Website Reviews
David Cook, Maggie King, JaehyunSeo
GSL520 CALL
October 15, 2017
Prof. Christine Bauer-Ramazani
Three web sites are evaluated here by the team of Maggie King, David Cook and JaehyunSeo. These sites include Purdue University’s OWL (Online Writing Lab) special section for ESL Instructors and Students, BreakingNewsEnglish.com and Grammarly.com. The sites are assessed comprehensively using a variety of criteria focused on both teacher and student utility. Issues of using the sites in the classroom are also discussed.
The first website reviewed here is Purdue University’s OWL (Online Writing Lab). The website offers a special section for ESL students and instructors which is reviewed using two assessment templates.
One template utilized is Vance Stevens’ Worksheet for Evaluating Web Sites designed for students’ use. The template offers a clear rubric with 15 criteria and numeric scores (0-6) for each. Based on this template, Purdue’s OWL special ESL section gets a score of 88/90. The site loses points for only one criterion: “Is a date given, and is it up-to-date?” Most pages, but not all, have “last edited” dates; for this reason two-points are removed. Some of the exercise pages were last edited in 2013, though this was not judged to be grossly out-of-date based on the content (e.g., grammar exercises). A second template used for this site’s evaluation is Christine Bauer-Ramazani’s table for Evaluating Web Sites Effectively. This table offers ten criteria with which to assess a site, without numeric scores. Similar to the first worksheet, Purdue’s OWL receives a very high assessment with demerits only for some pages missing dates.
By combining the above assessment tools, it is clear that Purdue’s OWL special section for ESL instructors and students is a valuable web site. The purpose of the site is to inform, and the content is objective, relevant, and balanced. As the site’s source is Purdue University, its authority is high, respected, and trusted (the .edu URL is the most trusted of all addresses). The layout and design of the site is simple, non-distracting, and consistent from page to page. There is no advertising, though there is an omni-present unobtrusive “Giving to the OWL” cell. There are many links and additional sources. There are references when necessary, but much of the content is produced by OWL itself.
Pedagogically, the Purdue OWL site in general, and the ESL section specifically, is judged to be highly valuable for ESL students. There are many exercises, both on-site and linked, including those for grammar, punctuation, academic writing, specific-purposes writing, and much more. There are pages devoted to gaining the most from a writing tutor and how to avoid plagiarism, all of which are ready for student consumption as-is. There are remote Power Point Lessons on subjects such as using idioms and stock phrases in formal writing. For the intermediate to advanced learner, these lessons are quite informative and accessible as-is. Other pages, such as the myriad links to exercises off-site, would need some teacher involvement for best student results. For example, a link to ESLGold results in many exercise options for all language skills. Unsupervised by a teacher, a novice student may get frustrated with the quickly produced and elevated language in some videos. A teacher’s input to monitor length and language level, adjust speed, offer schema, and arrange repeat listens with an eventual script would greatly improve the student learning experience. An ESLGold writing sample of present tense is quite dense for a novice learner. This example also begs for a teacher to adjust the content for both presentation and length to better match the language level of the learner for a better learning experience.
In summary, the Purdue OWL is judged to be a highly valuable source for both teachers and students. As may be the case with many sites, however, a teacher’s involvement to guide consumption is recommended.
The second website to be reviewed is BreakingNewsEnglish.com. It is a simplified news source that offers both textual and audio news lessons. It is reviewed using two separate evaluation tools as well.
The first resource used for evaluation of this website comes from a section of the University of California at Berkeley Library’s website. This page covers the following criteria: 1) authority, 2) purpose, 3) publication and format, 4) relevance, 5) date of publication, and 6) documentation. The assessment breakdown is as follows:
1) At the bottom of the homepage, there is a link that brings readers to a page about the author of the website. On this page, Sean Banville gives a brief self-introduction, including several general hobbies, his educational information, a link to other educational websites that he owns and maintains, and a link to his 2003 Master’s dissertation from the University of Birmingham, U.K.
2) The purpose of this website is to provide reading and listening lessons for ESL/EFL students and instructors through the medium of news articles. The content of the news stories covers a wide array of topics.
3) The lessons contained on the website appear to be unique in that they do not appear elsewhere in either print or another digital medium.
4) The relevance of this site is that it utilizes contemporary news stories to provide English language learners with the opportunity to enhance their listening and reading skills by use of current events.
5) Although it is unclear when the website itself was most recently updated (the homepage merely states a copyright date of 2004-2017), the news articles all include a date of publication.
6) Each individual lesson includes citations of where the information was retrieved. Each article appears to incorporate information from at least three different, widely-varied news sources. For example, the article posted on October 7, 2017, cites The New Yorker, BBC.com, and sciencemag.org.
In addition to the criteria on the UC Berkley Library’s website,Vance Stevens’ Worksheet for Evaluating Web Sites is also used to evaluate this site. BreakingNewsEnglish.com receives full marks in many categories, but there are also several criteria in which it receives a demerit; therefore, it only scores a 71/90 based on this evaluation. One area in which the website falters is the publication type. Although the author of the website, Sean Banville, possesses a Master’s Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language from the University of Birmingham, he self-publishes the material using a .com website which does not outwardly evoke the same sentiment of professionalism as a site published and managed by a trusted institution, regardless of actual content. Another downside of the website is its layout. There is a vast amount of print and audio resources available, but there are no pedagogically purposeful graphics incorporated into the lessons. Instead, the material is periodically interrupted by advertisements and reminders to donate to the website. All lessons are free, but there are reminders all throughout the site promoting donations.
