For this week's website/software review, I took an in-depth look at English Central. My paper wound up being too long for a blog entry, but here are the highlights.
Software/Website Title: English Central
Website URL: http://www.englishcentral.com/
Overview
English Central is designed to help students learn English through videos. Most of the videos offer a four-step process:
1) Watch. Learners select a video and watch it with subtitles. If they don’t know a word, they can pause the video and click on the word; the word appears in a pop-up box along with the definition, a sample sentence, and IPA and audio pronunciation. If the user interface is set to the student’s L1, a translation into that L1 is occasionally also provided.
2) Learn. Learners focus on vocabulary words pre-selected by the site. They watch the video again, this time with gaps in the subtitle text, and they type the missing words they hear. If the word is correct, the definition box appears, and the video moves on when the learner is ready. If it’s wrong, the definition box appears, and the learner tries again.
3) Speak. Learners watch selections from the video, and repeat the dialog line-by-line, with the website recording their audio and offering feedback in the form of a point score and highlighted areas of difficulty.
4) Quiz. The learners review their new vocabulary through quiz questions.
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| The "Speak" part is pretty cool. I kept getting low scores, though.... |
The website keeps track of the student’s progress, noting the videos watched as well as the words learned, and the learner can take quizzes whenever they wish to review vocabulary words. Learners can move words from their “known” to their “unknown” list, or vice-versa, depending on what they’d like to review.
Teachers have the option of setting up a class site for their students. If they choose to do this, they can select specific videos they’d like their students to watch, select a pre-set “course” of videos put together by the website, or let the students choose which videos to watch. Teachers can also choose whether or not to set goals for their students (e.g., “Watch 5 videos and study 25 words per week”), and can monitor students’ progress through a detailed tracking system. If the teacher pays to upgrade to a Premium membership, the site will also give the teacher in-depth pronunciation feedback for each student and even let the teacher “listen in” to the students’ recordings.
Individual users can access a variety of videos
for free (registration is required, though sample lessons are available). For
about $15/month, users can get full access to the 9,000 videos in the English
Central library and will be able to “speak” all of the videos, instead of only
a limited selection.
External documents provided
Video tutorials are available for teachers. These are effective but probably unnecessary for most tech-savvy teachers.
Clicking on “video details” on a video’s page opens
a pop-up window that includes the video transcript, a list of featured words,
and a few comprehension and discussion questions. If the learner has selected
their L1 for the user interface, the video transcript will appear with a
line-by-line translation (at least, it did on the videos I sampled). It’s nice
to have the supplemental material for discussion and comprehension, but some of
the questions are better than others.
Practice/Assessment/Feedback opportunities
This website is entirely based around practice, assessment, and feedback! First, in the
“Learn” part of the process, students listen and type the missing words. The
website marks the words as right or wrong (spelling counts) and reveals the
right answer in the dictionary box; if the student has made a mistake, they
have an opportunity to write the word again. Next, in the “Speak” portion, the learner
listens to the lines and tries saying each one, themselves. The website records
their speaking and gives them a score, highlighting areas the student had
difficulty with or encouraging them to speak more fluently, and also offering a
chance for students to compare their recording with the original audio. The
“Quiz” portion allows learners to test themselves on vocabulary words from the
video, keeping track of correct and incorrect answers and showing the right
answer before moving on to the next word. The “My Words” section of the user’s
profile, meanwhile, tracks the words for which users sought definitions (during
the “Watch” portion) and lets users review the words either as a list or
through quizzes. The site also uses formative assessment to decide which words
users have mastered and which need more work, using a visual indicator bar to
alert learners to their progress on each word.
Strengths of the website
1. The use of L1. I love that the user interface is available in multiple languages; this can help alleviate a lot of the stress learners might feel when encountering a new online tool or language software program. The use of L1 translations/definitions in the quizzes also make it easy for learners to demonstrate their knowledge without being stymied by complicated English definitions (see “Areas for improvement,” below).
2. It’s easy to re-watch videos—or parts thereof. If learners select the icon for “listen to the last line again,” the previous line is played again, this time more slowly. This is very handy! The time bar under the video is also divided into segments that represent each line in the video, letting learners quickly locate different lines.
3. The bonus materials. The extra materials (script, discussion questions, etc.) provided make it easy for a teacher to use these videos with an entire class.
4. The personalized feedback. The tracking and feedback—on the vocabulary quizzes, pronunciation, etc.—is highly individualized and personal, allowing learners to pinpoint their weak spots and improve on them. It would be very difficult for a teacher to give this kind of individual feedback with any regularity to the average class during a semester!
5. Encourages autonomy and mastery. The wide selection of videos means that learners can pursue their own individual interests; this kind of autonomy can help increase learner motivation. The use of feedback, particularly in the “Speech” section, also encourages mastery goals, as does the self-paced watching (and re-watching) of videos and the ability to click on unknown words without any penalty.
