Online Language Learning Resources: A Feature Analysis

The onslaught of Covid-19 pandemic has made the current year the least effective as far as academic activities are concerned. Concerns and doubts are looming large on proper impartation of class room teaching, right from elementary to higher education. Inquisitiveness in us is exploring virtual mode of education and there is no better time to ponder upon the method and the medium than now and access it’s potential. Numerous websites have started providing virtual classes and courses in varied subjects and are turning more and more creative and interactive to the users. The present paper tries to explore the language teaching and learning as being presently provided by various on-line resources across the globe including India.  
This article aims at evaluating the online language learning websites and looks into the availabilities of linguistic contents and materials. It also looks into the techniques and activities used as a part of language instruction practice by the websites. This study has used the secondary sources to do the qualitative analysis with quantitative expressions. For the current study, multiple websites have been assessed on the basis of certain parameters such as, number of languages available for learning, conduction of placement test, accessibility, learning purpose, learning level, language activities, linguistic contents, language assessment and user friendliness. Following are the elaborations of the mentioned features.


.Introduction:
Whenever, a review is done of any material in printed form such as book or article etc., the analysis generally refers to certain instruments such as structural lay out, conceptual details and contents covered. Similarly, the current research, which looks into the online resources have also taken the help of the above stated factors. The only additions to the mentioned instruments are accessibility and user friendliness. There are multiple resources available for e-language learning and the interest of the present study is in the language learning websites. Most of the websites are offering courses in multiple languages and the languages which are offered the most are English, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, Italian, Arabic, German, Korean, Japanese.
Similarly, amongst Indian languages, Hindi is the most offered language for learning in national as well as global websites.
2. Elements used for feature analysis: As mentioned earlier, this research paper has focused on various interactive language learning websites and has evaluated fifteen language learning websites 1 following certain www.ijellh.com 23 parameters. The parameters chosen for the feature analysis of the websites, has given emphasis on both linguistic contents as well as extralinguistic information.

Extra linguistic features:
The extra linguistic feature presents the structural and functional aspects of a language learning website, which are as follows: a accessibility, whether it provides free or paid service. The services provided by a particular website has been recorded under three categories such as free, freemium and premium. The free service is devoid of any charge and provides an open access to all its linguistic content and material. The Freemium language service supply free learning content up to a certain level and then demands a fixed amount for furtherance of the learning process and level.
The premium services are those which can't be accessed, without taking a paid subscription.
d.Learning Purpose: Learning purpose has already been proved to be a major determiner for learning outcome.
Website's set up and content is analysed to see whether it imparts training to users, usually in an education setting, to use language appropriately. This feature differentiates the learning purpose under three categories such as academic, non-academic and professional.
If the website purposefully stresses on achieving classroom-based goals, it can be categorised as website with academic purpose. On the other hand, if the website and its content on language teaching is about informal use of language in an informal set up without systematic classroom inspired goals/tasks of learning, the website is categorised under non-academic purpose. Similarly, professional language teaching inspires a learner to get mastery over language to accomplish specific professional objectives.
e. Learner Level: Learner's level has always been a key issue in instructional medium, as it directly influences the design, preparation and production of study materials. f. Learning assessment: Stassen et al., (2001) defined assessment as the systematic collection and analysis of information to improve students' learning. Assessment is a key component in learning. It helps a learner to know his/ her learning achievement level and which ultimately functions as a motivating factor for improving learning as well as chasing higher academic or nonacademic goals in life. The availability of this feature is checked by going through the website's mode of conducting periodic tests, gradual upward difficulty level etc.. Learning assessment has been referred to yes/no dichotomy, in the current feature analysis, for the possible findings related to conduction of learning assessment by a specific website.
g. User friendliness 3 : For analysing this parameter, the website is scanned to check the user interface, simple appearance and easy to interact. It has been ranked on the scale of high, moderate and low.

Linguistic features:
The linguistic features include the actual academic teaching contents provided by a specific website for language learning, which are as follows: a. Linguistic contents: Linguistic operates at multiple levels such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. However, the linguistic content analysis for this specific study has selected www.ijellh.com 26 three levels such as phonetics, morphology and syntax. Thereby, this feature has undertaken a qualitative investigation of linguistic content with special emphasis on sound, words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs available for learning in a specific website.
b. Language activities: Language activities do play an important role in effective and substantial language learning. This feature looks into the kind of activities used for language instruction in the respective websites. This linguistic feature enquires, whether a specific website promotes individual or pair/group learning activities.
c. Teaching Learning Material (TLM): TLMs are always been employed well, to get better learning outcomes during a pedagogic session. Hence, it is necessary to explore the type of TLMs, a website utilises to engage a learner in the learning process and how the content information has been conveyed to its learners. TLM used for language instruction by a particular website has been clubbed under the segments of audio, video, textual and graphical medium. 3. Feature Analysis of the websites: Henceforth, the feature analysis proceeds with the help of above mentioned extralinguistic and linguistic features. The websites included in feature analysis with the linguistic and extralinguistic data are given below. The following table has got twelve columns and each column except 1 st and 2 nd , counts for a specific feature. 1 st and 2 nd column provide the serial number and name of the websites respectively. ii.
As per as the accessibility is concerned, most of the global language learning sites provide free services for beginner level, whereas for advanced learning, a premium subscription has to be done.
iii. Group level community learning should be encouraged, as collaborative learning enhances the ZPD (zone of proximal development), which ultimately gets reflected in a learner's acquired linguistic skills.
iv. The data of linguistic level analysis has suggested that sound level activities should be necessarily incorporated and encouraged, as most of the studies on error analysis suggests that the first language influences the second language speech. Hence, more is the students' awareness of phonetic level notation and pronunciation of the target language less will be the error production. In addition to it, paragraph level activities should also be introduced and regulated sincerely in order to get good oral or written production at composition level.
v. Any kind of assessment, may it be formative or summative is a must. As learning and assessment are very intimately and effectively connected for the success of any pedagogical practice. Whether, the learning is online or offline, commencing any type of assessment should be given a priority.
vi. The website should necessarily take into consideration the requirement of differently abled learners' requirements while designing and executing the learning programmes, which will definitely pave a pathway for inclusive education.