Understanding and Using English Grammar: Interactive (Advanced)

Title: Understanding and Using English Grammar: Interactive (Advanced)
Authors: Betty Azar and Rachel Spack Koch
Proficiency level: Advanced
Age appropriate for: teens and adults
Activities: quizzes, tests, speaking and listening activities
Requires: Java and Internet Explorer

General observations: (see below for detailed evaluation criteria)

To get an overview of the structure and content of Using English Grammar: Interactive (Advanced Level), I examined in detail the third chapter: Perfect and Perfect-progressive tenses. This section deals with the present (and past) perfect, present (and past) perfect progressive tenses (see the outline for this section)

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A separate subsection is devoted to each of these, and each tense is personified by a talking cartoon character who introduces (with audio as well as screen text) the features of his or her particular tense in a conversational/dialog speaking style. The cartoon character also explains some of the differences that set it apart from the other tenses in that section (see examples below)





Immediately following the introduction of each new tense, there is a graph which visually illustrates the nature of that tense with a time-line, and sample sentences are included.

Following the introduction and graph for each tense, there follows a series of four- to five quiz-type exercises which require the learner to complete sentences with the correct tense, or find and correct the tense mistakes. The exercises each contain sentences of various tenses, so for each item, the learner must be able to judge which tense is appropriate (see examples below).

Each chapter ends with a series of speaking, listening and reading quizzes.

The listening exercise is in a conversational/interview format, and is accompanied by a multiple-choice/ true-false sentence cloze quiz. The learner must listen in order to choose the correct answers because there is no text (see below).

In the speaking exercise, learners listen to an audio prompt, and can then record their own response directly into the exercise by clicking on the microphone icon. After each item, they can listen to a “model” response (see example below).

The program keeps track of learners’ progress by putting their scores into a report (see below).

Deatiled evaluation of UUEGIA:

Technological features:

Understanding and Using English Grammar: Interactive Advanced (UUEGIA) is a CD-ROM which is navigated from within Internet Explorer. The interface is much like any website, and the user can navigate with the mouse, go back and forward, and shift into other sections. Most of the quizzes and activities are completed with mouse clicks.

UUEGIA has quite a lot of audio content for reference pages and listening exercises, and uses speaking quizzes allow users to record their responses into the program. There are no visual graphics other than still images with minimal animation. There is no voice recognition function. There is some basic level of interactivity present in some exercises, for example where users must use the mouse to find (and correct) hidden mistakes. Some examples are shown below.

Users’ scores on the various activities can be collected and shown in the report section.

Activities

The activities in UUEGIA mainly consist of sentence cloze and multiple choice quizzes, and each chapter includes a listening, a speaking, and a reading activity.

Pedagogical Approach

The pedagogical approach of UUEGIA is fairly conventional, and many of the quizzes are laid out much like typical worksheets. However, there is some basic degree of interactivity that challenges the user to identify mistakes, choose the correct answer, or even write in the correct answer. The software marks the written answers as correct or incorrect.

Although the activities seem designed primarily to be completed by learners individually, there may be ways for teachers to adapt the software for use in a more classroom-based approach. However, there seems to be no particular features that would be easily adaptable to a collaborative learning approach.

Design (Learner fit)

UUEGIA is designed for English learners at the advanced level, and is most appropriate for high school, university and adult ESL/EFL programs. The design of the software makes it most useful as a self-study tool.

In addition to the various activities, UUEGIA also features a considerable amount of grammatical reference pages with various aspects of grammar illustrated in charts and tables. This part of the software is quite well done, and presents difficult grammatical concepts in a clear and direct way. This feature, along with the overall individual-user design, makes UUEGIA particularly well-suited as a self-study resource for self-motivated learners.

Summary

I found UUEGIA to be a well-designed piece of software for use as a resource for self-study by motivated teen and adult English language learners at the advanced level. The software is not specifically designed for classroom use, although it could well be used as a supplemental activity in a formal advanced-level English course. If this software is available to my students, I would recommend they use it

Publisher’s link:
http://www.azargrammar.com/multimedia.html