Book Reviews

Under Construction: ESL/EFL Textbook Companion Web Sites Nevitt Reagan and Owen Murray

ffective integration of Web-based materials into ESL/ EFL textbooks is still in its infancy. Although many ESL/EFL companion Web sites offer valuable materials, their content and design often discourage use. This review describes ways in which sites might offer more useful content and a more usable interface to those who have purchased the publishers textbooks. For instance, a useful site should provide content that is complete, level appropriate, and well connected to course themes. A usable site should work quickly, contain only active links, and label all links clearly. In addition to these descriptions is a chart (Table 1) that rates 35 sites according to their usefulness and usability, along with more detailed comments. Because of the rapid changes in Web sites, the comments should be seen as guidelines for evaluation, not permanent assessments.

Usefulness of Site
Companion Site versus Promotional Site
A companion Web site should offer materials that are useful during a course. Because companion sites are typically accessed after a textbook has been selected, they should not be overloaded with product promotions. For example, Heinle & Heinles site for Looking Ahead a true companion siteprovides useful materials, such as complete online teachers manuals that are regularly extended and revised. By contrast, Cambridges New Interchange site, which provides promotional links but few companion materials, does not label its promotional links, such as Teachers Edition, as mere samples. Publishers should label sample links explicitly to prevent users from wasting time searching for companion materials that are not available online. (For a list of ESL/EFL companion Web sites, see p. 52.)

However, for lower level students, such authentic links may create linguistic challenges that are more frustrating than useful. For example, a NorthStar Basic Listening/ Speaking Unit One Web activity links to www.hotjobs.com, which displays job links, such as Accounting/Finance, Advertising/PR, Arts/Entertainment/Publishing, Pharmaceutical-Biotech, and more. Even if basic learners choose a simple job title link, such as Sales, they would then encounter subheadings, including Account Management, Analyst, Channel Management, Pre-/Post-Sales, and Relationship Management. This vocabulary is much more difcult than that in the NorthStar Basic textbooks. Students would be better served by material at the level of the texts. The site tries to address this problem in other units by using third-party sites for English-speaking children. Unfortunately, the link NorthStar provides to the Kids Valley Webgarden site contains low-frequency vocabulary, such as fertilize, mulch, thinning, and soil. Moreover, childrens sites may not lend themselves to adult textbook themes, such as employment. Another way of employing third-party Web sites is to offer general Internet tasks, such as searching for information on a designated topic, without supplying specic Web links. Heinle & Heinles Tapestry series site, for instance, offers the following task:
Web Strategy: Find information about U.S. government agencies on the Web. Apply the Strategy: Visit the White House, nd information about your senator, the State Department, the CIA, country statistics, and much, much more.

Because students using all Tapestry levels are directed to the same Web Strategies, these unsupported Web tasks neither ease the challenges for low-prociency learners using authentic English-language sites nor ensure relevance to textbook materials. In the end, authentic Web site links can be effective and appropriate for upper intermediate/ advanced-level students but should be recommended only for students at these levels.

Links to Authentic Materials

The simplest way to offer relevant supplementary material is by providing links to authentic third-party Web sites that match textbook themes. Longmans NorthStar series Web site offers several relevant links for each unit. For instance, Advanced Listening/Speaking Unit Two: The Oldest Old on the NorthStar site has a link to a Longevity Game on the Northwestern Mutual Web site.
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Publisher-Produced Activities
Companion sites often provide quizzes and activities that are suitable for self-study. For example, the Cambridge Grammar in Use/Vocabulary in Use series Web site has useful exercises similar to those in the textbooks, providing additional practice. It also has longer tests that review an entire textbook. However, student access to online answers prevents these tests from being formal evaluation tools,
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Table 1. ESL/EFL Companion Web Site Ratings

The following companion Web site ratings were compiled by the authors. Usefulness ratings were based on completeness, link relevance and appropriateness for prociency levels, and quiz/exercise differentiation. Usability ratings were based on speed, clarity, and presence of dead links or needless procedures. Scores range from a high of A+, indicating a superior site, to a low of F, indicating an inferior site. Sites such as Oxfords New Headway and Heinle & Heinles Grammar Dimensions are purely promotional/sample sites and are not rated here. Comments were accurate as of March 2002. Note: These ratings are not meant to be an endorsement of any publisher or product.

