WebQuest Assessment Tool

WebQuest Assessment Tool

So the next CALL project I’m tackling for the class I’m taking this semester is to develop a WebQuest for language learners. To kick off this project we’re going to be talking about some of the CALL assessment tools we plan to use. So, to get things started, first, let me start with a brief description of what I’m planning for this WebQuest.

I would like to work with the topic of food to explore the adjectives and descriptions that can be found on menus. I would do this WebQuest with intermediate-level Japanese students studying English as a foreign language, namely 3^rd year junior high school students (Ages 14-15).  I plan to have students work collaboratively in groups of three for this WebQuest, where they will look at various restaurant websites to assemble a personal corpus of food-related descriptive language. While I’m not yet certain what CALL technology I want them to use to present their final product (and therefore don’t yet know how it will be assessed), so far I have decided on two documents that these groups will be required to complete.

In an attempt to give my student a “paperless classroom” experience, I would like to try to do as much of the basic assignments using only the computer. For this reason, I think I would give each student group a Google account that the groups “techie” (one of the student roles) could access and edit their assignments in. These Google docs and spreadsheets would be shared with me so that I could also digitally provide immediate feedback to the groups as needed.

The first document that student groups will work on is the “Word Chart” Google Doc, which will look like this when students first access it:

This document contains a three-column table that students will complete in two stages; the first two columns of the table are to be completed at the beginning of the WebQuest (and without the help of any dictionaries), while the third and final column will be completed after the WebQuest has been completed. This activity was inspired by Egbert’s (2007) discussion of using self-assessment tools in language learning, in which he states:

“At the beginning of a lesson, learners using a pretest-posttest model can note what they know at the beginning of a lesson and what they want to know at the end. At the end of the unit or lesson, learners can look back at the pretest and note what they now know and whether or not they have learned what they wanted to learn” (p. 252).

Though my proposed word document self-assessment task deviates from the typical know-want to know-learned (KWL) activities that she was describing here, I believe that the self-assessment tool I’ve created here will help learners take note of their progress in the following ways:

• By first listing the adjectives they know in Japanese (their L1), my students can become aware of all the different words they use in their native language to describe food.
• Students at this level will likely not be able to translate all of the words they listed in their L1 into their L2 for the second column, which will show them the gaps in their vocabulary knowledge.
• Students will be allowed to copy items from their second (pretest) column into their third (posttest) column before adding the terms they learned during the WebQuest; the third column should therefore be longer than the second, helping students visualize the gains they’ve made in their English vocabulary knowledge

Additionally, by having students type their word lists into a digital document rather than have them write it on paper, they can take advantage of the program’s spell-check feature. This gives them extra confidence when writing words from memory into their second column as well as when inputting newly encountered words into their final column.

Because this is a self-assessment tool, its main purpose is to help students reflect on their progress and understanding; it’s therefore my intention to grade this portion of the WebQuest only for its completion. However, since I don’t have all of the assessment tools ready at this point, I’m not sure how much weight this part of the WebQuest will have on the students’ final grades.

The second document I want my students to work on is a corpus of food-related description words (sweet, crispy, rich, grilled, steamed) including the sample sentences that they found on the various online menus I’ll provide for them. Though the act of gathering vocabulary words and sample sentences seems like a simple scavenger hunt activity, I believe this step is important for language learners in this WebQuest because it arms them with the L2 knowledge base they need in order to progress to the more “transformative learning” tasks that “real” WebQuests aim for (March, 2004, p. 42).

I will give the groups an initial file with a list of English words to search for, and it will be up to them to find these words on the various websites. They are to take note of which nouns these words can be used to describe (as in, I might say “a creamy milkshake,” but I wouldn’t say “a creamy tomato”) and provide the sample sentence in which they found that descriptor being used. This was inspired by the fact that in Japanese the verb “yaku” is often translated into English as a number of different things: grill, bake, cook, etc. My 3^rd year students also study reduced relative clauses in the latter half of their textbooks, so I thought this WebQuest might be a relevant way for them to practice that knowledge.

This corpus that the groups assemble will also be submitted to their Google Drive in the form of a spreadsheet. Tentatively the blank file I’ll give them will look something like this:

This will likely have much more influence on the group’s overall grade, but again, this corpus is merely going to be a tool for their ultimate project in which students will use these adjectives and descriptions to assemble their own list of appetizing daily specials for a fictitious restaurant of their choosing. Again, because this is merely a tool to help students gain some familiarity and confidence with the material, I would likely focus on completion and accuracy (no spelling errors, no irrelevant examples, etc.) for grading this portion of the WebQuest.

