A Review of Online Reading Sites for ESL Students

A Review of Online Reading Sites for ESL Students

Summary

In this article, the authors try to find suitable online sites for reading as supplementary material for ESL students. They choose their recommended site based on three criteria:user-friendliness, support and interactivity, and effects of media.The first category, user-friendliness, refers to the extent of usability of online reading materials.Support structure, such as dictionary, glossary, concordance and thesaurus, made available to users is the second category.The final category of evaluation criteriaincludes not only the quality of audio and video clips, but also our consideration of how well different forms of media integrate for effective learning, the reading speed of the audio clips and technical compatibility.

Among the eleven sites that they reviews, the top five sites recommended based on their students’ needs are as follows:

1. VOAnews.com
2. English Listening Lesson Library Online (elllo)
3. literacynet.org
4. Adult Learning Activities
5. onestopenglish
6. Unfortunately, onestopenglish(The Guardian Weekly )requires the students to subscribe, so the cost may be a deterrent.