Companion Web Site and Publisher

Usefulness A+ AB+ B+ B

Usability B+ A+ A+ A+ A+

Overall Grade A A A A A-

Comments Lots of third-party links and activities; student bulletin board and teacher forum Pay site for weekly reading lessons from Financial Times; lots of free links; fast and clear Limited promotion; clearly organized; wellgraded third-party links; quizzes are exercises Limited promotion; clearly organized; well-graded third-party links; quizzes are exercises Few but well-selected third-party links; downloadable activities; student/teacher discussion areas Lots of activities; well-graded third-party links; solid teacher support; enter site page Lots of activities; no third-party links; quizzes are exercises Slightly difcult third-party links; well-organized activities; quizzes are exercises Mostly third-party links; lower-level links are too difcult; enter site page Teacher can print quizzes and teachers manual; limited self-study activities; books have different site formats; enter site page Teacher can print quizzes and teachers manual; grammar FAQ for students; enter site page Listening activities only; quizzes are exercises Third-party links relevant but some are difcult; registration and login required; confusing labels Web search activities; quizzes are exercises; only sample teacher resources Great support for teachers; confusing for students; enter site page Lots of downloadable activities and third-party links; slow site Lots of activities; good teacher support; quizzes are exercises; enter site page Well-described and graded third-party links but confusing navigation Links are much too difcult; slow site Downloadable grammar tests; many third-party links are not well graded Many third-party links are not well graded; teachers materials still unavailable
continued

Dave Sperlings Internet Activity Book, Longman Market Leader, Longman New Vistas, Longman Voyages, Longman English Firsthand, Longman

Focus on Grammar, Longman Tapestry, Heinle & Heinle Go for it!, Heinle & Heinle NorthStar, Longman Global Links, Longman

A+ C C B B+

BA+ A B C-

AB+ B B B-

Grammar Express, Longman Grammar in Context, Heinle & Heinle Cutting Edge, Longman Expressions, Heinle & Heinle Looking Ahead, Heinle & Heinle Rewards, Macmillan True Colors, Longman Way Ahead, Macmillan English Express, Longman Impact Series, Longman Prospects, Macmillan

C+ D A D B B C B C D D

BA+ D A C CBCC B B-

BBC+ C+ C+ C+ C+ C+ C C C

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Companion Web Site and Publisher

Usefulness D D DD

Usability B B B C

Overall Grade C C CC-

Comments Difcult third-party links; links listed by topic, not by unit or level Lots of badly graded third-party links; only sample teacher resources Links for rst two units of rst two books only Few exercises; registration required for test score records Third-party links are not all well graded; weekly activities do not follow units Downloadable activities; third-party links not well graded; enter site page; very slow site Mostly promotional; links are only for teachers Book requires Web link use; lots of third-party links; poorly graded Not updated regularly; poor design; confusing labels Only three activities and sample teacher resources Difcult third-party links with no support Activities for only two out of six books; enter site page Many exercises; too much promotion; some unit links not available; registration required Quizzes are exercises; registration required; most unit links unavailable

Shine, Macmillan Skyline, Macmillan English Upgrade, Macmillan Grammar In Use/ Vocabulary in Use, Cambridge Inside Out, Macmillan Springboard, Oxford Family Album, Longman Internet English, Oxford The Internet, Oxford New Interchange, Cambridge Powerhouse, Longman Spectrum, Longman Opportunities, Longman Language to Go, Longman

DB F F F F D+ F F F

B F B BCB D CD D

CCD+ D+ D D D D DF

which could be useful because the publisher, Cambridge University Press, does not provide tests in these textbooks. Sites should also be checked for mistakes. We discovered a number of errors in the online quizzes for one of the Tapestry textbooks, which led to time-consuming double-checking of answers (after notication, the Tapestry Webmaster quickly corrected them). Online revision is necessary and easily done.

