3 Interactive Websites for Your ESL Classroom

When teachers step into the classroom, they face a great deal of responsibility. Not only do teachers need to teach the material, but they also need to teach in a way that draws students into the lesson and keeps them engaged.

Building engagement and allowing students to interact within the lesson is key, and in a world where education is moving more and more into online classrooms, engagement needs to be prioritized (Bowden, 2022). Researchers have found that students who participate more in class tend to have more correct answers compared to students who do not participate (Sánchez-Hernández, et al., 2021). In one study surveying English-language learners, students said that uninteresting classes made them less motivated to study English (Alyousif, et al., 2021). Self-determination theory suggests that students learn better if they are intellectually stimulated and given opportunities to learn in a new and exciting way (Shin, et al., 2021). If teachers can include interactive activities that keep students engaged, it may help positively affect their ability to learn. While there are advantages to using technology to increase engagement, it’s important to keep in mind the limitations or challenges you might face in your own classroom. For example, when I taught in rural China, none of my classrooms had computers or projectors. Sometimes, we didn’t even have electricity in the classroom! You might not worry about having electricity, but computers can still malfunction, the internet could be too slow to load things properly, and in China, many foreign websites are blocked. If you’re using technology in your classroom, make sure to properly test it out before class begins or have a back-up plan ready to go. Without further ado, here are three websites that could help build engagement in your ESL classrooms!

1. Wooclap

Wooclap is a great website for interactive communication among students and can be especially useful for remote learning. We know how hard it is to create an interesting and interactive online environment where each student feels like they are part of the lesson rather than a silent observer. In Wooclap, you can create an interactive quiz that all your students can complete at the same time. After you’ve sent the code for your quiz in whatever app you use to communicate with students, students can start the quiz. As students answer, the results will be updated immediately on the teacher’s side, which the teacher can then share with the students. This type of quiz works great for an introductory lesson when the teacher is trying to build rapport with students and can create a feeling of community within the classroom.

In the quiz, you could ask students to pinpoint where they are from (which works great for my university students who come from cities all over the country), ask them how confident they feel about their English ability, or what they are hoping to accomplish in this class. Wooclap has nineteen different types of questions to choose from, with one of my favorites being the word cloud. As students answer, for example, what they are hoping to accomplish in the class, the answers will appear for everyone to see.

While this works well for online classes, it can also be done inside a traditional classroom. If you have a lesson where there are opportunities for students to share opinions, take polls, or even if you just want to get an idea of how well the class is understanding a topic, a Wooclap quiz could be a great choice.

Wooclap has its own YouTube channel, with plenty of tutorials to help if you or your students get stuck with navigating the app. Wooclap does not require a VPN for restrictive countries like China; as long as you have an internet connection, you can use Wooclap. There is a free option, but quizzes are limited to only two questions. For more features, it can cost 7-15 euros per month. Teachers in certain countries may be given a discount, so check to see the cost in your country.

2. ESL Video

Don’t be deterred by the simple interface of eslvideo.com. Shakespeare said, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” Well, ESL Video is simple, but fierce. Not only is this a great reference tool for lesson planning or ideas, but it can also act as an interactive supplement to a lesson. ESL Video has a variety of topics under four levels: Beginning, Low Intermediate, Intermediate, and High Intermediate. When you click on a topic, you’ll be taken to the lesson page, where there is a YouTube video, a transcript of the video, and a quiz. After students watch the video, they can take a quiz to test their understanding of the video. The quizzes can vary; for example, the quiz connected to a low intermediate video about a girl who lives on a ranch has comprehension questions about the video whereas the quiz connected to a beginner level video about the typical day of a medical student has questions about verb tenses related to the actions performed in the video. In the video, students will have a chance to see and hear real native speakers, and if they are struggling, they can follow along with the transcript. After students complete the quiz, they have a chance to see which questions they got wrong, and they are also given a final score they can send to the teacher.

