Website Evaluation - Listening

For our homework this week, I chose the StoryCorps website to evaluate using a selection of the listening criteria that Marianna, Guanya, Hongbo, and I came up with. StoryCorps’ mission is, as the website states, “to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.” The website features hundreds of stories from all over America and also includes an education section with a few lesson plans and activities. It is not focused in any way on second language learning. The criteria I’ve chosen to use for evaluating the website as an ESL listening resource include: 1. Listening content – length, topic, and difficulty; 2. Ability to pause, rewind, slow down, replay, download and edit the audio; 3. Teacher work required to create materials; and 4. Availability of transcripts or other visuals.

1.     Listening content – stories told by the people who experienced them.

a.     Length – most stories are short, from 1 – 5 minutes, which is a good length for beginning and intermediate students because it requires less cognitive demand to stay focused for shorter periods of time

b.    Topic – the topics are usually very personal to the person telling the story and are often related to interactions with other people, most painful memories, or happiest moments. There is a way to categorize the topics on the website, which is helpful for teachers looking for a certain subject. Some examples of topics include Military Voices, Friendship, Discovery, and Alzheimer’s. There is also a story search function.

c.     Difficulty – the recordings are professionally recorded and are of high quality. Because they are authentic and from all over America, the speakers have a vast range of accents, speeds, nativeness, language use, and speaking mannerisms. This degree of authenticity may make the StoryCorps too difficult for beginning and intermediate students, and perhaps even some advanced listeners.  

2.     Ability to pause, rewind, slow down, replay, download and edit the audio – When you click on the Listen button by each story, you can see the length of the story and also have the option to pause or stop the audio. However, there are no options for slowing down, rewinding, or downloading and editing the content. You can play the story as many times as you like, though. Without the ability to slow the authentic speech down, rewind, or manipulate the audio, beginning and intermediate listeners may understand very little of what they are hearing and may need to listen several times.

3.     Teacher work required to create materials. Depending on the level of the students, teachers would need to create supplemental materials to guide and facilitate comprehension. Even for advanced students, teachers would likely need to create vocabulary glosses for slang or region-specific words. The work required to make the recordings understandable for beginners would likely deem the site unsuitable. Additionally, the topics are not terribly broad and may not match the content of the rest of the class. As mentioned before, the site provides an educational section, but the materials are not aimed at second language learners and are not story specific.

4.     Availability of transcripts or other visuals. No transcripts could be found on the site. However, there is a section called Animated Shorts, which contains popular stories that have been animated. Visuals may help learners to understand what is being spoken about.

Overall, the StoryCorps website is a great website, but for very proficient speakers. Based on the above evaluation, I would recommend StoryCorps to ESL teachers who have very advanced students in a class that is focusing on American culture or the American experience. Listening to and reflecting on a story could add a nice weekly side activity that could compliment larger units on aspects of American life. I would not recommend the site to teachers of beginning or intermediate learners, or to teachers who have a specific subject matter outside of American culture.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll check out StoryCorps and listen to a few voices from around the country.