Final week!

This is the last post and what a journey it has been! I don't even need to change my Facebook and iPad back to English as I am able to understand it all. Plus, when new features are discovered in the future they will act as further learning experiences.

This week I was highly engaged in the course content as I was able to relate to using translation as a learning strategy from when I was on exchange in Brazil. The grammar translation method (GTM) however, appears to be a very outdated and disengaging pedagogical practice for 21st century learners. Although, I can see its relevance from the era starting in the late 1700s. I can imagine that it wouldn't be expected that students could access environments with NS like they can now with exchanges, holidays, etc. For this reason there was probably more of a focus on 'pen pals' and similar learning experiences which would require only writing and translating. As demonstrated by Cook (2010), translation in language teaching has often been associated with traditional pedagogies such as focussing on form, accuracy, artificiality, declarative knowledge and authoritarian teaching. In contrast to the contemporary focus on meaning, fluency, authenticity, procedural knowledge and collaborative learning (Cook, 2010). Despite GTMs outdatedness and criticism in contemporary classrooms, there are still advantages of using translation in language teaching. As demonstrated by Gnutzmann (2009) translation in language classes can effectively teach forms and structures, assists in comprehension development, further develops one’s mother tongue and increases learners’ knowledge about language and their language awareness to develop conscious and linguistically aware language learners. What’s more interesting is that some researchers believe we need to re-evaluate and re-adopt translation in language learning as they believe it is more important in our technologically rich 21^st century (Dagiliene, 2012; Witte, Harden & Harden, 2012). Additionally, we now have technologies in classrooms that would make for authentic and engaging application of translation practices (Witte et al., 2012).
Personally, I believe that there is a place for translation as a pedagogical practice in language classrooms with and without the aid of technologies. This is due to the high use of digital translators out of classrooms as a learning strategy. This is a strategy I’ve always used and used in depth in Brazil to assist my development of Portuguese. I found Google Translator a much more useful tool than dictionaries and phrasebooks and it is far quicker and has the ability to demonstrate pronunciation and effective use of conjugations. Additionally, incidental learning is often evident through the use of Google Translate as there is often things that are learned about words/phrases that were not the aim when using the tool.

Now that I've shared my love for Google Translate I’ll focus on my technologies and final week of my challenge.
DuoLingo’s goals have all been met, but this will not be the end of our time together! I have reached the next checkpoint which ended up being my main goal in the end, however there is still a final set of skills to learn to master the app and ultimately the language! I had to complete 2 skills to reach this goal, but I also completed a third skill, Flirting, as I was interested to see what it had to offer. The ‘core’ skills I learnt this week were Irregular Plurals and People. The Irregular Plurals skills was more difficult than I expected and required substantial use of the explanations section to understand. However, I was already quite confident with the People skill as it is something that is often focussed on in language classes. The Flirting skill was quite ridiculous in the end, but of course that was expected from the beginning. As you can see below, I learned how to say phrases such as vous me plaisez – I have a crush on you & vous etes mannequin? – Are you a model?
Despite these phrases being quite useless, I did learn a lot of vocabulary relating to love, beauty, going out, etc. Although I achieved all my goals relating to DuoLingo, I am still quite far behind Bronte and Melanie, as I am sure their focus must have been on DuoLingo rather than a range of technologies. Nevertheless, my overall learnt vocabulary, as demonstrated by DuoLingo (2015) is……………. 880 words!!! I am extremely happy with this end result and can happily say I learnt a huge range of French vocabulary from using DuoLingo over the last 5 weeks. The parts of speech I learnt include verbs, proper nouns, pronouns, prepositions, numerals, nouns, interjections, determiners, conjunctions, adverbs, adjectives and others that are unspecified.
It may be apparent that the focus on learning grammar became a little overtaken by vocabulary throughout my challenge. As evidenced by the amount of words I learnt, it is hopefully a bit clearer as to why I was unable to focus on both the language proficiencies to the same extent. I do however feel more confident in reading, writing and creating sentences using a range of new vocabulary in the correct grammatical style. This is only possible because of the various activities offered by DuoLingo that allowed me to focus on both competencies and practice their correct uses.
Overall, I would rate DuoLingo a 4/5 for its French vocabulary and grammar development effectiveness. I will definitely be using this app again in the future to finish the French module and possibly complete the Portuguese and Spanish modules as well. I will keep posted to see when they add an Indonesian module as I would be very motivated to learn that through DuoLingo to then use in context during a surfing holiday.

