Category: Learning Project

I can’t believe the semester is over, that just flew by! It felt like just yesterday I did my introduction for my learning project and now I’m doing a wrap up post! I learned a lot that I haven’t learned before and I am so excited that I was able to learn some French to use in my future. I may not have ended up where I wanted to be at the end of the semester with learning the language, but that’s okay! I still learned a lot.

I also learned a lot about blogging and just getting my thoughts out, which isn’t something I have done before. I like the blog style that we did throughout class, it made it easier to do the assignment such as not having to reference in APA (lol). You can just insert links, your own pictures and videos and there you go!

It was a long and difficult journey but I am proud to say that I know more words in French. I will summarize week by week for you all what I have learned:

Learning Project: Future Pro in Francais:

-wanting to speak & write more in the French language

-wanting to converse more in French

-background knowledge of what I already know in French

-some of the apps & websites I plan to use for my learning project

Duolingo…Good or Bad?

-using the app Duolingo to practice learning French

-20 minutes of learning per day

-the app is like a game, you earn XP for completing lessons & can level up

-Has a streak feature to keep you motivated

-You have to pay extra for “hearts” to continue lessons

Duolingo Super…Better than Regular Duolingo?

-Unlimited number of “hearts,” so if you make a mistake, you can always keep going

-Includes “ranks,” where you can play against other people

-expensive, probably not worth 119$ a year unless you are really committed to learning the language.

New Tool…Exciting or Scary?

-Used French Pod 101 on YouTube to learn some new phrases

-Learned telephone and internet phrases

-Used iMovie to edit a video of me practicing and uploaded it to YouTube

Using a Netflix Show to Learn French?

-watched Emily in Paris on Netflix to practice learning French

-learned new phrases such as “I care about you” and “I’m proud of you”

Busuu…Better than Duolingo?

-Used the app Busuu to practice learning French
-has a daily streak count to keep you motivated

-videos of people speaking the language rather than an animated animal or person

-You can keep on practicing despite making a mistake

-Learned phrases such as “What did you do today?” and responses to that question.

Dabbling in the French Experiment 

-sites that includes online French lessons for beginners

-many different lessons on the website including counting in French, telling the time, question words, etc.

-learning how to make possessions negative

Learning French with Alexa

-learning about moods in French from a popular YouTuber

-Alexa goes over the French phrases, repeats them and then gives a test at the end

Learning French with Vincent

-learning French from another popular YouTuber

-learning about relative pronouns in French

Learning French with Games??

-games include numbers, phrases, foods, animals, etc.

-Focused on learning the names of animals in French

This week, I was struggling with what tool to use to learn French. I stumbled upon this website which is a website that you can use to play games to help learn French vocabulary! I think this is an awesome website that you can use as a teacher because the website has all grades you can choose from and find what you are teaching in French at the time to help teach your students.

The only downside is that you have to have a membership and pay for it to play the games. I think it would be beneficial though, especially because children find it motivational to use games to learn. I focused on the homepage, which is free. You can see numbers, phrases, food, how to tell the time, animals, etc. I think you could also use this as a resource in the classroom if you do not want to pay for the membership.

As you can see by the photo, I focused on learning about the names of animals this week.  I already know the names of basic animals such as dog and cat, but I don’t know others! Specifically, I learned about sea creatures. I think young kids would love learning the names of sea creatures in French; I definitely did! It tied in well with my learning project this week. Here is a list of names of sea creatures that I learned:

I also wrote down the names of the animals on my iPad again to help practice writing them, and saying them!

 

This week, I decided to use a series of videos from the YouTube channel Learning French with Vincent. Specifically, I decided to focus on this video.

This week was learning all about relative pronouns in French. It was a little tricky, but I got used to it. I’m not going to do a good job of explaining what a relative pronoun is on my own, so I am just going to quote the video: “A relative pronoun in French is a pronoun that introduces a relative clause, which provides information about a noun in the main clause.”