This is, as of right now, my plan to incorporate technology into the assessment of my WebQuest. As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are always welcome!

References:

Egbert, J. (2007). Classroom practice: Practical classroom assessment. In Egbert, J., & Hanson-Smith, E. (Eds.), CALL environments: Research, practice, and critical issues (pp. 242-257). Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

March, T. (2004). The learning power of WebQuests. Educational Leadership, 61(4), pp. 42-47.

Website Evaluation

CALL Website Evaluation

My next task after last week’s evaluation of a mobile language learning app is to examine a website or software CALL resource. I’m not going to lie – I’m a bit more confident about attempting this evaluation task. I feel much more comfortable working with a personal computer than I do with a mobile device for language learning, which I suppose is fortunate since the elementary school computer lab I currently teach in only has a SMART Board and desktop computers – no mobile devices in sight! I’m sure that might change some day, but for now I’m happy to have this chance to take a deeper look at a more stationary piece of technology for language learning and teaching.

In particular, for this task I wanted to evaluate a language learning website instead of a software program. I know there must be hundreds of amazing educational resources available on the internet, but I sadly have not taken enough time to investigate and evaluate all that’s out there. So, in this blog post, I present a review of the ESL language learning portion of the BrainPOP website – a resource I stumbled upon quite some time ago but never really stopped to consider as a teaching and learning resource.

To begin, let’s get a few of the basics out in the open:

Website title: BrainPOP ESL

Website URL: https://esl.brainpop.com

Grade/age/proficiency level: website describes itself as providing content for learners “of all ages”; lessons are organized by proficiency level (with an accompanying placement test to direct students towards the lesson that best fits their current level, as pictured below):

Language and content: English as a second language; content varies by lesson but seems relevant to school-age learners

1) What is the intended purpose of the software or website?

BrainPOP appears to be an all-around English language-learning program for young learners of varying proficiency levels, though it’s probably best suited for students in elementary and middle school. The overall intention is to educate as well as entertain the learners; each lesson (of which there are 90!) covers a different grammar pattern and set of vocabulary, and it accomplishes this with colorful, animated videos and interactive games. This therefore seems like the perfect program for young English language learners who want an engaging, fun CALL experience.

Of course, the full program can be purchased with a number of different subscriptions designed to suit a variety of different learning contexts (home, classroom, school, district), meaning that since much of the program’s content cannot be accessed without a subscription, part of the website’s intended purpose is to sell the full program to educators, administrators, and parents. However, this intention is to be expected; there are no ads to be found anywhere on the website, providing a distraction-free web environment for students to interact with, so the program logically needs some source of funding to provide such an extensive language-learning program. Purchasing a subscription also gives educators a way to not only track and monitor their students’ activity and progress, but it also allows them the opportunity to create their own interactive quizzes for students to use. Though I have not purchased a subscription to the program and have not experienced these features first-hand, BrainPOP offers video tutorials and tours of these features to inform educators of all they can do to interact with their students. Again, while this helps the website sell subscriptions, it nevertheless provides an outstanding, interactive learning program for educators and students alike.

2) What is the content of the software or website and how is it presented?

The website’s content is extensive and covers a multitude of language patterns and topics; thankfully, the “Teacher Resources” link on the bottom of the BrainPOP ESL homepage offers .pdf files outlining each lesson’s function (e.g. “discussing near future plans”) and form (e.g. “present progressive (future tense)”). Additionally, there are also files detailing the topics of the lessons’ content videos (e.g. recycling, music genres, ancient Egypt, etc.) as well as the relevant videos that can be found on other portions of the BrainPOP website (BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr., and BrainPOP Español).

The website’s content covers an impressive number of topics, so in addition to providing an extensive amount of English grammar and vocabulary the website also lets learners apply the language being learned to a variety of cross-curricular subjects, like science, math, music, and art. Furthermore, there are files and even webinars detailing how the language and content presented in each lesson can be aligned with WIDA and Common Core standards.

3) What external documents (some guides) does the software or website include? Are they effective?

In addition to the video tutorials, teacher resources, and webinars I discussed in the previous questions, the accompanying BrainPOP Educators website offers an incredible amount of external documents to help teachers plan how to use BrainPOP ESL in their curricula and lesson plans. Each lesson has an accompanying lesson plan that educators can access by clicking the “Lesson Ideas” button found on each lesson’s webpage.

