Website Evaluation of "365 ESL Short Stories: A Free Site for ESL Intermediate Learners"

Yesterday one of my teachers asked me to assist her in finding ESL versions of short stories to use in her beginning to intermediate reading class. The class is an elective type course with course objectives, but no textbook. It is up to the instructor to locate resources to use in the classroom. When searching the web with her, I came across a website titled “365 ESL Short Stories: A Free Site for ESL Intermediate Learners.” While the website seems very primitive in nature and is riddled with advertisements, I think that it provides very useful instruction for the English language learner.

“365 ESL Short Stories” is found at URL http://www.eslfast.com/ as well as URL http://www.eslyes.com/ and is linked from the main website found at URL http://www.rong-chang.com/. The author of the sites, Dr. Rong Chang Li, appears to be quite credible. At the top of the main site Dr. Li links a shortened version of his Curriculum Vitae which includes the following information: a color picture of himself, his email address, selected publications, presentations, software, internet projects, and awards. Included in his awards are grants from organizations such as University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, TESOL, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Hewlett Foundation gives money worldwide to better the social and environmental problems of the world. This is a very large foundation that issues grants on a competitive basis. One can see from his credentials, that Dr. Li, who works in China, is a very credible author. I also googled his name and found that he and his websites are referenced on a number of other credible ESL websites.

If he is so credible, then why do I describe his website as “primitive”? Well, the sites are no frills and look as if they were made in one day. The main page is simply a list of 365 stories. The background is white, the numbers are black, and the links to the short stories are traditional blue links. There are no graphics, no welcomes, and no explanations. If Dr. Li had not linked his Vitae to the website, the viewer would not be able to discern whether or not the site was credible just by looking at it.

When the viewer clicks on one of the short stories links, it takes the viewer to another page that has the title of the story on the top of the page with three icons. These icons are very useful. One is the picture of a book that stays “Dictionary.” Clicking on this icon will open a new window that takes you to http://www.dictionary.com/. The other two icons allow the view to listen to the story. One icon says “real” and the other says “slow.” The viewer can listen to the story as one might normally hear it or the viewer can listen to the story in slower, more articulated speech. The “real” version can also be heard by clicking the play button on the music player just below the title. The “real” version for every story is in a woman’s voice and the “slow” version is in a man’s voice. Below the music player is a bar of google advertisements as well as a google search bar. Along the left hand side of the page, taking up about one third of the page, are more advertisements. The story is located below and to the right of the advertisements in large black letters on top of a white background. At the bottom of the page are blue links taking the reader to activities associated with the reading.

Even though the page with the story is not well laid out, the reading and the activities are very interesting. The readings range from three to five short paragraphs on a variety of topics, including TV shows, news stories, and personal stories. The activities include a list of vocabulary linked to www.dictionary.com, cloze exercises where the student gets immediate feedback and percentage correct, a crossword puzzle that can be filled in online and checked, and a dictation exercise where the student listens to a sentence, types it in the box, and checks it for accuracy. Every story has the four activities above and some stories have additional activities. The activities do not ask students to work on reading comprehension, but rather vocabulary building, listening for dictation, spelling, and grammar/mechanics. I would like to see a reading comprehension activity added to the available skill that the student can learn.

Also linked to the main page of “365 Short Stories” are a list of vocabulary, sentence structure writing practice, 2,000+ ESL/EFL conversations on different topics, and links to beginning reading selections with activities similar to the intermediate reading selections on the “365 Short Stories” site. The amount of material available to the English language learner on this website is vast, the author is extremely credible, but the website itself lacks in its overall appeal. I would like something that is much more organized and more aesthetically pleasing.