Clicknlearn- learn language on your own is easy and fun.

Clicknlearn is an interactive language learning website which promotes autonomy in learners through its interactive presentation, games and exercises. The lessons are constructed using tests of ESOL and BAT as main agenda. There are six levels- four  ESOL for primary and secondary education and two BAT for prepraration into tertiary education. In each level, it is further divided into three categories-easy, intermediate, and difficult.

How to use it??? Let's watch the tutorial!!

Application in language teaching:

• Preliminary activity to introduce the new topic/lesson. 
• Preliminary activity to activate their schemata of the previous lesson.
• Weekly Quiz. for example, at the end of the week, students are given quiz using this website to test students' understanding of the week's lesson.
• Homework for students. This helps to reinforce knowledge learning.

Advantages:

• The are six main levels, where in each level , students can choose the activity according to its difficulty level.
• The topics are arranged accordingly to each level which suit learners in general to their age.
• The activities are interactive and context-based.
• It uses functional approach in teaching language.
• The documents can be printed. As source of note or further reference for students.
•  The instructions are clear and easy to understand.

Disadvantages and limittations:

•  Insynchronize use of keyboard typing and mouse click for data entry. The repetitive need to use mouse click instead of Enter keyboard to submit the answer, after having typed the answer using keyboard is tiring after a while.
• Some exercise cannot be skipped and must be finished till the end. This would demotivate students to continue playing the exercises as their motivation to explore and preview the lesson is hindered.
• Some of the exercises are content- based which without prior knowledge/presentation is difficult to answer.

Breakingnewsenglish- 2 in 1.

Breakingnewsenglish offers language learning with abundant sources of authentic materials which comes together with the latest news.The activities are developed from the news updated from Breakingnews website. This offers authentic language use to students in their learning or in other words, learning in contexts, which makes the lesson more motivating.

Application in language teaching:

• Ready materials for language exercises, which can be used whether as pre, while, or post activities.
• complete activities which are arranged to scaffold learning  
• As homeworks or optional exercises for students who want to improve their language skills.

Advantages:

• Real world materials and contexts. Therefore, students are exposed to variety of knowledge/contents.
• The materials and exercises are free and do not need signup.
• Students can do the activities by themselves as answers are provided. This features allows students to foster autonomy in their language learning.
• The activities covers listening skills, reading skills, grammar, and vocabulary(spell and words).
• There learning activities are conducted in form of games which is fun and  interesting for students. This aspect raises motivation in students which eases the language learning process.
• The activities stimulates quick thinking, which is a crucial element in language classroom which hinders monotonous and boring perception of language learning.

Disadvantages:

•  Requires internet connection
•  Lack of interactivity@interaction or activities which support communication. Therefore, one aspect of language skill-speaking skills are not really developed. Teachers need to adapt the materials to overvcome this issue.
• Lack animation and colours which after a while brings off the mood.

Wordsift- 4 in 1

Wordsift is a learning tool which main function is to summarise text into keypoints in form of word clouds. The site also provides additional tools in relation to the text 'sifted' where it draws the mind map of the keypoints, provides alternative links and videos as further references, a thesaurus, and a dictionary with examples of sentences from the text.

Application in language teaching:

• For teacher:

1.  Helps  teacher in the process of designing and adapting materials. As teachers need to select the suitable materials, wordsift helps in skimming and scanning process.This means, teachers are able to have general view of  texts through the word clouds which saves time for teachers.  
2. The site also provides several other references/articles related to the text as alternative or further readings. This provides teachers with alternative of variaty of texts to choose from if the selected text is not suitable, which saves time for teacher to search for new article.

• For students:

1. Pre-writing/pre-reading:

a) Guess the content of the text from the word clouds. This activity can be used as pre-writing activity to activate students' schemata.

b) In groups, asks students to read an article and list out keypoints of the article. Then, asks them to compare and discuss their lists. Finally, teacher gives them the word clouds to confirm their lists.

     2.   Writing activity:

Create a story using the word clouds. This activity helps to develop students'cognitive ability since they need to use all the words in the word class to create a whole new story. The process is similar to matching up pieces of jigsaw puzzle. 

      3. Speaking activity:

Match pictures with suitable word clouds and justify. In groups, students are to match given picture with several word clouds. After they have chosen the suitable one, they are to justify and present their choice with other groups. This activity allows discussion which helps to develop communicative competence and stimulate their cognitive ability.


     4.   Vocabulary learning

Fill in the blanks with suitable words. This activity can be done either as pre-writing/pre-reading activity or as post-activity where it supports vocabulary learning through the contextualisation of the words from the examples from the text and helps reinforcement of the vocabulary memorization if done in post activity .

Advantages:

• It is free and  no need to sign up or  have accounts.
•  Teacher can custom own wordlists into word clouds.
• The words can be sorted out  in  few categories which includes common to rare, rare to common, A to Z, and Z to A.
• The words can be identified according to genre or subjects such as Social Science, Mathematics and Language. This helps students to understand words use according to its contexts.
•  There is workspace available if teachers want to use it. This workspace could ease students' note taking or copy some exercises.
• Examples from text of selected word, which provides students its contextualised word use.
• Thesaurus and mind map at hand to foster study skills and encourage autonomous learning by students.

Disadvantages:

• The design of the word clouds is simple and of only one colour. This issue is resolved by alternative site which is Wordle, which offers more designs for the word clouds. Below is an example:

• Need to have suitable Java software, which is a hassle as one needs to download it if their computer/laptop do not have it.