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.