Appearance plays a major role in how students will react positively. In order to be an effective website, the layout should definitely be easy on the eyes and easy to read. If there are issues with links working or if it is too difficult to figure out, students will not be motivated to continue.  Integrating audio and video contributes to heightened interest thus enticing students to want to focus and engage in the activities offered. The font should be big enough to easily read and not require zooming in to be able to read it. Also, to promote more interest, the text should not be against a plain white background. 

Here are 5 websites that exemplify sound design ideals:

www.Busuu.com Awesome website that offers language learning dialogues, audio recordings and even an opportunity to speak with other language learners or native speakers for real-time practice.  It is beautifully organized with an appealing structure and appearance.  This site also offers a free app, which allows on the go learning and overall offers a well-rounded approach to language learning. 

www.duolingo is one of the most well rounded resources for studying world languages that is offered free of charge.  Students learn a language through reading, writing, listening and speaking.  The graphics on the site provide organized and interesting learning opportunities and the same is true for the free app. This site is extremely visually appealing and effective.

www.livemocha.com is an extremely comprehensive online learning community.  There are native speakers from over 200 countries who offer real-time interaction.  It is extremely organized with audio and video integrated which encourages students to use the program to actually learn a foreign language.  Interesting addition is the social media aspect that is attractive to many students and foreign language enthusiasts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/ - This website is extremely aesthetically pleasing and is one of my favorites.  BBC Languages’ site is very aesthetically pleasing. It also integrates the use of multimedia resources, including audio recordings of dialogues and videos. I have used the “MI Vida Loca” series in Spanish class and my students loved it!  This particular series was a virtual tour of Madrid with real-life interaction involved such as actually paying a cab driver by clicking on the money and putting it in his hand.  The videos were intriguing and students couldn’t wait until the next episode.  Very well organized and motivate the students to continue learning. 

www.babbel.com - This website is similar to LiveMocha because it is a digital learning community, but not quite as structured.  It is extremely thorough when it comes to teaching vocabulary and includes video and audio.  In addition there is a chat feature that offers five different chat rooms in the languages it teaches.  There is also a live forum for interaction to help each other learn.  This site is very well organized and visually appealing. 

5 websites that don’t exemplify sound design ideals:

https://www.lepointdufle.net/- This website offers a wide variety of activities to learn French, but is not very user friendly.  The text is hard to read and does not pop. Light blue font with a white background is extremely difficult to read. In addition, this website doesn’t do a good job of integrating audio and video. The links seem to be an unending maze that goes on and on, which creates a lot of frustration when trying to find what you’re searching.

www.quia.com- This website has hundreds of shared activities that teachers have created at no charge.  Students can find games and quizzes that go with their textbooks.  There are no videos and audio, but there are plenty of activities to reinforce learning any subject.  The organization is good, but the appearance needs much improvement. 

www.conjuguemos.com- This website is great for reinforcing verbs, grammar and vocabulary in French, Spanish, German and Italian.  On the other hand, it is very dry and doesn’t integrate any audio and video.  It is designed for rote memory of content, which causes the students to lose interest very quickly. 

www.Makebeliefscomix.com - This website allows for creation of comic strips, but I did not find it very attractive or that easy to use.  The bubbles are not large enough to hold long sentences.  It is definitely not visually appealing nor does it integrate audio and video. 

www.quizlet.com -This is a good resource that allows students to create flashcards for any subject.  It also integrates audio for students to listen to the pronunciation of vocabulary.  The appearance of the website is not attractive, nor does it integrate videos.  Although it helps students to memorize vocabulary and is organized well, it is not appealing at all.