I focused on the French phrase “lequel” which translates in English to “which,” “who,” “that” or “whose.” It is difficult knowing that one word can translate in to. so many different meanings. Vincent did a good job of reading out the phrases in French and then translating them to English and explaining what they mean and why. I again wrote the phrases on my iPad to help practice writing them and also saying them.

Overall, I recommend Learning French with Vincent on YouTube. He does a great job explaining what a relative pronoun is and how to use it in different contexts. I recommend anyone to check him out if you are a beginner at learning French! He helped me out a lot and made it easy to understand.

This week, I practiced learning French with a series of videos from the Learning French with Alexa on YouTube. I mainly focused on this video.

Learning French with Alexa is a great YouTuber. She goes over the French phrase, then repeats it and then there is a “test” at the end that goes over what she had just taught. This week, I decided to focus on learning how to say different moods in French. I think that we say our moods quite often in English, so why not try to learn them in French too? I thought that it would tie in perfectly with my learning project!

I thought a funny and enjoyable thing about the video from Learning with Alexa is that she put on funny glasses that represented different moods to get her viewers to guess what mood she is and to say it in French. It made the video more fun to watch and made it feel less like “work.” All of her other videos are like this too, very enjoyable and fun!

I recently bought a new iPad and I used my it to write down the phrases this week. I found it helpful because I have always had my iPad on me lately. So, I could easily go back and refer to the phrases and practicing saying them. Alexa went over the masculine & feminine phrases of the different moods and she explained it in a way that a beginner could easily understand! I definitely recommend Learning with Alexa on YouTube if you are a beginner learning French!

 

This week, I used this site to practice learning my French for this week.

I was looking around for different sites to learn my French this week, and I stumbled upon The French Experiment. It is a site that includes online French lessons for beginners and I thought, perfect! There are many different lessons to choose from including counting in French, question words, telling the time, making things negative, possessions and many more. The site includes audio for you to listen to,  so that you know what the French sounds like.

This week, I decided to focus on making things negative. I thought that it is common to say that we do not like something or do not want to do something, so I thought it would fit in well with being a beginner in learning French.

The site is easy to navigate, with a bunch of lessons right on the homepage of the website. The site also includes French stories, which you can read and listen to and that you can translate in to English.

Some phrases that I have learned this week are:

Ils ne viennent pas aujourd’hui=They do not come today

Il ne veut pas danser=He does not want to dance

Tu n’aimes pas les chats=You do not like cats

This week, I used the Busuu app to practice learning French.

With Busuu, I have noticed many similarities to Duolingo, but also some helpful differences. For staters, with Bussu, you can also have a daily streak count that keeps you motivated. You can also be placed on a leadership board amongst other participants so that the app kind of feels like a game, rather than “work.” The app layout is also very similar, it has different lessons with different sections that you can complete and it tells you how long it will take complete the lessons.

Some helpful differences that I have noticed are it has videos of a person speaking the language throughout the lesson, rather than an animated animal or person. I find that it makes it more realistic to learn the language that way, Also, you don’t run out of “hearts” or anything like that if you make a mistake. The app corrects you, and then gives you the correct answer and why that is the correct answer, which I found really helpful. The app would also give you “tips” throughout the lesson to help the learning experience become more personalized.

Overall, I find that Busuu is a lot better than Duolingo. It has the videos that speak the language and what you are supposed to learn. It also has the ability for you to keep on practicing despite making a mistake, which lessens the frustration of learning a new language.

This week, in my free time, I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix. I stumbled upon a show “Emily in Paris,” and I thought it would be fun to watch. Little did I know, they would be speaking a lot of French in the show, so I thought it would be perfect to use for my learning project.

There would be translations of the French that was spoken on the screen. Some words came up more than other words. I watched the show with my family and even they picked up on some French words, which I thought was cool! I also looked at this site to review some of the phrases I have learned from the show.

Here’s a few of the phrases I picked up:

You’re welcome=vous etes les bienvenus

Je Tiens A Toi= I care about you

Je suis fier de toi=I’m proud of you

La plouc=hillbilly (lol) Emily was called this a lot in the show.

