Elllo for the Classroom: A CALL Website Evaluation

natewynne1982
Mar 12, 2016
4 min read

First Impressions

For a predominantly free English language learning website, Elllo has an impressive library of educational materials for English teachers and English language learners. Founded in 2003, Elllo provides thousands of listening activities performed by speakers from over 80 countries around the world. Elllo was created by Todd Beuckens who is an English teacher based in Japan. His mission is to provide interesting and engaging, multimodal listening activities. These activities range from beginner level, to intermediate, to advanced.

Upon visiting the Elllo website the first thing you’ll notice is the large amount of content all packed into the homepage. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the layout and design can be a bit overwhelming at first glance. At the top of the page is the claim “Learn English Naturally with ELLLO!” Below that is a section for “this week’s” lesson topics. Most of the hyperlinks to Elllo’s lessons are found toward the middle of the homepage where they have a list of categorized lessons. These include: Views, One Minute English Videos, Mixer, SixPix, News Center, STEP (Test taking skills), and Scenes. The bulk of lesson content can be found in the “Views” category with over 1,300 lessons. I am unsure of why exactly the category is called “Views.” But, perhaps it is because learners can view videos that contain audio, read scripts taken from the audio, take quizzes based on the audio, and review vocabulary from the audio.

What I like the best about the lessons in the “Views” category is that they incorporate multicultural themes in them such as life in Ecuador, Columbian music, and Japanese traditions. Another thing I like about these lessons is that they utilize voices from non-native English speakers from all over the world. English learners can hear the lessons spoken by people from places such as Canada, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Portugal, and many more. Unfortunately, most of these lessons have limitations though due to the fact that there is no real life feedback on the progress the learner is making. Some might see this downside as a lack of authenticity. As a result of these limitations, learners are forced to pick and choose random activities that may or may not contribute to their overall language acquisition.

Although English language learners might find Elllo unwieldy and a tough site to navigate, I believe that the content could be useful for teachers who want to add CALL methods to their classrooms. Using Elllo’s content in a controlled environment where the teacher can select the appropriate activities from the site would mostly eliminate the limitations pointed out earlier. Due to massive amount of activities to choose from and subject matter available, I believe English teachers would have no problem finding a way to integrate the content into lessons so long as external documents are used in conjunction with the material on the site. Quizzes can be done individually or in groups, Scripts can be read in groups or performed in front of class, and the listening activities can be done out loud or via headphones.

Elllo in Action

The video and transcript below shows an example of a video activity that includes a short quiz (shown on the right) to take after watching the video. Elllo offers hundreds of these types of short videos with quizzes to accompany them. While many of these videos are not comprhensive in that they do not specifically address topics such as grammar and syntax, they do give learners an idea of how real English speakers from around the world use the language.

Conclusions

Overall, I think Elllo has the potential to be of use in multiple English language learning environments. Specifically, the most ideal use of Elllo seems to be in structured classroom settings where teachers can guide students on how best to use the site. While a large majority of the site is free to use, there are limited options to purchase worksheets in PDF format and mp3 files to download for offline use. The free content is, however, more than adequate for classroom purposes. One thing I would like to see from Elllo is expanding its services to include mobile apps so their content can be accessed on the go. The biggest downside for Elllo as CALL software is that it is not very innovative. Don’t expect to be wowed. Although the Elllo mission is to provide engaging material—when used by itself—Elllo is not very engaging or inspiring. Even the website itself does not feel very polished. The voice actors clearly do not have professional experience and pauses and hesitations can be heard in many audio clips. That said, for a mostly free CALL site, I think the creators have done an impressive job at compiling a tremendous amount of lessons for English learners of all ages and abilities.