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emilychen
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Evaluation of CALL software
I'd like you to post your CALL software (CD-ROM) evaluation here, just as you did for the CALL website evaluation. In your evaluation, please include the following:
1) The title of your assigned CD-ROM, the publishing date/year (if available), the author/publisher.
2) The target audience/learners and their English proficiency level
3) Brief description of the CD-ROM along with its learning objectives
4) Criteria you use to evaluate: You can choose the criteria that you think important for your evaluation, but make sure your chosen criteria cover the three main aspects: design, content (presentation and interaction), and potential effectiveness for language learning and teaching (particularly look at what theories/principles can support their CD-ROM-based learning activities).
5) Your rating of the CD-ROM (based on the scale of 1-10)
For your in-class presentation, I'll give each group 20 minutes. You can leave 3-5 minutes for a Q8A session. Please manage your time well.
Last edited by emilychen, 11/25/2004, 2:45 pm
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11/25/2004, 2:34 pm
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EUGENEHUANG2004NKFUST
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 Evaluation of CD-ROM
Hi, we are group three. Eugene, Christine Wu, Stacey, Queenie and Jean.
Title and Publisher
Sesame Street Reading Basics-Phonics is the CD-ROM’s title that we are evaluating.
The Learning Company published it in 1999.
Target learners
Basically, the target learners are preschool children. Their English proficiency level is approximately fixed on primary and a little medium,compared with the learners in our country, for each unit contains three options to choose---easy, medium and hard.
Brief description
Sesame Street Reading Basics-Phonics provides task-based activities to foster younger leaners’ understading of the target language using whole animation characters which children all familiar with to connect the contents and give positive feedback. Six different stories provided create a student-centered and full student-autonomy environment, for students can easily shift from one lesson to another, from an easy to a hard level.
Presentation delivered
The design of Sesame Street Reading Basics-Phonics follows a theme-vivid, active and friendly. Simple icons with sound instructions lead children into munipulation. Six colorful books:1. History Mystery 2. Super Grover 3. Beam Me 4. Cookie 5. Zoetry Poetry 6. ElMO’s Wild Kingdom, and different leading characters will not make learners feel bored. Leading characters using their cute voice to express some information to learners can attract learners’ attention to follow steps to practice English from different exercises, and cartoon characters in this CD- ROM having vivid body language and pronunciation add interest to the content, and each book is divided into three evels--- easy, medium and hard, focusing on the main subject Phonics. Therefore, sound recordings have been used to achieve the purpose of this CD-ROM. Segmental exercises are the main objects presented with both pictures and voice. Furthermore, listening comprehension ability also can be enhanced by comprehensible input through word guessing games it provides. This CD-ROM focuses on youger children’s Phonics learning. We consider that it indeed makes itself interesting and attractive; however, the sound recordings it uses seem too childish. We have found that this kind of animated sound recording might cause potential negative effectiveness, because non-native younger kids may imitate the childish voice for granted. For example, one of my friends’ kids always listens to Donald Duck, and his mother is worried that they will have another Donald Duck at home because of the weird accent their kid pronounces.
Good design, good content, and user-friendly environment, we gave it 8 points.
Interaction Provided
The interaction in the CD-Rom is good. For example, when a learner enters a game, a character of the Sesame Street will give the learner a warm welcome; during playing the game, if the learner achieves the goals, the learner will be given a vivid and positive feedback. But if the learner can not achieve the goal, the character in this game will encourage the learner to try again and says “I believe you can do it, try again;” (This is the best feedback our group have seen among those websites we have evaluated.) Besides, when the learner click the button ”exit” and want to leave, the character will say, “Oh, you want to leave. That’s ok; the cook room will be open to you at all time.” From there, we can see that the expressions and actions of the characters in this CD-Rom are lively. We think the CD ROM provides a joyful learning environment for children, so children can put play and learning together, which can draw children’s attention and interest to learn English.
Good positive feedback, attractive features, easy to shift lessons, we gave it 8 points.
Theories and approaches used
About the reading approach we think that Sesame Street applied is a balanced approach including both bottom-up and top-down approaches. In the bottom-up part, we think it is concerning the Phonics approach in its CD-Rom. In some exercises, you can hear the alphabet letters and the sounds of a word, but Elmo won’t tell the learners what the word means. For example, when you choose the book “cookie with cooking” and medium game, you can hear the sounds and spell of the word “rice”. And then you give the alphabet letters of “rice” to the cookie monster to learn the word. The learners learn the spell of a word from the sounds they heard. But it is a little different. The Sesame Street CD-Rom doesn’t simply give the sounds and alphabet letters; it also gives the pictures to assist the learners to understand what the word means to impress the learners.
In the top-down part, we think it uses the Content-schemata approach. The learners should have some background knowledge. For example, when you choose the book “Zoetry and poetry” and the hard game, the Zoe will ask you that birds like what. And then you have to choose the initial of the word pronounced as “b”. Sometimes, in this CD-Rom, reading would become a psycholinguistic guessing game. It focuses on the readers. If the readers don’t know how to spell each word, they would get nothing from those exercises.
About Grabe’s six component skills and knowledge areas which make learners fluent readers, we think that the CD-Rom can help learners develop the automatic word recognition skills. The CD-Rom allows readers to identify letters and words without being consciously aware of the process. Surely, we all know the CD-Rom of Sesame Street focuses on the children. And we think it’s enough for children and it’s a base to help learners to read rapidly after.
