Clicknlearn.net - A fun and interactive english learning

LINK: http://clicknlearn.net/

WHAT

Clicklearn.net is a Franch webpage where it provide interactive tool for learning language. It provides you with all kind of interesting language activities suuch as listening activity, mix and match, reading, language games and comprehension check. It comes with attractive sound and nice graphic.

This is a very good website for young learners because it contents that is cute and colourful, which make it approachable to the learners. It is also motivating for it interesting background and for language learning, motivation is what keep the students engage to the learning. 

Some of the tasks are repeated, which in my opinion a good approach. Drilling may not be a fashionable teaching method but it could benefit students to some extents. If the grammar is present repeatedly, students have the tendency to remember better.

HOW

 

As you could see, it is using bright colours to attract younger learners especially with an interesting sound. There few infos regarding this site:

• Students level - The upper right hand side button is for the students age and you could choose the proficiency level appropriate for the intended group of students. 

• Web infos - In the middle, the links there will direct you to the information about the webpage and some teachers and students guide. Unfortunately, it is in French. 

• Level content - There is also an information about the content for each level, where if you clicked it, it will direct you to this page. It provides you with the content for each level which include lexical, grammar and cultural references.

 

• Printable document - If you look at the P button, it will direct you to the list    of printable documents. 

• The H button will direct you to the homepage.

EXAMPLE 

Topic - 'In the Park'

Level - level 2/easy

• It requires student to click on the image of what is referred by the sentence. It will make chime sound for correct answer and monkey sound for wrong answer.

• Further, it then require students to answer yes or no question.
• The questions started to become more complicated where it requires students to type the answer. If there is a mistake, a rule (not in English) will pop out saying how should students use 'is' and 'are' in a sentence. Spelling mistake will be counted as a mistake.

 

• In the next level, it requires student to fill in the correct answer for the usage of 'a' and 'some'. 
• Then, the use of 'there is' and 'there are'. 

• Practising the use of '...is not a...' and '...are not any...'. Students will have to type the whole sentence in the box. Example is provided.

• At the end of the unit, mark is given which is counted base on the frequency of mistakes done by the students.

ADVANTAGES

1. Interesting - interesting use of graphic, presentation and sound. 
2. Interactive - 
3. Diferrent level - It carters students with different level of proficiency. (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
4. Various topics - There are many topics provided such as environment to world knowledge ()
5. Skills development - There is reading and listening activities for language enhancement. Spelling and vocabulary is stressed.
6. Rule presentation - The rule or grammar is presented before the exercise. It gives student general idea of how a grammar is used before practising. 
7. Printable handout - For teachers as classroom activities or students if they preferred paper rather than on screen exercises. 
8. Easy and Free - It is acessible for everyone and anywhere.  

DISADVANTAGES

1. Practical issues - some task does not allow users to go to the previous page or skip a sub-task. Users may stuck in a question and could not skip the part. 
2. Not attractive for adult learners - Though there are suitable for different level of proficiency, the task type (e.g. gaps fill, click the right answers, etc) is not challenging enough. 

CONCLUSION

It may not be challenging enough for adult learners but it provides a very good oppurtunity for younger learners. They learn in a simple and fun environment (by clicking, typing etc) that would give less pressure in learning. It is worth to give it a try.

WordSift - Isolating important words

LINK: http://www.wordsift.com/

WHAT

Wordsift - just like its name, this website is a brilliant tool of 'sifting' or isolating the important or useful words and group it as one. Now, could you imagine how this tool contribute to lesson planning?

It is useful as a pre-reading activity where when you have a long story or article, and you can let this tool choose the important words from that. It delete common words and the words that give the gist of the article stay.

It is not sifting the important words alone, it has also has supportive function like visual meaning and thesauraus. For a student, it will surely help them doing reading preparation because rather than isolating the important words, they would also able to quickly look at the meaning of a difficult words in one click. Easy tool motivate learning.

The context of the way a word is used is also provided in one page through sampling. This is very useful where teachers may help students to further understand the meaning of a word through context. 


