Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
http://www.esl-lab.com

Bob Gettings, Hokusei Women's Junior College

One of the strongest features of Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab, developed by Randall Davis, is the variety of listening exercises for EFL learners from beginner to advanced. All of the quizzes are accessible from the site's home page under four categories: Short Listening, General Listening, Listening for Academic Purposes, and Long Conversations with RealVideo. Each section is sub-divided by level of difficulty. Many of the shorter exercises, such as Animal Sounds, are suited to beginners or are just fun. A few of the quizzes in the most difficult sections and long conversations section might be a challenge even for a native speaker of English.

Besides variety there is also volume. There are more than 80 listening exercises (most in RealAudio/Video format some also in .wav) and post-listening quizzes. There are no pre-listening activities per se but all of the exercises have short self-scoring quizzes (5 - 10 multiple choice or true/false questions), text scripts and text completion exercises are also available. A few quizzes combine listening with graphics (e.g. looking at a map or schedule). Feedback is simple, fast and direct: for the most part cgi scripted scores displayed in various formats including a list of the correct answers. Some quizes only display the score or have pop-up menus with correct answers for each question.

The site is easily navigable. All of the quizzes are accessible from the opening page. There are tutorials dealing with the technical aspects of using the site (quirky RealAudio) and pushing the right buttons to answer and get feedback. Beyond this there is a wealth of technical information, links, and tutorials designed to assist teachers to develop their own web listen-ing sites. The site is constantly under development and the FAQ, What's New, Bulletin Board and Voice Mailbox pages offer users a chance to see new developments, critique typos or minor errors, and request new directions.

On the down side, the site depends on JavaScript and RealAudio/Video, which are sometimes quirky in performance and require a newer OS and lots of memory. (Some shorter quizzes are available as .wav files which have lower requirements). There were frequent freezes even on a PowerMac with 15,000K assigned to Netscape Communicator connected to the net on my school's LAN. There were more problems with a 33,600 modem connection. However, this is not a problem with the site so much as with the current state of streaming audio video over the web.

The site is not a stand alone listening skills tutorial. It does not take a particular pedagogical approach to teaching listening and guide the user step by step with a focus on particular listening skills. It is a marvelous collection of individual listening exercises and worksheets perfect for individual use or to supplement a class. And Randall Davis hasn't stopped yet! A chat group has been added. Academic listening exercises and more quizzes for each listening segment are planned. This site is a must either as listening practice or to see some of the limits that listening can be stretched to on the web.

Recommended System Requirements (mostly tied to RealAudio/Video)
• Windows 3.1 or later, Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51 or later

• Macintosh PowerPC

• 2 MB free on your hard disk

•16 MB RAM; but 24 MB RAM recommended

• Modem connection: 14.4 minimum / 28.8 or faster best

• RealPlayer G2 (Windows) or 5.0 (Mac) (free download at http://www.real.com/products/player/index.html )

• check system requirements for RealPlayer carefully http://www.real.com/products/player/50player/sysreqs.html

Randall's ESL Cyber Listenming Lab....a second point of view
http://www.esl-lab.com

Francis Britto, Sophia University

Perhaps the best listening site today for learners of English is Randall S. Davis's ESL Cyber Listening Lab. It hosts an amazingly rich and pedagogically sound collection of audio and video materials, which learners of all levels can use to listen to English, view the script, and answer comprehension questions.

