‘Trusting the Process’: Part Three of My Autoethnography as a Self-Directed Learner of French

Abstract

This is the third part of an autoethnography about trying to enrich my vocabulary and improve my listening skills as a self-directed learner through French language songs. I followed the same Study Use Review Evaluate (SURE) learning cycle as my students in a self-directed English class at a university in Japan, and my work occurred at the same time as theirs, over a period of six weeks. Throughout the project and in the course of writing it up, I have been making comparisons and identifying connections between my learning and that of my students. This installment covers the final three weeks of the project. First, in continuing my language learning history, I discuss authentic language and the discrepancies between my classroom language learning and real-life experiences, especially with regard to understanding spoken language while in France. Next, the paper details how I evaluated my learning both during the project and months after it finished. After that, I describe my longtime interest in accents and dialects and how I chose my third song partly to study Nouchi, a French-based dialect spoken in Ivory Coast. The paper concludes with a description of how I felt my goals shifting at different points in the project and reasons I considered changing my focus from listening to reading. I also describe a way I have been able to continue practicing reading French on a daily basis and how students can benefit from this method too.