Week 7 - Implementation #2

As week 2 of implementation has come to a close I will once again evaluate and reflect on my progress during this week. This week my focus was going to be on writing a present tense paragraph, and completing all activities for the conditional tense. I decided to instead do all activities for both and write a paragraph combining these tenses. I could not quite adhere to the daily schedule I made last week due to exams for other courses. Despite not following the day-to-day activities, having a certain amount of time to spend on each activity in a certain order was definitely beneficial.
My results for the online verb conjugator and paragraph are shown in the same format as last week below.

Online verb conjugator result table:

Discussion: These results show more accurately my improvement throughout the week as it is analytical (i.e. there is an actual percentage to compare), rather than last week's assessment being more judgemental. In all categories I improved significantly, and achieved my goal of 80%.

Paragraph correction result:

Discussion: I am quite happy with these results. The errors made were not based off any fundamental mistake, rather it was mostly using the wrong tense in the wrong context. I.e I made no conjugation mistakes! Yay! In addition, dad wrote a comment saying "Very well done! I think if you would do a few more exercises you would have perfect results!" A great confidence boost :)

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In addition to this assessment analysis, I would also like to apply some concepts from Mike Levy's week 5 lecture. He refers to Egbert & Hanson-Smith's (1999) eight 'Conditions for Optimal Language Learning Environments. It seems appropriate here to reflect on the efficiency of my language learning challenge with respect to some of these principles. I have chosen and reflected on the four principles that are most applicable to my challenge, as below:

1.  Learners are exposed to and encouraged to produce varied and creative language: This principle is well incorporated into my challenge through my paragraph writing. It requires me to be creative in terms of vocabulary, using new sentence structures, and different tenses.
2.  Learners have enough time and feedback: By creating a daily schedule, I think I have definitely given myself adequate time. In terms of feedback, I receive this on both my online quizzes in the way of a numerical score, as well as with my paragraph.
3.  Learner autonomy is supported: After doing the VARK Questionnaire and several other learning method analysis tests, I have been able to adjust my challenge to how I learn best. For example, when learning the conjugation rules I have made it as visual as possible to reflect my strength in visual learning. 
4.  Learners work in an atmosphere with an ideal stress/anxiety level: The language learning challenge is an individual, independent process, allowing me to complete it at my own pace in my own time. An advantage of this is that I am not put under any significant stress or pressure. A disadvantage however, is that it is easier to fall behind as there is no incentive or no one checking that I am keeping on top of my work. Therefore perhaps a slightly higher pressure environment would be better. 

The four other conditions include: 5. Learners have opportunities to interact and negotiate meaning; 6. Learners interact in the target language with an authentic audience; 7. Learners are involved in authentic tasks; and 8. Learners are guided to attend mindfully to the learning process.
I feel as though these conditions are not incorporated as strongly into my challenge. However, it is difficult to satisfy all criteria and I think incorporating half is rather effective considering the scope of the challenge.

This is all for now, until next week when I have learnt the futur proche (near future)! :)

References:

- Egbert, J., & Hanson-Smith, E. (1999) CALL Environments: Research, Practice, and Critical Issues. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Week 6 Blog Entry - Implementation #1

After posting my final LL Challenge Proposal, it is now finally time for implementation. In this blog post I will begin by reflecting on the first week of implementation, highlighting things that worked, things that didn't, and what to change in order to make them work. I will also discuss slight changes made to my challenge plan, and post my results from this week. Finally, I will discuss any further changes to my LLC.
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Reflecting on the past two weeks:

Last week (in week 5), I had planned to do a revision of the present tense (le présent) and past tense (le passé composé). I found several resources online, including:

• The rules and endings for -er, -ir, -re verbs in the present tense. 
• Common irregular verbs in the present tense. 
• DR MRS VANDERTRAMP - a common way to remember the 16 irregular verbs which take être as the auxiliary instead of avoir in the passé composé.
• I wrote a list of present tense irregular verb, with: the verb; the translation; the conjugations for je, te, il/elle, nous, vous, ils; the past participle

After printing off and studying these rules, I used the online verb conjugator I found. My initial thoughts are positive and I noticed an improvement in my scores from about 40/50% - 70/80%. One problem with the website is that there are a lot of verbs I don't know, and am therefore finding more difficult to conjugate. I am getting better at these, but it is still providing some difficulty.