Links to additional external documents can be found within the lesson activities as well, such as in the “Write it!” portion of each lesson. One example is the level 2, unit 1, lesson 1 “Write it!” activity that provides not only a writing prompt, but a link to an external “Paragraph Graphic Organizer” .pdf file that teachers can print out to help students complete the task.

All of these external documents seem to provide both educators and students with a wealth of helpful guides and suggestions on how to make the most of all of the content this website offers.

4) In what ways is the software or website interesting to the target audience?

Simply by looking at the pictures I’ve posted above, one can probably tell that the overall website is visually very appealing to young learners with all of the bright colors, interactive features, and animated characters. Each lesson focuses on an animated movie featuring the website’s recurring characters Ben and Moby, and the topics they discuss in each lesson seem very relevant to young learners. For example, one lesson has the characters getting ready for a 4th of July party, others have them describing their hobbies and favorite musical artists, and another has them camping and telling scary stories. Though the program doesn’t necessarily allow the students much freedom to choose which topic they will explore with each lesson, the overall variety of topics across the three units would likely prevent the learner from getting bored with the content.

In addition to presenting each lesson’s content in the form of an animated video, the lessons also provide learners with interactive, animated games they can play to review the grammar patterns and vocabulary. These games can be found by clicking the “Practice” button on each lesson’s webpage, and the games for each lesson are different; one lesson might have students clicking pictures in response to an audio prompt, while the next might have students answering written questions presented in a board game format. This variety in the way games are presented is also likely to prevent learners from getting bored, as the content is not very repetitive.

5) For what language goal(s) is this software or website useful/effective? 

The website’s contents appear to cover all of the language skills: listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, grammar, and to some extent, culture. The animated videos that accompany each lesson present the learners with a way to see and hear the target grammar and vocabulary in use, and learners can even turn on the captions to read along with what’s being said. Various aspects of English-speaking culture are also introduced through many of these videos; one video has the characters discussing presidential elections, another had them reading “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” (which some ELLs might not be familiar with, depending on their cultural background), and another video I mentioned earlier has the characters preparing for a 4th of July party.

Each lesson also allows the learners a chance to view videos that further describe the target grammar and vocabulary. These grammar and vocabulary videos provide additional examples of how to use the new structures in different sentences and contexts.

Additionally, at the bottom of each lesson’s page there are “Read It!”, “Write It!”, and “Hear It, Say It!” buttons that have students practice reading, writing, listening, and speaking the new grammar structures and vocabulary. The only skill that feels a bit neglected to me is pronunciation; while the “Hear It, Say It!” portion of the website allows the students to record their voice so they can listen and compare it to the native speaker in the program, there is no feature that evaluates their pronunciation. However, CALL technologies that evaluate pronunciation are overall still somewhat unreliable since it’s hard for a digital device to accurately evaluate a speaker’s performance, so I really don’t think a lack of pronunciation-evaluating technology is a real negative to this website. If anything this only means that the teacher needs to be aware that some in-class pronunciation practice may be necessary to supplement the use of this program.

6) How can teacher use this program or website to offer practice to students? Assessment? Feedback? Of what kinds? (give examples)

As mentioned in question 3 regarding the website’s abundant external documents, BrainPOP ESL can be easily used in the classroom alongside the contents of corresponding teacher-oriented BrainPOP Educators website. The lesson plans outline objectives, materials, and procedures for each lesson on the website, and links to visual aids and worksheets are also provided in many cases. Additionally, some lessons even include more than one lesson plan. For example, for the very first lesson in the program, “Hi, I’m Ben!” there are three different lesson plans provided:

If we look at the lesson plan 1.1.1 The Verb to Be (Affirmative), we find three activity ideas, printable visual aids, and links to other relevant videos found on the parent BrainPOP website. The suggested activities in this particular lesson all take place in the classroom and have the students using the target language in collaborative speaking activities away from the computer. The lesson plan therefore appears to be a way to provide additional conversational practice for the students after viewing the website’s contents, but perhaps before they are expected to use the other features of the website (such as the “Write It!”, “Practice”, or “Quiz” sections). If I were to use this program with these external documents, I believe this format (view the video – work through collaborative in-class activities – allow students to independently work through the lesson materials on their computer) to gradually move the students from whole-class to individual activities.

