Evaluating "English Daily"

The website called 'English Daily' is a free online resource that allows learners to practice their reading and writing skills. The website has multiple sections that allow the students to read about different topics in English. Most passages are short and a question and answer section follows which tests the learners knowledge about what they just read. There is a section however that provides longer passages in English.  That section is called Comprehension which allows the learner to read a more extensive passage and answer comprehension questions at the end of it. The link to the website is http://www.englishdaily626.com/.  There are many different criteria with which a website can be judged. The criteria that I believe is useful in order to evaluate a language learning website for reading and writing skills are:

• ease of use and accessibility for teachers and learners
• amount of content that is beneficial
• variation of activities and motivating factors
• degree of interaction (communicative language teaching principles)
• improvement over non-technology/traditional means

This website is easy to use and is accessible to both teachers and learners. Teachers can use the materials to supplement their own textbook and teach them certain idioms or popular phrases in English. Learners can use the website to possibly find topics that interest them to read about as well as test their ability to comprehend passages by answering the questions at the end. The only problem with the websites ease of use is the ads that the website puts everywhere. These ads can make it hard to figure out where to click and what is part of the website and what is part of the ads.

The content provided by the website is varied and interesting which can be beneficial for students motivation for reading as well as allow them to learn more about the English language. The shorter passages would only be beneficial for the beginning learners while the longer passages could be used for a range of learners depending on the level of the vocabulary presented in the text. I believe the fact that the website shows different idioms and expressions that are common in English will allow the students to learn phrases that they wouldn't normally learn in the classroom. 

On the other hand, there is little to no variation in the activities that the website offers. They are all generally comprehension questions with a few open-ended questions added in here and there. Another problem with the activities is that the answers are given on the same page so students would just have to scroll down in order to cheat themselves out of the benefits of the activities. As for motivating factors I believe the website would get very boring very fast if no other activities are supplemented to the ones provided. Students would lose interest fairly quickly by repeating the same activities passage after passage.

There is no chance for interaction between students or between teachers and students while the are using the website. It is a website that one has to do by themselves unless the teacher prints out the activities and brings them to class in which case the students would be able to interact and talk about their answers and the passages together and with the teacher as well.

This website has a few improvements over traditional means of providing material. One improvement is that there is a lot of material all in one place. A teacher would have to buy multiple books or provide many many articles in order to provide the same material for the students that this one site has to offer. For this reason alone it makes it a good resource. On the other hand the teacher will still need to provide various activities and supplement the information provided on the site because it does not have the variation that students need to keep motivated and progress in their language learning endeavors. 

After looking at the criteria and how it applies to this website is it easy to see that this resource has both negatives and positives. It would be a good supplementary item to a class to help students progress in their reading and writing, but it is not a resource that can be used on its own as the only material for a lesson or a class.