Week twelve diary

I found out this week that I will be going to Senegal for a week in January for work. Most of the people I will be meeting with will speak English, but I'd like to be able to understand what is going on around me so I've decided to try to teach myself some French before I go (and maybe Wolof greetings). My goal is to learn survival French by January.

Thursday
I ordered a book online called Easy French Step by Step. It hasn't arrived yet but they gave me Kindle access to a couple of chapters so I spent 30 minutes diving in. I read the preface, which includes a pronunciation guide and a list of common greetings. I then found flashcards of the greetings on Quizlet and went through them once. It includes audio and I was able to turn on the audio for French and off for English. Pronunciation is a bit of a challenge, but I find if I close my eyes I can focus on the sounds. If I read the words I get confused by the disconnect between the spelling and the pronunciation. My partner speaks French (though it's been a long time, I think, since he learned it and/or used it) so I'm hoping he'll be willing to practice with me.

Thursday night
My partner and I wrote a simple dialog of greetings and practiced it a few times. It was pretty easy. He finds the pronunciation difficult so I'm not sure he'll be much help to me, although his vocabulary is good.

Friday
I started reading about nominal gender using the Kindle sample of the book I ordered and made a set of flashcards of some common words in each gender, but didn't have time to practice them. I spent about 30 minutes on language-learning.

Saturday
I practiced with my flashcards using Quizlet for about 45 minutes and feel like I mastered them. Got a nice high score, as you can see here:

My book arrived today, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

Sunday
I started working through the book and made a new set of flashcards to practice the definite articles. I'm frustrated by the lack of pronunciation tips for new vocabulary in the book. Quilt is useful, though, because it has audio files for the French words.

Monday
I didn't make time to practice my French.

Tuesday
In class today we discussed self-assessment. Students seemed to understand the importance of regular self-assessment but were a bit reliant on their language partners to provide it.  Several of them mentioned talking with a language partner as a form of assessment: can you do what you’ve been working on? Some who had less access to a language partner were making up their own role-plays and using them to identify gaps in their knowledge or vocabulary. L talked about using self-assessment to see progress and increase motivation rather than noticing what one doesn't know yet. She also mentioned that her language partner was not available last week. Focusing on self-assessment this week made her realize that she’s been overly reliant on him, and she found ways to do more things on her own.

We talked briefly about the benefits and challenges of self-assessment. Learners saw a benefit in meeting your own goals rather than those set by someone else. They didn't mention any challenges when we talked in general terms, but when we talked about the specific self-assessment plans they had designed, we began to see that it is a challenge to move away from an external assessment.

In our time for updates, ED told us that he has made a daily plan for what he wants to do and plans to use his language partner for practice rather than instruction. N is noticing links to her art history class, learning about Yoruba deities. She tried to watch a Yoruba movie but had trouble understanding and realized that she needs more listening practice.