Stevens’ rubric contains a space to include another category of the reviewer’s choosing. Here, the variety of the lessons is evaluated. A new lesson is uploaded to the site every other day, varying between generic “easier” and “harder” labels. The lessons vary in difficulty from levels 0-6. The same news article and all of the accompanying material is available in multiple levels for different ability students (level 0-3 for the “easier” lessons and 4-6 for the “harder” lessons). Each level corresponds to a CEFR score so that educators can gauge which readings would be appropriate for their students. For more information on the level and CEFR correlation, consult the see information on the 7 levels page. For example, a lesson labeled as “level 5” corresponds to a CEFR rating of B2.
Each print lesson comes with several different listening resources, as well. These include dictations, 20 questions, and readings of the news story at different speeds. Due to the author and location of origin of the website, the majority of audio files accompanying the lessons are spoken in Received Pronunciation, also known as “standard” U.K. English. Some lessons do come with North American English audio files, but they are not available across all levels and speeds.
In conclusion, BreakingNewsEnglish.com contains a great wealth of activities for teachers and students to utilize. However, teachers should be cognizant of the pros and cons of this website when implementing it in their classrooms.
The final website reviewed isGrammarly.com. This website offers many free explanations of salient grammatical elements in five categories. One attractive feature of the site is that users do not need to login to be able to use it. Another beauty is that all information with reference to grammar is seen at a glance on the first page. Users may click the column that they want to explore and read explanations with a variety of examples. In the example, the author compares and contrasts correct and incorrect grammatical forms. Not only does the website provide learners with grammatical elements, but it also provides learners with information on a variety of writing techniques to which they may refer.
This website is reviewed using two assessment templates. One template isEvaluating Web Pages: Questions to Consider: Objectivity of Web Pages by Cornell University Library. This template offers five major points teachers should put into consideration when assessing web documents: 1) accuracy, 2) authority, 3) objectivity, 4) currency, and 5) coverage. Each point narrates specific factors to consider without the scoring system.
1) Thirty-six (36) grammatical elements are categorized according to five major headings: grammar, punctuation, mechanics, techniques, and style. It seems that each of the elements is accurate with specific explanations and cogent examples. One distracting element is that an advertisement for the website urges viewers to download their app. At the end of each column, reviewers can leave comments so that others may refer to it.
2) Regrettably, there is no clue as to whether information is written by experts or laypeople.
3) This website does not provide any information in regards to its objectivity, such as the goal of this website and how detail it is.
4) Some columns state when they were last updated, while others do not. The latest update of the column checked was three days ago. It is obviously up-to-date information.
5) It seems to be obvious that this website is a good source of reference to both novice and proficient English language learners considering the quality and details of information.
The other template employed when evaluating this website is Vance Stevens’ Worksheet for Evaluating Web Sites. As stated above, this worksheet offers a clearly-defined rubric with fifteen criteria and numeric scores with three possible choices of 0, 4, and 6. (See the table below) Based on the rubric, this website receives a score of 72%. This website earns a score of ‘0’ for domain name, as it is managed by a commercial company and has a URL of ‘.com’.
All in all, grammarly.com/blog/category/handbook is a valuable resource for both teachers and students alike in that information is constantly updated and it provides a wide variety of grammatical elements at a glance with lucid explanations.
It is best practice for an instructor to thoroughly review a website before bringing it to the attention of students. It is also best practice for that instructor to teach students how to review websites for themselves. The authors of this review all concur that Vance Stevens’ Worksheet for Evaluating Web Sites (as depicted on the following page) is a user-friendly rubric for ESL/EFL students and recommend its usage in classrooms where digital resources will be accessed and evaluated. The language is accessible, the scoring is objective, and the criteria are comprehensive and easily navigated. The question format of the criteria is easy for students to answer and the scoring format leads to clearly objective results. Given that the internet has no hierarchy and truly anyone can post to a website, it is important to teach students how to assess the quality and utility of the websites they visit.
REFERENCES
Banville, S. (2017). See information on the 7 levels | BreakingNewsEnglish.com retrieved from
Bauer-Ramazani, C. (2007). Searching for and Evaluating Web Sites Effectively retrieved from
search_eval.htm#Effective_Internet_Searching
BreakingNewsEnglish.com available at
Cornell University Library. (2017). Evaluating Web Pages: Questions to Consider: Categories
retrieved from
English Grammar Rules | Grammarly Handbook retrieved from
ESLGold.com available at
ESLGold, writing sample of present tense available at
Evaluating Web Pages: Questions to Consider: Putting It All Together retrieved from
Purdue OWL/ESL Instructors and Students available at
Purdue OWL/Giving to the Purdue OWL available at
Stevens, V. (2003). Worksheet for Evaluating Web Sites retrieved from
University of California at Berkeley Library. (2017). Evaluating Resources: Home retrieved from
1