For the final week of Quizlet I selected a study set of surfing vocabulary for some extra motivation, I originally planned to compete the 5^th part of French Intermediate 1, however it became apparent that this study set does not exist! The surfing study set was very enjoyable and included vocabulary such as waves, surfers, boards and water. As I was not very familiar with many of the words it took me quite some time to achieve 15 seconds and below 3 times. However, I finally did so in 15, 14 and 13.4 seconds. This means that my overall personal best for this challenge was the 11.4 seconds I achieved in week 3. Considering I originally planned to achieve a score under 20 seconds this is a great accomplishment. Upon completion, this means I have achieved my goals set out in my proposal for Quizlet, and even surpassed them.
Overall, I was quite happy with Quizlet’s vocabulary choices to suit my language level. I enjoyed the gamification style of matching the correct vocabulary and consequently learnt a lot. I still think this app could have better complimented DuoLingo if the vocabulary was similar week to week. If I were to do a similar challenge in the future I would find a study set that matches the skills in DuoLingo that I engage with and use Quizlet’s matching game to compliment the DuoLingo skills. Even so, I would give Quizlet 3/5 for its effectiveness and focus on developing vocabulary.

On Facebook this week I made sure I was able to understand everything possible that I would come across in the future using the app. I looked through the parametres (settings) that in the beginning of the challenge looked very scary! I clicked through all the settings and was able to understand how to change them if I needed to. To consolidate this knowledge I posted a link to my profile for friends to sign up to Uber, which would give me free credit to use it in the future. However, I didn’t want ALL of my friends to see that I posted it as I don’t usually like posting such tacky things. So, I filtered through the privacy and sharing settings to only have it visible by friends I would catch Uber taxis with. It was easier than I thought it would be and consolidated my comfort in using Facebook in French from now on. This means that I achieved my goals in Facebook by being able to understand everything in French unassisted.
Overall I would give Facebook a 3/5 for its effectiveness in vocabulary and grammar language learning. More specifically, I would give it a 2.75 for grammar and a 3.25 for vocabulary, averaging out to 3/5.

As I have been using all the above technologies on my iPad I feel very comfortable using it in French from now on. I have successfully completed the goal of being able to understand everything unassisted. However, I believe I achieved this goal last week as I haven’t had any difficulties since then with anything. I am even confident in changing any of the settings, unless it is to an unfamiliar language of course!
Overall I would give my iPad a 3.5/5 for vocabulary learning. It would achieve higher if there were more examples of contextualising the learnt vocabulary and grammar through the other technologies. However, I am very happy that I am able to navigate and understand everything after only 5 weeks. Of course my prior knowledge of French as well as using it in English greatly assisted in this component of the challenge.  

Finally, I will briefly review the feedback from my NS sister after completing my second 200 word essay on the topic of travel. She was very impressed with my second attempt and noted the improvements in using a more diverse range of vocabulary as well as less grammatical errors. She made a note that she was even more pleased that I had correctly included accents, unlike the first attempt. I believe this is due to DuoLingo’s cruel philosophy of failing an activity when accents are absent! However, even though I have greatly improved I still have room for further learning. My sister made notes of areas I could have used more descriptive language, such as describing the features of a place I want to visit. I believe by completing the rest of the French DuoLingo module I will be able to do so. Additionally, now that I’ve focussed on grammar and vocabulary it would be a good idea to work on my listening and speaking, thankfully both of which are also offered by DuoLingo!

As stated last week, by choosing my own Quizlet study set I would hopefully see improvement in similar vocabulary across all technologies. However, as I focussed on a surfing study set this was not the case. But I don’t think of this negatively as I have in previous weeks. As there was less to focus on using my iPad and Facebook, by already achieving the goals, I was happy to engage with a further range of vocabulary, especially when it meets my interests as a learner. As evidenced throughout this challenge the combination of these technologies has proven to be extremely effective in catering for my multimodal style of learning which kept me motivated and sufficiently challenged. Furthermore, the nature of the activities successfully catered for my analytical and authority-orientated language learning styles.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this language learning challenge and learnt far more than I anticipated. By discovering DuoLingo especially, I will be continuing to develop my French in my spare time with continued motivation from my followers and meeting daily goals. This challenge has also developed my learning potential in other academic areas through the use of critical reflection. Stay tuned for the possibility of more learning documentation in the future!
Bye for now, but not forever!