Finally, although the CD-Rom of Sesame Street is reading basics, we think it does a lot of help in learners’ listening. Including the speaking and feedback of Elmo or Cookie monster or Zoe, all facilitate the learners’ listening ability. In the listening part, it uses the Natural Approach. We all can see that the environment it builds is conducive to language learning. And the language production emerges from nonverbal responses, single words, combinations of two or three words, to sentences. Sure, the CD-Rom of Sesame Street is a comprehension precedes production. Learners can acquire listening and reading skills before speaking and writing skills. Those mentioned above are the principles we think can support the CD-Rom-based learning activities.
In conclusion, Sesame Street Reading Basics-Phonics really implements its original goals of teaching. Animation is vivid, and its sound effcts are amazing. The six story-lines are fluent and its characters are lively and fun. The feedback it provides are perhaps the most attractive and encourging that we have ever seen so far. Here we still have to point out, though the Natural Approach permits production later than comprehension, Sesame Street Reading Basics-Phonics did not provide any tutorial function to correct children’s pronunciation, such as Automatic Speech Recognition. Without assistance from real teachers, we are afraid that children will have their errors of pronunciation fossilized.
Last edited by EUGENEHUANG2004NKFUST, 11/28/2004, 10:04 pm
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11/28/2004, 3:46 am
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jessieyang
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Group 2 (10,12,14,16,56)
1)biz 互動英語 Interactive English for Business, September 2004, Live ABC
2)Not mention in this software. However, we think it is for over intermediate level EFL learners.
3)Four learning skills-listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It also includes many kinds of tests.
4)Part 1
[ Design ]
1.The software provides links to main or previous pages.
2.Dark text on a light background. The contract color between the background and the text make good readability. It is easy for learners to read, and doesn’t cause confusion.
3.All pages include a link back to the home page. This software provides link to its home page on the header or footer in all pages. It’s impossible that learners will get lost in it.
4.Learner will make progress by mentally processing the language he/she is learning if they keep using this software regularly.
5.The user interface is easy to understand.
6.The feedback is intrinsic. It will show the score, and how many questions learners have done, and how many answers are wrong after learners finish tests or activities.
7. The table of content on the main page is to help students locate the text. They can always clearly know what other parts of text they can click to learn.
【Content】
1. The content is integrated with many activities. For example, it gives learners many reading, writing, and listening activities in its texts.
2. It addresses sounds in a practical way. Learners can choose whole-text reading, text repeating or fast-slow reading functions in reading and writing parts. This is an effective way of teaching sounds to ESL students since they can listen to the pronunciation to help comprehend the meaning of the contents.
3. This software provides other contents for learners. For example, learners can learn from MTV and movies. It could somewhat release learners’ pressure and have more fun while learners learn those parts.
4. It includes “learning plan” and “week test” parts to make sure that learners absorb and comprehend the contents gave in the whole program. And it also has TOEIC Test part. In this part, it gives tests in two parts (reading and listening). Learners can practice first before they have a TOEIC Test.
5. It provides real voice in each pronunciation part.
6. In the reading and writing parts, they have buttons called “說明”。Learners will read directions to help them use these two parts efficiently if they click on it.
7. This software provides sounds recording. Learners can use this system to practice their pronunciation with computers. Later, Kathy will show you this part explicitly.
-Potential Effectiveness for Language Learning and Reading-
《Listening》
Comprehensible input
In the listening part, the CD-ROM supports the text, sound, pictures, video, which provides meaningful contexts to facilitate comprehension. For example, at the beginning, learners can click “text version” or “video version.” In text version, the learning will show the script on the screen, and learners can read the script as many times as they needed until they feel they understand it. Furthermore, if there is any vocabulary that learners do not understand, they can click the “vocabulary explanation” or “dictionary” to find out what the meaning of the word is. On the other hand, in the “video version,” it offers sound and video to help learners to get to the situation even if learners do not know what the specific sentences or vocabulary is talking about, they still can guess it when the video is playing.
Top-down processing
Before you start using the CD-ROM, it will show learners’ different situations in different topics, which can help learners to identify the speaker’s communicative purpose or the main idea of discourse. Furthermore, learners can use schemata to infer the contextual information from the heard or watch the speech or conversation, even if there is no any subtitle to tell you what the speakers are talking about. Third, those activities are designed to help learners develop their pragmatic and discourse knowledge. For example, there is a topic, A Business Trip, includes several subheads, like “Making plans”, “Security Check”, “At the Hotel”, and “Meeting a Client,” etc,. In this case, it provides learners to learn how to use some specific dialogue in the Business situation. Finally, these activities are used for improving communicative skills focusing on meaning rather than form. This CD-ROM focuses on “communicative way”, which teaches learners how to use the sentences when you are in some situation, but not teach you how the grammatical structures are.
Transactional purposes
In this part, the CD-ROM provides listening to lectures, practicing dictations and cloze exercises. After learners heard the conversation, learners can make an exercise to test the learners themselves. In this CD-ROM, each topic has one exercise to do, one-half is cloze exercises, which learners can listen to the sentences with the video and fill the vocabulary in the blanks; one-half is multiple choices, which the CD-ROM will show learners the video, asking you some questions below the screen, and learners can answer the questions when they heard the answers.
