Introduction to French

The brief

Introduction to French sits inside NTU's language offer, available both to current students who want additional credit or a supplement to their degree, and to external learners taking the course in its own right. It is fully online, with occasional live contact points via Teams. The core question was how to give learners genuine spoken practice, not just reading and writing, in a course they mostly work through on their own.

My role

I designed and built the interactive activities across the module, working with the language academics as SMEs on content and pronunciation.

How I approached it

Language learning fails when there is nowhere to practise speaking. So the shape of the module is anchored around spoken practice with instant feedback: activities where learners speak into the microphone and receive an immediate response on what they have said, without waiting for a tutor to review it a week later.

I balanced that with listening comprehension activities built around spoken French clips, where learners match what they hear to written or French versions. Those two strands, speaking and listening, do the majority of the work; the reading and grammar activities support them rather than lead. It is more honest to how language actually gets learned.

Outcome

The module has been running for several cohorts across multiple years, with strong learner take-up from both the internal student body and external enrolments. Because it is enrolled through the university's own systems, I cannot share a public link, but I can walk through the activity patterns on request.

What I would do differently

The instant-feedback speaking activities are the most valuable thing in the module and also the hardest to scale beyond simple phrases. Given more time, I would push into conversation-shaped practice, where a learner responds within a short back-and-forth rather than repeating individual phrases, because that is where confidence actually builds.