Cook, G. (2010). Translation in language teaching: An argument for reassessment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dagilienė, I. (2012). Translation as a Learning Method in English Language Teaching. Studies About Languages, (21), 124-129.

DuoLingo. (2015). French words learned. Retrieved from https://www.duolingo.com/words

Gnutzmann, C. (2009). Translation as Language Awareness. Translation in second Language Learning and Teaching, 53-77.

Witte, A., Harden, T., & Harden, A. R. O. (2012). Translation in second language learning and teaching. Peter Lang.

Week 4

Week 4 has again been a bit more laid back, with a continued break from other courses. I've successfully reached all my goals thus far and am very confident I will reach my final goals by the end of next week!

Again this week I will discuss some connections to course content followed by evaluating my progress using my technologies. The course content this week was especially catered to my challenge as it was focussed on Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). This is by far my favourite ‘ALL’ so far as it directly links with active learning of French vocabulary and grammar. The push/pull concept of MALL appears to positively influence SLA through further motivation and time on task (Mellow, 2005). To some extent my technologies push information and knowledge to me for language learning. This is particularly evident in DuoLingo where there is no choice of what to learn, just to complete the lessons to reach the next. However, Quizlet fosters the pull concept to an extent as there is a dearth of information and knowledge and it’s up to the user to choose which will benefit them the most. Perhaps the biggest reason I enjoy MALL is that the learning is catered for me to be used anywhere, anytime (Ally, 2007; Traxler, 2009). Although this may partly contradict what I mentioned above about DuoLingo, it was still my choice to select DuoLingo and I did so as it caters for my specific learning styles. Pedagogically, MALL has been demonstrated to positively influence learning through personalised, situated, authentic, spontaneous, context aware and informal practices (Kukulsha-Hulme, 2009). In the context of my technologies I don’t believe they support situated learning as I am developing my French language for further use than just navigating devices and communicating online. Similarly, the learning is only authentic for online use; however I believe this translates to real-world knowledge and skills, as mentioned in previous blog posts. Although I rarely undertake such practices, my iPad has the potential to capitalise on context aware practices to promote further learning experiences. However, contingent learning is evident through the combination of all my technologies and I often further investigate vocabulary in different contexts after learning on Quizlet and/or DuoLingo. The future of MALL in education is looking very excited as technologies are ever progressing with ever increasing implications in schools (Godwin-Jones, 2011; Watson & Plymale, 2011). I am interested to see how this will affect the teaching and learning of my future students either as a non-specialised primary teacher or a French teacher.

As next week is my final week, I wrote my second and final 200 word short essay on the topic of ‘travel’. I considered the feedback that was given to me after my first attempt as well as new vocabulary and improved sentence structures while writing. This was a great activity that made me feel very confident about my learning journey so far. I was able to incorporate new words that I’ve learned from all of my technologies and create a far more engaging and high quality essay. However, I won’t truly know how much I’ve improved until I receive the feedback from my NS sister. Next week I will discuss the feedback and similarities/differences to my self-evaluation to identify where I have improved and future implications for learning.

Now to focus on this week’s experiences using my technologies.

First I will quickly evaluate the appropriateness of my technologies used in my challenge through the six conditions of CALL (Levy, 2015a):
1. Language learning potential – The potential of language learning through the combination of these technologies is infinite. However, in the context of my challenge, development of vocabulary and grammar are the only possibilities. This is due to focussing on these language competencies and silencing the rest. However, the amount learned each week greatly depends on the engagement of activities and the range of new vocabulary and grammar available through the many learning experiences.

2. Learner fit – As previously mentioned in this blog, these technologies have been strategically selected as their combination caters for my multimodal style of learning. Additionally, my analytical and authority-orientated styles of language learning are catered for. Furthermore, the learning experiences encountered through using this technologies are specific to my language level. This is achieved through selecting intermediate level appropriate study sets on Quizlet, taking a placement test on DuoLingo, and challenging myself through French immersion in Facebook and my iPad.
3. Meaning focus – While using these technologies, especially my iPad and Facebook, I have the potential to focus my learning away from the meaning of the experience. This has been an issue so far with the previously mentioned technologies as I am not suing them solely for language learning. Instead, they are used for contextualisation and incidental learning. In doing so, it is easy to disregard the new French vocabulary and grammar, ultimately losing meaning from the technologies. However, when I stumble upon something new I quickly engage in the learning and focus on the meaning of the experience.
4. Authenticity – By incorporating my iPad and Facebook into this learning challenge I am increasing the authenticity of the learning. This is achieved as the technologies are not created specifically for language learning use, meaning I am engaging with ‘real-world’ authentic texts to enhance my learning experiences.
5. Positive impact – While these technologies sadly don’t assist in the learning of culture, they are positively impacting on my development of vocabulary and grammar, as well as my metacognitive strategies especially when used with this blog. This challenge as a whole is positively impacting on my skills and knowledge of learning languages successfully, for myself and future students.