The opening page of the Listening Lab presents numerous options, but for learners the most useful ones are those listed under the four main sections: Short Listening Exercises, General Listening Quizzes with RealAudio, Listening Quizzes for Academic Purposes, and Long Con-versations with RealVideo. In each section, items are grouped under three or four levels of diffi-culties: Easy, Medium, Difficult, and Very Difficult. The topics covered are quite diverse. The section of Short Listening Exercises, for example, contains about 35 entries and deals with basic pronunciation topics (e.g., minimal pairs, r/l, b/v, and f/v contrasts), grammar points (e.g., numbers), vocabulary items (e.g., American slang), and several notions and functions (e.g., saying hello and goodbye, giving directions to a place). The General Listening Quizzes with RealAudio, containing about 36 items, are like chapters in a book, with conversations appropriate for several situations and contexts, entitled e.g., Restaurant, Hello. May I help you?, Hotel Reservations, What is she like?, Where's the movie theater?, A Visitor from Space, It's a Home Run! The Listening Quizzes for Academic Purposes, containing 11 items, deal with more serious themes such as Saving the Earth, The Japanese Economy, and Our Aging Society. There are five Long Conversations with RealVideo, each like a mini lecture (playing for about two minutes) on specific topics such as Culture Shock, Bamboo Artifacts and Guidelines for Safe Investing. Randall tries to meet the needs of all learners, whether they are at the elementary or at the advanced level.

Randall's basic approach is to help learners listen to a text and to let them perform some activity based on what they have listened to. To give an example, if you click on "Directions 2" in the Difficult section of the Short Exercises, you'll get a horizontally split screen with a top frame and a bottom frame. In the bottom frame, you'll see a colorful street map with street names and buildings. In the top frame, you'll get instruc-tions as to how to proceed, and a set of comprehension questions regarding the data given in the bottom frame. These are the instructions you get:

Each question consists simply of a PLAY link and four choices. Following the instructions, first you have to study the map and then click on the PLAY link, located within the top frame (hidden in Figure 1). Immediately, a recorded script is played; after listening, you have to choose the correct answer. You may play the recorded script any number of times. Also, if you find it too hard to make out even one or two words, you may click on the link Quiz Script. This link allows you to view the script as it is spoken. However, since the script and questions are on different pages, you can answer the questions only while hearing the script, not while viewing it. You may input your response by selecting it from a drop-down list box, which shows the message, "Choose one number here." When you click on this box, you'll be able to see the four choices. (see Figure 2)

You may go through all the questions without looking up the correct answers, and then have your input evaluated. Or, if you prefer, you may also look up the answer to each question any time, by merely clicking on another box labeled "Answer." Thus Randall makes it possible for learners to control their own pace and strategy. There's no atmosphere of TOEFL-style tension or time pressure.

Essentially, Randall follows the same technique in presenting each of the nearly 90 items. He always lets the learner listen to a segment of spoken English (usually without revealing the script, but often with some visual aid such as a figure or video clip), shows a set of questions based on the spoken script, and evaluates the responses given by the learner. He gives full autonomy to learners so that they can control their own pace and mode of studying. So if learners wish, they can view the script, play the recording repeatedly, and even find out the answers by clicking a button or giving nonsensical responses.

Randall's site is simply outstanding on many counts. First, his pages are free from clutter, which, alas, characterizes many popular Web pages, including several academic ones. By avoiding animated gifs, popping up ads, and other distracting bells and whistles, Randall offers clean, quick-loading pages which every visitor will appreciate. Second, as listening sites go, Randall's site is quite voluminous. There is no other Web site for learners that contains so many listening exercises with audio and video clips as his. Third, one can sense in Randall's pages his commitment to teaching and eagerness to give learners his best. Unlike certain commercial sites which reluctantly offer

a few appetizers, and even those only as a bait to entice customers, Randall's offers a rich variety of quality dishes so that learners can gorge themselves for free. While the sites of some good-willed educators, though useful, suffer from lack of depth or talent, Randall's exhibits meticulous professionalism both in its academic content and in technical execution.

I visited Randall's Lab using Netscape 3, installed in a Pentium 100, 48 MB RAM, Windows 95 computer with a LAN ethernet connection. The data transmission was smooth, and the quality of the audio and video was excellent. There were some minor glitches in the multi-framed "Text Completion" exercises, but since Randall seems to be aware of them, they might be eliminated in the near future.