While in-class activities proposed in the lesson plans give the teacher a way to directly see how students are progressing with the target language, another interesting feature of this website is that with a subscription teachers can not only make their own student quizzes, but can provide their own feedback to their students’ responses as well. I initially wasn’t very impressed with BrainPOP ESL’s feedback, which mostly either showed the student the right answer or let a student choose again if a wrong answer was selected; no additional feedback as to why one answer was better than the other is provided. However, I think the option for teachers to make their own quizzes with their own feedback is a great feature, so I feel that the otherwise weak feedback from the BrainPOP ESL activities is merely a minor setback.

7) Is this software or website easy to use? (i.e., navigation, layout, etc.) 

The website is colorful, visually appealing, and the layout is logically organized and easy to understand. Each level’s units and lessons are clearly displayed on the left side of the website, are easy to move between, and utilize a simple, easy-to-read font. Lessons in each unit are also displayed on pages with different color schemes to set them apart, which is a subtle yet nice touch to the website’s organization.

Additionally, when a lesson is selected the lesson’s title, activities, and supplementary materials are then clearly displayed on the bottom half of the screen. Another feature I like about this program is that the words on each of the lesson’s content buttons are read out loud whenever the user hovers the mouse over them. While not all of the titles and words on the website do this, the majority of them do, which is a particularly user-friendly feature on a website intended for non-native speakers of English.

Games and activities are also very easy to work with; any instructions are presented both with both written and spoken instruction as well as visual cues, such as animated arrows and highlighted areas of the screen to indicate where to click. Again, in a program aimed at non-native speakers of English, presenting instructions this way allows as many chances as possible for students to understand what’s expected of them.

The ease with which this program is navigated also means that it appears to have a low program difficulty, which “has to do with the learning curve to operate the program (because of inherent complexity or technical design flaws) and, in the case of games, the deliberate level of challenge the user is faced with” (Hubbard, 2006, p. 15). I had a difficult time teaching with the Rosetta Stone software these past two years primarily because many of my young students in grades K-4 had trouble logging into, setting up, and syncing their hardware with the software. All of these challenges were merely time-wasting distractions that only had a negative effect on my students’ focus and motivation. Though it looks like purchasing a school subscription to BrainPOP would allow students to have their own accounts that the teacher can then manage and monitor for student progress, I doubt that logging into this website would have as high of a learning curve as the more adult-oriented Rosetta Stone language learning software.

The biggest criticism I have of the website’s presentation is the size of the content in comparison to the window size. Perhaps it’s just an issue on my browser, but whenever I have the window maximized the website’s content only fills about 50% of the screen. Thankfully the website offers a zoom feature that enlarges the video, but even with the video zoomed in it still seems odd to have so much unused space on the screen. Both the zoomed-in video and the navigation page could easily fit side-by-side in my browsing window, which makes me wonder why the website’s designers chose such a narrow layout. Since this is a website aimed at young, non-native speakers, it seems to me like it would make more sense to present the program with big, bold font and large buttons and images.

8) What are the strengths of this software or website? 

In an attempt to keep this short, I’ll highlight the website’s strongest points:

• Addresses all language skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary, culture, and to some extent pronunciation) 
• Fun, visually-appealing website to interest young learners 
• Massive amount of content for learners of varying proficiency levels 
• Includes a placement test to start students on the right lesson for their proficiency level 
• Abundant external documents to provide teachers with lesson planning assistance 
• Website titles and instructions are presented both visually and aurally with visual cues to help non-native speaker learners 
• Learners can turn on captions when watching videos if needed 
• Subscription allows educators the opportunity to monitor student activity and progress, and lets them create quizzes and feedback specifically for their students 

9) How can this software or website be improved? 

As I mentioned before, I had kind of been hoping that the program would provide slightly more in-depth feedback that what it currently offers. It’s certainly a nice feature to let teachers create their own quizzes and add their own feedback, but I think some of the later units and lessons especially would benefit from giving more feedback to students than simply telling they which questions they got right or wrong.

One minor issue I had with the video portions of the website was the inability to jump to a specific part of the video. This is merely a minor complaint, since the website allows users to fast forward and rewind videos; however, if I wanted to jump back to a specific part of a video to hear what a certain character had said, I had to keep pressing the rewind button until I landed close to where I wanted to go. I think this would have added even more convenience to the video content.

Also, I didn’t see a feature to change the speed of the audio on any of the website’s features, which would be a nice option particularly for beginning learners struggling to keep up with the spoken English.

