Reflective commentary on my website

The World Idols: Extension Activities Channel Website has been created for young male adult students aged between 18-22 years at lower intermediate level. It is aimed at promoting their reading abilities. In other words, these HP activities will serve as a supplement to the WebQuest activities.

According to the comments related to weak points I have received, one important thing is that the activities of ‘World Idols Cloze’, ‘Fact or Fiction’ and ‘World Idols Crossword’ should be accompanied with the reading texts or information to help the students do the activities. This point is really significant because providing more texts can improve the students’ abilities more effectively. As far as the reading texts are concerned, in these three activities concern World Idols that most of them are really interested in so that they may have some information about the people they love prior to doing these activities. The HP activities may serve as a resource that the students can discover more about their idols. Moreover, in the cloze activity, I just want to use the authentic reading material in the activity, and I do not want to adjust or alter it. It is not also easy to find the text that is quite similar to this one. This can explain why I do not provide the students with the texts for them to read in these activities.

Concerning the information provided, that is Tiger Wood’s official website, it is true that this website contains huge information, and the instructions should be more specific, that is, which part the students are supposed to read for the particular activity. Actually, I put About Tiger in the instructions. This may not be clear enough. I should be more careful next time. Moreover, another useful viewpoint is that it would be nice if there are some useful texts created for them to read and combine each of the stories of idols together and put into the word document. That’s also true. However, as I mentioned above, I really want to focus on using authentic reading materials.

Another view that is raised for suggestion is about the activity which is too long. I really agree that in the World Idols Crossword which contains 18 words can be made into two short activities so that the students do not get bored or give up before completing them. With regard to a template, I absolutely agree that, in the activity of ‘World Idols Sequence’, it is easier for the students to do the activity by using a drag and drop template because they can see all the statements and it is easy to change the answers while doing this activity.

With regard to learning style preferences, it appears that a visual person may find the colours in these HP activities bland and not so attractive. I simply use the actual HP activities templates, so the audience, particularly my students who are young adults, may get bored to find the same color in each activity. It is clear that my project needs to be more colourful as suggested. In addition, it is only later that I realise that each activity should have a new tab to help the students look back to a main page easily and would not lose track. I totally agree with this point, too.

To sum up, there are many areas of improvement needed for making my project become a more effective tool for improving the students’ reading ability. The suggested issues include: the sequencing should use a drag and drop template; crossword activity is needed to be shortened; more attractive colors should be added; and it would be a good idea that each activity use a new tab. I believe it takes a lot of efforts and time to create good HP activities to ensure that target audience can get the most out of the CALL materials website. This is a good start for the promising future.

Thank you...

I really appreciate all comments made for me which I could use them for improving my website to be a better tool for my students. Thank you again Jennifer, Sherry and Maggie. Wish you best of luck in your life and job.