☞CALL review 3☜

     Professor displayed multiple online tools and resources for speaking. I posted activities which I enjoyed in last class. So you can check very useful CALL speaking resources or programs if you click on the hyperlink here. http://younahing.blogspot.kr/2012/10/week-7-2-class-activities.html

   My favorite resource among a lots of online speaking tools is Practice Speaking with Mike (Talkingbot) http://www.eslfast.com/robot/tutor_mike.htm. This homepage provides us very simple but useful activity for ESL Students. In this site, we can see the talkingbot called 'Mike', who is our teacher and helper to improve our speaking skill. Firstly, he begin to introduce the purpose of this site. Under the him, there is a box where we can talk with him. If you type something in the chatting box, he answer very fast. By asking some questions and having conversation with Mike, we can learn how to reply to real native people or English users. While I had conversation with him, I felt as if I talk a real foreigner. As a result, I can learn authentic language naturally and practice conversation out of class.
 

   The strengths of this CALL resource are countless. Firstly I think students can engage in real conversation without going abroad to meet a native English speaker. It is conductive to time saving and also money saving.

   Second, this site can help student study by content-based instruction, because he can answer also easy academic questions. When I asked "Where is Korea?", he answered Mike: The country is located in Asia. Like this we can also gain the knowledge.
   Lastly, we can use this site anytime and anywhere, without any help, because it is very simple and easy to use. We do only Just enter the question, and answer the Mike's comment. These simple activities can help you improve English speaking skills.

  However, there are also some weaknesses. When I asked same question repeatedly, he just showed same answer. Also I sometimes get his strange and inappropriate answers when I asked some weird questions to see how well he can answer. Like these examples YOU: i dided Mike: I see what you mean. or  YOU: i will be killed Mike: You will? OK he has a limitation. Furthermore, he can not understand questions with type-off. YOU: Where is Koorea? Mike: I really don't know. Would you teach me if you know? Please say "It is ..." .  If the site take some advises into consideration and try to change some defaults it has, then it will become a better useful site for all kinds of English learners around the world. Furthermore I think this site needs some functions such as capturing the chat or uploading to own blog, twitter, or facebook, and also if we can share with another users the chat, we can learn easily how others chat with Mike, checking various dialogues.

   Finally I think this CALL is very useful and motivating tool for English learners. If I will be a English teacher, I use this effective site for my future students.