1)     What does the website or MOOC or app or tool attempt to “teach”? Are exercises or activities included in the website? What are the types of exercise or activities included? Are there immediate feedbacks? Are there different levels of difficulty for different proficiency levels? (You can add any other comments you think is important to point out).

The website elllo.org attempting to “teach”, or I prefer to say providing listening lesson to both teacher and students. In elllo, there are few interesting item which can be access, starting with a written dialogue, audio of the dialogue, vocabulary section, as well as activities (comprehension questions) to analyse whether the user understand the lesson. After the users have answered the questions, they can check the answers. The website also show the correct answers to the user. Other than that, this website also provide a section that is called “A Video Lesson” in which a video will be shown together with the text, with the purpose to improve user’s listening and pronunciation skills. There are nbo different levels of difficulty, as the videos/audios are different from one another. Thus, every video/audio content would be different too. I think another comment I would like to highlight about this spectacular website is that, the videos are from various country. Therefore, the slang, language use, jargon, and even content would surely different in each video/audio. If I were to improve my listening skill, I would love to learn it here, on elllo.org.

2)    What are the learners/visitors required to do with regards to learning the content of the website or MOOC or apps?

This is another interesting part of this website. For you to use the site, you can just click on elllo.org and you are free to choose any audio/video you like. There are no sign up or fees required to use this website. I think this is very nice, since there are a lot of interesting learning websites, but people have the tendency to open it once they see that registration are required. This is because, I believe that everyone in this world prefer easy-to-access-websites rather than the opposite.

3)   Does the website or MOOC or app or tools present learners with something that cannot be done in a face-to-face classroom? If yes, how so?

No. this is because, this websites are very easy to access (on the search engines) and teachers can use this as their teaching aid. For example, a teacher only need to open the website in the class, use a speaker to make it audible, and she can now start the listening lesson. As a future educator, I believe this website would be a great help in my listening and speaking lesson, as it involve pronunciation and activities that are going to improve my students’ skills.

4)  Can you pinpoint some theories of language learning and/or teaching underlying the application?

Noam Chomsky  proposed the theory of Universal Grammar: an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language development in children and overall language processing in adults. It means that The child’s task is just to learn the words of her language. They will know how to combine words into their own sentences. But, they might not improve only by speaking alone. Thus, I believe that by listening to the correct pronunciation and grammatically correct sentences would surely help students to improve their language. This would be the same for teachers, as teachers are also a learner themselves.

5)    An important criterion for evaluating a CALL program, task or activity is the potential for language learning (i.e. will student learn something?) Does the website or MOOC or app fulfill this criterion? If yes, how so? If no, why?

Yes. Some of the learning websites might be interesting, but the purpose of why it was created should not be ignored. This website provides more than 1400 free lesson. All the videos are filtered and certified as an input for an effective lesson. The purpose of this website is to focus on students’ listening skills. Students can learn the correct pronunciation and also learn about the other country through this website. I believe that nowadays if we want to learn something outside the walls, there are a lot of medium for us to do so. The websites with useful information on the internet are countless. However, I personally prefer to use this website (elllo.org) as it serves its purpose of teaching listening skill, as well as providing a medium for teachers to improve his/her classroom session.

6)    Would you like to use the application yourself in your future work? Yes? Provide reason(s), No? Provide (reason)

Yes! Of course! When I was doing my practicum, I found  out that it was quite hard to find an appropriate audio to be used in my listening classroom. It was difficult to make sure that it sync with the topic of the syllabus, whether its is appropriate for students, and I also need to consider the students’ interest, or else they would get bored. I believe that this website would surely be a big help for me in the future. I can choose any audio out of 1400 choices and play it in my classroom. Then, I can project the quiz at the screen and ask my students to answer it before discussing about it. Other than that, I could continue with writing class where I would ask them to write a similar dialogue to the script, but based on their personal experience. That already conclude 2 sessions of my ESL lesson!

Website : http://www.elllo.org/index.htm

Benefits of elllo.org:

1-     Provide over 1400 audio/videos

2-     Provide vocabulary section (helps students understand text/audio better)

3-     Provide comprehension activity regarding the audio/video

4-     Easy (free) to access by anyone

5-     Clear instruction / text

6-     World-wide content