The virtual reality experience of ImmerseMe will motivate you to analyze, evaluate, and apply practical everyday concepts in a real world situation. Using the four scaffolded learning modes of the ImmerseMe platform (pronunciation, writing/dictation preview, translation preview, and immersion), you will fully engage with real-life scenarios where you will be prompted to interact and negotiate meaning.
I went in assuming that French culture was just about the same as American culture but with more walking and formality. This assumption formed because of the media I watched growing up displaying characters that are obviously French-speaking in upper-class or city-centric scenarios. French is a language in the Latin family that has a lot of forms to memorize, but once you know how to manipulate the infinitive, it’s easier than English. A person learns French the most effectively through constant interaction, especially with native French speakers. As I engaged with ImmerseMe, I understood Francophone cultures to have a lot of parallels to American culture once I put in the effort to connect the vocabulary to my own. I could also see that they are much warmer to casual, frequent interaction than Americans. To me, language means a way of conveying thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and experiences through a common understanding, and that cooperation between participants is amazing in principle.
My learning progress in French improved massively in a relatively short period of time. Despite my weakness in quickly stringing together a sentence, I make up for it with my strength in picking up rules and vocabulary, as well as guessing unfamiliar patterns in the French language.
Pronunciation
I went into this experience confident in my pronunciation. This was tested, however, because the voice detector was inconsistent a lot of the time, and when it functioned, I had to teach myself to slow down and over-enunciate my words. I think I improved my pronunciation by the end of my ImmerseMe experience, whether it was from my grasping how to pronounce French words correctly or if I managed to “game the system.”
Writing/Dictation Preview
Writing (and reading) French has always been my strong suit, so this part of ImmerseMe was no problem at all. Sure, it was a bit of a hassle to use the accent marks on a keyboard, but overall, it wasn’t a challenge. This gave me more awareness of the relationship between the visual form of words and how they sound as they’re being read out, so I can assume spellings more easily if I’m unfamiliar with the vocabulary.
Translation Preview
In this section of ImmerseMe, I tended to have to pause more often. Initially, I was sure that translating phrases would be a breeze since I don’t struggle that much with speaking French in class. I was proven wrong almost immediately though because it takes much more concentration to focus on what the other speaker is saying first. That added distraction, on top of trying to translate the phrase provided, definitely prevented me from being as quick as I wanted to be. But now, with my practice over the weeks, my reaction time is faster than ever.
Immersion
Immersion seemed to be the most daunting to me at first glance, but it turned out to be the most fun of the activities. Yes, it made me think hard in order to answer properly, but I found it to be more fulfilling than Translation because I could use my own style of speaking. It acted as a good practice for interacting in the real world. My first Immersion was rocky, but I’d say that I’m nearly a pro by now (when I’m not nervous).