ESL website (3) - a4esl.org

The 3rd ESL website i browsed through is http://a4esl.org/
This website has a variety of activities for ESL students to aid in their english language learning. It has a selection of quizzes.


The Grammar Quizzes category has 4 sections which are - grammar: easy, difficult, easy and quizzes about places.
The Vocabulary Quizzes category has 4 sections too which are - vocabulary: easy, easy with pictures, medium and difficult.
The Crossword Puzzles category has 2 sections which are - crossword puzzles : easy and not so easy.


It even has Billingual Quizzes category which has quizzes on arabic-english, chinese-english, czech-english, malay-english and even zulu-english. The malay to english quizzes is linked in our lecture presentation's 6th slides on vocabulary.

Overall, the activities on this webite is suitable for Beginner ESL students.
The Malay-English billingual quiz is suitable for primary students.
However, the crossword puzzles are quite fun and hard to complete, it's suitable for primary to secondary students.
The Grammar and Vocabulary quizzes have levels of difficulty which are appropriate for primary to secondary students too.

ESL Website (2)- 1-Language.com's ESL center

The next ESL website i browsed through is http://www.1-language.com/ . I got it through the same Tower of English ESL Sites as John's ESL community.

This website is very useful to every ESL student and teacher.

Under the Learn English section:

1. The Free Materials section has 3 sub-categories which are Services, Chat/Boards and Resources. The Services category is beneficial to beginner and intermediate students. There are helplines link and the chat room, friends/penpal links can help students to improve their language abilities. There are even ESL games, quizzes and the all time favourite ESL Hangman. However to access the Chat/Boards services which have chatroom, friends/penpal, learning english and Helpline sections, one need to register to obtain a login ID before he/she can obtain these services.

2. The Teach English section has 2 main categories which are Community and Resources. This section is useful for those looking for jobs in this field cause there Jobs and Resumes links. Under the Resources section there are teaching resources which a teacher could use to aid his/her teaching such as the Phonic Sheets and Writing Sheets. These are printable.

Under the People and Languages section:

This section is for those intend to study or live abroad. Whereby they have links to language schools and links to other language learning like learning Spanish or French as 2nd Language.

This website is convinent for those finding resources to learn English language and other languages.

It has many links to foreign language learning.

Overall, the free material section is suitable for beginner students.

ESL Website (1)- John's ESL Community

I googled for esl websites and found lots of esl websites. http://www.google.com.my/search?hl=en&q=esl+websites&meta=
In this posting, I will talk about John's ESL Community website http://www.johnsesl.com/
which i found at Tower of English ESL Sites http://towerofenglish.com/eslsites.html .
The Tower of English ESL Sites has a list of ESL websites.



This website has 2 categories of users which are the Students category and the Teachers category.
I browsed through the Students category.
The Student category has 5 sub-categories which are Language skills, Quizzes, Games, Riddles and Holidays.

Under the language skills category, there are 7 sub-categories which are Vocabulary, Reading, Writing, Listening, Grammar, Idioms and Quotes.
The Listening sub-category is interesting, There is a section on minimal pairs /b/ and /v/, it's quite hard to differentiate the /b/ and /v/ and i scored 11 correct out of 16 questions (68%)
The Grammar section is divided into two parts which are Beginning Grammar and Intermediate.
This category is suitable for beginner students. Secondary students can benefit a lot in the writing, listening and grammar sections.

Under the Quizzes category, there are 9 sub-categories which are Short answer, Cloze, Yes/no, Multiple choice, Vocabulary, Scramble text, Flash Cards, Matching and Listening.
This category is suitable for primary and early secondary students ( Form1-3).

Under the Games category, there are 6 sub-categories which are Hangman, Maldlibs, Scrambled Text, Matching games, Action mazes and Never ending story.
This category is suitable for beginner students. Besides testing ones vocabulary, one can have fun at the same time. Learning becomes interactive.

Under the Riddles category, there are 4 sub-categories which are Logic, Math, What am I? and Words.
This category is very mind boggling.... it's perfect for those who loves riddles.
It is suitable for anyone who wish to have their thinking cap on!

Under the Holidays category, there are 4 sub-categories which are New year, Christmas, Valentine's day and More.
This category is more of an information section. In this section are brief information and history of well-known and celebrated occasions and people such as Thanksgiving day, President's day and Martin Luther King.
This category is suitable for anyone who wish to read up some information or history...