6. Various
formats for word encounters. The quizzes use different formats for their
questions: sometimes the words are given, and the user must select the
definition (which can be in their L1); sometimes the definitions are given, and
the user must select the appropriate word; sometimes the user must type the
missing word from a line in the dialog.
Areas for improvement
1. Quizzes that actually check comprehension and encourage transfer. Although I like that the video-based quizzes use different formats for the questions, I’m not convinced the questions actually indicate any comprehension or mastery of the word. First, the distracter answers are often obviously unrelated to the dialog, so the user can easily guess the correct response; second, the questions use only lines from the dialog. I’d rather see questions that check real comprehension of the word; for example, gap-fills in new sentences, concept checking questions (e.g., “The ball is enormous. Is it a little big or very big?”), or using the target word in a new sentence and asking the learner to select the appropriate picture (e.g., “I have a large dog”—> the learner chooses the photo of the child with a big dog, not the small one, the hairy one, the dead one, etc.).
2. Better example sentences. In contrast to the video-based quizzes, the review quizzes (in “My Words”) do use new sentences; however, these sentences are unrelated to the level of the initial video, and thus tend to include more complicated or difficult words than a beginning learner would know, even if they know the target word. For example, when I registered as a student and worked my way through a video called A Big Family, the video introduced the expression “gave birth”; the review quiz, however, used the sentence, “You can patent anything in the world that’s alive, except a full-birthed human being”—quite a step up from the beginner-level video I had studied!
3. Better definitions. Related to the idea of better example sentences
is another concern: The definitions, themselves. They seem fine when they’re
translated into the student’s L1; however, in English, they’re excessively
complicated or confusing. For example, the definition of “large” in my
student-self’s word list is “having the broadest power, range, and scope.” I
have to wonder, what learner doesn’t know “large” but does know “broadest,” “range,” and “scope”? Occasionally,
definitions are even missing, as was the case when I clicked “million” in The Devil Wears Prada.
4. Keep better track of word forms and meanings that the student has
encountered; quiz students only on these. Sometimes the word lists store (and
then quiz students on) the incorrect word form or definition. In the video A Big Family, for example, “now” was
defined as “at the current moment or time”; but the word list stored it as an
adverb, giving the definition “used for giving emphasis to a request, order, or
comment,” and the quiz’s example sentence was “Now, tactful is a little bit of
a difficult word.” As another example, when my student-self encountered “make”
in the video, it was defined as “to cause to be or to become”; my word list,
however, stored the noun form: “a group of products that are all made by a
particular company.” A similar thing happened with “lonely,” which somehow
changed into “lone” in my word list—closer to having the correct meaning, at
least, but still likely to be confusing for students!
5. Better/more comprehension questions. As it is, each video offers three comprehension questions. They tend to be detail-oriented and seem to require reference to the script (or an excellent memory!). It would be nice to have more open-ended comprehension-check questions, including questions for both gist and detail; also, perhaps answers should be provided so students can self-check.
6. More genuine videos and movie clips. A lot of the videos I found on English Central are actually just still photos with a voiceover—basically a listening exercise with pictures added. Even the dialogs based on movies (e.g., Monster House, The Devil Wears Prada) were like this, though I found a handful that were actual movies (mostly trailers and clips older animated features, such as a couple of Peanuts clips). If I were a user who had paid a lot of money to learn English through movies, I’d be very disappointed. I’m sure there are rights issues that explain this; but the subscription fees charged by the site should be sufficient for the website to secure the rights to more video clips.
7. Use more natural speech on the videos created by the site. The conversations on the created videos are often a bit stilted and rarely include connected speech or weak/reduced forms. Some of the dialogs also contain phrases that sound a bit awkward or unnatural.
8. A better speech evaluation system. I can’t figure out how the system evaluates spoken input during the “Speech” stage. I suspect it’s mostly stress-based, with less emphasis on discrete phonemes. When I tried it, myself, I got a “Very nice!” and a high score when I spoke with natural stress but very poor phoneme pronunciation; and I got a “You can do better” and a low score when I spoke a little slowly but with my natural pronunciation.
Even with these problems, though, I’d recommend this site for EFL teachers. Overall, it’s a nice site for individual studying, personalized feedback, and integrated skills. Even with the limited number of genuine videos available, it’s still a promising (and motivating) departure from more traditional listening exercises for students.
Teachers have the option of setting up a class site for their students. If they choose to do this, they can select specific videos they’d like their students to watch, select a pre-set “course” of videos put together by the website, or let the students choose which videos to watch. Teachers can also choose whether or not to set goals for their students (e.g., “Watch 5 videos and study 25 words per week”), and can monitor students’ progress through a detailed tracking system. If the teacher pays to upgrade to a Premium membership, the site will also give the teacher in-depth pronunciation feedback for each student and even let the teacher “listen in” to the students’ recordings.