Depending on your classroom situation, you could watch the video together as a class, then ask students to complete the quiz on their own. You could go through the answers together and talk through any issues. If you’re in a remote classroom, you could ask students to send their scores to you or have students post their scores in whichever remote learning app you’re using, such as Zoom or Tencent Meeting. I’ve also used activities like this as homework assignments to review or just get some extra practice in outside of the classroom.

Teachers have the ability to create their own quizzes, as well as view students’ scores after setting up a specific class code. If students are ever experiencing technical difficulties with the quiz, the quiz is also available for as a PDF download. QR codes are also available for easy access.

Some of the cons for ESL Video is that the vocabulary words used in the video are not emphasized or highlighted. There are no exercises that show how to use the vocabulary words in a sentence and no example pronunciations are given. If you wanted to focus on learning vocabulary, you would have to pull vocabulary words from the video yourself. 

ESL Video is completely free, and while you don’t need a VPN to access the website, you might need a VPN to access the YouTube videos, if YouTube is banned in the country you are teaching in. They do provide a user’s guide on their website (https://www.eslvideo.com/users_guide.php) with tutorials on how to create quizzes or set up your class code.

3. Quizizz

If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you’ve probably heard about Quizizz. While there are tons of quiz apps and websites out there, Quizizz has some amazing benefits. Not only can you create quizzes, but you can also create interactive lessons. Also, you don’t have to do all the work! Quizizz has an extensive library of quizzes and lessons created by other educators, but you can also create your own. Students will use a quiz code to access the quiz, and as the teacher, you can see how the students are doing as they take the quiz, as well as view their final results at the end. Quizzes can be programmed to be done in the student’s own time, done together with a class, or assigned as homework.

Quizizz is free, or you can upgrade your plan for $8 a month. You don’t need a VPN to access Quizzizz in countries like China, so as long as you have an internet connection, you’re good to go!

Bonus tip: If you’re curious about using ChatGPT to make writing quizzes easier and faster, check out Mark O’Donohue’s video here: https://youtu.be/xMKrT-nbGbM

Using technology in the classroom can be a helpful tool in building engagement, but it is just a tool. While technology can supplement your lesson, the core of your lesson should still be about learning. Be sure to use technology in a way that adds to the lesson, rather than takes away from it. Students could have negative feelings about a course if they sense that teachers are using technology and videos to kill time in class (Yadav, 2021). If you don’t currently use technology in your classrooms, I know it can feel a little intimidating, but technology has been proven to increase levels of engagement among students (Bendenlier, et al., 2020).

Hopefully one of these websites will be the perfect fit for you use technology to build engagement in your own classrooms!

References

Alyousif, R., & Alsuhaibani, Z. (2021). English language learning demotivating factors for Saudi high school EFL students. English Language Teaching, 14(8), 29-39. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v14n8p29

Bedenlier, S., Bond, M., Buntins, K., Zawacki-Richter, O., & Kerres, M. (2020). Facilitating student engagement through educational technology in higher education: A systematic review in the field of arts and humanities. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 36(4), 126-150. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.5477

Bowden, J. L. (2022). Analogues of engagement: Assessing tertiary student engagement in contemporary face-to-face and blended learning contexts. Higher Education Research and Development, 41(4), 997-1012. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2021.1901666

Sánchez-Hernández, D. I., Vez López, E., & García- Barrios, Y. (2021). Factors that de-motivate EFL students’ class participation at a school of languages. GIST – Education and Learning Research Journal, 22(1), 147-172. https://doi.org/10.26817/16925777.860

Shin, M., & Bolkan, S. (2021). Intellectually stimulating students' intrinsic motivation: The mediating influence of student engagement, self-efficacy, and student academic support. Communication Education, 70(2), 146-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2020.1828959

Yadav, D. K. (2021). Student engagement at higher education institutions: A study of international student engagement and motivational challenges at Chinese universities. International Journal of Educational Reform, 30(3), 237-254. https://doi.org/10.1177/10567879211015945