This week (week 6), I have veered from my initial plan as I have an exam in week 7 for which I need to be able to use the imperfect tense fluently. Therefore, I spent quite some time this week learning the imperfect and all its rules. For the writing exam, we also need to use the passé composé, therefore I decided to adjust my plan slightly and have written a paragraph this week concerning these two past tenses. I sent this paragraph to my dad for correction and will discuss the results further in this post.

During this week, I also bought the full version of the app 'Très Bien' for $4.49. I have been doing exercises on this app, with the aim of redoing a set of questions until I achieve 100%. This has been helpful and has made me really think about what I am doing. A negative of the app however, is that it doesn't include a lesson on the passé composé.
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Adjustment of LLC plan:

According to what I have done these past two weeks, I will have to change my schedule a bit. Firstly, I haven't been delegating time effectively enough to this challenge, and therefore have found myself falling behind and having to change around my schedule. Therefore I think in this post it is critical to redefine my order of learning the tenses, as well as create a weekly schedule of when I will complete which activity. When we did the peer review, I saw Sophie had a schedule of which activity she would do each day. This seems like a great idea to keep on top of the work so I have decided to implement something similar. Both the new order and weekly schedule are shown below:

New order:

Weekly schedule:

This schedule amounts to ~1.5 hours per week of work on the challenge. This seems reasonable. 

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Assessment results: 

My results for the passé composé and the imparfait and a short discussion about each are shown below:

Online verb conjugator result table:

Discussion: These results quite accurately reflect my knowledge, as I do feel I am not 100% fluent yet, but I have definitely improved significantly since the start of the week. It is also on/above my goal of 80%. The only issue I am finding with this assessment method is that there are some verbs (especially irregular) that I do not know and therefore get wrong.

Paragraph correction result:

 Discussion: Since there is not a high number of verbs used, only a few mistakes show a big percentage drop, and therefore these results seem quite low. However, this is relative and is likely to be a continued trend throughout the challenge, therefore not presenting an important issue.

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Further changes to LLC:
In order to more accurately document my actual improvement for each tense, I will do an online verb conjugation quiz at the start of each week - before I have learnt the tense. I will do this on Monday. This will be able to show me more effectively whether I have actually improved. It will quantitively describe this improvement, providing a much more reliable basis for analysis.

This is all for the first implementation of my learning challenge. C'était très utile! (It was very useful [in the imperfect tense]) Hopefully it helps me in my exam on Monday!

À bientôt :)

My Final Language Learning Challenge Proposal

My Title: A learning journey of different times – French tenses

My Challenge:
Having studied French consistently through high school, I acquired an intermediate-advanced level in speaking, reading, and writing. For the past two years I have been studying engineering and haven’t made a strong effort to keep up my French. I have undoubtedly noticed the effects in several different ways after recommencing studying the language this semester. Although vocabulary – always my strongpoint – does not seem to pose an issue, it is grammar that is limiting my further language improvement. In particular, tense conjugations have always been an area of weakness for me. I believe that by improving this area, I will be able to further my French abilities significantly especially in terms of writing and speaking confidence. Therefore, for my Language Learning Challenge I have chosen to focus on learning, practicing, and actively using French verb conjugations.

My Learning Goal:
My main goal for this 6-week learning challenge will be to identify, learn, and practice several different tenses and ultimately become proficient and confident in using these. I will aim to learn one tense a week through the following process:

1. Writing down the tense and its rules and conjugations;
2. Using colour/visual aids to make it more memorable;
3. Doing simple conjugation exercises on an iPhone app. Choice of app TBD;
4. Practicing conjugation further using a online French verb conjugation trainer;
5. Finishing the week by writing a paragraph using predominantly that tense; and
6. Asking my dad, who speaks fluent French, to correct this paragraph.