External documents provided
Video tutorials are available for teachers. These are effective but probably unnecessary for most tech-savvy teachers.
 |
| One of the less-than-stellar comprehension questions |
 |
| Feedback on a vocab quiz. And I love the definition. It makes giving birth sound like a magic trick. |
Strengths of the website
1. The use of L1. I love that the user interface is available in multiple languages; this can help alleviate a lot of the stress learners might feel when encountering a new online tool or language software program. The use of L1 translations/definitions in the quizzes also make it easy for learners to demonstrate their knowledge without being stymied by complicated English definitions (see “Areas for improvement,” below).
 |
| L1 definitions are usually available for the video-based vocabulary reviews. |
2. It’s easy to re-watch videos—or parts thereof. If learners select the icon for “listen to the last line again,” the previous line is played again, this time more slowly. This is very handy! The time bar under the video is also divided into segments that represent each line in the video, letting learners quickly locate different lines.
3. The bonus materials. The extra materials (script, discussion questions, etc.) provided make it easy for a teacher to use these videos with an entire class.
4. The personalized feedback. The tracking and feedback—on the vocabulary quizzes, pronunciation, etc.—is highly individualized and personal, allowing learners to pinpoint their weak spots and improve on them. It would be very difficult for a teacher to give this kind of individual feedback with any regularity to the average class during a semester!
5. Encourages autonomy and mastery. The wide selection of videos means that learners can pursue their own individual interests; this kind of autonomy can help increase learner motivation. The use of feedback, particularly in the “Speech” section, also encourages mastery goals, as does the self-paced watching (and re-watching) of videos and the ability to click on unknown words without any penalty.
Areas for improvement
1. Quizzes that actually check comprehension and encourage transfer. Although I like that the video-based quizzes use different formats for the questions, I’m not convinced the questions actually indicate any comprehension or mastery of the word. First, the distracter answers are often obviously unrelated to the dialog, so the user can easily guess the correct response; second, the questions use only lines from the dialog. I’d rather see questions that check real comprehension of the word; for example, gap-fills in new sentences, concept checking questions (e.g., “The ball is enormous. Is it a little big or very big?”), or using the target word in a new sentence and asking the learner to select the appropriate picture (e.g., “I have a large dog”—> the learner chooses the photo of the child with a big dog, not the small one, the hairy one, the dead one, etc.).
2. Better example sentences. In contrast to the video-based quizzes, the review quizzes (in “My Words”) do use new sentences; however, these sentences are unrelated to the level of the initial video, and thus tend to include more complicated or difficult words than a beginning learner would know, even if they know the target word. For example, when I registered as a student and worked my way through a video called A Big Family, the video introduced the expression “gave birth”; the review quiz, however, used the sentence, “You can patent anything in the world that’s alive, except a full-birthed human being”—quite a step up from the beginner-level video I had studied!
 |
| Seriously?? |
 |
| Bonus points for a difficult definition AND a sample sentence that stereotypes its target audience! |
5. Better/more comprehension questions. As it is, each video offers three comprehension questions. They tend to be detail-oriented and seem to require reference to the script (or an excellent memory!). It would be nice to have more open-ended comprehension-check questions, including questions for both gist and detail; also, perhaps answers should be provided so students can self-check.
6. More genuine videos and movie clips. A lot of the videos I found on English Central are actually just still photos with a voiceover—basically a listening exercise with pictures added. Even the dialogs based on movies (e.g., Monster House, The Devil Wears Prada) were like this, though I found a handful that were actual movies (mostly trailers and clips older animated features, such as a couple of Peanuts clips). If I were a user who had paid a lot of money to learn English through movies, I’d be very disappointed. I’m sure there are rights issues that explain this; but the subscription fees charged by the site should be sufficient for the website to secure the rights to more video clips.
 |
| The site's video for The Devil Wears Prada feels as if you're flipping idly through the book. Check out the distracter answers, too. |
7. Use more natural speech on the videos created by the site. The conversations on the created videos are often a bit stilted and rarely include connected speech or weak/reduced forms. Some of the dialogs also contain phrases that sound a bit awkward or unnatural.
 |
| Sounds like something Jesse Pinkman would be selling. |
8. A better speech evaluation system. I can’t figure out how the system evaluates spoken input during the “Speech” stage. I suspect it’s mostly stress-based, with less emphasis on discrete phonemes. When I tried it, myself, I got a “Very nice!” and a high score when I spoke with natural stress but very poor phoneme pronunciation; and I got a “You can do better” and a low score when I spoke a little slowly but with my natural pronunciation.
Even with these problems, though, I’d recommend this site for EFL teachers. Overall, it’s a nice site for individual studying, personalized feedback, and integrated skills. Even with the limited number of genuine videos available, it’s still a promising (and motivating) departure from more traditional listening exercises for students.
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