Last edited by jessieyang, 11/28/2004, 5:50 pm
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11/28/2004, 5:48 pm
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jessieyang
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Group 2 (10,12,14,16,56)
4)Part 2
[Speaking]
We use computer technology to create an environment that encourages communication and provides varied communicative opportunities for learners to utilize their oral skills. In current integrative approach, pronunciation is practiced within meaningful task-based activities.
feature points of 錄音 record
1. Learners can either record their voice sentence by sentence, or the whole text at one time.
2. If you click “播放影片聲音”, you will hear the sound of the text before you record your voice and before you hear your recording voice.
3. ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition)
a. It recognizes if your pronunciation is correct.
b. You can adjust the sensitivity of ASR.
According to behaviorism, imitation is a process of learning languages. Using this CD ROM, learners can record their own voices by repeating after computer. They can hear the playback of their voices followed by the computer’s, and try to figure out how they pronounce differently with computer and correct their pronunciation on their own. It fit in with the intuitive-imitative approach to pronunciation instruction: the learners listen to and imitate the sound and rhythms without the assistance of explicit instruction.
This CD ROM also makes use of ASR. Computer with ASR is used as a tutor. However, it is not effective as it is planned to be. The ASR recognizes your pronunciation, but it can not tell you where your pronunciation problem is. Learners only get implicit feedback and feel frustrated because they do not know how to improve, where they pronounce wrong.
feature points of 角色扮演 Role play
1. Choose a role to play and the compute will shut the sound of the role.
2. If your pronunciation is correct, the conversation will go forward.
3. If not, there pops a window with three choices: “speak it again”, “skip it”, and “computer read it for me”. Those are to help you keep the conversation going.
Learners have interaction with computer through role play. It’s a human-machine interaction. However interactivity is not adequate. Role playing is supposed to be interactive, but learners will get stuck when they do not pronounce correctly, and thus the conversation is stop. Learners get feedback like “your pronunciation is wrong, please choose 1.speak it again, 2.skip it 3.read it for me. It seems the CD ROM provides high level of interactivity
This CD ROM provides real-life business English for communicative purposes to meet learners’ particular needs, which is of business usage utterances in daily life (On the macro level: up-down). Goal: learners develop intelligible speech and be able to effectively communicate in English.
[Reading]
We think it takes top-down models in reading part. As far as we are concerned, we can receive input from the text, make predictions based on conceptual abilities, background knowledge and language processing skills, test and confirms or revise those predictions.
However, we also find out some benefits and drawbacks which are listed in the following.
Benefit:
We can read the article by adjust the speaking speed, and we can clearly figure out how to make a pause when we read a long sentence. Then, when the person speaks the sentence they are presented in yellow. Thus, we will not get lost in such a long article.
Drawbacks:
Once we click on something while the person is speaking, the voice will stop. Secondly, we can not mark down the main ideas and scan the whole article if we read with a CD-ROM.
[Writing]
After learning Unit 8, approaches to teaching writing, we think that the writing section in this CD-ROM is very weak.
First, click on “寫作訓練教室”, and there is a writing center under it. This writing center provides a monthly feature, and this month it talks about how to write an invitation letter. We think it is a very attracting topic; however, the CD-ROM just gives us an article as the example, not really teaches us or shows us “how to write.” When finished this part, you can move on to the writing exercises. In this part, doing exercises is very like translating sentences. For example, if you choose the same topic as what you have read, you only need to memorize the original text and fill in the blanks, as long as you can memorize the original text well, you will get good grades. In addition, the answers you type in has to be the same as the text; you cannot give any other synonym because the system has the only one answer. We think that writing in this way is very inflexible because learners have to memorize the whole article and try to translate sentences according to the original text then fill answers in the blanks. Learners cannot write on their own words, and they cannot get feedback of their writings. The purpose of the writing part has become helping learners to review what they have read and helping them memorize vocabulary, not teaching them how to write. So we think the writing section is more like a tool to help learners review what they have read. Learners cannot learn enough writing knowledge or skills in this CD-ROM. It can just push learners to memorize vocabulary, sentences, or some proper nouns, etc.
[Conclusion]
In conclusion, we think this CD-ROM provides a good listening environment to learners, and it is embedded lots of useful functions to help learners to practice their listening.
5)Rating: 5
Last edited by jessieyang, 11/28/2004, 5:52 pm
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11/28/2004, 5:51 pm
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sam6
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 Group 5: CD-ROM Evaluation
Group member:Janet,Sam,Louise,Joanne, and Christian
1) The title of your assigned CD-ROM, the publishing date/year (if available), the author/publisher.
Published year 1995~1998
The publisher: Syracuse Language Systems, Inc.
2) The target audience/learners and their English proficiency level
Elementary school students or anyone who has the level of basic
vocabulary.
3) Brief description of the CD-ROM along with its learning objectives
Tripleplay Plus English is a good software for anyone who like to learn basic English. The CD-ROM develop listening, speaking, and reading ability. We think the objectives of this CD-ROM is to let L2 learners to acquire the knowledge by themselves without teacher’s help. And search for the solution whenever they incounter problem while they’re learning. For example, everytime they make mistakes in the test, they have to correct themselve and after that they know the correct answers and acquire those knowledge. But above all, the most important objective of this CD-ROM is to make L2 be interested in learning English without pressure. Once they like to learn, they can learn it themselves naturally without other to force them.
