Comments on Karen's Website

Karen's Website 3-11-2007

Clearly you have a carefully worked-out plan to help your learners to learn more about art and history from your website. Your product is very successful and you give lots of interesting visual inputs (music, video, songs, pictures, dramas, and graphics) to motivate your learners to learn English. Your instructions are very clear and easy to follow. The materials are well-selected and your activities are highly-focused on your topic.

However, you didn’t mention your learner’s background, for example, EFL? ESL context or native speakers? As an EFL/ESL learner, I think some contents are too hard for me, let alone the year 8 to 10 students. Your learners should have a very high English proficiency such as reading skills, listening skills and some knowledge about art and paintings. Otherwise, they can’t achieve your goals. Art itself is abstract and it’s not easy to understand. I think your target audience are senior high students or young adults. They are interested in reading visual art or abstract things.

Regarding activities, you put a famous song about Van Gogh on your cloze exercise, it’s a comprehensible input for your learners and they can learn with fun. I think Year 8 to 10 students maybe like pop songs or popular culture things rather than classical songs. I played piano for years however I liked the pop music.

Just one more point, please check the wikipedia link (someimes it does work and sometimes it can't). Match 1 and 2 repeat.

Overall, you have done a good job! And I think you spent much time on creating such lovely product with varies and communicative exercises. However, from my point of view, you overestimate your learners’ abilities and their patience. I think some of your learners are finding your tasks very difficult, e.g. crossword and jumble exercise.

I love your ideas and I enjoy reading your website.

Thanks for Yuki's late comments and my comments on her Website

Yuki's Website 31-10-2007

You designed a very attractive website. I like the background colour! Very soft and comfortable view! The materials and activities are well-selected and effective. All the links do work and pictures are nice.
I have some questions after reading your website.
You didn't mention the background information of your learners, such as their age and the level of English. I think your target audience are primary or junior high students. Young people are very interested in reading your topic and enjoy doing the activities. However, I read your blog and I realise that your target students are freshmen in the college (19-20 years old). If it's true then I think all the exercises are too easy and too brief (2 to 4 questions per activity) for them.
For example, matching activity is too simple, it would be better if you can use some long sentences instead or match the history of the sports. What do you think?
The cloze is not too hard, from my point of view, learners don't need 10 minutes to finish all the tasks, you might be underestimated their abilities.
It would be better if you can use drag and drop in the Mix activity.
In short, I like the Quiz exercise because you put the reading text together and the questions are interesting. Also, the crossword is well-designed and suits your students.

You did a good job!