ELLLO ENGLISH

Hello,

I was in Russell's class today and he taught us about Adobe where you can have long distance lecture as well ELLLO English. So my focus today is on Elllo English where firstly I am going to talk about what is the website is all about, the sections, the target group, why recommend Elllo, and also the disadvantages.

What is ELLLO English?

Elllo English is an interactive website where it is one of the biggest source for teaching and learning materials. The main skill that is emphasised in the website is listening skill. Elllo has a wide range of English listening lesson activities ( they call it English Listening Lesson Library Online), where students or teachers may learn language naturally.

There are several main sections which are: Views, Mixer, Games, Videos, and News. For each sections, the listening lessons will include some activities which have multimedia, free MP3 files, vocab tasks, language notes, print page and many more. There are a lot of activities to choose from. Most of the texts are supported with audio explanations of vocabulary items. The most interesting part is that video sharing, where there are a lot of videos have been sent from people all around the world. You can listen to different accents (Korea, Canada, Singapore etc.) and their speech rate in the videos. The topics and issues are very interesting and engaging, ranging from personal issues, technology to cultures of different people.

Target group:

13- 17 years old. This is the age for secondary school students in Malaysia.

Why choose Elllo English?

1. Authenticity. The topics are mostly related to students' lives where it shows real-life situations. Moreover, the videos give students some exposure to how to use language in daily life, not fabricated English where some people do speak like a book.
2. Variety of accent. It is fundamental for students to know that English is now becoming an international language and is being spoken in many accents. It is good for students to know and be proud of their accents even though it is not RP English because as long as people can understand them, accent does not matter.
3. Accommodate students of different learning styles. The website provides both video and audio to cater students with different needs and abilities.
4. Suitable for autonomous learning.
5. The topics are quite interesting where it shows variety of different culture and its society.
6. Audio explanation for vocabulary items with examples of sentences.
7. Downloadable MP3 files and text where teachers and students are able to use it in the classroom without internet connection.
8. Personalisation. Address different preference by choosing topics that relate to students themselves.
9. Language is skill-based where it offers opportunity to practice different skills. Activities ranging from writing, comprehension, listening and communicative language.
10. Give students reason/purpose for listening through the activities that is assigned to them.
11. Context. Language is learnt in meaningful context.
12. CLIL. Be sceptical. Could be negative too.

The disadvantages:

• Too many advert. Distracting.
• Videos cannot be downloadable. =(

Overall, Elllo provides am excellent materials for listening activities. I think for classroom activities, it is quite interesting since the topics varies and interesting.

click N learn. Ready?

Hello and greetings to all.

Click. Click. Click. n LEARN. As easy as the name, so do the website! Click n Learn is a Spanish website that provides learners with different level of English proficiency some language activities. There are many activities to choose from and teachers can select any activities to suit his/her students' age and level of English. The good thing about the website is it is very visual. There are a lot of fancy animations that can get students engage and attach to the website. Some of the activities come with sounds too. For each topic's chosen, there will be several sub-activities and games once you click it ( it's click N learn by the way :)

http://www.clicknlearn.net/

Picture 1: Language options. Choose English if your target group understand English ( their other language is English)

Picture 2: The menu will provide you with different kinds of activities. My favourite would be "the burglary" where it teaches us about Past Tense form.

So, that left us with a question. HOW ARE TEACHERS GOING TO USE clickNlearn?

• For obvious reason, teachers can use it to teach grammar form,function as the website provide us with endless games and activities.
• Set it as a homework. Foster / encourage autonomous learning. Students may be assigned a task later on to present their findings.

I love clickNlearn because:

• Free
• Full of animation
• Many activities
• Contexts are variety
• Organisation of the activities are quite good. It's easy to understand.
• The activities can be printed!
• Integrating skills in some of the exercises where some of it are useful for reading and writing.

I don't like it for some reasons:

• Some of the activities does not provide a clear instruction or no instruction at all. Besides, the instructions are in Spanish so it is difficult to understand it.
• The sound effects are too exaggerating. It is distracting and I found it very annoying.
• There are too many sound effects but the activities does not have any listening activities. (What a shame)

Till then, happy good day everyone!