4) Criteria you use to evaluate: You can choose the criteria that you think important for your evaluation, but make sure your chosen criteria cover the three main aspects: design, content (presentation and interaction), and potential effectiveness for language learning and teaching (particularly look at what theories/principles can support their CD-ROM-based learning activities).
a. Potential Effectivness for language learning and teaching:
(1)This is a student-centered and promotes student autonomy.
It facilitates focused development of English speaking skill, use multiple modalities to support various learning styles and strategies. It foster understanding and appreciations of the target and native cultures, and provide appropriate feedback and assessment. We can listen to sound first, then through microphone to speak the correct sound. If we are right, we got the Ding; if we pronounced wrong sound, it will give us a Dan. It provides a lot of flash card with sound to supply comprehensible input.
(2) Support development of cognitive abilities:
When click into Concentration, we see a lot of pictures without any words first. These pictures can help learners get more familiar with the contents and understand them more quickly. Learners can click the pictures to hear the voice and then memorize. When start the game, the computer will say the words and we have to pick up the right pictures. This will help learners to develop their cognitive abilities.
(3) Provide appropriate feedback and assessment
Among each game/test, the computer gives feedback during playing the games/tests. For example, in the reading test, if the learner is correct, the computer will say “outstanding,” “correct,” “that’s right,” “that’s fine,” “wonderful,” “very good,” and “bingo” something like that to encourage the learners. If the learner is wrong, the computer will say “no,” and pronounce the word the learner clicks to remind him or her.
b.Design:
However, in its design, it doesn’t provide good footnote to let learners know how to use those buttons, and how will they related to each other. It is the worst part of designing this program. The program use some icons such as arrow icon to let users to move to pervious or next page, though there’s no button to go straight to the main section. However, each icon is easy for users to understand what do those button do without instruction. In addition, there are no ambiguous icon which confused users.
c.Content (presentation and interaction)
(1)The CD-ROMs provide lots of interaction activities. In listening part, depends on the different topics, there are various games available. In the games, learners practice their listening skill through the three levels such as vocabulary, phrases, and conversations. The vocabulary provides in each games/conten are comprensible for learners. Even in the level three, conversation, there is no difficult word that learners don’t understand.
d. Theory/Principle
In the listening part, the conversation provides top-down activities for learners to practices the different situations in different topics. This facilitates learners to identify the communicative purpose or the main idea of discourse. Through the conversation, the activities develop learners’ pragmatic and discourse knowledge. This will also improve their communicative skills in some specific situations. In the reading part, the designer uses bottom-up model to teach reading because in each game, sounds are the key point for learners to continue playing.
5) Your rating of the CD-ROM (based on the scale of 1-10)
We rate this CD-ROM 8 points.
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11/28/2004, 9:47 pm
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maureenchen322
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CNN Interactive English Disk (group 8)
We are group 8 (CNN Interactive English Disk)
The CNN Disk offers many functions for users to use to improve their English skills. Its content mainly focuses on cultivating users’ listening skills. They offer lots of functions to users. If you are the first time using the program, you can clink guidelines to see how to use the program. Or if you encounter problems or questions, you can clink here to write to them. As to the content, it could be mainly divided into three parts that are the texts, dictionary, and tests. There are variety kinds of texts included in the program, for example the news, latest movies or MTVs. Users can choose the kind they like or interested in to watch, read and learn. And, if they encountered unfamiliar words or sentences they could ask for help by using the dictionary function. And after watching the text, they can do some tests to see if they got them all. We will evaluate the program by discussing about the advantages and disadvantages of the three parts, text, dictionary functions and tests.
In the part of text, this CD-ROM provides a variety of topics to motivate learners. Therefore, learners can choose the article that they are interested in and feel comfortable to learn. For instance, if I am interested in Movie Trailer, I can choose it to learn. To take the movie Taking Lives as an example, we can see a brief introduction in Chinese first to identify the main idea of the discourse. Also, it provides multiple modalities to facilitate comprehension. For instance, when you play it, you can watch the video and connect words and sentences below to the video and sound. It provides learners meaningful contexts to facilitate comprehension. However, learners can also practice listening without caption. In this part, it uses the top-down listening process. To take the function called “Learning from content” as an example; you can listen to the whole content first. Then, it gives you autonomy to review and repeat any sentences as many times as you need until you understand it by clicking the button called “repeat reading.” Then, you can also check any word that you do not understand by clicking the button called dictionary. Besides, it provides a low anxiety-learning environment. For instance, if you think the speed of delivery is too fast and hard to catch it, you can make it slower by clicking the button called “fast-slow reading.” The function of “role play” and “recording” can let you start speaking after just listening to it. You can choose any roles you want to play and imitate it as the raw message you hear by clicking the button called “role play.” Also, you can record your voices by the function called “recording.” It will read the sentences for you before you speak, and you can practice speaking by imitating what you hear after it. So you can start practicing your oral skills after you have comprehended the whole content.
The function of the dictionary part is like Glossary in textbooks. This part provides new words and phrases showing in the content of every lesson. Users can check these words if they have words they don’t quite understand after they go through the lessons.
Natural Approach and behaviorism are used in this part because this program gives learners comprehensible input and allows learners hear the words as many times as needed to reinforce learners’ memories until they feel they understand them. In addition, this program provides low-anxiety learning environment to learners. These words are categorized by different difficulty levels so learners can learn these words according to the individual needs. For example, if learners want to check the easy words, they can click 初級字彙, and then it will show you all the words. After learners comprehend these simple words, they can move on more difficult ones. For listening process, bottom-up processing is used because learners comprehend the content from words, to phrases and clauses and other grammatical elements, to sentences. For example, learners choose words they want to learn first, after they memorize these words, they can go further to phrases and sentences. Afterwards, learners use these words, phrases and sentences to comprehend the new content.
