week 3-4

Bonjour tout le monde,

In this entry, I will update more on my experiences of using Duolingo and French English Dictionary to ease my language learning challenge. Different student struggling with different aspect of language learning. For me, the hardest would be pronunciation. I have zero basic in French and it is not very helpful that my first language is Malay. My pronunciation is needing a lot of improvement and this is where the application comes handy.

Duolingo

I have completed the daily exercises provided by this application. From my observation, the application helps users to improve more than one aspect of language learning. It focuses on many skill such as listening, grammar, writing, spelling, vocabulary and also pronunciation. This is based on the variety categories of exercise given. Not only the features make it more interesting and less boring for user to keep doing the exercises, it also improves all aspect of language learning challenge. It comes with correction and brief explanation of the correct answer to help the users get better understanding of their preferred language.

 Below are the example of exercises provided:

Testing different skills (Image from google)

It is also motivating that user will be able to unlock award based on their achievement.The interface is very user friendly. It is a fun way of learning language compared to traditional non-CALL type of learning. Plus, it keeping track of your progress in learning language.

French English Dictionary 

This application is my new best friend! Whenever I need to translate something, this is my on-the-go application. My savior. The application is really easy to use. I just need to type in the word and TADAAAA the meaning is there for me to see. Conjugation is really important in learning French; with this application, you just need to click on the "conjugate" on top corner and you will be provided with the conjugation for the chosen word. It also states the gender for the word as this is another important aspect in French, thus, giving every information needed on the chosen word. I really like that this application is also available offline though it is limited to certain features when it is offline.

Below is the example search of word using the application:

List of the word plus the conjugation (Image from google)

There are more features on this application. However, in order to focus on improving my pronunciation which is my aim, I maximize the function for searching word's meaning and the way to correctly pronounce it. There is a speaker/audio symbol on the top corner of the application which will tell you the way to pronounce the word when you click on it. This is my favorite feature of the application. It also improves my confidence when I need to speak in French as I am able to check on the correct pronunciation first and practice it before speaking out. 

That is all for this entry. See you on the next one. I hope it gives every learner out there some ideas on  making full use of these two application.