Checking back in with my wonderful audience to give you an update on my progress to improve my French speaking abilities. Using Duolingo has been a blast! I took a placement test, got pretty far down the list and am nearly done the French language lessons! I can honestly say that Duolingo is a great program for teaching vocabulary. It is effective at teaching grammar but it lacks a little if you aren't taking proper notes during your play time. Also, if you haven't studied a language in a formal setting before then Duolingo may not be as profitable. I say this because in a formal learning setting you learn how to learn a language; that's not weird is it? You learn what different words are called, that a sentence typically has a subject, what nouns and pronouns are, the definite, indefinite articles and how words like adjectives and adverbs interact. Using this acquired knowledge with a program like Duolingo is incredibly beneficial. Luckily, you can find this information all over the web in places like about.french and use great tools like Word Reference. The tools you need to learn another language are all over the Internet; you just have to find them!
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| WordReference (Online image). Retrieved from. |
Knowing English is surprisingly helpful if you want to learn French. I've discovered this through various Fren-ami's or French friends. These are words in French and English that look alike, sound alike and share a similar meaning. This helps a great deal with remembering vocabulary; and learning aids are always welcome! In addition to this benefit, having English as your native tongue helps because an overwhelming amount of people want to learn it! There are so many French speakers that want to either learn or improve their English and their are willing to exchange their French knowledge for your English knowledge. On my last post I mentioned the web site Ayni and what it does for language learners. Since then I have connected with several French men and women and just talked. In our conversations we let each other know what is right or wrong, what sounds good or awkward, or how to say things differently or more commonly. One of my pen pals on Ayni explained that she lives with her boyfriend and two cats. She said that, "All of them three are lovely". I really liked her choice in the descriptive word "lovely". However, the sentence is incorrect but still conveys its intended meaning. I correct her sentence and complimented her choice of words and she proceeded to correct the message that I sent to her. If I wanted to say "It will benefit you", I normally would say "Il vous bénéficiera" but my pen pal noted that while it makes sense "Il sera bénéfique" or "It will be beneficial" sounds more natural in French. This is a different type of learning that you often don't receive in a classroom because the teachers are focused on what they have to teacher and not always on what your questions are.
Hi Raff,
ReplyDeleteIn terms of all the necessary artifacts, everything appears to be checked off and have everything. I really like how you have organized all your genius hour into their appropriate pages. Your blog posts have great photos and have a lot of content about what you have learned as well as providing the continuous update about what you have been learning throughout the course.
Moreover, your documentation, images and media all follow the copyright guidelines being taught in class. Some of them, more so the recent one I found do not but because the images were of webpages, it was easy to locate where you got them from. The various amounts of hyperlinks made you blog look neat and easy to navigate. The use of creative and clear headers and sub-headings allowed me to learned quickly and effective what the post was going to be about. The colours and fonts are aesthetically pleasing that makes the blog easy to read and is consistently being used throughout the blog.
Lastly, your writing mechanics (i.e. grammar and spelling) and reflections were very well thought out, concise and with no errors in terms of punctuation. You provide great detail about what you’ve learned and provide great visuals and examples about how one can apply different types of technology into their placement or future career as a teacher. It also emphasizes with great detail about how it can be integrated into multiple disciplines. It will exciting to use those ideas in my own learning and career.