Learning French online - technical things you need to know
As Corona has pushed us to online classes, we have discovered aspects of this, which I felt, can be shared.
To begin with, this is not a classroom experience where we see and talk to each other, where we can see the body langauge of each other, and where the teacher can go to each of you and examine what you are doing.
Online classes, need special efforts for everyone, from the teacher as well as from the students. At the same time this offers the advantage of being at one's own place and join from far.
First of all, online classes need to have a smaller group as it is more energy consuming for a teacher to invest to each of the students during an online class, as compared to a classroom program. For this reason, while we at Centre Zenith go for upto 15 students in a classroom program, are limiting this to a max of 9 students in our online programs.
Secondly, what we understood during the brainstorming sessions among our team members, that keeping your video ON is a very important part of attending the online programs.
Think this way, if the teacher does not see you, she feels to be less connected to you. She needs to put much more energy to communicate with you if you are not visible. Hence, keeping your video alive becomes a necessary part of attending an online program.
The other part of an online program is, if there is a doubt in your mind, do not hesitate to ask your questions. We do not ask too many questions if we do not need but at the same time we also ask questions that are necessary.
Dont forget also to greet your teacher when you come, and tell bye when you leave at the end of your course. This is a very important social custom in France.
Now, if we do them with points, we get the following to get the best out of the class, and also to make it pleasant for everyone :
- Let's greet the teacher when it starts and tell bye before to leave (the bonjour and au revoir culture)
- We participate in the class with our video ON, switch ON our audio when we speak and fully invest ourselves in the class without doing another thing by the side
- We do not hesitate to ask question when we have one
That's it for now ! Happy learning :)
PS: Centre Zenith is a Paris based French language school which provides both classroom and online programs. It also has an active Facebook page.
Sourav Choudhury is a social entrepreneur living in France since 2003 and working for the cause of Indian community of France, since 2007. He is founder of multiple projects: the largest social network of the Indian community of France, a French language school for english speaking expatriates, this website, and few other projects.