HOW TO CHECK IF A WEBPAGE IS RELIABLE: VERY INTERESTING!

Nowadays, most of us, who are studying at secondary school or at University, even those who are curious readers or those who like to be updated with what happens all around the world, look for information in the net. We tend to read all the web pages that are related to the topic that concerns us to get information or - if we need to make a paper or a presentation - we sometimes quote in order to get our paper to look reliable. But how do we make sure that we are looking for information in a trustworthy web page?

Here we analyse two web pages Oxford University Press- Student’s site (https://elt.oup.com/learning_resources/?cc=ar&selLanguage=en&mode=hub) and ESL KIDS STUFF (http://www.eslkidstuff.com/flashcards.htm) to see whether they are reliable or not. In order to do that, we take into account a series of parameters that we strongly recommend that you should consider when you visit a web page for any purpose.

• Purpose: a web page may have many objectives: educational, commercial, personal, institutional, entertaining, among others. Both web pages we analysed have the same purposes commercial and educational. Oxford University Press web page offers students the possibility to access many coursebooks to find extra practice (grammar, vocabulary activities, etc) related to each unit in these coursebooks and students can also buy them. While the ESL KIDS STUFF site offers flashcards, games, songs, and lesson plans that teachers can use when developing their own lessons.
• Reliability and currency: what is important to point out here is whether we can contact the authors of the web page or not, who they are and the frequency in which they update the site. In the case of Oxford University Press site, it is one of the most prestigious publishing houses around the world making the information found here both trusty and authentic, apart from that it was recently updated in 2015 and it has a section in which we can contact the authors.On the other hand, though the authors of ESL KIDS STUFF do not belong to any publishing house or prestigious university, still they are experienced English teachers who design their own material and we can contact them by facebook, twitter, blogs, among others. All that is what makes the webpage reliable. Furthermore, it was last updated on June 6th with the latest trends on the English teaching lesson. Another thing that we should observe here is that added to the fact that anyone who wishes can contact the authors of these web pages, one of them (ESL) accounts for the fact that whatever it appears on their page was designed and produced by them, and the other one (Oxford’s) makes clear where the information is taken from, they account for every article, activity or anything else that was not produced by them.
• Appropriateness and relevance: We think that these pages we dealt with are appropriate each for different levels of proficiency in the English language. ESL KIDS STUFF is a web page directed to teachers who either work in the preschool level or in the primary levels, though preferably the first years only; while the Oxford page works with many books and other (more advanced) levels. They are both reliable, interesting and good pages, each with different purposes at view and aimed for different levels. If you are a teacher, make sure that the content you choose to work with in class would be contextualized and adapted to your students.

Clarity: While ESL KIDS STUFF is a webpage that intends to attract kindergarten or primary school teachers and the Oxford web page intends to attract higher levels, they are both well designed, according to their aims. ESL KIDS STUF has a lot of interesting pictures, and funny fonts, with a very colorful background. Oxford’s page is more formal, with few colours in its fonts and background. Still, they are both clear as to which their contents are and who they are meant to serve. Clarity is a really important feature!!

Having seen all these parameters that we should take into account when looking for information on the Internet, next time you are trying to make a paper look “wiser” or you are playing the “geeky/nerdy” guy in front of your friends, think first: is this source as reliable as I thought? … Really?

These are two articles that can help you solve any doubts you may have on how evaluating criteria to distinguish reliable and valid online information:

• From Lesley University
• From the British Council

We hope you can find them helpful!!