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January 19, 2003
I. Philosophy
My goals for this project were to meet the assignment criteria, practice my information technology skills, and create a Second Language Acquisition project that would be both useful and used. In order to meet these goals, I created Français Simple an interactive French language website. The purpose of the site is to help individual learners improve their recognition, recall, and pronunciation of key French vocabulary. The vocabulary topics that I have chosen to include are the cardinal numbers from one to one hundred, the ordinal numbers from first to tenth, colours, the days of the week, the months, and the seasons of the year. The target audience consists of French language students ranging from ten years of age to adult.
In creating the site, I have considered and addressed a variety of student learning styles including auditory, visual, analytic, and tactile styles. Because I embrace constructivist learning theory, I have structured the site to encourage students to make connections between the symbols, images, and text that they see and the sounds that they hear. Students click on a button to hear French words corresponding to the button. Students move the mouse from button to button to pop up a box to see words for the symbols, colours, and abbreviations displayed on the buttons. Students count and manipulate numbers, solve puzzles, and view an animated PowerPoint presentation. Throughout Français Simple, I have tried to include "hands on" activities and make the site as interactive as possible.
I have purposely limited the use of English to the Home Page of the site. While I understand that there is no harm in combining both English and French on the same page, I wanted to encourage students to use French to make sense of what they viewed on the various pages. I wanted to prompt them to begin thinking in French and have them use French as much as possible. The vocabulary I present is very basic and corresponds directly with images and sound files. On a few pages, I have included sentences that are a bit more complex. Students must use both prior knowledge and current context to understand these sentences. At a recent BCAMT seminar, Trevor Calkins explained that students often learn by synthesizing from the complex to the simple. I therefore feel justified in including these sentences. Teachers who feel that the Français Simple content is too difficult for their students can scaffold their students by introducing the unfamiliar vocabulary to them before letting them use Français Simple.
Individual students can access Français Simple in a computer lab, on stand-alone computers in the classroom, or, if they have them, at home on their personal computers. In a computer lab, I envisage teachers using Français Simple to help students review vocabulary, improve word recognition, and practice pronunciation. On stand-alone computers in the classroom, I see teachers using it as an extension for students who complete their assigned tasks early.
I do not present Français Simple as a motivational tool, but rather as a tool to help motivated learners improve their French language proficiency.
II. Links
When considering the content to include on the Français Simple web site, I checked to see if what I had planned for the site fit with the strategies and outcomes listed in the B.C. Core French 5 to 12 Integrated Resource Packages (IRP); I discovered that it did. The table on page three of the IRP lists several learning strategies for Grades 5 through 7. These strategies include using visual and context clues to guess meaning, using repetition alone or with others to practise and reinforce new language, using prior knowledge of a topic to predict meaning, recognizing known French and cognates in new contexts, and self-evaluating progress by comparison with earlier performance or against personal goals. I believe Français Simple supports these strategies. The navigation bar used throughout the site uses the cognates 'explorations' and 'challenges'. The main content pages give learners the opportunity to practice and reinforce new language. Several of the pages also allow students to predict meaning; the calendar page is one such page.
Page 12 of the French Core IRP states, "[I]t is important the experience [of learning French] be non-threatening, rewarding, and enjoyable." I do not claim that using Français Simple will be enjoyable for all students; however, because students set their own pace and work alone, it should be non-threatening.
The French Core IRP recommends that beginning learners recognize and recall simple language patterns. It suggests that student language production be limited. Therefore, Français Simple rarely requires direct input of text into forms. The exception is the jeu de calendrier, which asks students to look at a calendar and record the highlighted date. I included this component because recording the date in French journals and notebooks is a common task that teachers ask of their students.
III. Sound
Français Simple includes hundreds of small sound files containing the pronunciation for vocabulary words. I have used my own voice to record these files. While French is not my first language, I have studied French for several years and believe my French pronunciation provides a good model for beginning learners. An advantage of using my own voice to record the sound files is that when students in my class use Français Simple, they will readily recognize my voice and the way that I have pronounced words during regular lessons.
IV. Graphics
I have included pictures representing the seasons on the L'année page. I have also used graphics and pictures in the Un, deux, trois, le roi PowerPoint presentation. Some of these images are animated. They make the site more visually appealing and help visual learners connect with the vocabulary.
V. Buttons
Throughout the Français Simple site, I have used small graphic images to create buttons that link to sound files. I have purposely used buttons that are alike in appearance. This creates a consistent, unified graphical user interface. On the Challenges pages, I have used "submit" buttons to access JavaScript code and create interactive web content.
