CILL’s Home Page
http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/cill/default4.htm
Secondary and adult ELL’s are its target audience. This is an English site.
This site is intended to provide practice to advanced ELL’ers… practical practice. This is found on the website published by CILL (Center for Independent Language Learning) and it appears to be a very detailed set of activities and guidance for ELL’s and their teachers. The site has, for instance, an interactive program that helps a user to create a letter of application for a job position. I assume there are some other generators out there, but I have not seen them, and this one seemed to provide good guidance and advice for each step of the information gathering “interview.” Obviously, this would be a very meaningful exercise to a good proportion of the students. In addition, there is a link off of this page for teachers, where both the optimist’s view of this generator as a teaching tool and the pessimist’s fears of the generator only being used as a surface activity (and a somewhat deceptive one for a prospective employer at that) are discussed in fair fashion. I was impressed. In addition it gives instant feedback vocabulary practice for a huge variety of vocabulary units. There are hint buttons involved with each word, too. This website would give the motivated speaker a great outlet for energy and enthusiasm. The only suggestion I would offer for the pages I saw is that there is a cluttered and truncated feel to some of the “netherpages” or as you get deeper into the help functions they are a little harder to comprehend. So, for example, I clicked the word “judged” to get examples. It gave 35 of them, but often without the full sentence, just a portion, so it was harder to comprehend.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Wow ... what a great website. I've already added it to my favorites. Although the information is geared toward more advanced learners (as you noted), there are many things that can be modified. I was surprised to find a needs analyis on the site.
I'm going to pass this website on to a co-worker of mine who teaches the ESL Bridge to College class. If she doesn't already know about, she will definitely find it an asset. How do you plan to use the site?
Stefanie
Well, I think that it can provide some good vocabulary feedback for studetns as we cover other more teacher-essential topics in class. Of course, that would sever the authenticity link to vocabulary study... but with additional "write a letter to a partner about the story" type activities I could reestablish its meaning. I don't know really! I'll have to experiment!
Doug
I think that's a really useful activity. I think that it is a good activity for the "mid-way point". What I mean is that it would be good for an activity after focusing on formal writing, organization, transitions and other sign posting techniques, and so forth. Then use this as a comprehension/performance check...an assessment if you may :)
While the utility is nice, it is not complete. There is a lot that you can talk about, transitions (within and between paragraphs), consistency, and voice to name a few.
Is this what you are going to use for the external documents assignment? If so, I think that it would be perfect.
Dan
Post a Comment