In my initial proposal I suggested additionally enhancing my cultural knowledge by listening to French songs. However, due to my course workload having increased dramatically, I have decided I will not have time to do this.

My learning styles and strategies:
In order to determine which learning style and strategies are best suited for me during this challenge, it is critical to first reflect on the effectiveness of previous methods. In high school, I used to print out pages with the different tenses and conjugations and put them on my wall with the purpose of this providing constant exposure and practice. This worked at first, but I found that after a while the pages would blend in with the wall and I did not pay attention to them. I also downloaded podcasts to listen to while driving, but unfortunately I often found myself zoning out.

Considering the relatively unsuccessful experiences mentioned above, I have undertaken a VARK Questionnaire and completed a Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) in order to determine more effective learning methods. My results are as below.

VARK Questionnaire

I consider these results an accurate reflection when evaluated against my personal beliefs and past learning experiences. Having visual aids such as pictures and colour coding helps me learn and remember, as does actively being involved in ‘tangible’ activities. 

My lack of success with the car podcasts is reflected in a low result in aural learning. However, a result that I do not agree with from the questionnaire is my low score on read/write. Perhaps with my engineering subjects this is applicable, but when learning a language writing practice is crucial – especially for grammar.

Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL)
I scored especially highly on "remembering more effectively" (part A) and "compensating for missing knowledge" (part B). After re-reading the questions for these criteria I do feel that these reflect my areas of strength. Most questions in both part A and B reflect visual and kinaesthetic learning styles, for example remembering the location of words on pages or using body gestures to negotiate meaning.

Additionally, based on the reading by Wong & Nuncan (2011), I have been able to further identify my language learning style – communicative and concrete. I am a communicative learner since I have certainly experienced the benefit of learning by conversation; I am also a concrete learner as my strength in visual learning makes games, pictures, and videos very effective learning methods.

Ultimately, being aware of my strength and weaknesses by completing these surveys has allowed me to incorporate them into making my LL challenge as efficient and effective as possible. I will make my initial learning of each tense as visual as possible, and the practice as kinaesthetic as possible by using engaging mobile applications.

The technologies I am going to test:
For practicing the tense conjugations after I have learnt the rules, I will be using a combination of mobile applications and a website. I analysed a range of applications and websites but found a lot of these were either quite expensive (Busuu, Open Language, babbel.com) or too vocabulary based (MindSnacks, Memrise).

The technologies I decided would be relevant to my specific challenge are analysed as in table 1 below:

Table 1 – Analysis of relevant technologies 

When analysing these technologies in terms of their language pedagogies, they do not seem to fully reflect my learning styles or optimal pedagogies (i.e. CLT and immersion). However, during this 6-week journey, I will challenge myself a bit by trying to adopt different learning pedagogies. I believe the grammar translation method will be quite successful, since repetition is a critical element for remembering, especially in language learning.

My plan:
I will be focusing on one tense per week for the duration of the challenge. After careful consideration, I have based the order on several criteria:

1. Revision of tenses I already should know at this point;
2. Requirements for FREN2010 (i.e. required knowledge and usage upcoming exams); and
3. Recommendation from a friend who has studied several advanced French courses.

The order I will be following is:

Since I have a lot of class on Mondays that I have to prepare for, I will aim to finish each tense by Friday of that week. This gives me time to finish all practice, testing, and write a relevant blog post by the end of the week.

My evaluation approach:
My evaluation approach is as mentioned above in the technologies section. At the end of each week I will be writing a paragraph utilising mostly the tense I have focused on that specific week. To check my result, will ask my dad to correct this and give me a percentage mark of how many times the tense was right when used (i.e. if used 10 times and correct 6 times, mark is 60%).

I will also use the online French verb conjugation trainer to do a weekly assessment. The website I have chosen can be accessed via: http://www.verbs-online.com/french-verbs/french-verbs.htm. The format of this website is as shown in the image below.

This is a website I will be using throughout the week when practising my conjugations. At the end of the week I will do a 50-question test and also record my percentage score.

