The Role of the Webquest in Learning Forign / Second Language

Bernie Dodge defined the webquest as " an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing. "

This website is considered as a guide to the students to guide them how to perform any plan with some resources provided. Webquest contains activates and tasks which helps the students to be independent.

Teachers may use the webquest for cooperative purposes. As the webquest that we worked on it as groups, we provides a task with a chosen topic about how to plan a graduation party then we ask the students to find out more about the rolles by surfing the sources that we have provided on the webquest, to come up with the information’s needed. It will enable the students to discover and knowledge about the topic. And the teacher will act as councillor, faciliator and guide to the students. However, the class invironment should have all qualities of technology like internet and computers.

As future English teacher, I will provide my students with this tool because it will encourage them to work in groups.

 

 

Website Evaluation

There are many   ESL/EFL websites founded on the internet which make the teachers confused about which sites they should recommend their students to use. Here we are evaluating   http://a4esl.org/ 

It is an organization website about learning English as second language which contains different resources for quizzes which are related to grammar, vocabulary and crosswords. Students can access all the main sub-menus of the site. Both the grammar quizzes and the vocabulary quizzes are sorted into three levels from easy to difficult. In addition, it has a section for bilingual quizzes.

 The purpose of this website is to help students study English as a second language on the website. It is done by many teachers throughout the world for ESL/EFL students in which different levels of quizzes are offered using various formats and for many languages. New quizzes and activities are added regularly. Moreover, all materials that are of immediate practical use to ESL/EFL teachers who are currently teaching.

The home page colors give relaxation for the eyes. However, it should have any creative multimedia such as graphics, images and recorded sounds which the site lacks of; on the other hand, there are JavaScript and flash versions which can the learner use it. There is no advertising, no Minimal HTML, No Nonsense. [a4esl.org] should work even if your browser is not compliant with the newest web standards. The website has good navigation which allows students to move easily through pages. Moreover, visited and unvisited links do not detract from the content. The fonts are black and blue which makes it easier to differentiate between the link and the title.   Finally, the site doesn't provide inquires and help section which could be benefit for the learners and there is no search section to save the learner’s time when looking for any activity.

        As an English Language teachers, we would benefit from the knowledge about website evaluation by apply it within our teaching and evaluate each and every site before asking our students to go for.