The strength in this part is that learners can practice a lot of times until they comprehend these word, phrases, and sentences. The weakness is most examples it provides in this part are related to the news content. We think if it can provide extra examples, learners will have clearer understanding of usage of words.
The testing function of CNN interactive disk provides four kinds of exams, cloze, hultiple choice, translation and scramble for users to see how much they learn from the disk. No matter which selection the users choose, before taking the tests, users can watch the related video first because all questions were picked from the reports. Besides, users can decide the playing time and speed of the report they choose at any time even while the video is playing. Furthermore, all the selections provide clear and detailed explanations such as the phrasal verbs and the usage. Both the cloze and the hultiple choice divided a report, which is chosen by the users, into several pieces and then play them in order. The users can listen to the report again and again till totally understand and then reply by filling in the block among the sentences or choose the most proper answer. The quizzes of the translation and the scramble are different from the other two above. They won’t give users any hints when the test starts. However, I think at least the quiz of translation can offer some audio clues that would make the questions be easier for users to answer and also be helpful for improving users’ English listening ability. Overall, the function of tests is conformed to the natural approach and top-down processing. Before taking the tests, users can watch the related video which can be chosen to present the reports at different difficulty levels with adjustments in speed of delivery according to individual users’ needs. In addition, users can listen to the available input as many times as needed until they feel they understand it. About the top-down processing, since CNN itself is a news station, of course the texts in the CNN interactive disk are all consisted of various TV news reports and users can just pick the one they are interested in to watch. It’s the feature that news reports always contain lots of vocabulary and jargon. Therefore generally there should be no possibility that the users can know every word in the reports. According to the top-down processing, we can infer that the users must comprehend the whole texts by their background information and schemata for a global understanding of the articles.
As a conclusion, though some of its functions are not good enough, mostly we think the CNN interactive Disk is helpful for the users to improving their listening skills. Its advantages are more than its advantages. It integrates “Top Down” and “Bottom Up” process, use multiple modalities and create a no threatening language learning environment for users to learn, and gives users tests to evaluate their learning result. Also, it uses natural Approach and behaviorism theory in the dictionary part to give learners comprehensible input to help them got the words well. So, We think it is a good program for its target users.
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11/29/2004, 12:00 am
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Randi46
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 Re: Evaluation of CALL software~~Group 4
We are Group 4: Randi, Christine, Raymond, Glenn and Gary.
1)The title of this CD-ROM is “Reader Rabbit Personalized 1st Grade.”
Publishing year: 1999
Publisher: The Learning Company
2)The target audience is 1st grade of English-native speaker. Their English proficiency level includes: early reading, noticing differences, simple arithmetic, ordering and sequencing, problem solving, measurement, critical thinking, memory, directional words, time concepts, seasons and months, and social skills.
3)The design of the CD-ROM is game-based. The content of the game is that there will be a show for tonight, and Reader Rabbit has to get everything done by tonight. There are four directions for Reader Rabbit to get through, including Bob’s Workshop, Pierre’s Studio, Owl’s Tree House, and Papa’s Store. Each direction has two-three games; Reader Rabbit has to pass each one of them and get the thing he needs for tonight’s show.
Its learning objectives include reading comprehension, spelling, phonics, addition and subtraction, counting money, days of the week, problem solving, measuring and estimating, identifying emotions, similarities and differences, and creativity and music. Children can learn the essentials for school and life.
4)Design---
Advantage:
It is a userfriendly design. It is convenient to use mouse as your hand. You do not have to use keyboard for typing word or make choice.
Loading speed is very fast. Also the introduction can be skipped when the users don’t want to listen to it for second time.
This program gives us different level of language to choose. It helps learner learn English step by step.
The user interface is easy to understand. Learner can get feedback when they have the right answer to the question. The feedback is extrinsic. It would say: good job or excellent to encourage learner.
The program has excellent sound recordings, It helps learn to know the situation in the game. It also has a good mix of male and female voices to show the conversation between the animals.
The program use animals to attract learner. It is interesting for children.
Disadvantage:
Learner can not seek help on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, cultural content?
Learner can not easily quit something that is beyond his/her ability. You still have to finish the game.
Content---
Presentation:
(1)It supports comprehensive input. The software provides repeated-running games which can help children continue practicing the skill of the themes of the games; for example, in the measuring game, children practice measuring heights of towers, buildings, and planks.
(2)It supports development of cognitive abilities. This is particularly for the 1st grade of English-native speakers who already have basic skills of math, language, logic and creativity. But for English-as-second-language learners this is beyond their abilities.
(3)Language skills are just a part of the focused skills, only including reading comprehension, phonics, and spelling. The others are for addition and subtraction, counting money, days of the week, problem solving, measuring and estimating, identifying emotions, similarities and differences, and creativity and music.
(4)It also provides multiple modalities, including filling out the blanks, multiple choices, stepping on the pedals, measuring height by footprints, and doing counting questions.
(5)The software is particularly for native English learners; therefore, it doesn’t meet the needs of other culture.
Interaction:
(1)The software meets human-machine communication.
(2)The software includes both of problem-solving and task-based activities. As for problem-solving activities, in counting activity, Papa bear raises counting questions for Reader Rabbit, and then Rabbit makes answers for each one of the questions and finally gets the prizes.
