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Review: The Language Gym interactive site

This review comes with a disclaimer! I obviously know Gianfranco Conti who, with former colleagues, set out to redevelop and monetise the existing free site which has been much used by teachers over the last few years. Gianfranco asked me to write an honest review, so here goes. I shall focus mainly on the French content as it stands so far - bear in mind new material is being added all the time.

I tested the site on my PC.

First off, what is The Language Gym?  

It's an interactive website with French, Spanish and Italian content, which enables students to practise their language manipulation and comprehension skills. Content comes at all levels from novice to advanced. In the Games Room there are four types of activity called Verb Trainer, Workouts, Boxing Game and Rock Climbing. Let's look at each in turn.

Verb Trainer

There are two modes to choose from: Practice Mode and Normal Timed Mode. The latter adds an element of time pressure to encourage quick response and ramp up the competitive element. In Practice Mode you can choose whether to work in Normal Order or Random Order. (On first view it's not clear what difference this makes.) In both cases, you get a choice of eight tenses to select from.

You then see eight subject pronouns and enter a verb you wish to practise. (Interestingly the third person singular is split into two rows - il/on and elle (I can see why since in some cases an extra agreement is needed with elle, although this might create a slight issue with the use of on in composite tenses with plural subjects, such as on est allé(e)s.

You choose a pronoun and a list of verbs and verb types appears. You can select all or choose specific verbs or categories. A new pane appears and you are invited to type in the correct form of the verb. A picture is provided to reinforce the meaning of the verb, along with a translation, e.g. she waits for elle attend. There's a "cheat sheet" to let students check the whole conjugation if needed. When working with attendre in the present tense, I noticed the system would not let me add extra incorrect letters to the ending of the verb. If you make a spelling error earlier in the verb a red WRONG button appears. The NEXT button turns green when the answer is correct.

Overall the interface is solid, somewhat staid-looking, but the goal of verb inflection recall practice is achieved. Not particularly fun, but decent enough for a motivated student. (I've never been a great fan of conjugation apps and websites, to be honest!)



Workouts

There are four modules to choose from: vocabulary, grammar, reading and oral preparation. These are, as yet, incomplete, given that not all levels can be selected in each module. I understand new material is being rapidly added.

I chose an intermediate level vocabulary module, which offers a range of 12 topics (at the time of writing). Not a comprehensive list for GCSE yet, therefore. Each LESSON displays a series of pictures and three target language options to choose from. The pictures have a house style and are unambiguous. After the lesson you get a record of how long it took and your accuracy level.

The intermediate grammar module has a range of interactive tasks, e.g. gap-fills, translations or matching. A bar of accented characters is provided at the bottom to make life easier for students.

The Higher Oral Prep module offers a range of exercises such as gap-fill, split sentences and broken words. The interface for moving text around on the page works smoothly. The five topics so far in this module are education and future plans, environment, healthy lifestyle, hobbies and holidays.

In general I found this part of the site much more interesting than the Verb Trainer, given its focus on more meaningful chunks of language.



Boxing Game

This comes at four levels from beginner to advanced. Choose any level and you get a wide range of topics, some grammatical, some more thematic. Select your topic and a large, bold boxing ring pane appears. Under time pressure you work through each question which is is in the form of a target language phrase or sentence and four English translation options. I like the fact that the language is in chunks, not isolated words. I've heard that pupils like the boxing format, although it's just a way of making a simple multi-choice translation task a bit more fun. The competitive, time pressure aspect helps with this, along with the sound effect (a bell or an OUCH!).



Rock Climbing

Again, this comes at four levels. You get a sentence in English and have to spot the correct translation from a choice of four, starting at the bottom and climbing up the rock face. If you get a wrong answer, you fall back to the bottom (with an alarming sound effect!). You have to be very careful, since differences between each option can be minor, e.g. missing accents. Once again this game operates at chunk and sentence level. It helps build reading and translation skill, and no doubt written accuracy, even though no typing is required.

Click to enlarge this image.



Just to add, I've been told by one of the writers Dylan Viñales, that there is a Live Mode where students can play the Verb Trainer and get ranked on a Leaderboard as they do so. This adds to the fun factor.

Verdict?

First off, the new site has a much better interface and, from my previous experience, is easier and quicker to navigate. The developers have done a good job in producing a slick, colourful, easy to navigate site, particularly when it comes to the Boxing and Rock Climbing. It's based on some sound methodology (chunking, focus on verb colligations, comprehensible input via translation and images).

It's competitive and teachers report their pupils enjoy using it. The French sections I looked at were accurate. My cursory look at the Spanish games suggests there's lots of content there too. The material is well matched to GCSE specifications, but could be used by students and teachers doing any French course.

Were I still teaching, I would have used it to supplement the scheme of work, as I used to with the languagesonline.org.uk, which remains an excellent free site. If you were to plan your scheme of work very thoroughly, you would work out where each game fits in and build it in in a fine-tuned fashion. Some teachers may just like it and a nice change from regular classroom lessons.

The ability to manage classes on the site will be of great use to teachers, though I was unable to try this out. No doubt pupils could use the site at home with teachers being able to monitor progress.

Any reservations? Well, some of the content needs to increase in quantity. The advanced level material is a bit limited so far, but I would think most teachers would be using this primarily with beginners and intermediates. You might argue that the site could have been launched complete, rather than as a "work in progress", but there's plenty there already. The Verb Trainer is a bit so-so for me, but other teachers and some pupils will like it. If I were using the site with classes I'd spend most time on the Workouts and Rock Climbing.

Some teachers have commented that they would have liked a preview section to try out the site. I agree that this would be welcome.

Price-wise, well this sort of site costs a lot to develop and requires plenty of bandwith which comes at a cost, so it will never be super cheap, but compared to some of the published material I have seen and used, this is actually good value. Early Bird school offers start at £120 for an annual licence (up to 15 teachers and 8-00 students). This will rise in March to £200. If you work in a larger school, that fee rises in proportion to the size of the school. The site is very worthy of consideration.


Comments

  1. I purchased a subscription especially with senior students in mind as the first time I'm teacher yr 11/12s in the Australian system. A comment my students have mentioned with the verb trainer is there seems to be no save mode. They could be in the process of doing 170 questions and time runs out or they get bored and hence they would like to be able to save their progress. Do you know if there is an option for this? If there is not that option, they then have to start all over again.

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    Replies
    1. I’d suggest contacting them at the site. They have a Support email, I believe.

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