6. Practicality – I have designed this challenge and implemented these technologies in order to maximise practicality. This means I can engage with the technologies anytime, anywhere. The biggest benefit of this is being able to focus on language learning during transit to work and university, when I would usually just be playing games.

This week in DuoLingo I have progressed where I anticipated and have only 2 skills left to learn to reach the next checkpoint and my major goal! The skills I learned this week included Prepositions 2 and Places. The Places skill in particular was motivating and engaging as it is generally an area of vocabulary that is a weakness of mine, while also being a practical area of any language. In class this week Melanie and I finally worked out how to add each other using my iPad. So now there are 3 people on my leader board to give me extra motivation. Use the QR Code below to see where I sit this week! Next week will be very interesting as I will be attempting to achieve all of my final goals. I am eager to see the final amount of learned vocabulary generated on the DuoLingo website. There will be lots of quantitative data useful in evaluating the effectiveness of this entire challenge. I will also be blogging about my experience of the Flirting skill. Currently I have 29 lingots and need 30 for this skill, so I am unable to do it this week.

 

This week’s study set on Quizlet was not as interesting as last week’s. Consequently, it took me longer to get under 15 seconds 3 times. I was also nowhere close to beating my personal best of 11.4 seconds. I did however complete it in 14.4, 14 and 13.4 seconds. Now that I have completed the 4^th and final unit in French Intermediate 1, I will select an interesting yet challenging study for next week.

This week on Facebook there was again a lot of incidental learning of grammar and vocabulary from routine activities. A survey suggestion popped up from Facebook asking me to answer some questions to improve my news feed. I am very glad I did this as I was quite unfamiliar with some of the vocabulary in the survey. For the first 2 questions I thought it was asking if I would like to see these sorts of pictures/posts in my news feed. I then quickly realised that it was asking if they looked like ads! From there on I was able to rate each picture/post appropriately. It had some suggestions from French restaurants and shops, giving me some authentic text to read in French in a push style, as mentioned above. This was a great learning experience filled with new vocabulary and a range of sentence structures, both assisting in achieving my goals.

Using my iPad has been so comfortable that I decided to change some settings. I was getting a little irritated at the amount of notifications I was getting, especially from Blackboard! So I found the section in the setting to change this and turned off many apps’ notifications as well as only displaying notifications on the Blackboard app’s picture rather than having them pop-up and/or stay in my notifications bar. On top of this great authentic learning experience, I set a couple more reminders (Rappels), this time with ease.

And so the pattern continues, the technologies have not been using similar vocabulary and grammar this week, unlike last (but like the one before, but not like the one before that!). I believe this is again due to the change in Quizlet study set and progression in DuoLingo. Next week, by this time selecting my own Quizlet study set, I will hopefully see this pattern continue and finish on a positive note where all technologies are using similar vocabulary, allowing for repetition. As demonstrated by Levy (2015b), repetition and opportunities for retrieval are important factors in incidental vocabulary learning. I believe the combination of my iPad and Facebook allow for both repetition and retrieval of incidentally learned vocabulary, maximising the incidental learning potential. The combination of these technologies has continued to prove to be effective in catering for my multimodal style of learning which is keeping me motivated and sufficiently challenged. Furthermore, the nature of the activities has also continued to cater for my analytical and authority-orientated language learning styles.

References

Ally, M. (2007). Guest Editorial-Mobile Learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 8(2).

Godwin-Jones, R. (2011). Emerging technologies: Mobile apps for language learning. Language Learning and Technology, 15(2), 2-11.

Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2009). Will mobile learning change language learning? ReCALL, 21(2), 157-165.