I will record my progress on a graph, while aiming for a score of above 80% each week. The final score requirement is yet to be decided.
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This proposal has been critically thought out, however it is subject to change if any unexpected situations arise during the semester that may require an adjustment to the LL challenge.

References:

o   verbs-online.com. (2016). Online French Verb Conjugation Trainer. Retrieved from http://www.verbs-online.com/french-verbs/french-verbs.htm

Week 3 and 4 - Updating and refining the proposal

Since my last blog post I have been absolutely swamped with work from other courses, and marking assignments for a subject I'm tutoring. Therefore I haven't been able to post as regularly as I would have liked, but from now I am going to make it a priority to set aside at least 1 hour each week to write a post, even if it's brief.

What I'd like to do in this post is reflect on the changes I've made for my proposal and how these came about. A major motivator for changing the proposal came from the peer review we conducted over the holidays. I teamed up with another Sophie who is also basing her challenge around French and she gave me some great feedback! Here are a few major changes I have made since:

• I have moved the section I originally had in 'My Challenge' which explained the different methods of learning I used when in high school to 'My Learning Styles and Strategies'. This seems like a much more suitable place as it helps give a clear analysis of my own learning methods.
• I have also really refined the actual learning styles and strategies section to not only describe my survey (VARK and SILL) results, but also to truly incorporate these in the challenge. I explained more clearly how I can use being aware of my strengths and weaknesses to my advantage in creating the most effective possible learning challenge. 
• The technologies I had explored previously were presented quite poorly, making it hard to understand how I decided to use certain technologies. In my final proposal I have therefore created a table including a description, advantages, disadvantages, and the learning pedagogy of each method. I have also tried to evaluate each technology more in terms of its pedagogical implications. 
• After Sophie's suggestion about finding an evaluation method more quantifiable than writing a paragraph, I found a great verb conjugation trainer online. This technology is very well suited to my challenge and will adequately record my progress.

These four points encapsulate the main changes made to my proposal after peer review. I have found this process of marking each other's work early on of invaluable help, and feel as though I have really been able to improve and finalise my proposal. To avoid making this blog post awfully long, I will post my proposal in my next post.

Besides the progress made on the learning challenge, the past few weeks of classes, readings, and online lectures have also captured my interest and allowed me to improve my proposal. I will talk briefly about some points I found interesting from week 3 and week 4. 

Week 3

- Mike Levy (2013) explained in his week 3 lecture that "personal technologies are becoming more relevant and Centrally Provisioned Technologies are possible becoming less relevant." In his lecture he also mentioned the top technologies used in language learning, some of these including online dictionaries, web-based translations, mobile phones apps, and conjugation websites. I found myself relating to this well as these are the main technologies I have used during my language learning journey, especially in the past few years, where I find textbooks have become of less critical use.

- I identified my learning styles as described by Wong & Nuncan (2011) as mostly communicative and concrete. These styles were described as being used predominantly by effective language learners, and therefore I included these points in my learning challenge. 

Week 4

- From reading 2 (Kennewell, as cited in Steel & Levy, 2013), I thought it was interesting how he basically described the teacher's role as being to "orchestrate the supporting features, including technology, of a learning context so that learners can use these features together with their existing abilities to achieve learning task outcomes." This is similar to the week 4 lecture which explained how a computer can be used as either a 'tool' or 'teacher'. Equally, the role of the teacher is evidently also interchangeable between these two. 

I will end my blog post on this note, and post my proposal tomorrow. 

À demain :)

References:

o   Levy, M. (2013). Week 3: Evolution of technologies for language learning [Lecture recording]. Retrieved from SLAT2002, University of Queensland Blackboard Online: https://learn.uq.edu.au/

o   Wong, L. L. C & Nunan, D. (2011). The learning styles and strategies of effective language learners. System, 39, 144-163.
o   Steel, C. H., & Levy, M. (2013). Language students and their technologies: Charting the evolution 2006 - 2011. ReCALL, 25(3). 306-320.