Project Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

This is good news for literature lovers. Take this as an extra brilliant material where you could improve your English proficiency. We can download, distribute, share and most of all, it is FREE!!! There are over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone and many more.

by Liyana Rosli

BBC Learning English

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/index.shtml

We can gain a lot of knowledge by just clicking on the link. We can improve our grammar, learn new vocabulary, learn pronunciation tips and many more. This link should be one of your favourite bookmarks.

by Liyana Rosli

Forvo

http://forvo.com/

As a number of our respondent has difficulties when speaking English o foreigner because of the accent, Forvo is one of the solution. Forvo is a multilingual user generated pronunciation dictionary. We can listen to any words spoken in vast range of language. We can always check the English words spoken by British, American or Arabian people according to their accents.

by Liyana Rosli

The Speech Accent Service

http://accent.gmu.edu

The Speech Accent Service provides speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. This site is relevant for those who wish to listen and compare the accents of different English speakers.This site surely will helps its users to master the English language orally as it also provides a phonetic transcription. Phonetic transcription do helps in pronouncing English words in a correct way.

Posted by Noorfarahen bt Hanafi

Photo Peach

http://photopeach.com

The idea of this site is to help it users to tell stories using photos. Users can simply create a slideshow in just a few minutes.It also offers a background music and caption to make the slideshow stories become more interesting. Basically, this can be a new way of learning of English as teachers may use it as a teaching tool. Teachers can collect their students slideshows and give comments.

Posted by Noorfarahen bt Hanafi

FunnelBrain

http://www.funnelbrain.com

Basically, this site compiled a collection of academic questions and answers. This site is a user driven site just as Wikipedia which means anyone can do the editing, contributing and organizing informations. Students can make a full use of this site as one of their new approach of learning. They may have a collaboration with their classmates as this site offered a feature called study team. Discussion regarding a few topics can be done in this study team. A new way of learning in this site such as creating and answering quizzes and creating flashcards would help in learning process.

Posted by Noorfarahen bt Hanafi

English Cafe

http://www.englishcafe.com

This site is an English learning community that involves both experts and learners. The new learner may choose their own level, whether they want to start as a beginner, intermediate or advanced learner while the teachers can find their students too.The free lessons offered in this site consists of photos,videos, documents, audios and files. The writing of the learners can be corrected by the teachers. The other feature of this site is the users have their own personal library to store their study materials. One more important feature of English Cafe is there is a toolbox available to correct the pronunciation and helps in translation. Have a look to this site !

Posted by Noorfarahen bt Hanafi

MakeBeliefsComix

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com

This site was founded by Bill Zimmerman. Since the launching day, over 3 million visitors from more than 175 countries have been using this site and most of them are educators who use this site to encourage writing, reading, literacy and learning of English among their students. It will be a great tool to be used by all because this site has been selected by Google and UNESCO as the most innovative site for fostering literacy and reading purpose. In the other word, this site is an alternative site for people to learn English in a fun way.

Posted by Noorfarahen bt Hanafi

Sugarsync

https://www.sugarsync.com/?source=myss

This is also an online storage for any documents in form of PDF or Words and many more. The difference is, it is made specifically for mobile device. So anywhere we go, we can still keep and see our document through our device.We can send files of any sizes to anyone from any places. Not just that, they will keep the five latest version for any files as a back up if we lost any of them. So, this tool is technology based that helps us in learning.

Posted by-Solehah binti Azizan

Box.net - Business collaboration software

Box

http://www.box.net/

This is a very interesting tools for file sharing. As respondents need learning aids that is fast and downloadable. The focus of this site is to managing and sharing content. All the files in form of PowerPoint, Microsoft Words, PDF, MP3 can be taken from here. One of the respondent said that he wish there is a record of his lecturer voice to help him in learning, this tool will be very helpful. Lecturers can record their lecture and put it on this side so that all students can download it. We can review our content online through the familiar file and folder structure.The file can be turned into widget and can be shared on any web,page or blog. This site can also be viewed from the mobile phone. This site has many interesting features and suitable for students.

Posted by-Solehah binti Azizan

Diigo

http://www.diigo.com/index

Diigo is research tools where you can bookmark, highlight, share, and many other things with your notes. This is also a web where knowledge can be shared among it users. Through features like group, the members can share their content together. We can bookmark as many notes as we want. We can also list it down through the categories that we want so that it will be easier to check back all the notes. In My Network, users can check other useful sites that has been featured in Diigo. Not just that, we can also make sticky notes to be put in our webpage desktop.