Levy, M. (2015a). Week 4: Evaluation of LL technologies [Powerpoint slides]. Unpublished manuscript, SLAT2002, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia

Levy, M. (2015b). Week 9: Mobile language learning [Powerpoint slides]. Unpublished manuscript, SLAT2002, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.

Mellow, P. (2005, December). The media generation: Maximise learning by getting mobile. In Ascilite (pp. 470-476).

Traxler, J. (2009) Learning in a Mobile Age. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 1(1): 1–12.

Waring, R., & Nation, I. S. P. (2004). Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning. Angles on the English speaking world, 4, 97-110.

Watson, C.E., & Plymale, W.O. (2011). The pedagogy of things: Ubiquitous learning, student culture, and constructivist pedagogical practice. In T. Kidd & I. Chen (Eds.), Ubiquitous learning: A survey of applications, research, and trends. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Week 3

Week 3 has been a bit more laid back compared to previous weeks, with a bit of a break from other courses. I've successfully reached all my goals thus far and am noticing many improvements, particularly in my vocabulary!

Again this week I will discuss some connections to course content followed by evaluating my progress using my technologies. While last week I spoke of the underlying pedagogies of my technologies in relation to my learning goals and challenge, I did not mention the extent of which these technologies could be used for other learning areas. I will be using parts of Chapelle’s (2001) principles for evaluating technologies, in particular the pedagogical approaches underpinned to maximise learning. The modular approach using DuoLingo has the potential to promote learning and development in the language competencies of reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar (Levy, 2009). However, there does not appear to be any focus on the cultural competency, especially as the language is French without any connections to the country or countries that speak French. Additionally, some activities in this app are heavily underpinned by the grammar-translation pedagogy. According to this article, the translation is what makes the owners of DuoLingo their money, enabling the app to be free forever. Quizlet has the potential to promote the competencies of vocabulary, reading, listening and writing, with the vocabulary aspect being the main focus of the app. Using my iPad and Facebook both independently have the potential to promote every competency. The iPad achieves this through the use of particular apps while Facebook also has many possibilities as a language learning social network and community. Communities such as Facebook give users the ability to develop all competencies, especially culture, as well as receive feedback from NS (Levy, 2007). However, I especially find Facebook and the iPad’s contextualisation and incidental learning of grammar and vocabulary the most useful for my challenge (Groot, 2000; Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001; Waring & Nation, 2004). All four technologies also have many multimodal capabilities that further engage and motivate users in their learning experiences (Hampel & Hauck, 2006). I believe the iPad has the most potential to achieve this in a range of contexts.

Now to focus on this week’s experiences using my technologies.

This week in DuoLingo I have again progressed further than expected and learned the new skills Objects and Adjectives 3. Together these skills consisted of 17 lessons, which is far more than I planned to do in a week. However, with 22 lessons now left until the checkpoint I thought I would get a bit of a head start. I’ve now got only 2 skills left to learn and I will have reached my main goal for this challenge! Conveniently this will mean learning 2 skills each week, however, I anticipate that I will earn enough Lingots to be able to buy the skill Flirting and I wouldn’t miss completing it and sharing my experiences on this blog! Now that I’m progressing further into DuoLingo I have come across an additional 3 affordances. Firstly, the app is offering descriptions of complex concepts such as Plurals to enhance understanding. Secondly, the Select the missing word activity was new and a great way to consolidate understanding of feminine plurals. Thirdly, I’m receiving weekly emails from DuoLingo giving an overview of my weekly progress. The only negative with the weekly report is that it seems to send on Tuesdays, after I’ve already blog posted about the week! I’ve included last week’s one below. This week, as I completed for more than I anticipated, I’m on top of the leader board! I’ve discovered that each lesson earns 10xp, so it will be interesting to see my total xp at the end of this challenge for some quantitative data.

I was more motivated than previous weeks with Quizlet’s matching game since French Intermediate 1 Unit 3 study set is focussed on food and eating related vocabulary! However, there was again quite a lot of new vocabulary that made it difficult for me to match in under 15 seconds. Although, it definitely helped that some of the words in French and English can be quite similar such as soda and soft drink or anchois and anchovies and even moutarde and mustard. After playing around 15 times I was finally able to break the 15 second goal. Shortly after, I achieved this twice more and even managed to do it in 11.4 and 11.7 seconds! (note: the 11.7 score is in small writing under the play again button in the 13.3 photo). 11.4 seconds is my personal bestand may very well be for the entire challenge. Through this online learning experience I am now more confident in talking about foods and even ordering in a restaurant.

