
For this particular assignment, the British Council website was chosen to be evaluated. The website was given the name of LearnEnglish Kids and the URL for the website is http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/. The main target of the website is the children who are learning English as their second or foreign language. Kids can have fun with games, songs, stories and lots of activities and at the same time, learn English too. The activities on the site are designed for learners to do at home, on their own, with friends or with their parents.
This website is trying to teach the English language as general, without giving any special emphasize on certain field of the language. Basic skills on reading, writing, and listening are taught in the website. The site administrators are trying to instill interest within the users to learn English in a fun way. Fun learning includes songs, games, videos, and many others.
The users are expected to be learning English through all the mediums provided in the website. Some kids might have special tendency to learn second language through listening, so listening segments are provided by the administrators. The main expectation of the administrators would be the users to be able to learn English in their preferred way, and at the same time providing them with fun.
To be able to fully use all the features of the website, not much of complicated knowledge about computer is needed. The basic computer skills needed would be the skills to use and understand the features of web browser (back, forward, stop, refresh buttons etc.). Other than that, users should also have the knowledge on accessing hyperlinks and the ability to choose the best website from the search results given by the search engine.
To say that this website reminds the evaluator of his English classes or teachers would be rather difficult. This is due to the learning experiences that he had in his schooling years were mainly teacher-centered, contrasting the way this website is presented to the users. The website provides freedom to its users to choose and try any activity that they prefer, as the administrators only provide important explanations to them (rules of games, steps to perform activities, etc.). In addition, the website is filled with fun activities for its users, different from the evaluator’s English lessons, which were mainly focused on drilling, teacher’s talk, and textbook’s exercises.
One of the second language acquisition theories that can be related to the website would be the Input or Interactionist theory. This theory focuses on the importance of the language input children received from their surroundings and care-givers. Languages around the world exist for the purpose of communication and can only be learned in the context of interaction of interaction with other people and surroundings. LearnEnglish Kids plays the role of a communicative medium for the children to learn second language, as it provides them with interactive activities.
The constructivist theory is always associated with active learning, or in other words, learners learn by performing the actual activities. According to the theory, the role of the instructor is mainly as facilitator who helps the learner to learn better. For this evaluation, the website plays the role of an instructor as it provides questions, supports, gives guidelines and creates the sufficient environment for the kids to come out with their own conclusions regarding what they have learned from the website. Furthermore, LearnEnglish Kids also provides exercises that are related to real life situations, helping the students to build on their schemata.
In the evaluator’s opinion, the issue of computer being the ‘master’ or the ‘slave’ does not arise when he was evaluating the website. He sees LearnEnglish Kids as a website that plays the role of an instructor. It helps the children to learn English in a more enthusiastic attitude, more like a motivator. The website might seems like a master/teacher to the children, however, after a closer look, we can say that it looks more like a friend who is trying to work together with the learner to help him/her improves.
To use the website for future work would be a good idea. The website is really helpful for teachers who are teaching English language to the primary school students. It contains quite a number of activities, with different level of difficulties. The loading speed of every page in the website is satisfying, helping to maintain the students/learners attention in performing the activities.
Despite of all the good criteria that it has, the site can still be improved to make it better. For example, including more language games would be a huge help as games are really effective in teaching the children the second language. Other than that, the administrators could also include more activities and at the same time, raise the level of difficulty of those activities. This will attract more students from higher standards to access the website.
