During the process of test design, I have acquired much knowledge of designing an effective online project for ESL students' language improvements. In particular, using “Hotpotatoes” created several interactive exercises also makes the project more attractive and motivated. With regard to the experience of designing online project for ESL students, I have realized the potential of technology in ESL teaching contexts. For example, using computer for teaching second language may enhance students' motivation and also enhance students' second language ability as well. However, designing an effective and interesting online exercise dose involve several considerations should be taken into account such as students' and teachers' ability of manipulating computers and also students' language proficiency and the availability of high technological equipment.
For designing an appropriate online project for young ESL learners, I used several colorful pictures to attract young students' attention and modify the feedback of students' wrong answers to cheer young students up and prevent their frustration. Additionally, I also used lots of animations for enriching the project in order to make it more interesting and attractive. Furthermore, for young and low proficiency learners, clear instruction can lead them to engage into the activity more easily and successfully. Therefore, I tried to make each instruction clearly in order to facilitate students to engage into the exercise more effectively.
On the other hand, based on the self re-examination and valuable peer feedback provided by my classmates, I think I need to modify some portions of the project to make it better. Firstly, there are two exercises have time allotment in the project and that might make young learners suffering lots of stress and anxiety because under the time pressure. However, the purpose of time allotment is for practicing students' reading speed and word reorganization. For these reasons, I should allocate students sufficient time for them to complete the exercise in order to achieve the main purpose of the exercise and also reduce young learners' pressure and anxiety of doing these exercises. Secondly, I have found some questions in quiz exercise have unclear descriptions therefore, that may result in young ESL students' confusion. Hence, I should modify those questions and make descriptions easier and more understandable so as to facilitate young students to answer those questions successfully. Thirdly, the text of cloze exercise seems too long for young learners; consequently, students may lose their concentrate on the exercise. Therefore, I should separate the text into two parts in order to make the text shorter to maintain students' motivation and interests.
Overall, designing the online project for preparing students to engage into webquest more successfully dose take me lots of time to form the idea and construct the website by using techniques we have learnt. Furthermore, through the process of conducting the project with my classmates; I have found that peer comments did provide me lots of creative thoughts of how to improve my project. That is really useful for me to reinforce my ability to design an online project better in my future teaching contexts. From this valuable experience of online project design, I gained much confidence and knowledge of how to put technology into practice in ESL contexts. Hence, I do believe that these valuable techniques of designing web-based exercises will enrich my future ESL teaching and that also will lead my students to experience newly oriented teaching approach to facilitate them learning second language more successfully.