This week on Facebook there was again a lot of incidental learning of grammar and vocabulary from routine activities. I even found a help forum that has lots of answers to frequently asked questions as well as community posted questions, all in French! I had a look through a few of the discussions and decided to change my profile picture using the instructions given. To my surprise I understood almost every word and was able to successfully upload a new photo. I went back and looked for the dictionary meaning of the few words that I was unsure of such as appuyez and recadrez. My progress is going very well and I’m able to understand most of the vocabulary and sentences I come across, even in the help section.

Navigating my iPad is almost as easy as in English now! One of the main incidental learning experiences was when I wanted to check the date and support acts of an upcoming concert. This was actually the first time I accessed the calendar on the iPad since beginning this challenge. As you can see in the picture there is immediately a large variety of words relating to days and time. While the vocabulary used wasn’t hard to comprehend it was good to contextualise the month and days of the week as well as phrases with plurals, as I just learned in DuoLingo. I was glad that the skills I’m learning in some technologies are complementing the learning experiences in others. By completing little activities like this I am learning many new words and sentence structures. I’ve definitely met my goal of understanding most of the vocabulary and sentences on my iPad. I’m confident that this is putting me on course to meet my final goal in a couple of weeks of understanding all of the language on my iPad and Facebook.

It’s funny because this week, unlike last (but like the first), I’m happy with how the technologies have been using similar vocabulary and grammar. I believe this is again due to the change in Quizlet study set and progression in DuoLingo, but this time in a positive manner. I hope that in the coming weeks the vocabulary continues to match up as it is perfect for the contextualisation that DuoLingo and Quizlet don’t offer. The combination of these technologies has continued to prove to be effective in catering for my multimodal style of learning which is keeping me motivated and sufficiently challenged. Furthermore, the nature of the activities has also continued to cater for my analytical and authority-orientated language learning styles.

References

Chapelle, C. (2001). Computer Applications in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3 - CALL.

Groot, P. J. (2000). Computer assisted second language vocabulary acquisition. Language Learning & Technology, 4(1), 60-81.

Hampel, Regine and Hauck, Mirjam (2006). Computer-mediated language learning: Making meaning in multimodal virtual learning spaces. JALT CALL Journal, 2(2) pp. 3–18.

Laufer, B., & Hulstijn, J. (2001). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: The construct of task-induced involvement. Applied linguistics, 22(1), 1-26.

Levy, M. (2007). Culture, culture learning and new technologies: Towards a pedagogical framework. Language Learning and Technology, 11(2), 104-127.

Levy, M. (2009). Technologies in use for second language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 93(1), 769-782.

Waring, R., & Nation, I. S. P. (2004). Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning. Angles on the English speaking world, 4, 97-110.

Week 2

Week 2 has been a little stressful due to starting a new job and having a large assignment due, but I managed to find the time to reach my goals and even start next week’s DuoLingo!

After this week’s tutorial I realised that I may not have made clear which pedagogical approaches are embedded in my technologies. As I’m focussing on developing my grammar and vocabulary, the principle underlying pedagogy is the modular approach (Levy, 2009). For this reason I am only reflecting on my development of these two language competencies. Furthermore, using Facebook and my iPad in French has resulted in an additional underlying pedagogy – incidental learning. In this approach, I am incidentally learning new vocabulary through completing familiar and unfamiliar tasks without focussing on intentionally acquiring the vocabulary (Groot, 2000; Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001; Waring & Nation, 2004).

One of the readings I engaged with this week provoked some thoughts on using my Oxford French/English Dictionary. It became apparent that many dictionaries, especially offline, are reluctant to receive feedback and change to meet the needs of users. This is due to lexicographers systematically designing dictionary consultation as a one-way road where they are communicating but not listening (Nielson, 2008). In terms of using my dictionary, I have found it difficult to find words at times, especially when words have accents. I believe it would help users if there was a short paragraph at the start of the dictionary that explained how words are alphabetically represented with and without accents.

It has also become apparent that this challenge is developing more than just my French Language acquisition. Just from using this blog I am developing my digital literacy skills through applying creative practices, communicating effectively, finding and selecting information as well as critically thinking and evaluating (Hague & Payton, 2011). These skills and more are developed through creating a hybrid of oral and written language in this digital platform. The main components used through this digital platform include permanent language, easily modified language, and pervasively multimodal language.