Posted by-Solehah Azizan

Pronunciation Studio

Link:  http://www.pronunciationlondon.co.uk/africanaccents.html#3

Here is a website on how to understand English with and African accent. In here they distinguish how an African speaks English by their vowel sound, consonant sound, structures and intonation.

by Jason

Dave’s ESL Café

Link: http://www.eslcafe.com

This site has many resources and exercise to boost one’s English vocabulary and grammar. Exercise such as adjective clauses where it teaches student how to use adjective clauses and many examples; conditional sentences, when to use and how to use; the common confusing words like lend and borrow and other confusing words and many more. These lessons can truly help one’s grammar and vocabulary to improve drastically. Also, when feeling bored, there are contents such as quizzes and some information about slangs to help entertain the reader.


by Jason

Wordpress

http://wordpress.org/

It takes less than a minute to set up a blog in WordPress, register with email address. Users are able to customize their own web adress as they like. Although this application is free, WordPress provides a great deal of fascinating features.Users are able to change the appearance of their blogs with over one hundred attractive themes, be it funny or professional. Users can switch themes in just a few seconds by just clicking on the theme they desire. Every theme allows users to customize their sidebars with widgets while some enable them to upload images to their header bars.Besides, wordpress is popular with its stats system. Users are informed of how many people are visiting their blogs, where do those visitors come from, how many people have visited their blogs, which post are most celebrated and so on. It is easy to create posts and upload photos using WordPress. Uploading photos is similar with services like Flickr or Photobucket. Users can also embed videos from YouTube which makes their blogs to be more attractive. And there is a very important feature in WordPress that is as users are typing their posts, the host keeps saving the posts just in case users might lose their works due to some unpredictable problems, such as connection error or computer problem.


Posted by-Wong Siew Mun

Wikispaces

http://www.wikispaces.com/

Wikispaces--- Wikispaces is an application to publish and to share basic information online. Wikispaces was setup as an online collaboration tool, which allows multiple users to interact and work together. Wikispaces allows users to create a document, edit it, and hold discussions about the documents or any edits that have taken place. Users can create a document, or space, for editing, like Wikipedia, and allow anybody view and edit it. Users can also choose to restrict the editing process only to people who users already know. Like Wikipedia, a history of document changes is kept, and a log is made of which user made which changes and at what time, so authors can keep track of the work done.


Posted by-Wong Siew Mun

Citebite

http://citebite.com/

CiteBite is a medium to link direct to a particular bit of text on a webpage. Its main purpose is to highlight quotes or text in a particular link, then share it by emailing that link to others or putting it in users' blog or webpage.The advantage using CiteBite is that when users cannot link directly to the public site, because the webpage designer did not insert enough anchors, or anchors at the exact words users want to link to, CiteBite can solve it by creating new link for them.The disadvantage for CiteBite is that users can’t highlight photos or videos. It only works on text, not images. But users could select text before or after the photos or videos you want, such as a caption. Another cons on the CiteBite is that users cannot link to password protected pages or sites requiring login, users will just get an error message.Citebite is quite easy to use and the interface is user-friendly too. It is a good tool for users to link a text on the internet.


Posted by-Wong Siew Mun

Mashface

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/mashface-create-hilarious-photo-video-mashes/


Mashface is a website where anyone can turn photos into short video gags, with superimposed webcam recordings and sound effects.Users can upload their photos and mash themselves onto uploaded photos of celebrities and politicians using a microphone-enabled webcam and an Internet connection.To make users' own creation, they have to pick from one of the ready-made photos of celebrities and politicians on the website. Once users have found the photo, record up to a minute of audio and video from the webcam, and it can be placed on top of the photo,includes things like eyes and mouth and sometimes users can utilize the tool to mimic hand gestures too, depend on the photo.Mashface lets users tweak the size and shape of recording, along with the color tone, so users can try to match their skins with the person they have chosen. However, it is quite difficult to get a perfect match between the skin colour of users with the person they chose.


Posted by-Wong Siew Mun

Sliderocket

http://www.sliderocket.com/about/


SlideRocket is an online presentation software which is famous for being able not only to display presentations, but also to create them.SlideRocket offers a number of different packages to suit the needs of many different people. Some are to be paid monthly and even some are free packages. Using SlideRocket to create a presentation is really easy to make it full of transitions and effects. Users can register for a free account on SlideRocket, or try a trial of the paid services for a month.



