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Evaluate - The Digital Evaluation Service

Multi-language Exercise Generator.

Below you will find general information on the product, Evaluate’s interim product evaluation and a full classroom evaluation (where this has been completed). Click on the title bars to show or hide the interim and full evaluations.

About the product

Product:

Multi-language Exercise Generator

Publisher:

Clarity Language Consultants Ltd

Type: CD-rom

Subject(s) supported: Modern Foreign Languages ESOL Science

Keystage(s) supported: keystage 3 keystage 4

Scheme(s) of work: No QCA Schemes of work available

Technical specification(s) required: PC
Operating system:
Microsoft Windows 98
Processor speed: Pentium
RAM: 64 Mb

Cost(s) £49.95

The interim evaluation is an overview of the product based on the evaluator’s investigation of its capabilities outside the classroom environment. It provides information on the subject and scope of the product, its content and appearance, and the potential benefits it could offer teachers in the classroom.

Context: The product would be used with key stage 3 and 4 students. The source text chosen by the teacher determines the overall level of difficulty of the sheets produced. The teacher could therefore tailor the worksheets to any class, or produce several differentiated sheets by subtly altering the source text.

Technical information: I installed the product myself from the CD supplied, which autoran and began installation immediately. All necessary software is included on the CD, and the installed software ran successfully every time. The supplied guide covers getting started, and a full help file is available within the program – I found it helpful to print this in its entirety for easy reference.

Design & navigation: This is a teacher tool with an intuitive menu structure giving access to the various program features and the library of available texts. A few minutes’ navigation is enough to familiarise oneself with the different types of worksheets which can be created. These are printed in 12 point Arial font, with a clear style and ready formatted space for student responses. There are options to add spaces for students’ names, the name of the school, and other details to each sheet. By default, each sheet includes the first answer completed to demonstrate to students how to proceed.

Content: Teachers can use any text to create worksheets that focus on different skills such as gap fill, jumbled words, proof reading and word forms. The same text can be used to generate each type of worksheet and change the target areas. Teachers can make differentiated worksheets for students within the same class by varying, say, the number of words to be jumbled or omitted. Completely automated layout and formatting mean teachers can concentrate on choosing the best source text rather than typing or layout.

Curriculum coverage:

The product would be useful for any modern language teaching, as well as teaching English as a foreign language. It focuses on building skills such as tense formation, the use of textual and context clues to deduce meaning, and improving spelling, and therefore sits well with the new MFL Framework at key stage 3.

Learning outcomes:

I will use this resource to increase students’ skills in reading and understanding texts. With year 7 pupils, word searches generated may develop awareness of spellings and familiarity with new vocabulary. In year 9, gap fill activities may be useful to highlight word roles in a sentence. Students in year 10 or 11 would use worksheets requiring infinitive verbs to be conjugated in the correct tense.

Classroom management & preparation: A new user should spend some time looking at the exemplar worksheets to get a good idea of the type of material Multi-language Exercise Generator can produce. The manual covers getting started and guides the teacher to the online help contained within the program.Through the range of worksheets which can be created, the product aims to develop pupil skills relating to knowledge of vocabulary and sentence structure. Differentiation can be achieved by the choice of source texts, differing worksheet types or varying the complexity of the worksheet within a particular type, eg how many words are jumbled. Assessment using worksheets produced would take the form of standard marking by hand, with the results recorded in a teacher’s mark book.

Summary: Multi-Language Exercise Generator is a timesaving tool allowing teachers to produce a word search or gap-fill worksheet in a matter of minutes once a suitable source text has been selected. Teachers can adjust the criteria to create differentiated worksheets. Once pupils are familiar with the format, the worksheets would be excellent for homework. The program allows teachers to use the same text in different ways and focus pupils’ attention from various angles. This would be excellent for coursework preparation or the detailed study of a text. Even the weakest pupils should be able to engage with a word search or elementary gap-fill activity. The program allows worksheets to be archived for future use, with titles describing their content and intended use. The archive facility combined with the standard format of the worksheets makes it feasible to produce a library of activities to which different members of a department could contribute.

The classroom evaluation is an in-depth appraisal of how the product performed in the classroom. It covers the ways the product was used during the evaluation, the perceived benefits and issues involved in its use, the students’ response and the opportunities for learning, differentiation and assessment it provided.

Evaluation subject	Modern Foreign Languages

Evaluation key stage	keystage 3

Evaluated on:	PC Processor speed:2.0GHz Connection speed:512K DSL RAM:256Mb Additional hardware:

How product was used:	Product used to produce worksheets to support grammatical and vocabulary development of students at key stages 3 and 4.

