ESL Website Evaluation (ESL GAMES WORLD)

There are a lot of ESL website available online where teachers & students can refer and use it to facilitate them in teaching and learning english language. I had found out one particular ESL website that is interesting, and the website is ESL Games World ( http://www.eslgamesworld.com/ )

These are my evaluation on this website. I made this evaluation by following a set of questions given to me during TSL 641 CALL class session:

1.   The ESL website I have found does not focus on teaching any specific component of the English language. However it emphasizes more on helping or facilitates the teacher and students during the lesson by providing fun online, printable and interactive ESL related games. There are varieties of games included in this website such as grammar, listening and speaking, vocabulary and pronunciations games. Types of exercise or games that can be found in this website are grammar snake and ladder, Grammar Jeopardy, Sentence Monkey and many more. As for the immediate feedback, only online ESL games have this function, while the printable board games for sure do not have it. There are different levels of difficulty to cater for every proficiency levels in this website. 

2.     In this Website, what a learner can do is to use all the games and exercises in the website to help them gain a better understanding after or during the English lesson. They can either do it with their teacher or do it alone because of the immediate feedback function it has.

3.   One game in particular reminded me with something I had done with my students. The “Present and Present Continuous (Progressive) Hangman Game” is a game I use to facilitate my lesson with the students. On some occasions, when I detect that my students were getting bored, I integrated the game of hangman into my lesson to make it more interesting. The difference was I used the manual method rather than computerized method. However, if I got the chance to use the computerized method, I'm sure it will be more interesting for them.

4.    The website offers something that cannot be done in textbook/workbook. The website contains dynamic exercise & games which students can have a two way interaction like getting a feedback right after the answer. Some of the games also allow students to be in teams and fight with other team which make more interesting than a textbook activity.

5.  One of the theories that I can detect is the Communicative Language Teaching with the Interactive Learning approach. By using this website students will engage in a significant amount of group work. They will be exposed to the authentic usage of the language and at the same time perform a task that will prepare them for actual usage of the language.

6.   Esl games world has the potential needed for language learning. It is because all the activities in the website integrate language elements inside it. Like the hangman game, it focus on grammar, vocabulary and spelling, while jeopardy integrates grammar component  and students need to provide the right form of the language in order to answer it. Not to mention all the games are suitable to be included in English lesson and the games are fun.

7.      In the future in would definitely use this website when teaching English. It is because this website contains lots of games that related to the subject matter. Not to mention my lesson will be more interesting and students will be motivated.