Overall, this website is suited best for beginner level students.
It is a site recommended to all beginner students.

Observation of Chatroom

On 26th January 2006, we had our tutorial session in Lab D, FSSK.
However, half of the computers there were not functioning therefore, most of us had to share computers.
The task on that day was to get ourselves into any chatroom and participate in the chatting while observing the language, colours and fonts the chatters used.


I joined the yahoo chatroom which requires its chatters to own a yahoo id.
Its URL is http://chat.yahoo.com/.
The Yahoo chatrooms are divided into 18 categories which are
Businessess & Finance, Computers & Internet, Cultures & Community, Entertainment & Arts, Family & Home, Games, Government & Politics, Health & Wellness, Hobbies & Crafts, Movies, Music, Recreation & Sports, Regional, Religion & Beliefs, Romance, Schools & Education, Science and Voice Chat.

I joined the Games chatroom. The chatters in the chatroom didn't take notice of me although i said hello, hi, hie many times. The chatters were engrossed in their conversation with other chatters that were in the chatroom earlier. However i did get a couple of private messages asking me to play a game with them. But, time isn't on my side, cause by the time the fella want to start the pool game, my chatroom session has ended.

From my observation while i was in the Yahoo Games chatroom, i found that the chatters uses various fonts, font sizes and colours for their messages. The colours they used varied from a single colour to rainbow-like colours. The colour of their message function as an attention getter to get other chatters attention and to differentiate themselves. I also notice that they do not use much short forms execpt for the usual ones such as u=you, LOL=Laughing Out Loud, the of smileys are not seen at all however, there are ocassional use of emoticons such as :), :P and :D. The use of code switches also didn't occur.

But, if i observe chatting in messengers such as the Yahoo or MSN messenger. The use of code switch, emoticons, smileys and short forms are common.

For example:

In conclusion, chatting in international chatroom is a good way to interact with people from various ages, personality and nationality. However, don't be suprise if the chatters who PM you starts sending naughty messages.

Wherelse, messengers are more personal and one to one mode with more colours and animations.

Observation of typing skills

After the online games session on 5th January we proceed with a typing task.
We had to retype a notice from The Language of ICT textbook by Tim Shortis on Virus Alert(pg16).



We took about 5 to 10 minutes to complete the task.

The font i used was 'Impact' font and the size of the font i used were 40, 22, 48 and 20.

I started off by changing the Font to 'Impact'.
Then, i choose the 'Center' layout to centralize the title (VIRUS ALERT) up to the stop line (....STOP....)
Next, i use bullets for the next 4 lines.
For the next paragraph, i align left after i off the bullets and centralize others below it.

However, the notice i typed is not exactly the same as in pg16, Tim Shortis's book. The difference is the Font and the size of font.

Observation of online games

Thursday, 5th January 2006 was the 1st lab tutorial session at Faculty of Social Science & Humanities Lab D, 0800-1000hrs.
For the 1st hour we were instructed to find and play any games that were listed in the Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) article by Warchauer and categorize the game into any 3 phases of CALL which are Behaviouristic, Communicative or Intergrative CALL.


I googled for the Hangman game and played it at http://www.hangman.no/
The Hangman game at this website can be played either in English or Norwegian(Norsk) language.


The Hangman game is in the Behaviouristic Call category.


It has 3 levels of difficulty which are (1)Easy, (2)Medium and (3)Hard.
After selecting the desired level, the player have to select a topic which ranged from Movies, Musical instruments, Frequently mispelled words, American presidents, Brands to Animal breeds.

It rewards its player with a 'CONGRATZ' message and clapping sound effect if the player solved the game.
Wherelse, if the player fail to solve the word and got hanged, it will encourage the player to play another game by displaying 'HANGING ALREADY? LET'S GIVE IT ANOTHER GO, SHALL WE?' message.

The Hangman game is suitable for Beginner ESL students.
It's a fun way to test our vocabulary and word power :D

Welcome!!

HieHie,

Welcome to my blog for Language and ICT!

This blog is dedicated to reports of tutorial activties for SKBP1023 Language & ICT subject.

SKBP1023 is a 3 credit hours subject whereby 1 hour is for lecture and the rest 2 hours is for tutorial session which, would either be conducted at FSSK computer labs or at BS14 in PPBL.