As for task-based activities, in painting activity, the task for Reader Rabbit is to finish four paintings, and the acts will be posted on the billboard.
(3)It is student-centered and promotes student autonomy. Students can choose the sections he/she wants to learn.
(4)The software does not provide collaborative learning. It just provides a game for children, no discussion with others.
(5)It meets affective needs because children can learn through these games. Also, the design of the software is very brilliant. The design contains cartoon characters, colorful background, and vivid pictures, which can attract children’s attention and lower their learning pressure and depression.
(6)It provides appropriate feedback. If you make a correct answer, the host of the game will say something praising you. But, if you make a wrong answer, the host will give you the clue again and encourage you to re-answer it.
Potential effectiveness---
Theories and approaches used
1. Listening Processes (bottom-up)
In the activity of word bird, the Bottom-up Processing is applied. It focuses on individual linguistic components of discourse, phonemes to words.
The owl is going to read a word and then it gives the children three letter choices. Children have to recognize which letter the owl pronoun and also the position this letter in the word. To do this activity, children can phonemic awareness by listening for letter sounds in the beginning, middle, and end of the words. As they isolate the correct letter combinations, youngsters hear how different combinations of letters combine make different sounds.
2. The reading process (top-down)
In the silly script activity, children are going to read several paragraphs. In every paragraph, there are always two or three blanks leave. Children have to choose the right words form the list the owl provides to fill in the blanks.
To do the activity, children first of all need to read through the whole paragraph and receive the input from the text. After they have enough understanding of the story’s context, they can make the prediction and guess what the blanks should be.
Moreover, the blanks in the story often have more than one possible correct answer. This show children exact word used is often less important than the word meaning in the context.
5) Rating: 7
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11/29/2004, 12:25 am
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pigdodoo
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Re: Evaluation of CALL software
Hello, we are group 7, Yaping, Kelly, Ella, Jessica .and Stacy.
1) Title and Publisher
Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, which published in 2003.
2) Target learners
The target learners are Advanced English learners.
3) Brief description
The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary on CD-ROM is the ideal dictionary CD-ROM for exam success in ELT/ESL. This software has 170,000 words, phrases and examples, plus these extras: * Interactive exercises to help you learn new words and improve your grammar * QUICKfind - when you are on the Internet, just point at a difficult word and the dictionary instantly looks it up * SUPERwrite - tools for advanced writing, giving help with grammar and collocation *Picture: improve your pronunciation by listening to any word and repeating it
4) Rating is 8.
5) Presentation delivered
【Main Dictionary】
You can see the left hand side, and this is the searching bar. You can key in the words you want to look up. For example, we type “attention” here. And you can see the result. You can see there are many “attention” here, and it means that this word “attention” has different meanings. Green type words are idioms or phrases. Let’s see the first meaning. You can see the two icons, the red one and the blue. You click on them; they will show you the British and American pronunciations. And if you click on the microphone icon, you can record and play your own pronunciation. Users can use this function to improve their pronunciation. These two functions are what the print dictionary does not have. Then there is an explanation of this word, and the italics are the example sentences. Words that are commonly used with “attention” are shown in bold type. If you do not know any word in the explanation or example, you just double-click on that word; The Look Up Window will open showing the definition. It’s very convenient. Then, you can see here is the SMART thesaurus. You can click on it to find synonyms and other related words. You can use SMART thesaurus to explore the dictionary, expand your vocabulary, or learn more about a subject. Now let’s see the second meaning. Also, there are three icons and phonetics. But you can see here are two buttons, Word Building and Collocations. Click on Word Building to see a list of words which are formed from a common root. It’s very convenient for users; you can see all the words at the same time. Then, click on Collocations to see a list of words which are commonly used with the entry. Through this, you can know what verbs or adjectives you can put in front of this word. Users can make fewer mistakes. If you want to have advanced search, you can click here. The advantage of using this is that The Advanced Search window lets you choose how you want to search the dictionary. And on the right hand side, these are search tools; you can click the arrows to select the type of search you want, and then click Find. For example, choose “idiom” and type “story”. You can see the left panel is the result list and the middle panel is the definitions and examples. After showing you what electronic dictionary have and its strengths, we think the most advantage of using it is convenience because you don’t have to turn pages over and over. You just move the mouse and click the buttons, and then the electronic dictionary will organize and category the information for you.
【Exercise】
For the “Exercise” part which divides into two parts, one is “Word Exercises,” and other one is “Picture Exercises.” Each of them has subtopics, for example, the Word Exercises part has six subtopics: Adjectives and adverbs, Affixes, Homophones, Irregular and problem verbs, Noun forms, Suffixes, and Verb meaning Perform; the Picture Exercises part has more life subtopics: Birds, Cars, Sports…etc.
When users click one of subtopics of the Word Exercises, it will appear few questions, and users just follow the top part direction and play the game. At the bottom part you can see there is a gray line, when users answer questions and it will tell you how many correct answers you get! However, for the Picture Exercises part, it will also tell you how many correct answers you get, but without the colorful rate line! Actually, I am wondering why (do they have different function), but I do not have the answer!
In this software (Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary), the most different part between the print dictionary and the online dictionary is the “Exercise” part because the print dictionary does not have this kind of “interaction exercise”. So, comparing to the print dictionary, the best advantage of the software is the Exercise part.
