Context This web site has been designed for Chinese University students enrolled in a project that is a joint

co-operation with an Australian University and several Chinese Universities throughout China. The students who will be using this website as a resource are enrolled across two universities in Shanghai. These students are to study in Shanghai for two years, mainly concentrating on English language skills during this time, and they will then go on to study another two years in Australia and achieve a Bachelor's degree from an Australian University. The main focus of the student's study while in Shanghai is to improve their English in relation to being able to score at least 6 in the IELTS examination, and also to improve their Academic and Business English language skills, so that the students will be successful in studying a Business Administration degree in Australia. Each weekday the students have one lesson with a foreign teacher and one lesson with a Chinese language teacher. There are also ongoing projects like writing competitions and speech competitions for the students to take part in. The students' general level of English is intermediate to high intermediate. The problem and possible solution Initially the problem that led to the writing of the website for student usage was the students' inability to improve their writing. Students consistently made the same mistakes in relation to incorrect vocabulary usage, grammar mistakes and also sentence structural errors. With limited time allowed to be allocated to solving this problem during class time it was decided to make a website that would allow the students to spend their own time, out of class, improving their writing and grammar skills. With the passing of time it also became clear that students were poor at understanding the academic writing genre. Reasons behind this relate to the high level of English language required to successfully undertake a piece of Academic writing in English (Freeman and Freeman 2001 pg 156) and also to the fact that these students have not been asked to write in such genres before, even in their own language. The students thus must learn the genre requirements of argumentative essay writing to successfully complete a piece of academic writing. Intended goals of the website in relation to the students' needs The students need to improve their writing so as to allow themselves the best chance at study in Australia and also to get a score of at least 6 in the IELTS examination. This website has tried to keep these two goals in mind and has attempted to provide information in relation to the IELTS examination's requirements, as well as the general requirements of academic writing. Thus the website has sample questions from the IELTS exam. (http://www.eduers.com/ielts/writingsample.htm) As well as links to websites that instruct students on research, proofreading and also provide examples of academic essays (http://www.icanwrite.piczo.com/ howtowrite.htm)

The students' common grammar mistakes led to the inclusion of a page that specifically targeted grammar with explanations, examples and also activities those students could undertake online. Another page was also provided to show examples of fellow students' work, on the belief that examples of this nature would be valuable to all students, in demonstrating common errors. The website is intended to help students increase their knowledge of the expectations placed on them in relation to their future needs. This is done through providing relevant content, as well as chances for the students to discuss the content with others. This will be discussed in further detail below. Theoretical Justification for the creation of a website, and for the website containing the content that it does One of the key motivational forces of the web page was to get students to improve their writing ability, and this included both making less grammatical errors in their writing, as well as becoming more familiar with various different English writing genres. The web site tries to deal with grammar errors in two main ways, firstly it uses the more traditional approach where grammar items are focused on separately, this is similar to the way the students are being taught their grammar currently, and it doesn't seem to have a strong influence on the students' improvement in understanding of English grammar. As Gilbert states (2004 pg363) students are unable to make a jump from this form of traditional grammar teaching to their own writing. However first explaining the grammar in isolation from a body of writing should at least allow the students to understand the fundamental grammar rule being focused on. Secondly the students can see grammatical rules in action inside a piece of writing that is provided on the student's work page. Here the student's will have a chance to discuss grammatical rules in relation to a piece of writing of similar standard to their own. As Gilbert also mentions (2004 pg363) the students can learn to look for clues in writing that will help them avoid making grammatical mistakes. Together through discussion the students can build up their skill of proofreading and hopefully automate their ability to pick up grammar errors, a skill that the students are not so likely to learn if the rules of grammar are 'spoon fed' to them. Another area of importance is the nature of interaction between the student and the website; the students have access to this resource at any time, and may make us of the website when they feel motivated to learn. This is obviously the ideal time for a student to study, and it can not be guaranteed that the prearranged class time will be suitable for the student to be suitably motivated, awake or interested enough to learn at their optimal level of ability. Also the website can try to provide students with work that is most relevant for them, as it is created by the teacher for the students, and is easily updateable. Unlike a text book that is static and is impossible to update or change the content as the teacher wishes and the student needs. A website's ability to be continually, easily and quickly updated allows the website's content to stay with the students' Zone of Proximal Development. The zone of knowledge that is just 'ahead' of where the student's learning is up to and thus is the next item of learning that the student can easily acquire (Lantolf 2000 pg17). Thus a website is a resource more suited to the dynamic nature of a language learning classroom. As Bell and Gower state, "there is no course book that

