Site Review Article Review

Program

Introduction
Many people cannot afford to buy books urgently needed for teachings in English. As such, they turn to sites in search of information, teaching and reference material for use in their teaching. One such site is http://www.tesol.net/.

Visual Assessment

The site offers access to an incredible amount of downloadable resources such as books, journals, quality projects from other students, and videos. Within the pages, the site also contains links to other sites that provide more resources on the same subject. The site is especially useful for teachers and students interested in learning English while being speakers of other languages. The site has an excellent page layout structure that makes navigation between the different web pages quite easy. Page orders define the navigation structure in http://www.tesol.net/. The homepage, for instance, has different menus both at the top and on the left side of the page. The menus at the top are quite simple and well-arranged containing links to downloadable material. The ones on the left contain a combination of text and logos that act as links to different pages of the site.
The homepage also contains author information and the date of publication. To a typical user, the site presents itself as having an excellent design element with uncrowded information. As such, visitors to the web page can easily find the information sought.

Functional Logic

The site consistently fragments its content among pages and sections hence eases the user’s navigation around the site. In a nutshell, it attempts to prevent users from leaving. Users can quickly locate the essential contents of a site such as the profile and the contacts page. In the event of any clarifications, the author provides a link to a contact page where users can leave their comments and addresses for the author to get in touch with them later. The links are also functional in the sense that they have the correct labels and once clicked, they direct users to the relevant pages. Once the user visits linked pages, a search feature present on the top right side of the linked pages enables users to find information quickly.

Coding

The site has a neat appearance and appeals to the user. The implication is that there is great execution of coding, whether simple or complex, by the web designers. The response time of web pages is quite fast after click events from the user. As such, the site does not have a lot of clutter that would otherwise slow down the response to user-initiated events. Some sites are notorious for non-functional menus and inactive links or links to non-existing web pages. Such is not the case with http://www.tesol.net/. On the contrary, the links the different pages in and out of the site are fully functional.
The site, however, also has a downside in terms of its functionality. The disadvantage is that the site often experiences server overloads that occasionally shoot timeout errors. As a result, users are at times unable to download the online resources. Investing in more reliable servers will help the developers to ensure a seamless user interaction with no delay of timeouts particularly when downloading the online material.

In terms of content, http://www.tesol.net/ passes the ultimate test of delivering presenting valuable content. Additionally, the site has a professional look with less clutter and no fancy diagrammatic representations. Such defines the professional look and makes the site attractive to both teachers and students studying English for speakers of other languages. Another great feature that relates to the content of the site is the lack of typographical and grammatical errors in the text. More often than not, such errors within a site’s content usually confuse and annoy the visitors to the extent that they end up leaving the site frustrated. The characteristic error free feature of http://www.tesol.net/ ensures that each visitor spends a considerable amount of time on the pages and in the end acquires relevant information.
The downside of the site, however, is it does not seem to have regular updates. From the author information provided on the homepage, the copyright period date extends to more than ten years since the last update. As a result, despite the site providing information relevant to the subject topic, such information is not up-to-date. Such may be a limiting factor particularly to scholars who visit the site seeking modern resources with up-to-date information.

Summary

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would personally award http://www.tesol.net/ a rating of 4. Holistically, the site has a good and professional layout delivering a good feel to the user. The simplicity and ease of navigation to the different web pages also positively portrays the site. However, timeout errors due to unstable servers and lack of current information and modern resources negatively impact on the site. Access to resources and relevance of content information remain the primary objectives of the site’s development in the first place. On the contrary, the negative features seem to affect the goals adversely. As such, the site is recommendable for people who want to gather general information about English for other language speakers. It would, however, be unimportant for people seeking current information and modern resources of the same topic.

References

Harris, K. (1997). The Linguistic Funland TESL Page: Resources for Teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL/EFL/ESOL). Retrieved February 4, 2015, from http://www.tesol.net/