Aside from these minor issues I was incredibly impressed with BrainPOP ESL, even after only interacting with the free features of the website. I am currently not in an ESL teaching context, but if I were I certainly would consider finding a way to use the program with my students to give them an engaging way to independently play and learn English on classroom computers. In fact, these past two years I have been working in an elementary school “language lab” where students use computers to work independently on Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish; a few times we’ve had ELLs move into the district, and these students were allowed to use Rosetta Stone to learn English instead of Spanish. However, since I taught kids in grades K-4 and Rosetta Stone isn’t a particularly child-oriented program, I feel BrainPOP ESL would have been a much better choice for these ELLs. If only I had known about this program sooner I could have requested a way to use it in the classroom with my students!

Overall Rating 

     1. Very Poor (Not recommended at all)
     2. Poor (not appropriate)
     3. Adequate (Acceptable with reservation)
     4. Good (Appropriate for use)
 X 5. Excellent (highly recommended) 

Resources 

Hubbard, P. (2006). Evaluating CALL software. In Ducate, L. & Arnold, N. (Eds.), Calling on CALL: From theory and research to new directions in foreign language teaching. San Marcos, TX: CALICO.

Mobile App Review

Language Learning Mobile App Review

For my summer course in CALL we are taking some time to explore the mobile apps currently available for language learners and choosing one to evaluate. Allow me to begin my review with my rationale for selecting this particular app. As a language learner I’ve often used study materials that were aimed at helping native speakers of English learn a foreign language. So, for this review I decided to turn the tables around and instead look for an English-language app designed for native speakers of Japanese, as most of my experience teaching ELLs has been with Japanese students.

One of the first results I discovered in the iTunes App Store was an app designed specifically for helping Japanese ELLs learn conversational American English. It seemed interesting and relevant enough to my search criteria that I downloaded it and gave it a try, but to be perfectly honest I don’t believe I would recommend this app to either language learners or instructors. However, while I think that I could have continued searching for a more appropriate app for Japanese ELLs to review for this assignment, I decided to stick with my original choice to further explore why exactly I felt this app wouldn’t be a wise choice for English language study. For this reason, I decided to comment on each of the 15 parts of this evaluation, so the overall evaluation ended up much lengthier than I had hoped. However, I feel that this evaluation turned out to be a very valuable experience for me as an aspiring language educator.

App information

Title: Standard American English With Full Text Japanese Dictionary Free HD (https://itunes.apple.com/app/biao-zhunamerika-rennoyouni/id552695264?mt=8)

Place to download: iTunes App Store

Price: Free for first 5 “books,” $2.99 for full version without ads

Last update: March 16, 2015

Version: 5.5

Size: 54.7 MB

Publisher/Developer: Li Yang

Target audience: upper-intermediate to advanced Japanese learners of English

Language skills: Conversational English, American English idiomatic phrases and colloquialisms, vocabulary, culture

App Evaluation

1. Purpose:
Is the purpose of the app clear? Is the content of the app in line with its purpose? Is the app appropriate for its target learner?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

This app has a very specific focus: helping upper-intermediate to advanced Japanese ELLs gain additional exposure to and understanding of colloquial American English. The app doesn’t allow users much freedom to customize the content or difficulty level of the material presented, but I think that for these particular individuals this app does a satisfactory job of fulfilling its purpose.

2. Accuracy:
Is the content of the app accurate? Are spelling and grammar accurate? Are the learning materials of the app culturally accurate?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

This was a difficult rating for me to assign; while the language that composes each “book” sounds very natural and includes many commonly used American colloquialisms, some of the spelling and grammar used in other parts of the program is startlingly incorrect. For example, right when the program first launched a menu with instructions popped up on my screen. In this instruction menu was the line, “1. How to consult dictionary? While reading, you get some word you wanna look up, simply press on the word <press for longer than one second>, and then you’ll see related annotations and usage of the word in pop up.” Since this is an app designed for Japanese ELLS, I was surprised that the user instructions were in English only, and on top of that the English used was awkward and incorrect.

I also spotted a few more issues with punctuation and grammar in other areas of the app as well:

- In the dictionary there are random entries that are capitalized, such as “Acts” and “Congratulations.” Though this isn’t a big deal, it could lead an ELL to believe that these words are always meant to be capitalized.

- Dictionary sample sentences also contain some inappropriate punctuation. Periods and commas are often separated from words with an additional space (e.g. “Try again .”). Also, the punctuation for the Japanese sentences in the “books” section is occasionally missing or incorrect as well.

- In the dictionary entries there are some awkward or even incorrect sample sentences (e.g. “It is as large again as that.”).