After class this week we had an interesting discussion of whether online learning helps in communicating in SL offline. I believe that I’m at a level in French where I’m comfortable in communicating offline but sometimes struggle to correctly form sentences and use extensive vocabulary. So for me, I believe online learning, especially in the context of this challenge, helps me communicate in French offline.

Now to focus on this week’s experiences using my technologies.

This week in DuoLingo I have progressed further than expected and learned the new skills conjugations 2, adverbs 2 and household vocabulary. This app has continued to keep me motivated and engaged, particularly through the three activities displayed below (translate this sentence, how do you say and tap the pairs). 

Additionally, I have found two more affordances, one that will keep me more engaged and another that I don’t think I’ll have enough time to make use of. Firstly, the weekly leader board shows where how much XP my friends have got this week compared to me. I saw that I was quite far behind Bronte and surpassed my weekly goal by completing two weeks’ worth of skills. However, as you can see below, she is still much further ahead than me. Secondly, I have discovered that there is a function for practicing weak skills. Skills become weak over time and users are encouraged to practice them to ensure past, present and future skills are all as strong as they can be. However, as I have other technologies and commitments it would be too time consuming to practice skills that don’t help me to reach my goals. 

I will just quickly explain another reason for completing next week’s skill. I have noticed that the upcoming skills look much harder, longer and time consuming to complete than previous skills. So by progressing a little now it will minimise the stress of meeting the next checkpoint by the end of the challenge.
I decided to have a quick look on DuoLingo’s computer platform to see what it offered. An astonishing discovery (see below) is that I have learned 613 French words since starting this challenge! Of course this includes the placement test but I still think this is a wonderful achievement and gives me some quantitative data for the end of my challenge to determine exactly how much vocabulary I’ve gained and the language area that each word belongs in.

Quizlet’s matching game was a little harder since I started the French Intermediate 1 Unit 2 study set. There was quite a lot of new vocabulary that made it difficult for me to match in under 15 seconds. I must have played at least 20 times before I even managed to get under 20 seconds. However, when I did, I was far more familiar with the new vocabulary and was able to achieve my goal of three matching games under 15 seconds. I even beat my personal best by finishing in 11.7 seconds!!!

This week on Facebook there was a lot of incidental learning of grammar and vocabulary from routine activities; however the most learning came from being out of my comfort zone and adding a new job on my profile. After completing the new ‘Emploi’ on my profile I used my dictionary to make sure I was correct before I hit ‘Enregistrer’. Sure enough I was right and I am now familiar with ‘Poste’ meaning a position, among other words.

Navigating my iPad is getting easier and easier as I progress through this challenge. However, I wanted to turn off auto-rotation and had a bit of trouble figuring out how. I knew which button turned it on and off but I had to change my settings in order for that button to do it. As I was aware that the same button turned the sound on and off I found the setting ‘Le bouton latéral sert à’ and sure enough I managed to ‘Verrouiller la rotation’. Through this experience I incidentally learned that verrouiller means to lock and am now familiar with many other words that can be seen in the screenshot below. By completing little activities like this I am learning many new words and am feeling more comfortable navigating my iPad. This is helping me on course to meet my goal next week of understanding most of the vocabulary on my iPad and Facebook.

This week I have not been particularly happy that all four of my technologies have been using different vocabulary, unlike my experience last week. Perhaps this is due to the change in Quizlet study set and progression in DuoLingo. I hope that in the coming weeks the vocabulary matches up again as it really was an excellent way to contextualise new words. However, the combination of these technologies has continued to prove to be effective in catering for my multimodal style of learning which is keeping me motivated and sufficiently challenged. Furthermore, the nature of the activities has also catered for my analytical and authority-orientated language learning styles.

References
Groot, P. J. (2000). Computer assisted second language vocabulary acquisition. Language Learning & Technology, 4(1), 60-81.

Hague, C., & Payton, S. (2011). Digital literacy across the curriculum.Curriculum Leadership, 9(10).

Laufer, B., & Hulstijn, J. (2001). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: The construct of task-induced involvement. Applied linguistics, 22(1), 1-26.

Levy, M. (2009). Technologies in use for second language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 93(1), 769-782.

Nielsen, S. (2008). The Effect of Lexicographical Information Costs on Dictionary Making. Lexikos, 18(1).

