Review #5

Name: Rosetta Stone
www.rosettastone.com

Level and Skill: Beginner to Intermediate Level in Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking

Interactive: Yes

ESL/Non-ESL: applicable to both

What makes it good? For any language learner, this is an ideal site to experiment with the variety of languages offered in the demo. I found that a good portion of my afternoon was occupied by trying at least a quarter of the 30 language possibilities. It became quite an addictive exercise in fact, as I listened for the similarities of the sound to the actual word being spoken. I loved the sound of some languages and was instantly attracted to the Romance and Germanic families of languages knowing that at least some of my responses would be correct! I was reminded of the Contrastive Analysis of our Language Acquisition course in Term 1, where we were given an activity from Michael Swan and Bernard Smith’s Learner English and asked to analyze a specific language in contrast to English. The Rosetta Stone exercises provided a better understanding of why interference can be so problematic for an ESL learner. For a linguistic specialist, this site would definitely be attractive with an overview of all the language families.

The pronunciation and listening skills are excellent practice for some of the suprasegmentals and ESL learners could benefit from slowing the pace down on the speech recognition software to suit their needs. In terms of practicality, however, I am not sure if learning the basic vocabulary of a horse, cat, ball, man, woman etc. are really useful. These would not be my first choices for vocabulary building. While the site is interactive, there is a certain tedium to pointing and clicking on the pictures and hearing the positive reinforcement of the harp music and the more negative resonance of the organ should the choice be incorrect. I imagine the full Rosetta Stone programme provides a more dynamic, appealing and powerful interface to learning languages. This was a great way to spend a couple of hours putting myself in the seat of the ESL learner.

Review #4

Name: Learn to Read at Starfall
www.starfall.com/

Level and Skill: Pre-Benchamark, Literacy to Low Level Learners in the skill of reading, phonic instruction and vocabulary development

Interactive: Yes

ESL/Non-ESL: Could apply to either but the site is primarily designed for young children and the beginning reader.

What makes it good? During my practicum, my mentor teacher pointed this site out to me. She uses this site with many of her learners who are adults enrolled in a literacy level course. At first, the site appears to be quite juvenile, however, for many of the adult learners who are unfamiliar with the Roman alphabet, the ABC exercises are an opportunity to explore the letter sound relationships and develop some word recognition skills. The interactive aspect of the exercises in all 4 categories is easy to use, so for those learners who have had little or possibly no experience with computers, the elementary steps to using a mouse, moving and clicking on an area of interest, is ideal. There are lots of visuals with arrows, animations and hands that point. Even though the explicit phonic instruction in this Starfall reading programme along with the repetition might seem tedious, for the emergent ESL learner who often has trouble making the letter sound connections and building on vocabulary, this site offers a good starting point.