Software Evaluation # 1 Auralog: Tell Me More Education

Title of Software: Tell Me More Education

Producer: Auralog

Target students (e.g., age or grade-level of students): The portion of the demo I saw seemed to be most appropriate for older students, perhaps 7-12 or adult students.

Proficiency level (e.g., beginning, intermediate, advanced): Intermediate, although the demo didn't allow me to see any other level of proficiency.

Description:
Provide a brief description of what the program is, what it does, how it looks, how the user interacts with it, etc.

The activity I was able to interact with was a trip to New York. The demo puts the user at customs in the airport in New York and you must interact with a customs agent. It had effective photos to support the language use. Additionally, there were also individualized activities to allow the learner to work on pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, associated with the scenario. I particularly like the pronunciation activity that lets the learn via an oscilloscope compare their pronunciation to the pronunciation of a native speaker at both the word and sentence level. I would have liked to have gone through some of the lessons for lower proficiency level students to see what they were asked to do or see what some of the other lessons in order to gain a full range of what the program offers in terms of content.

Language skills targeted: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Also included grammar and vocabulary exercises.

Evaluation:
What are the program’s strengths or weaknesses? Do you feel it would be effective for helping ELLs learn English? Why or why not? Would you use it in your classroom? Why or why not? What method or approach to language teaching does this program appear to represent?

Based on what the demo allowed me to do I think the real strength of this program is the ability to tailor lessons to the individual learner targeting their strengths and weaknesses. I don' think the program lends itself well to collaborative learning although creativity by the teacher could probably overcome this apparent weakness. I do think the program is engaging and interesting and would help ELLs with acquiring English. Although, I think it is somewhat scripted and doesn't necessarily allow the learner to create language use, but the scenario I ran through was realistic. I think I would use it in the classroom, but perhaps only for individualized learning, focusing on what I think is the program's strength; addressing specific learner's weaknesses. I don't know that I got to see enough of the program to determine its overall value for collaborative learning. The program claims to address any methodology and I think based on the demo that is true, to a degree, because once again I thought the scenario was scripted. Not a lot of room for the learner to create their own answers. Overall, I liked the program and would definitely consider using it in my classroom.