can cater for all of the needs of all the learners all the time" (1998 pg 116). While a webpage may not be able to achieve this goal either, it can arguably come closer to achieving such a goal. The website's addition of online discussion groups is also an important feature, with this turning the relationship between the website and the student from a more passive one to a more interactive relationship. Here the student is reading, but also publishing their own thoughts and beliefs and also thinking about and, in conjunction with other students and the teacher, cocreating new concepts and ideas on learning English and writing. Social constructionist theory believes that knowledge should be "socially constructed through a process of discussion and negotiation within learning communities, where the social setting impacts on cognition" (Geer and Barnes 2007 pg 127) It is hoped that through allowing the student to be more involved in the process of discussing their learning experiences the students will be greater motivated to learn (Breen and Littlejohn 2000 pg 25). Also this should provide a 'safer' environment in which students may express themselves. By communicating through reading and writing the student has as much time as he or she needs to compose their contribution to the discussion, unlike a real-time classroom conversation where the student may find that they are unable to contribute to a discussion (Chapelle 2001 pg 60). Also the online discussion board allows the students to keep their identity a secret and thus avoid any loss of face, or stress, that they may feel if they were to us their English language incorrectly in a face-to-face discussion. Evaluation of site. The site has been operational for about 2 months now and during that time there has been nearly 200 hits (www.icanwrite.piczo.com) suggesting that a fair few students have visited the website. This in and of itself is a success that the website is being visited, however unfortunately a lot of the other pages have significantly less visits, suggesting that many students, after viewing the first page, are not continuing to view any further pages. Perhaps the initial page is in some way off putting to some students? After interviewing some students it seems that in the beginning some students couldn't find the other page links. This was due to a poor choice background that further obscures the text on the first page. Indeed Van Schaik and Ling (2001 pg 523) mentions how the importance of good position and a clear contrast between the background and the hyperlink can aide in the navigation of a website. However the students who have visited the site, and were able to navigate past the first page, have all mentioned that the site contains very useful information. Some students have even gone as far as to introduce the site to other friends of theirs. When asked about if the site would be easier to navigate if it was bilingual in nature it was surprising to see that all the students disagreed, mentioning that it would partially lose some of it's attraction as the students all conceded that they would only read the Chinese and ignore the English. Some students suggested that there was too much text and this didn't present the site in the most attractive way, they hoped that there could be pictures added to the website to help make the site more interesting and also to allow for an ease of navigation. It was suggested that icons and clearer sub-headings could be made use of to allow different links and different types of content

to be more easily found. When questioned about some of the links in the different pages of the websites, frequently students had not realized that such a link existed. This could be further evidence to support that there needs to be changes made to the setout of the information on the pages. One particular failure of the site, and this was originally seen as major advantage of this online resource, was the discussion groups. The reason for this failure seems to be manifold. Firstly it seems that the website that is currently being used asks the students to sign up for an account before they can write on the message board. The sign up process, which is all in English, seems to be a little confusing for students. One way to avoid this that will probably be implemented in the near future is to have a Blog linked to the webpage, this will ideally be a Chinese language Blog server and this will provide the students with extra ease in signing up to discuss English learning online. Some other students mentioned how they were unsure of what to write, finding the questions asked to be too abstract for the students to answer. Perhaps the questions needed to guide the students more as to what was expected of them. Some students suggest that in a Blog there could be different sections related to different topics, and the students expressed more willingness to talk about cultural or current affairs topics than to discuss the learning process. Perhaps such measures could be used to allow the students to get accustomed to the new site, and the new technology, through more informal chatting before more cognitive challenging discussion was undertaken. Geer and Barnes (2007 pg127) mention how it is important that members of an online learning community should feel comfortable before they can effectively take part in the learning process. Lastly some students suggested that they would feel more comfortable using MSN or QQ, a Chinese language online chat program, than using the online message board. This would however mainly only allow for real time conversations to occur, which would remove many of the earlier mentioned benefits of an online message board. However such an idea does seem to provide an example of the phenomenon called 'media stickiness' where students seem to be set in their ways of online communication, and perhaps see other, unfamiliar forms of online communication as unattractive (Geer and Barnes 2007 pg127). Some comments that the students gave about the student's exercise page (http://icanwrite.piczo.com/exercisepage)of the website showed strongly the Chinese attitude towards learning. In the student's exercise page of the website there had been provided an example of a student's work. The students all agreed that it was good to use classroom work as an example, agreeing that they would probably make a lot of the same mistakes. However the students didn't see any value in discussing the student's work. The student's hoped that the teacher would provide the students with an example and tell them what the good or bad aspects of the article were. When discussing the value of students practicing how to identify the good and the bad aspects of the article, the students were politely quiet, suggesting, indeed disagreement or at least confusion perhaps in relation to this suggestion. This response is hardly surprising when one thinks that Chinese education is particularly teacher centered and also focused around rote memorization