Students:	The product was used with 13 lower-ability students in year 8, 30 high-ability students in year 9 and 14 mixed-ability students in year 11. Year 8, lowest ability set. Year 9 top set. In year 11, the class was a small mixed-ability group.

Special Needs:	The year 9 group included some students who could be classed as gifted and talented. They used the text from the worksheets as a model for their own writing to further develop their skills.

Period of use:	The product was used in two lessons with the year 8 class; in four lessons with the year 9 class, and in three lessons with the year 11 class.

Schemes of work:
	For key stage 3, supporting the conjugating of verbs in various tenses, and the learning of vocabulary. At key stage 4, the conjugating of verbs.

Topics:	Places to go out; the perfect tense (KS3), the perfect, imperfect and future tenses (KS4)

Context:	Approximately equal numbers of boys and girls in each group. In year 8, the general ability level was low, most students were working at Level 2 or 3 in almost all skills. The year 9 group was the highest ability set, with several students able to confidently work at level 6 or above. The GCSE year 11 group’s predicted grades ranged from A to E.

Technical information:	I installed the product myself from the CD, which auto-ran – this took only a few minutes. After this, the product ran reliably and consistently without problems. No special extra software or plugins were required, and a full manual was supplied on the CD. It was helpful to print this in full for easy reference while using the software.

Design & navigation:	This teacher tool’s intuitive menu accesses program features and the library of texts. A few minutes’ navigation is enough to familiarise oneself with the types of worksheets that can be created. These are in 12 point Arial font, with a clear style and ready formatted space for student responses. Regular use will make this format very familiar to the students, allowing work to be set in a teacher’s absence. There are options to personalise each sheet. Each sheet includes the first answer completed to demonstrate to students how to proceed – this can be turned off to produce more challenging activities.

Content:	The year 8 low-ability group worked on gap-fill exercises based on activities from their course book. For example, in worksheets on hobbies or interests the sentence had to be completed with an appropriate location. For year 9, worksheets using the ‘word forms’ function provided verbs in the infinitive to be conjugated with a given pronoun in the perfect tense. Year 11 were asked to conjugate verbs in a variety of tenses according to their ability. The software’s different functions allowed students to engage with activities and succeed at an appropriate level.

	Curriculum coverage:
	The topics we were working on emphasised word patterns and the development of topic related vocabulary, and the product suited this work well. The product lends itself best to the development or consolidation of new topics, though it could be used together with dictionaries to introduce new vocabulary in context.

	Learning outcomes:
	Students in year 8 consolidated and revised their knowledge of words to describe hobbies and suitable places to do them. They were able to pair a sporting or leisure activity with an appropriate location, selecting from a list of given alternatives. In years 9 and 11, the emphasis was on consolidating understanding of grammar principles, principally conjugation of verbs, covered in various topic areas throughout the French course.

Classroom use:	A new user should spend time looking at the exemplar worksheets to get a good idea of the type of material they can produce using Multi-language Exercise Generator. The manual covers getting started, and online help is also available. Before the lesson, the teacher types or pastes a suitable text into the software, and selects the appropriate type of activity. Gapfill works well with lower-ability students. More open-ended word forms activities require considerably more subject knowledge and suit highest-ability students. Teachers may choose to use the program to produce material to complete as a whole class but generally the worksheets are better suited to independent study or homework. Results can be calculated by traditional marking methods.

ICT:	The ICT element of the product was largely invisible to the students themselves. However the software could contribute to school or department targets for the use of ICT to produce worksheets and teaching materials.

Student response:	As expected, the highest-ability students engaged best with this resource, and demonstrated competent use of grammar concepts, verb tables and dictionaries, to produce largely accurate results. The most able conjugated the same passage in two or more different tenses, changing occasional details to suit the time frame chosen. Lower ability students were generally less responsive, but clearly appreciated the gap fill texts which allowed them to supply correct answers with the minimum of writing. Results varied similarly across the ability range in year 11, though the activities did show that students had an increasing knowledge of tenses which they will be able to apply to future coursework tasks.

Summary:	This timesaving tool allows teachers to produce a word search or gap-fill worksheet in a matter of minutes and adjust the criteria to create differentiated worksheets. Once students are familiar with the format, the worksheets are excellent for homework or quiet writing time. The program allows teachers to use the same text in different ways and focus students’ attention from various angles. This could make a significant contribution to coursework preparation or detailed study of texts. Even the weakest students in the evaluation engaged with a word search or elementary gap-fill activity. The archive facility and standardised format of the worksheets allow members of a department to contribute to and build their own library of activities. The product clearly reinforces learning of grammatical concepts, as well as teaching vocabulary. Worksheets can also be used for assessment as the familiar format allows students to feel at ease in a test situation.

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contact@learnevaluations.co.uk