Waring, R., & Nation, I. S. P. (2004). Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning. Angles on the English speaking world, 4, 97-110.

Week 1

The first week of the learning challenge has been difficult but overall it’s off to a great start!

I sent off my 200 word short essay to my French NS sister and quickly received relevant feedback and constructive criticism. This feedback confirmed my need for a learning challenge to improve my grammar and vocabulary as they were particular weak points through my essay. However, I completed the essay at a higher level than I originally thought I would, giving me a bit more motivation in my ability to complete this challenge.

DuoLingo’s gamification style of learning has been so much more engaging than I expected, that I did a bit more than a week’s worth of work already! However, as this challenge progresses and I have other work and university commitments, the original standard of a level each week will be sufficiently challenging and stimulating. This week I have learned the skills Adverbs 1, Occupation and Negatives (see gold skills below).
 I have realised that my standard of a ‘level’ is different to DuoLingo’s and may not have been explained well in the proposal (see VoiceThread below for explanation).
There have also been quite a few new affordances of this app I’ve discovered that will assist in keeping me motivated throughout the challenge. Firstly, I’ve added Bronte as a friend on DuoLingo and will be able to compete against her throughout our challenges to see who gains the most XP (I’m currently winning!). Secondly, I’ve discovered the DuoLingo shop where different outfits and bonus skills can be bought with Lingots – app’s currency earned through completing lessons and levels in addition to meeting daily goals and daily streaks (see below). Thirdly (as demonstrated below), when learning new words they appear orange and underlined; when clicked their definition(s) appear. This has been particularly useful in building new vocabulary and understanding specific sentence stuctures. Fourthly (as demonstrated below), I’ve discovered the select all correct translations activity and have found it to be challenging and motivating. Finally, (on a different note), I have found evidence of the effectiveness of DuoLingo that has been demonstrated by Vesselinov and Grego (2012) to be more effective in language learning than a university language course!

Quizlet has met my expectations by offering a diverse range of new vocabulary and a fun matching activity. I firstly looked through the vocabulary from the French Intermediate 1 study set to familiarise myself with the new words. Secondly, I tested myself using the learn activity to successfully add 20 new words to my French vocabulary. Finally, I engaged with the matching activity many times until I finished in under 15 seconds 4 different times.
At first I was going to complete this matching activity a 3-4 times in under 20 seconds, however, after my first week’s experience I realised that I didn’t set the bar high enough. I will now be completing the matching activity in under 15 seconds 3-4 times per week depending on difficulty. This will allow for further consolidation of a wider range of vocabulary in a more difficult and challenging experience. I’ve set the benchmark for the rest of the challenge with my personal best of 13.4 seconds!

Facebook has been quite difficult so far trying to navigate through daily tasks. However, after a week I feel as though I’m learning many new words and am on track to meeting my goals.
 While almost every word is new to me, it has been made easier through the scaffolding of already knowing how to do most tasks. My French-English dictionary came in handy for translating new words such as évènements (events). There have also been many phrases and sentences that pop-up which give me a challenge. This is exemplified through the picture below that I hadn’t come across in the English version of Facebook. After comprehending what it was saying I realised it wasn’t relevant and closed it. 
OH, I also had a quick look in the settings (paramètres in French) for a change… I think I’ll leave that for later in the challenge! 

Changing my iPad to French has also been challenging yet rewarding. The days of the week and names of months are the first French words that appear when opening the iPad. While I’ve learned these words before I hadn’t seen them in some time. This is just one example of how useful the iPad is for contextualising new (and old) vocabulary to enhance my understanding. So far I’ve managed to send and forward emails, download apps, set reminders, navigate webpages and more, all in French. Many words however are still in English, such as the names of most apps, which is making navigating my iPad more manageable than I expected. 

Overall, I have been particularly happy that all four of my technologies have been using a range of new vocabulary at the same time. I didn’t expect this from DuoLingo and Quizlet especially as they seemed to be quite different in terms of focussed vocabulary. I believe this has assisted in minimising the potential constraints of these technologies by putting the newly acquired vocabulary into context. Additionally, the combination of these technologies has proved to be effective in catering for my multimodal style of learning which is keeping me motivated and sufficiently challenged. Furthermore, the nature of the activities has also catered for my analytical and authority-orientated language learning styles. 

À la semaine prochaine!