Usability of Site
Speed
Companion Web sites must load quickly. A good example, among others, is Longmans Market Leader site. Slow loading may be caused by the site server, an overabundance of graphics, or applets (programs written in Java, a programming language used to create Web pages) and plug-ins (programs installed as part of a Web browser). Colorful, animated pages tend to load very slowly. This problem will be most severe for users with older computers, outdated Web browsers, or slow Internet connections. Site designers should realize that cyber-pedagogy, which
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looks impressive on high-end computers, may not appear that way, or appear at all, in many parts of the world. Enter cover pages, site registration, and passwords are unnecessary. Sites for Heinle & Heinles Looking Ahead, Oxfords Springboard, and Longmans NorthStar and Azar all require users to click through an Enter Site page to access the main page. Before accessing most of the free resources on Macmillans sites, users must register and provide a password. Downloading the On-line Instructors Manuals for Tapestry requires a password from a Heinle & Heinle representative, yet the site gives no contact information. These procedures discourage site use. A related problem is that many sites have long Internet addressesknown as uniform resource locators (URLs) which might have to be typed into the Web browser. Pity the poor learner who must type http://occ.awlonline.com/ bookbind/pubbooks/focusongrammar/chapter0/ ddeluxe.html to access Longmans Focus on Grammar site.

Labels and Descriptions

Site links should be labeled clearly and/or contain brief, accurate descriptions of their content. Longmans English
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Firsthand Caf site does this nicely with pictures of four books identied as explanatory samples; below these are clearly divided and labeled resource links for students and teachers. Users should not have to guess where a link will lead. Longmans Family Album, U.S.A. video-based series site has a link mysteriously labeled Planetwide, without any accompanying description. Clicking on it produces a list of TV stations worldwide that broadcast the videos, which students will likely be watching already.

systems, coding problems sometimes occur. When users access the Tapestry site quizzes on Japanese systems, for instance, superscripts (such as apostrophes) appear on the screen as unrelated Chinese characters, making the text hard to read.

Conclusion
Every publisher wants to have a Web presence, even if the site is under construction. At present, though, the content and design of far too many companion sites are less professional than the texts they accompany. The medium is new for educational publishers, so these deciencies are understandable. However, as publishers rene their sites, their rst priorities should be to discard or revise items of questionable usefulness and to display content in the most usable manner. Publishers need to offer pedagogically sound material in well-designed pages to maximize the educational value of their companion Web sites.
Authors Nevitt Reagan has been teaching English at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan, for the past 14 years. He has also taught in the United States and South Korea. Owen Murray is an instructor of English and American Society at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. He received an MATESL from St. Michaels College in Winooski, Vermont, in the United States.

Active Links
Dead links are discouraging. Heinle & Heinles Looking Ahead series site has a section entitled Lesson Plans, yet only 1 of the 28 chapter links is active. On the same site, a section entitled The LA Communication System allows users to contact the authors. However, the link to the author of Book Four is not active. Creating links before providing content is counterproductive, especially when it is not visually clear that the link is inactive.

System Compatibility
Web designers should evaluate how sites function with computer operating systems in other languages. Although many English language Web sites perform well when loaded onto computers with foreign language operating

ESL/EFL Companion Web Sites

Cambridge University Press Heinle & Heinle Longman English Language Teaching Macmillan Publishers Limited Oxford University Press http://uk.cambridge.org/elt/ http://www.heinle.com/eslsites.html http://www.longman.com/cws/index.html http://www.macmillaneducation.com/resource.html http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/

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