Overall, using Emily in Paris to learn French was a fun and humbling experience. The show was interesting to watch to see what life in France is like and to indulge in the romance of it. It was humbling because of knowing how much work it takes to fluently learn French. I don’t think I’ll be fluent in French by the end of this 🙁 but I’ll definitely know some more phrases that I haven’t before!!

This week, I used Learning with French Pod 101 on YouTube to learn new French words and also iMovie to edit a video of showing you my progress with the language.

I originally tried to use the YouTube video editor to edit my video, but it wasn’t coming up. So, I thought that iMovie was my next best option to edit my video. I found it helpful to have the words on the screen, so that my viewers can follow along with what I’m saying. It helped me to see it as well!

I learned a few new common French words to help aid in my conversation in French. The videos from Learning with French Pod 101 were helpful. The facilitator sounds the word multiple times, so that we had the chance to practice the word and also used the word in a sentence. I recommend this channel to anybody that is beginning to learn French.

I tried adding music to my video as well, but I found that the music was too loud and overpowered my voice. I’m not sure if you can tone down the volume of the music or not. (Hey, I’m a beginner). I found that adding the subtitles was sufficient enough for the length of the video. But, one day, I hope to be a pro video editor like some of the videos that I see on YouTube!!

 

This week, I tried out Duolingo Super to practice learning French. Every time I was practicing, the app kept asking me to try out a free trial of Duolingo Super for fourteen days, so I decided to try it to see if it would be any different than the regular, ordinary Duolingo. There are a few differences that I have noticed.

For starters, with Duolingo Pro, you have an unlimited number of “hearts,” which means you can make as many mistakes as you want, and still be able to continue with the lesson. I like this feature because it doesn’t boot you from the lesson and make you wait longer to continue practicing.

With Duolingo Pro, you also have “ranks,” which means you can compete against other app users and earn “XP” (or experience points) to level up in your rank from completing lessons. There is a bronze league, a silver league and a gold league. I think this is pretty cool because it makes me motivated to continue learning more French and to see if I can level up higher against other participants.

I noticed myself skipping around different units this week because the “introducing myself” unit seemed too easy for me. I learned a few new things from that unit, but most of the other things I knew. I skipped to the “use the present tense” unit and it seemed to be at the right difficulty level for me. I learned how to say where I live, that I’m a student studying in a certain place,  how to ask others where they’re from where they’re studying, where I work, where I live, what languages I speak,  and even commands for my dog!

All and all, Duolingo Super is nice but I don’t think it’s worth $119/year. The few differences such as having unlimited “hearts” and ranks is not worth it to me. I’m okay with waiting if I run out of “hearts” for a little while to complete a lesson and not to see my position in ranks, although it does make learning more motivational. In the end, I won’t be using Duolingo Super but it was nice to try it out for a bit.

This week, I used Duolingo to practice learning French. I initially started my learning at the second section because I have a small background in French but I found that too difficult. I didn’t know how to translate the phrases that were being given, so I started at section 1. Section 2 was too advanced for my level I found.

There are five different time frames that you can choose to practice throughout the day. This includes anywhere from 2-20 minutes. I decided to go with 20 minutes as I want to be committed to learning as much French as possible in the upcoming weeks. Along with the twenty minutes each day, I would do extra practice sections to ensure my comprehension in what I had just practiced.

I found Duolingo to be quite fun because the app is like a game. With each section, you earn XP which then “levels you up” to the next module. You can also earn a streak which motivates you to keep practicing each day. If you don’t practice each day, you will lose your streak.

The only downfall about Duolingo is if you want to practice extra, then you have to have enough “hearts” to continue on. If you make a mistake, you lose a “heart.”  To gain more “hearts,” you have to wait an hour or longer or pay for Duolingo Pro which is $119/year which is out of a lot of people’s budgets.

All in all, I enjoyed Duolingo to practice learning French. It’s very motivating and fun with how you can “level up” to different modules and have an on-going streak. But, I don’t like that you have to pay for Duolingo Pro to get extra “hearts” if I want to practice extra.

Week 1 Practicing French