- Additionally, there are some spelling errors in the sample sentences (e.g. “So you want a rise? Dream on!”).

- Finally, while the sample sentences for some entries include other forms of the same word (e.g. “work” might also have sentences using the words “works,” “worked,” or “working”), there are some sample sentences with similarly spelled yet semantically unrelated words (e.g. the entry for “evens” includes a sample sentence for the word “evening”).

That being said, the idiomatic phrases used in the dialog activities are quite numerous and very common in everyday American English. Therefore, while the app is not always accurate with its spelling or grammar, I feel that it is very culturally accurate. I therefore gave this a neutral accuracy rating overall.

3. Usefulness:
Is the app useful for learning the target language? Does the app provide useful information? Are the activities or tasks of the app practical?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

The information presented in the app seems relevant and useful for the particular set of learners it’s targeting (upper-intermediate to advanced learners of English looking to learn natural American English slang and colloquialisms). The dialogs presented in the “books” sound very natural and the conversations concern everyday issues in relevant contexts (e.g. family members discussing a student’s day at school, a couple discussing their day at work, etc.). However, while a lot of great information is presented in the dialogs and the dictionary feature is quite extensive and informative, the tasks for the users to complete do not seem very helpful. Though there are cloze tests available for students to practice the idiomatic phrases encountered in the dialogs, there is little else for the user to do to in this app to help them gain a clearer understanding of when and where it’s appropriate to use the idiomatic phrases.

4. Flexibility:
Does the app allow the user to adjust settings to meet his/her needs? Does the app offer various modes of learning activities? Does the app provide opportunities to collaborate with others?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

Perhaps my favorite feature of the app is the ability for the user to change the speed of the audio. This provides the user with some sort of ability to control the information being presented in order to better accommodate their listening skills. Users are also able to add and remove words from their personal word list to keep track of difficult or unfamiliar terms. However, this is about as far as customization goes; the only interactive activity available are cloze tests with very few options, and there is no sort of online feature for users to communicate or collaborate with other users.

5. Authenticity:
Does the app provide authentic learning experiences? Are the learning materials of the app authentic? Are authentic materials provided in appropriate contexts?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

As we discussed in class, “CALL task authenticity can be estimated by taking into account the learners’ perceptions” (Chapelle & Liu, 2007, p. 121), which conversely means that it’s difficult to judge an app’s authenticity without knowing the particular learners for whom I’m evaluating this program. However, I certainly feel that learners would potentially see the content presented in the lessons as authentic since the audio sounds very natural, the content presents realistic conversational contexts, and the colloquialisms presented in the dialogs are ones that many learners would encounter when speaking to native English speakers in the United States. However, while the content might appear authentic for ELLs, I feel that the tasks presented would not come across as such. The sentences in the cloze exercises are presented out of context from the lessons in which they are introduced and the tests therefore feel very much like those one might encounter in a classroom during a pen-and-paper examination.

6. Engagement:
Is the user motivated to use the app? Does the app provide reinforcement to hold the interest of the user? Does the app offer a meaningful and interactive learning environment?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

Sadly, while the information presented in this app would be interesting for an advanced learner who is trying to learn more about American idiomatic phrases and everyday speech, it’s not very engaging otherwise. Users can only read and listen to the dialogs without any other ability to interact with the program (such as by being prompted to repeat each line into the speaker for practice). Additionally, the tests are not particularly rewarding. Users choose how many questions they want to answer when they start a test, but the questions are not influenced by what content the user has or has not yet covered in the app, and users are not given any other options regarding the content of the test’s cloze activities. The user therefore has no control over what colloquialisms and vocabulary they will be tested on. Students are able to check their responses immediately after the test and they have the option to consult the dictionary entries of words they missed or to add words to their unknown word list, but otherwise their test information is lost immediately after they’ve finished. There is no feature to track their scores or their progress in the program. Also, I know that some apps (such as Duolingo) have features that keep track of how often users access the program, and even send out reminders if users neglect to use the program for a certain amount of time. This app has no such feature.