VI. Age Appropriateness
I have endeavoured to create a website that will be useful to beginning French language students of diverse ages (ten to adult). I believe Français Simple is an appropriate resource for these students. The site design presupposes that students accessing Français Simple will have basic reading skills and know how to solve a variety of problems and puzzles in English. Depending on their personal skills and development, some students younger than ten years of age may find the site useful.
The vocabulary presented for practice and review is simple and direct. I have chosen images that are appropriate for students of all ages, and, while the Challenges and Explorations pages are geared for younger learners, adults may improve their skills by using them too. Because web content is non-linear, learners can easily navigate the site to choose the content that appeals to them and that meets their personal learning goals.
VII. Proficiency Appropriateness
The French language proficiency levels required to access and use Français Simple are minimal. I believe the site design is appropriate for all beginning language learners in the target audience who wish to improve their recall, recognition, and pronunciation of the vocabulary presented on the site.
French language instructions located on the various pages are clear and simple, yet students using Français Simple need not understand them. The English instructions provided on the Home Page are all that are required to navigate and use the site successfully. Ideally, students who do not understand the French instructions will construct their own meaning by observing what they can actually do on the site. Some students may choose to expand their vocabulary by referring to a dictionary or by asking their teacher for clarification. A glossary would be a useful asset on the site. If I develop the site further, I will include one; however, a glossary is not required in order to use the site effectively. In addition, I have designed Français Simple so that if students work their way through the site sequentially, they can gradually build on what they have learned on the previous pages.
Français Simple is inappropriate for advanced French language students. French is not my first language and I am not bilingual. While my pronunciation is adequate for students who are beginning to learn French, I believe that advanced students need to find a resource that models proper, standardized French pronunciation.
VIII. Text Appropriateness
As previously discussed, I believe the French vocabulary and text in Français Simple is appropriate for the target audience. After the brief review of my project with Dr. Kitchenham, I realized that my original Home Page was inappropriate. While it demonstrated my French proficiency and, to some degree satisfied my ego, it was an inappropriate way to welcome beginning French learners to Français Simple. I therefore rewrote the Home Page in English and expanded it to include instructions on how to use the site.
One problem that I did not address in Français Simple is that there are two words for second in the French language—second and deuxième. I only included deuxième.
IX. Development
As a simple lesson aid, Français Simple was a bit over ambitious; however, it did allow me to achieve all three of my personal goals. I addressed the criteria for the EDTE 523 SLA Multimedia Assignment, practiced and expanded my information technology skills, and created a useful lesson aid that is now available to people throughout the world via the World Wide Web. During the project development, the challenges that I faced were to find a way to make my web pages interactive, include multiple sound files on one web page, and reduce the volume of files posted on my web server so there was room for the Français Simple web. JavaScript coding enabled me to develop interactive content, rigorous housekeeping of my server directories freed up space for Français Simple, and the use of graphical buttons linked to individual sound files allowed me to access multiple sound files from one web page. I also wanted to create a clean, logical, user-friendly graphical user interface and I am happy with the results that I have achieved.
One of the steps that I took in the development of the website was to convert most of my sound files from .wav to .mp3 format. Because the files that I was saving were very small, there was little gain from using the superior compression algorithm of the .mp3 file format. It took a long time to save the files in the 16-bit .wav format required by my .wav to .mp3 conversion program and, in hindsight, the gains achieved by doing so did not warrant the effort. Moreover, I am now concerned that many computers may not have the plug-ins required to play .mp3 files. .Wav files are more widely supported in web browsers.
To proofread the French text in Français Simple, I used Microsoft Word and checked the spelling with the program's French (Canadian) dictionary. I also used the Systran online translator to help me when I was unsure of my French usage.
Because I had never used the animation feature in PowerPoint, as a personal challenge, I created a small, animated presentation and saved it for the web. I had hoped to implement sound files in the presentation but a computer glitch and time constraints prevented me from doing so. Later, for my own satisfaction, I would like to revise the presentation to include sound files.
Ironically, it was not until the wee hours of the morning before the due date of the assignment that I remembered one of the major strengths of the World Wide Web: web developers can access and link to material developed by others. If I had considered this fact earlier, my project would likely look much different. In any event, I searched the Web briefly, located several sites that reinforce or expand the vocabulary in Français Simple, and created an Explorations page to link to them.
While I am quite pleased with Français Simple, it has a serious flaw. I have not thoroughly tested it. I have tested all of the pages on my own computer, but further testing needs to be completed to see how Français Simple displays on Linux, Mac, and PC systems using various versions of the most popular browsers. This has not been done.
X. Conclusion
I found the project very interesting and I wish that I could have devoted more time to it. In the future, I would like to implement stand-alone lesson aids using both Illuminatus and Visual Basic.
WWW Pages lined to by Français Simple
Works Cited
Core French 5 to 12 Integrated Resource Package. Ministry of Education, Province of British Columbia. 2001.