HOW

1. Paste the text into the box.  Text can be taken online. (poems, short story, journal, extract, etc)
2. Click Sift

EXAMPLE 

Text: Poem by Joey Rodriguez, 'Tears, Pain and a Happy End'

• I sift the long poem and it gives you a gist of its content.

As you may notice,

• Sorting - You could sort out the words from 'rare to commmon' or 'A to Z' and vice versa, depending on your choice.
• Frequent words - The most frequent words are bigger than the rest

• Visualise the word - through google image search engine provided. 
• Visual thesauraus - where the thesauraus of the word is shown.
• Sample Text - you could take out the sample of how a word is used in the text. Example below shows how the word 'upon' is used in a text. 

Jay Rodriguez

Poem Source: http://www.loveislonely.com

Jay Rodriguez

Poem Source: http://www.loveislonely.com

ADVANTAGES

• Classroom activity - A good tool for pre-reading / pre-listening activity. 
• Instant meaning - If students wanted to know a meaning of a word, they could easily click the word, and the associated words will appear in the Visual Thesauraus box. 
• Visual meaning - There is a visual section where  some words are better explained through picture rather than another definition.
• Sorting words - I find this interesting because we can choose to sort the words from common to rare. In other words, it helps teachers identify the difficult words that need to be taught. 
• Sampling - It could take out the sentence where a particular word being used. Students could refer to the usage of a word.

CONCLUSION


This is a suggested website for both students and teachers. Students could use it as a reading preparation and teachers may want to come out with an idea of teaching using the information given here. Worth a try!

Wordle - Word Cloud

LINK:  http://www.wordle.net/

WHAT

Wordle is a tool to generate word cloud as shown below. It makes the most frequent word larger than the rest. What is best with this tool is that you could choose how do you display the words.

The frequent words are larger than the rest, make students pay attention of the particular word that is also an important content to the text. It is suitable for pre-reading activity.

EXAMPLE 

Text: 'I Believe I Can Fly' by R.Kelly

As you could see, it is presented in an interesting way. 

HOW

• Go to the page. You will be directed to the website. 

• Create your own - There is a little explanation of what the web is about. Few examples are shown as well. You could click the 'create your own' link to start making your own. 

• Paste text - As you could see, you could paste the text in the space provided. 
• Paste URL - Besides, you could also paste a URL of webpage and it will create a wordle of that page. For example, I use this blog URL and it will generate a word cloud of my blog. 'Student' is one of the most frequent word in my blog.

• Click 'submit' button - You will be directed to this page:

 

Using the same text, there are few editing that could be performed if we want to. 

• Edit - you could undo the editing
• Language - you could leave the word as spelled, or guess the word (this is for ...). Make the word upper case or lower case.  Besides, you could also delete the common words and words in another language.
• Font - various fonts 
• Layout - this is useful editing tool to avoid word crowded if you choose to a very long text. You could choose the maximum words and the less frequent words are not choosen. Re-arrange them in alphabetical order, horizontally or vertically.
• Colour -Make it colourful 
• Right click - If you right click the word, you could remove the word from the text. 
• Randomize - basically it gives you choices of different layout.

Besides editing,

• Print - Print it directly
• Save - Save it to public galerry to be viewed by all internet users, as well as share it with your friends.
• Embedded code - Once you save it, there is a code that could be embedded in your own blog or homepage. This link will direct the users to the wordle site. 

ADVANTAGES

• Useful for pre-reading or pre-listening activity. Since we could edit the amount of words shown, and also its ability to make the most frequent words bigger than the rest, it works well as a summary of a long text. Students get the gist of the text before proceeding to the next activity. 
• Colours and different shape. 

DISADVANTAGES

• There is no URL link provided but only embedded code. 

CONCLUSION

This website promoting a more interesting way of presenting a text. I would use it for variation in my classroom activity because it comes in shape and colours. So, if it could light up the mood, it will surely come in handy.