Posted by-Wong Siew Mun

Babylon

Link: www.babylon.com

Babylon is a dictionary software that has the translate feature that can translate words into more than 20 types of language, almost similar to Google Translate but this is a software that requires the user to download. A free trial version is available at download. However, if the user prefers to use it a lifetime, the price for purchase is USD 118 and that is around RM413. To purchase the software plus the oxford dictionary together, it cost around RM450. Hence, it is a product that worth the purchase.

by Jason

English Writing Solutions

Link: http://www.english-writing-solutions.com

This website provides free writing tips that not only boost the writing skills of a writer but also the usage of grammar and vocabulary of the writer. Anyone can just enter this website and subscribe to the free writing tips by inserting his or her email address, he or she will receive free writing tips on grammar, mistakes often made by us and many more. Hence this can provide another tip for enhancing the grammar and vocabulary.

by Jason

Wiziq

http://www.wiziq.com/

Wiziq is an idea of a virtual classroom where it provided 2-way audio, text chat, whiteboard, powerpoint and PDF. In this site, students can learn in live online classes. Example of the classes are 45 sentences to use in English, Elementary English and many more. This site is suitable for my respondent as she needs an online learning in learning language as well as to improve her grammar. Student can also enroll in any online courses available  One of the classes is Basic English Grammar for Dummies where you have to pay $4 to enter the course which is very cheap. Another feature is that we can view online tutorial for free through the powerpoint, pdf file, video, words, and others. They also have free online practice tests for students to improve the quality of their language. One of it is how good is your pronunciation where you have to answer 10 questions for free. Through e-teaching, student can find numbers of teachers available to teach them on certain subjects. The teacher will respond by giving them your details. Lastly, we can find educational resources in here. From this website, student can start participating in learning language rather than being a passive listener. A lot of benefits can be gained from this website.

Posted by- Solehah binti Azizan

Voki

http://voki.com/

This is a tool where students can create their own avatar face and record their voice. The avatar will speak using their voices. In this case, the respondent who is shy to speak in  front of people and do not know how to use the right grammar will slowly develop their confident. A key to start speaking with right grammar is to start speaking English continuously, slowly they will develop their own well grammar. Voki is suitable for education because it motivates students to participate, improve message comprehension and introduce technology in the classroom. Not just that, Voki can be used as an effective language tool and students can also get inspired by other teachers. Not just that,  we can also add it to our blog, website, or profile.They also have Voki for education where students can check to see subjects they like according to their grades. The best thing about this website is that it's free and can be used by everyone. Plus, students will not feel shy anymore because it is not their face that appears on screen, but the image of the avatar.

Posted by- Solehah binti Azizan

Lang-8

http://lang-8.com

Lang-8 is a website for learning foreign language in a revolutionary way. It is a very good site to practice and enhance our English. We can learn the real English from the native speakers via writing. Thus, these may solved one of the problems listed by our respondents which is how to use and apply the language. Lang-8 is a website for learners from many languages to come together and correct on other’s writing. This site is not only restricted to English speakers but there are already more than 80 languages being published. Native speakers can review the writing submitted by foreign learner who wish to improve. You can help and be helped! In the real world, there might be some people exchanging languages, but it is much more convenient on the net. So, come on! Let’s try this!


by Liyana Rosli

ESL Fast

http://www.eslfast.com/robot/

http://www.eslyes.com/easydialogs/ (alternative)

          As some of our respondent has claimed that one of their problems in learning English is in using the language, we have discover a very unique site which enable us to converse with a very smart virtual robot, Mike. Besides that, Mike is ready to practice more than 2,000 conversations with EFL students. Conversations are designed for beginners and cover a wide range of topics.  Other than that, we found that the site is very user-friendly. It is so easy to discover and we do not have to wait for a long buffer like the other sites. This site is very helpful in enhancing our communication skills other than improving all the grammar techniques and so. Have fun!

by Liyana Rosli.

Introduction

For our subject, SKBP 1023, Language and ICT, we are assigned to do a blog project. In this blog, we will discuss about the best web tools that can be used by our respondent regarding personal learning environment. Our task is to find out what are their major problems in learning English. We will suggest web tools that can be used by them to improve their language learning. 

Problems and Objectives

These are the problems stated by our respondent and we have suggested some objectives to help solve his problems.

Objectives

1. To provide websites that has complete notes and faster downloading speed

2. To provide web tools that will boost up the skills of vocabulary and grammar of my respondent

3. To provide some web tools that will help them to master foreign accent neither orally nor written

4. To search for web tools for easy-searching online dictionaries to provide a faster and even more efficient way of searching and translating words.

Themes

Theme 1 (Environment)	Theme2 (Technical)	Theme3 (Learning aid)
R1	R3	R1
R2		R2
R4		R3
R5		R5

Theme1               : Environment-with people surrounding them

Theme2               : Technical- Grammar

Theme3               : Learning Aid- Fast downloaded sites, complete with notes,
    new approach of learning.