English-at-home
Introduction
English-at-home
(Evaluated by Brian Rahn) provides a friendly, interactive way to learn reading and writing in English. The site primarily focuses on British English, but it does provide US alternatives to a few common terms.
Navigation
The major sections are listed in a right-hand menu with both colorful icons and text to indicate their content. Each section also has a submenu. The site design is excellent, overall.
Content
The site only focuses on reading and writing English. Visitors may be misled by the "Speaking" category. The category explains word choices and offers tips for maintaining a conversation. It does not provide pronunciation guides, sound samples, or in any other way indicate how to actually speak in English. The site makes a token gesture by offering links to several talk-radio stations, but it does not provide any way to understand what the stations are saying.
The vocabulary section explains terms such as "filing cabinet," but terms such as "correspondence" and "unpredictable" stand on their own. The other sections have a similarly strange mix of basic writing mixed with confusing details.
The games are all fun and cover useful topics, but they suffer from two basic flaws. First, they all cover fairly complex vocabulary and sentence structure. Second, they do not let you compare your wrong answers with the correct answers.
Summary
This site lacks a clear target audience and the result is a muddy mix of basic information and picky details. The site promotes flawlessly correct English, which is fine for more advanced learners. That audience, though, will find the �Speaking Tips� and vocabulary not merely useless, but often insulting.
English at Home promotes itself as a way to teach yourself English, but it builds from the bottom up. It starts with the bitter details and nuances and works toward the most basic writing activities. I can not recommend this site as a tool for learning English.
Rating
I give this site 2 out of 5 spinning plates.
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