The potential of the Exercise part is that the users can fill in the grammatical blanks and practice grammar concept as many questions as they would like to do; and they can get the feedback immediately, such as “correct” or “wrong.” So, users can improve their grammar quickly if they spend much time practicing Word Exercises! For the Picture Exercises, users can learn many words from the word and pictures matching exercises, but I suggest that in this matching exercise, the authors should add the vocabulary sound; uses can be more familiar with new words.
【Picture】
In Cambridge dictionary CD-ROM, it provides us with pictures zone. This can help learners to get into a word more correctly and easier. For example, when we click the button “pad”, we know pad can be used for lily pad, launch pad, pad on a dog’s paw, or pad of paper. If we still do not know what the word is we can click one more time, and it will show you dictionary meaning and even “show in the main dictionary.”
Another good thing is that when we click “plane,” and it shows many different kinds of planes for different functions. For example, when I click helicopter, it shows me how a helicopter looks like and where the rotors are. When I click airplane, the picture would show me what the UK people or US people say such as aeroplane for UK and airplane for US. And we can see where the engine of a plane is and what landing gears are. In addition, if we want to print this picture, it also offers us such function, so we do not have to copy it to Microsoft Word. It is a sweet service.
Comparing to print dictionary, CD-ROM dictionary categorize its items from A-Z. However, in printed dictionary, sometimes we even cannot find where pictures are and some print dictionary offers no pictures for learners. So I think is what CD-ROM dictionary can give users that print dictionary cannot. In addition, CD-ROM dictionary offer audio function for us to learn. And the sounds are made by native speakers. When we use this CD-ROM, we can learn more native pronunciation than print dictionary. In short, CD-ROM dictionary is effective and efficient. If we have to look a word up in print dictionary, maybe we can try CD-ROM dictionary, it may help you to find what the world you want faster and more correct.
【Study pages】
The Study pages contain useful information about English pronunciation and grammar, as well as helpful sections about letter writing, telephoning, handling money and more.
To open the Study Pages:
1. Click the button in the blue tool bar of the main dictionary window.
2. Click the name of the Study page you want to see.
Adobe Acrobat opens and the selected Study page is displayed.
IMPORTANT: In order to view the Study Pages, you must have a PDF reader, such as Adobe? Acrobat Reader? installed on your computer.
To install Adobe Acrobat Reader:
i) Make sure the CALD disk is in your CD-ROM drive.
ii) Click and hold the Windows START
button, then select PROGRAMS, then CAMBRIDGE, then INSTALL ACROBAT READER 5.05.
To print a Study Page (in Adobe Acrobat): click the FILE menu, and then click PRINT. To close the Study Pages: click the Close box in the upper right corner of the Adobe Acrobat window.
After you enter “Study Pages” section, you can see there are two different parts, one is “vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation”, and the other is “general information”.
Take each of them as examples, on the “vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation”, click “prefixes and suffixes”, and then, the Acrobat will show the page. In this page, you can learn what prefixes and suffixes are, and there is the introduction of prefixes and suffixes on the top of this page, and following is much that you can obtain, just like the appendix of the traditional dictionary. If you know what the parts of a word mean, you can often guess its meaning.
On the “general information”, you can improve some common sense in English here, take “common names” as example, you can know the pronunciation of common English names. And if you click the “common symbols”, you can know the name of the common symbols which you will see in writing. It also shows you how to describe types of printing, symbols from other languages, and the commonest mathematical symbols.
In the traditional dictionary, you can find the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation part in the appendix, but not the general information part. The most different from traditional and on-line dictionary is that on-line dictionary contains some general information for learners to gain some common knowledge more easily such as you can find there is a guide helps you to know many words relating to computer in English, and need not to check other books.
Last edited by pigdodoo, 11/29/2004, 9:20 am
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11/29/2004, 12:58 am
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Vita
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 Re: Evaluation of CALL software by Group 1
We are group 1. The CALL software we are going to evaluated is Engphonics which is focused on pronunciation and spelling. The target users are beginners. It was divided into many parts: ABC songs, Sound symbols, Rules, Activities, Game area and Word card, according to the software’s categories.
First, we look at ABC songs from design aspect. The design here is not bad. The background is music score that is a good way to let learners follow the song easier than only follow by each alphabet. In addition, the color is colorful and friendly. The tune of this song is lively as well. Under the circumstance, learners can learn the sound of each alphabet pretty soon.
From the content aspect, the designer not only provides the ABC song but also the possible sound and examples of each alphabet. For example, you click the letter “K,” another window will pop up and show you some word that contains “K.” Besides, there might be some tiny arrows on the left side. Click it and it will give further explanation of the rules of the pronunciation for K. If you don’t understand the word listed as examples, you can click it and you will see the picture, pronunciation and Chinese meaning. They are aids to help learners to learn the word.
From the teaching aspect, the design actually adopts parts of “Intuitive-imitative approach,” and parts of “Analytic-linguistic approaches because the learners not only listen to and imitates the sound without the assistance of explicit instruction but also are provided with phonetic alphabet and articulatory descriptions. The Intuitive-imitative approach is applied to learning the songs; the analytic-linguistic approaches is applied to here, phonetic alphabets, and articulatory descriptions
However, here are some problems. I doubt that the size of the window is a too small. The designer doesn’t provide the function to enlarge a window. As a result, all the words are showed like 12-point word-processing size. It may reduce the readability if learners have serious near-sight problem. And here are two bottons that are quite ambiguous. *singing by yourself* and *the small arrors.* It is difficult for learners to catch what the two buttons for from their icons.
