CALL Blog Entry 1

1. Why do you think evaluation of CALL courseware, websites, materials etc important?

I believe that such evaluation are important because it helps us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the coursewares, websites, materials etc. This is important especially for those who will be professionally involved in teaching one day as such items should be evaluated thoroughly before being utilized or presented in the classroom before their students.

If such items are not evaluated thoroughly, it may lead to improper conduct by the students, or the content may be misleading or inappropriate for the student's level of proficiency. The content may also be too mature or immature for whatever age the students you are targeting on utilizing the items on.

The authenticity of the items also play a major role as to avoid the items to cause onfusion or misunderstanding among the students. The authenticity can only be verified once you thoroughly evaluate the items. Therefore, for these reasons, it is understandable why evaluation of coursewares, websites, materials etc are important.


2. How do you think Hot Potatoes JCloze may help your students learn English?

I first learnt of Hot Potatoes during this semester, and I wished how I have found out more about it earlier as in before my practicum. There are a lot of things in this semester I wish I had known earlier.

Well, firstly, JCloze is a gap-filling exercise where the students will have to fill in the blanks of a passage which have random blanks. I have always approved of gap-filling exercises because I believed that it helps to generate creative and critical thinking skills among the students. Sometimes the gap could have multiple answers so it provides students an opportunity to think up a variety of correct answers for the gaps.

However, in the prospect of Hot Potatoes, I believe that this software helps to make it even more interesting, fun, and challenging for the students. The benefit of Hot Potatoes is that you can provide hints for them to facilitate the students in figuring out the answers. I find this a very appealing aspect of it. And no doubt, students are always excited in using computers, no matter for what reason they are using it for, especially when it comes to learning as it gives them a change of the usual scenario of sitting in the classroom facing the whiteboard one whole day.

I like how for Hot Potatoes's JCloze, you can customize the cloze passage to make it lok more appealing to the students and o suit the topic or theme you are focusing on. This can help to increase the students' interests in completing the exercise.