7. Feedback:
Does the app provide specific feedback? Is feedback on learner responses constructive and timely? Is error handling meaningful and helpful? Does the app allow the user to monitor his/her progress? Does the app provide a summary of learner performance?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

Though I feel a bit harsh for assigning a “very unsatisfactory” rating here, I feel that meaningful feedback is one of the most necessary and important features an app can have, and I sadly feel that this particular app leaves much to be desired. When students answer on the cloze tests items they are given little feedback aside from a green checkmark for correct answers and a red “X” for incorrect answers. At the end of the test, students are then given the option to access the dictionary pages for the vocabulary terms that formed the correct sentences in the test. However, there is no mention of which vocabulary word the learner originally chose for the question, nor is there any description why one answer is a better choice than the others.  The program also does not keep track of the student’s test results or progress, leaving students helpless to track their own progress within the app. This sadly does nothing to help cultivate student autonomy, as be nowadays “individual programs can track not only how learners did on tests, but also how they worked through material, including how long they spent on individual items, words they looked up, help they requested, and guesses they made while doing an exercise” (Healy, 2007, p. 382). This app could therefore have provided so much more feedback for the users, so I unfortunately had to give it a very unsatisfactory review.

8. Integration:
Can the learning materials of the app be integrated into a curriculum? Does the content of the app fit with curricular goals? Is the content of the app relevant to the course of study undertaken by the user?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

I feel that this app could be used as supplementary material for a course in conversational English, particularly if the students or the instructor were searching for an app to provide additional exposure to colloquial American English in particular. However, because of the language errors I mentioned in question 2 regarding accuracy, the instructor would need to carefully consider whether or not the relevant material presented in this app is worth also exposing learners to the inaccurate material. I could see the dialogs in this app being beneficial to Japanese ELLs who are having difficulties understanding how certain idiomatic phrases are used in everyday American English conversation, but integrating this app as a whole into a course could be a difficult task because of its errors.

9. Support:
Is user assistance available? Is online help adequate? Does the app provide necessary updates?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

The app has been updated within the last couple of months, so it appears that the creators are continuing to work on this app. There is also a substantial amount of information about the app in the “Help” section, and it’s set up like an FAQ so that it’s easy to find answers to some common questions that might arise while using the app. However, while the creator provides his email address for users who wish to contact him, there is no other sort of online support or contact information available.

10. Price:
Is the app free? Is the app paid? Is the price of the app appropriate and reasonable? Is the app a value for money and time?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

Since I was putting myself in the shoes of a learner when selecting my app for this review, I was immediately drawn to those that provide at least a portion of the app for free. I’m generally not willing to spend money on an app unless I’ve had a chance to try it for myself to ensure that it’s a.) worth the money and memory it costs and b.) something I would regularly take advantage of if it were on my mobile device. Personally, while I enjoyed working through the five free “books,” I think I would shop around more before purchasing the full app. In particular, the app’s spelling and grammatical mistakes lead me to believe that it might be worth my time to search for more polished, professional options over this particular app. However, I do think that the relatively low price of $2.99 is a good value for Japanese ELLs who have a particular interest in understanding, practicing, and using colloquial American English phrases.

11. Reliability:
Is the app free of bugs and breaks? Is the app stable without crashes? Does the app load quickly?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

I have never had the app crash on me, nor have I encountered any difficulty loading the program. There are unfortunately a lot of ads that pop up during screen transitions, and these have slowed down my progress using the app as some ads will not allow the user to close them until at least 5 seconds have elapsed. However, I would imagine that if a user were to purchase the ad-free full version of this program, there would be few, if any, problems encountered with its reliability.

12. Presentation:
Is the content of the app presented clearly and logically? Is the user interface of the app attractive and friendly? Are screen displays effective and efficient?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

I feel that the app has a clear layout and the text is easy to read. Though I’ve already mentioned that some content could be added to make the content easier to understand (such as presenting the name of the speaker in conjunction with their spoken dialog in the “books”), I do feel that overall this app presents a logical layout with few distracting features, save perhaps the advertising.

13. Organization:
Is the app well organized? Is the content of the app well structured? Is the app interesting to look around?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

While I wouldn’t say that this app is particularly interesting to look at, it’s got a simple, logical layout that’s easy to navigate.

14. Navigation:
Is the app easy to navigate? Are the on-screen instructions of the app easy to follow? Is it easy to retrieve information? Does the app use the touch screen effectively to explore?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

This is a fairly simple app with a fairly simple layout, so navigation seemed quite easy and user-friendly. The app’s basic instructions pop up the first time the program is launched, and more detailed instructions are also available to the user at any time in the “help” section listed under the “more” tab on the menu at the bottom of the screen. The other tabs (for the books, dictionary, personal word list, and tests) are always on display and easy to access, so at no time was it hard to get from one part of the app to another. My only problem with navigation would be the button used to open the options menu in the lessons (or “books”). While I never encountered any problems with the touch screen technology, the button was small and difficult to notice when I first started using the program.

