Page 117 - LanGuide Project: Research and Professional Insights
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What Can We Improve
forms (for example, when testing grammatical cases, a user should
have the possibility of looking at suffixes and declension rules at all
times).
2. Adding exercises for listening, reading, and written communication
would improve the app, because it is crucial that all communication
skills are developed equally when learning foreign languages.
3. In Slovenian, the placement of stress is not fully predictable and
stress must be learned along with new words. In order for learners
to acquire correct sentence stress, recordings of correct pronuncia-
tion need to be included in the app.
4. Learners at the level b1 can understand texts from domains of their
interest and grasp the basic point of texts related to their profes-
sional/study fields. To achieve these goals, the app should include
exercises, which check reading comprehension.
5. Exercises for testing and developing listening comprehension should
also be included, as learners at the level b1 can already express their
opinions and give advice on selected topics, and especially take part
in everyday conversations.
6. Exercises reviewing text formation principles (written and spoken)
are needed to achieve the objective of describing experiences, events,
dreams . . . as well as opinions or plans in brief, and should be added
to the app.
7. When writing a text independently, learners often make spelling
and/or grammatical mistakes. Exercises that help users correct/elim-
inate the most common spelling and/or grammatical errors would
certainly be interesting and useful. Such exercises should be based
on a corpus of frequently occurring errors in texts produced by the
app users.
Conclusion
Mobile apps and e-learning systems will not be able to supersede or replace
the traditional way of learning foreign languages – in a classroom with
textbooks and teachers – they can however play a crucial role in enhancing
gained knowledge, developing communication competences, and gaining
command of foreign languages interactively. In addition to all the advan-
tages mentioned above, such apps are, unlike traditional forms of learning,
always available everywhere and it is not surprising that their number is in-
creasing. In the present article, the authors made an effort to evaluate the
Slovenian language guidance app developed within the LanGuide project.
117
forms (for example, when testing grammatical cases, a user should
have the possibility of looking at suffixes and declension rules at all
times).
2. Adding exercises for listening, reading, and written communication
would improve the app, because it is crucial that all communication
skills are developed equally when learning foreign languages.
3. In Slovenian, the placement of stress is not fully predictable and
stress must be learned along with new words. In order for learners
to acquire correct sentence stress, recordings of correct pronuncia-
tion need to be included in the app.
4. Learners at the level b1 can understand texts from domains of their
interest and grasp the basic point of texts related to their profes-
sional/study fields. To achieve these goals, the app should include
exercises, which check reading comprehension.
5. Exercises for testing and developing listening comprehension should
also be included, as learners at the level b1 can already express their
opinions and give advice on selected topics, and especially take part
in everyday conversations.
6. Exercises reviewing text formation principles (written and spoken)
are needed to achieve the objective of describing experiences, events,
dreams . . . as well as opinions or plans in brief, and should be added
to the app.
7. When writing a text independently, learners often make spelling
and/or grammatical mistakes. Exercises that help users correct/elim-
inate the most common spelling and/or grammatical errors would
certainly be interesting and useful. Such exercises should be based
on a corpus of frequently occurring errors in texts produced by the
app users.
Conclusion
Mobile apps and e-learning systems will not be able to supersede or replace
the traditional way of learning foreign languages – in a classroom with
textbooks and teachers – they can however play a crucial role in enhancing
gained knowledge, developing communication competences, and gaining
command of foreign languages interactively. In addition to all the advan-
tages mentioned above, such apps are, unlike traditional forms of learning,
always available everywhere and it is not surprising that their number is in-
creasing. In the present article, the authors made an effort to evaluate the
Slovenian language guidance app developed within the LanGuide project.
117
