La conjugaison française is a French grammar site which provides complete French verb conjugations, definitions and synonyms of verbs. There are also explanations of French grammar and spelling, as well as Sudoku puzzles. Students can complete a variety of practice exercises related to verb conjugations, grammar and spelling rules.
Type of Material:
Drill and practice; reference
Recommended Uses:
The site could be used as part of a traditional course if the teacher were to bring his/her students to the computer lab to have them complete the practice exercises for certain verbs and/or grammar and spelling rules.
The site could also be highly useful as a supplemental source of practice material for students enrolled in an online course, as well as for individuals who are studying the French language on their own.Individual use for homework reference or extra practice is another possible use; in-class use of exercises is possible with computer lab (or teacher-led with projector)
Technical Requirements:
Browsers: works with Google Chrome; Internet Explorer; Mozilla Firefox
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The site is designed to help the French language learner improve his/her writing skills through a variety of practice exercises on verb conjugations, grammar and spelling rules.
Target Student Population:
HS / university - Intermediate to advanced students of French; can be used for beginners as they learn to use references; level can be chosen
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Although the practice exercises for verb conjugations, and grammar and spelling rules can be modified to the level of the learner, the site is truly designed for native speakers of French. For this reason, all instructions and explanations are provided in French. As a result, a student studying French as a second language would need to have at least an intermediate understanding of the language in order to navigate through and benefit from the site.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The site is very thorough, and both the level and the content of all practice exercises can be modified to meet the specific needs of the language learner. The verb search option is wonderful, in that it allows the user to type in any form of the verb (while a traditional dictionary requires one to provide the infinitive form). It is also convenient to be able to switch effortlessly between the complete verb conjugation, the verb's definition, and its synonyms. For practice exercises, level of difficulty can be chosen (based on French school system levels); good reference for verb conjugations
Concerns:
Some of the verb conjugation exercises are not graded correctly by the computer: When prompted for the first person imperative form of the verb "vendre" in the past tense, I provided: "Ayons vendu", which the computer counted incorrectly due to the capital letter. Similarly, when prompted with "que je..." and asked to provided the present subjunctive form of "boire", I gave "boive" but was told that the correct response was "que je boive."
In other instances, the computer simply accepted the subjunctive form of the verb without the repetition of "que" and the subject pronoun.
For exercises, no accommodation for American keyboard with no accents (must know how to produce special characters from own keyboard); answers typed without accents are pronounced “mauvaise réponse”
Translator inaccurate (tested with imparfait vs. conditional "would")
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The ability to tailor the practice exercises to one's specific needs makes La conjugaison française an engaging learning tool. It is also interesting to see how many other respondents were able to reply correctly to the question that you were given. Numerous links allow the student to seek additional explanations for any responses that he/she does not understand. The most commonly used verbs---including avoid, être, finir and permettre---have video clips in which a part of the verb's conjugation is written on a virtual chalkboard while a native speaker of French reads each form.
Concerns:
It would be wonderful if there were additional audio components which permitted students to listen to the verb, its definition, and its conjugation read by a native French speaker.Not the most innovative site visually; could use more appealing design elements to hold students’ interest.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The site is very easy to navigate and its instructions are clearly written. There are numerous links to the information that a student may wish to access.
Concerns:
Following every selection that I made to modify the level and content of my grammar quiz---I selected my level of schooling, the topic (verb conjugations) which I wished to be quizzed upon, the mode of the verbs, and the tense of the verbs--- I was required to watch the same commercial for La Banque Postale, which meant that I had to watch the same clip 4 times during a series of options that should have required no more than 10 seconds to select.
In addition, in both Google Chrome and Safari, some of the accented letters do not appear properly, which posed a problem in particular in the grammar note on the use of accents with the letter "e".
Other Issues and Comments:
Addition of click-and-paste accented characters would be helpful for non-European keyboards
Creative Commons:
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