The rule part was divided into three main categories. They are syllable table, stress rules, and spelling rules. Now, let’s look at the first one, syllable table.
The design of syllable table may be based on Intuitive-imitative approach, for it does not provide any explicit instructions; learners can only hear and imitate the sound and rhythm of the target language. In syllable table, there are many words for learners to practice. They can pronounce each word by following its syllable or click on it to hear the pre-recording sample. They can adjust the speed of the pre-recordings as they want. Besides, they can also click on it to see the difference between IPA phonetic alphabet and Webster one.
As to stress rules, it was subdivided into three parts: weak form, intonation, and tones table. The designs of them may be based on both Analytic-linguistic and intuitive-imitative approach, for each of them not only has learners hear and imitate the sounds but also provides them with explicit, structured teaching of speech.
As to weak form,it first gives learners a short explanation about weak form, and then lists six function words which are usually pronounced in their weak forms unless they are emphasized. Learners can click on each word to hear the sample and imitate it.
In intonation part, it gives learners a detailed clarification of intonation.
Later, in the tone table, learners can see five major tones: level, rise, fall, rise-fall, and fall-rise. It teaches learners where to rise or fall their tone, and for what purposes. They can also click on each one to hear the examples. Thought those sample words, learners can easily notice the difference between one another.
As to spelling part, our group members criticized it bitterly, for we think it just provides simple explanations but not gives enough examples. The only one example it gives is the difference between the pronunciation of “P” in pie and in spy. We don’t believe that after having read this oversimplified rule, learner can really apply it to pronounce other words accurately.
On the whole, we deem that learner can not make a great progress by merely mentally process the rules they see and hear. Some sound recordings are not relevant, and not an aid to understanding. Some contents are inappropriate to it target purpose. Besides, learners cannot record their own voice, not to mention the use of ASR. Above all, if they have any questions, they cannot seek any help in this part. These are the shortcomings we found in this part.
As to activity, it is divided into three parts: syllable, stress, and spelling.
Syllable is divided into three pars: correct, percentage, and remains. Correct shows users the number of correct answer. Percentage is the correct rate. Remains mean the total questions in the quiz. When users do the quiz, users will hear the voice and check the answer. If the answer is right, users can find “Well done! Your choice is correct” on the bottom of the frame. If answer is wrong, the system just show the answer is …… The system doesn’t provide any description or explanation to guide users why the answer is a, or b. Other disadvantages are: 1) when users want to change the answer, the system can’t provide the function. 2) Users can’t listen to the pronunciation one more time when they feel confused.
In stress exercise, you will find that each word use a “dot” to help users distinguish the syllable. Other functions of the part are the same as syllable.
In spelling part, it uses “star” to distinguish the difficulty of words. However, system shows these words at random. If the words show at random, why the system distinguishes words via star? We suggest that the system shows these words through easy to difficult. This will help students understand their English level and learn gradually.
As to the game area, it is called the Puzzland. There are 40 puzzles in the game. It provides sound and images of each vocabulary. We think this is a good method for learners to learn the phonic and vocabulary. Then, let’s look at its design; it is very simple and clear. It has score and time rating which help learners to know how much time they spend for each puzzle. However, the weak point is that the sound cannot be repeated and the score record is not count for the learners spelling ability, but for the speed of dragging and dropping appropriate tiles. Thus, our advice to this activity is that it makes more sense for the users if the scored record is account for how much time do learners’ spend on remembering each new word and how fast the learners can type the vocabulary correctly.
As to the final part, the word card, it is arranged alphabetically. The learners can chose which letter they want to start first. In the word card, it provides IPA symbol and Western pronunciation at the same. However, the learners only can hear IPA symbol’ pronunciation. We think the word card is a very tender and thoughtful design because it includes description of different pronunciation symbol, clear sound, Chinese translation for each word and a very fine picture.
Last edited by Vita, 11/29/2004, 1:55 am
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11/29/2004, 1:17 am
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pigdodoo
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Re: Evaluation of CALL software
【QUICKfind and SUPERwrite】
QUICKfind is designed to use while we are reading, and lets us look up words quickly and easily while we are browsing the Internet or reading text on the screen.
Use QUICKfind can also find the meaning of words quickly and easily whenever we are using the Internet, word processing programs, email and more.
I think using QUICKfind can help us to get the idea of a word that we do not know. We can also have better understanding of the words by using QUICKfind because it shows all the meanings of one word and gives examples of the words by showing us the usage of words.
Also, the words shown on the QUICKfind are organized in alphabetic order and it is easier for us to find the words we want.
SUPERwrite is designed to help us write in English. We can use it to help us choose the right words and avoid the mistakes that many learners make.
Whenever we are writing on the computer, we can find out that there are some advantages of this system. And we will have a fast and easy way to do the followings:
We can look up words and see their forms ( click the verbending button )
We can find related words and ideas ( click the word building button ) Therefore, we can learn not only one word but also the expanded words that related to it.
We can see words that are commonly used together then we can understand how to use the word in the right situation.
We can learn how to avoid mistakes that most learners make. The system will show the common mistakes and tell us the differences between right and wrong usage of the word. ( click the common learner error button ) Then, it can help us avoid making the same mistakes.
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11/29/2004, 9:21 am
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