Independent Study Report on SLA in France

® IFALPES

I spent this past summer, as mentioned in my About Me section, studying French language at the Institut Français Des Alpes, or IFALPES, in Annecy, France. This program was a five-week intensive study where I spent three hours a day doing nothing but speaking and learning French alongside students from all over the world. I had students in my class from Russia, China, Brazil, Colorado (exotic, no?), Spain, even Venezuela. We all went through this process of language acquisition together, with a variety of language levels and a variety of reasons for being there. 


I was fortunate to have gone there as an SLS student; this means that I have done some research, and been educated to some degree on the process of language instruction and language acquisition. Prior to my departure for Paris, and ultimately Annecy, France, I had spoken to my advisor, Priscilla Faucette, about doing a potential independent study project or 499. We decided that for this paper, I would go to IFALPES as a student of SLS, interested in what accepted methods were efficient or inefficient in my personal language acquisition process in a foreign language classroom. 

In addition to my time spent in the language classroom, I was also exposed to a more natural level of speech from my home-stay family. I was placed with an amazing family outside of Annecy, in Annecy-le-vieux, which is more or less the suburb of Annecy, with whom I could freely and comfortably talk. I was fortunate enough that my host mother had a thirteen-year-old daughter who was semi-proficient in English, and could therefore understand me when I was searching for a word, and could help explain if her mom couldn't fully understand where I was going.

During this process, and all of my interactions, I spent time noting what I was doing to further my language acquisition, what worked, what didn't work, and I began to speculate as to why. During my classes, I would jot down notes in the side margins about what the teacher was doing at that point in the lesson that I found useful or what I didn't find useful. I also made notes in the journal about experiences with my host family that were useful, interesting things I encountered in the real world, maybe with shopkeepers or sales people, and what was efficient and inefficient in those situations.

Since I have been home, I have been working on this paper, and having weekly meetings with my advisor to discuss my progress. I am now in the twelfth week of developing my paper, and am well on my way to a paper that I can, and will be, very proud of. I am starting this blog entry to give you a reference to what it is that I have been working on and why it is important to me and to my academic portfolio. 

I have attached below a copy of my proposal which was made before my departure to France, that can be used as a reference to my final paper to show what I was looking to get out of the paper, and what I did accomplish. When I have completed my paper you will be able to find it by clicking here.

That's all I have for now!

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Chelsea Singlehurst Independent Study Proposal
File Size:	59 kb
File Type:	pdf

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