Software Evaluation #2: ESLReading Smart

Title of Software:

Producer: Alloy Multimedia

Proficiency level (e.g., beginning, intermediate, advanced): beginning, intermediate and advanced students grades 4-12

Description: It is a reading and writing program that is designed for students in the above grades and proficiency level. It is very flexible and allows teachers to tailor to specific student needs. It provides multicultural readings and is backed by research conducted by prominent researchers in the second language learning field, for example Krashen and Cummins. The activities are fairly intuitive, but appear pretty easy to teach to a student who may lack some basic computer skills. It also allows for collaborative activities for the students and provides excellent lesson plans and teaching suggestions for teachers. Additionaly, all the materials are printable so if a teacher has limited computers or special needs students they can print the lessons to help overcome these challenges.

Evaluation:
What are the program’s strengths or weaknesses? There are three things that I think are real strengths for this program. First, the definite attention given to providing reading materials from a large variety of cultural backgrounds. Second, the program is designed to meet the objectives of state learning standards. Third, the program has 24/7 customer support and provides updates as technologies change.

Do you feel it would be effective for helping ELLs learn English? Why or why not? I think the variety of activities and readings definitely are advantageous for language learners and it appears to really focus on developing academic skills and vocabulary that we learned form Chapter 1 of Cummins are a problem area for ELLs at the 4th grade and beyond.

Would you use it in your classroom? Why or why not? I would definitely use this program in my classroom. Mainly because the software conforms to y intuitions as a teacher of how to teach reading and writing, especially the idea of exposing students to different genres of writing and teaching strategies for dealing with the way different types of information are presented to the learner.

What method or approach to language teaching does this program appear to represent? To me this program supports the communicative classroom very well, and the reading and writing assignments are very much like Cummins and others have described as the best way to teach reading and writing in the second language classroom. I particularly like the potential for bringing students' own cultural background into the classroom and the opportunity for transformational activities to build on what the students may already know. personally, I think this is the best CALL program I have seen so far.