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.
___________________________________________________________________

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