Software Evaluation # 3 Merit Software Evaluation

Title of Software: Merit Software Evaluation

Producer: Merit Software, since 1987

Target students (e.g., age or grade-level of students): ESL elementary.
* The producer is not limited to middle school and adult software available for ESL students but includes a variety of other products for all elementary , middle, high school levels, adult literacy and GED, college preparation, and special education.

Proficiency level (e.g., beginning, intermediate, advanced): Intermediate

Description:
The program is designed to help students with grammar. Topics are broken down into 6 units. The software is designed with a pre-assessment, activities/exercises, post assessment and follow up exercises. Scores also kept for students so that teacher can monitor their progress and have easy access to them.

The program is very user friendly. The student is presented with a sentence that is grammatically incorrect. They are given 2 answer choices to pick from. Students are given a star for each correct answer. Since the program is designed on levels, the student must be able obtain 6 stars before going on to the next level.

Language skills targeted: Written language. Although students are also given an opportunity to listen to the sentence they must work on.

Evaluation:

The strengths of the program include its user-friendly features, its ability to track student progress, and the programming that creates follow-up question for students on concepts they are having trouble with. In addition students are able to listen to the sentences. A weakness for this program is that it may not be culturally sensitive to all students. The sentences are biased to American students who have studied in the U.S. by using their vocabulary and their frame of reference.

I think that the program will be useful in the classroom because it allows students extra practice on their grammar skills. Since the program asks follow up question for the goals not met, students know what they still need to work on because of such immediate feedback. As a result this would be a good resource to draw from for those students who may still need help with grammar concepts.

Since the questions seem to be set up in drill format, the approach the developer is using has to behaviorist. The goal of this software package is to provide as much practice as possible so that students form good grammar habits.