(Ho 2002 pg 287). Thus the students feel that the teacher's job is to do the explaining and the pointing out of what are the good or bad aspects of a piece of work. Breen (2001 pg 132) mentions how each classroom has an established culture and that the class as a whole is predominately conservative and will try to maintain the perceived status quo. So it is warned that new teaching methods could indeed be seen as a threat to the established classroom culture. This could also lead to reasons why the website was not as fully made use of as was hoped. However in light of this fact, that the website has received any support at all from the student body, is also an achievement and testament to it's usefulness as a resource. In relation to the web page that is titled "How to Write" (http://icanwrite.piczo.com/howtowrite) students repeatedly expressed the value of this page, and hoped for more examples of other genres to be added to this site, with some student's mentioning such genres as comparative essays, descriptive writing of graphs, a possible IELTS examination task, and even scientific report writing. The web page that held examples of grammar exercises and grammar rule explanations, that was occasionally referred to in the classroom, was seen as being useful too, and it was hoped that more exercises and homework tasks could be provided online. Including essay writing tasks, especially in relation to current affair events, several students expressed interest in wanting to write and share their opinions about such topics online. Lastly students hoped for more content to be added to the webpage, with a frequent request being made for a page dedicated to vocabulary. Students expressed their frustration with an inability to use a wide range of vocabulary to express their opinion in writing, especially in relation to using different words or phrases to express the same meaning throughout a written text. Other students were also worried about understanding the slighter nuances of two English words that are seemingly the same in meaning, but are used in different ways. This project has been very informative and it seems that some of the attempted goals of the website have been achieved but others still require further attention and thought if they are to be realized. The students' positive attitude towards the website linked with its support and the expressed hope for continual addition of new content to the website shows that the resource is being valued by some of the student body at least. The fact that some of the key goals of the website, that of encouraging student discussion failed, suggests that there is need for continual experimentation with the way that this is attempted in future. The creation of the website has lead to the discovery of many online resources that the teacher and students can continue to take advantage of in future. The relative ease of updating and modification of this form of resource, compared to a physical text book, makes this form of teacher resource valuable. It is also reassuring that the University itself has decided to formalize the usage of the website resource for students this year and in future years, with the supervisor expressing interest in seeing this website's continual existence for the benefit of future students. Lastly it was a valuable learning experience to interview the some of the student body and gain feed back into their opinions on the website. References

Breen, M.P (2001). The social context for language learning: A neglected situation? In C.N. Candlin & N. Mercer (Eds), English language teaching in its social context. London: Routledge. P.Van Schaik and J. Ling (2001), The effects of frame layout and differential background contrast on visual search performance in web pages, Interacting with Computers vol 13. Gilbert, M. (2004), Evidenced-based educational methods, Science Direct, viewed August 20 2008, <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780125060417> Breen, M.P. and Littlejohn. A. (2000) The significance of negotiation in Classroom decisionmaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapelle,C.A. (2001) Computer applications in second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geer, R. Barnes,A (2007) Beyond media stickiness and cognitive imprinting: Rethinking creativity in cooperative work and learning with ICTs, Educational Information Technology, Vol 12, September, Springer Netherlands. Lewis, K (2008) www.icanwrite.piczo.com Lantolf, J.P (2000). Introducing sociocultural theory. In J.P. Lantolf (Ed), Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bell, J and Gower, R (1998). Writing course materials for the world: a great compromise. In B. Tomlinson (ed) Materials development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ho, J. (2002). Curriculum documents as representation of institutional ideology- A comparative study. Language and education, 16 (4). Freeman, D.E & Freeman, Y.S (2001). Chapter 8: How do explorer teachers celebrate students' first languages and cultures? In Between worlds: access to second language. Portsmouth. Heinemann.