15. Multimedia:
Does the app make effective use of graphics, sound and color? Is the level of audio quality, the scale of graphics or video display appropriate for language learning?

Very Unsatisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Neutral/Uncertain | Satisfactory | Very Satisfactory

The audio is perhaps the best feature of this app. Each dialog is spoken by native speakers of English, is clearly enunciated and easy to understand, and users even have the option to change the speed of the audio if it is still a struggle for them to keep up with what’s being said. However, I had really hoped for more that could be done with the available multimedia. For example, in the options menu there is a “Fillin word mode” feature. I’m actually not entirely sure what this feature does; it’s only available in the “books” and it doesn’t appear to change the written content or the audio in any way. Since this feature is only in the dialog activities I was kind of hoping that it would highlight the words as they’re spoken in each sentence for the user to more easily follow along, which is a feature I’ve seen in listening activities in some other language learning apps. Sadly, no such feature was available in this program. While the font is of an easy-to-read size and never clashes with the background colors, it’s no more interactive than a plain text file.

Another multimedia feature I’ve seen in some other apps is video as well as audio to present dialogs between two or more speakers. This app only provides the written dialog to accompany the audio, and what’s more concerning is that there is no mention of who is speaking each line in the script. This app let’s users choose how much of the dialog they want to listen to at a time: users can listen to the whole dialog at once or listen to one line at a time, and they can also choose for the dialog to automatically play/loop or they can choose to move through the lines at their own pace. As a result, if users are moving through each line at their own pace it might become difficult to understand who is speaking each line. This is especially true because the lines of text do not evenly alternate between the speakers (one speaker may say two lines of text, while the next speaker only says one), and in the case of the first book the speakers are two adult males who could be hard to distinguish for ELLs who are expending most of their cognitive energy trying to understand the content of the lines being spoken over who is actually saying them.

Basically, while the audio is very professional and easy to listen to and the presentation of the text is pleasant to look at and easy to read, I feel that this app could have done so much more with the mobile technology. But, at the same time, this is an inexpensive program, so for what it’s worth I can’t give this app any less than a neutral rating.

Overall Rating

    1. Very Poor (Not recommended at all)

    2. Poor (not appropriate)

 X 3. Adequate (Acceptable with reservation)

    4. Good (Appropriate for use)

    5. Excellent (highly recommended)

Additional Comments

I do feel that this app is worthwhile for Japanese English language learners who are specifically interested in learning more about American English colloquialisms and how they are used in everyday conversation. That being said, instructors would be wise to caution their learners that, while this app offers accurate examples of how to use American idiomatic expressions, this app (and the dictionary in particular) does contain a number of spelling and grammatical errors.

Further inspection into the origins of this app actually revealed to me that this particular app (designed for Japanese ELLs) is actually based on another app that does not contain any Japanese text: Speak English Like an American by Language Success Press (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speak-english-like-american/id398332055?mt=8). The app I evaluated therefore seems to be an attempt to produce another version of the same program but with Japanese language support added on.

Sadly, this app does not fulfill the present need in CALL for mobile learning apps to possess a degree of interconnectedness in which “learners can constantly be interacting with the things and people around them, and language learning tasks can be shaped so that they draw learners into interacting with their surroundings in new and innovative ways” (Stockwell, 2012, p. 212). However, it does fit the need for mobile apps “to be short and succinct, with a very short start-up time as well as short-segmented sections that can be completed individually as a single unit” (p. 211). While this certainly isn’t going to have a great impact on a learner’s progress, it at least provides a way for learners to study colloquial American English even if they’re on the go and don’t have much time to devote to language study.

References

Chapelle, C. A., & Liu, H. (2007). Theory and research: Investigating authenticity. In Egbert, J., & Hanson-Smith, E. (Eds.), CALL environments: Research, practice, and critical issues (pp. 111-129). Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Healy, D. (2007). Theory and research: Autonomy and language learning. In Egbert, J., & Hanson-Smith, E. (Eds.), CALL environments: Research, practice, and critical issues (pp. 377-388). Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Stockwell, G. (2012). Mobile-assisted language learning. In Hayo, R., & Thomas, M. (Eds.), Contemporary computer-assisted language learning (pp. 201-216). Huntingdon, GBR: Bloomsbury Publishing.

(Evaluation format adapted from Jong-Bae Son’s 2015 Language Learning App Review Form)