In-class discussion on 5/11 (by Anita, Eleanor and Mandy)

Discuss principles for designing English learning weblogs with team members.

1. First of all, we should let every visitor know that the site is about ESL learning, so the blog should be titled with directly.
2. The visual designs of the site should be simple yet captivating. It should be manipulated by learners with clear directions.
3. The content of the blog should fulfill our target learner's needs, and the target learner's age, language ability and other descriptions should be placed under the blog title.
4. Since we are building a site with Web 2.0 features, we should make sure that learners are capable of posting feedback or their practice outcomes, or comments on their interested articles. Rss, permalink and traceback would also help learning in distributing and aggregate learning materials.
5. With the help of Web 2.0 features, we can also make evaluation a public activity, such as web pulls and comments.

Discuss criteria for evaluating ESL/EFL weblogs with team members.

We think that there are some essential features a ESL/EFL weblog should have to help develop learner's four skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. In order to improve learners' reading abilities, the weblog should include hypertext in its articles for learners to link to more reading materials. This is really crucial because it offers learners multiple choices to link to other texts, so that learners will have more self-awareness about their learning process.

As for writing, we think it is important for the weblog to provide text-input features, so that the learners can submit their feedback to the site, such as comments. And other basic functions like spell check and grammar check should be provided. After writing a paragraph, it is better to provide learners a chance to find out their mistakes, and help them revise their original one.

Thirdly, If a weblog aims to improve learners' listening and speaking abilities, it will need more multimedia features to support their goal. To help improve the learner's speaking abilities, the weblog should be able to record learners' voice input then analyze them(such as accent, pronunciation, and intonation), so that it would generate comments and suggestions to the learners, and help them speak better.