RESEARCH
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The goal of the research on Simple French is to develop an application that is best fitted to answer the daily needs of refugees in their daily life, in terms of objectives, pedagogy and content.
Observations
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I have conducted field observations with various NGOs teaching french to refugees. I have based my observations on 3 axes:
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The pedagogy: teachers mainly focused on the acquisition of literacy (letters, writing, reading) and oral comprehension and expression. From my observations, and my conversations with the refugees, I have decided to focus on the acquisition of French oral skills through the association of image and sound, to answer their urgent need to speak French and express themselves
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The media: I have observed that many refugees owned smartphones (on the contrary to what we might expect) and that attending classes was rendered harder for them as they needed to buy metro tickets and find time in between their asylum application appointments. I have thus decided to develop a smartphone application that did not require an internet connection as many of the refugees did not have phone packages with mobile data.
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The User experience: My observations made me notice that refugees did not use smartphones in the same way as people in my entourage, as they used it mainly for communication and less to play games or for social media. I thus decided that an important work had to be done on the User Experience in order for the interfaces of an application to be understood from people from a diverse multicultural background.
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Background of refugees
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In order to design an application fitted for refugees, it is essential to understand who the refugees are, why they flee their country and come to France and what happens when refugees arrive on our territory. In international law, the term "refugee" is used to describe a person who, in case of return to his country, fears "with good reason to be persecuted because of his race, his religion, his nationality, his belonging to a certain group or its political opinions " ( https://www.amnesty.fr/focus/refugie
). In France in 2018, 337177 refugees were identified and the refugees mostly came from the following countries : Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan, Mali (https://info.arte.tv/fr/dou-viennent-les-refugies-et-ou-vont-ils). We need to precise that all the administrative process required for the refugees in order to stay on the territory (interview, paperwork) is conducted in French. This is why it is particularly important to learn french: without language, they are not able to conduct this administrative procedure. for them Although it is particularly hard to quantify the proportion of illiterate refugees in France, a source estimates it around 23%.
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Analysis of existing language learning applications
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I analyzed existing language applications to learn French in order to see if an application with the same goal as mine already existed and in order to analyze key points of those applications. After a work of identification of the existing applications, based on keywords, I tested no less than 30 applications. Each application were analysed according to these questions.
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Is there a prerequisite of literacy ?
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Is the User Experience (UX) satisfying?
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Is there a prerequisite of Internet connection?
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Who are the targeted users?
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What is the intention of the application?
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Was the application monetized?
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Is there a traced learning path?
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What do the most recent comments on the Play Store say?
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How many times was this application downloaded?
The result of the analysis showed that 90% of language learning apps required one to be literate, and the 10% that didn’t, did not have a satisfying UX to back up the fact that they were not relying on literacy skills to transmit knowledge.
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Pedagogical content
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To determine the pedagogical content, I used forms sent to teachers who teach French to refugees, and inspired myself from various textbooks. From the answers I got to the question “What do you think are the 3 most useful topics for refugees in everyday life?” and the main chapters in the textbooks, I decided to determine 7 precise themes in the learning content:
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Introduce yourself/Basic communication
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Numbers/Time
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Public transportation
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Medical/Health
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Food/Store
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Administrative
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Work.
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UX observations
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I conducted field observations in UX in order to improve my application. I tested the app with refugees, not with French, but in Elvish (a language invented by JRR Tolkien) so that they could not use previous knowledge of French or other languages, so that the effort of learning had to be done. I have made quite a few changes to the app from the observations in my tests (I conducted 3 UX tests of the app). For example, I have redesigned the buttons to make the clickable areas appear more clearly, I have segmented the progress bar into small distinct section in order for progress to appear more clearly, and I have added question marks to each possible answer in order to make the choice more clear.
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Accessibility of images
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The analysis of the accessibility of images had as purpose to check if the images that are to be included in the application are understandable no matter your cultural background.
In order to verify the accessibility of images, forms were sent to FLE teachers, literate refugees and international students. Images with the same size of use as in the application were presented with 4 possible words that would represent the image and the question “What word represents the image the best ?” was asked.
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If you wish to help this research here are the links to the forms:
- Form 1
- Form 2
- Form 3
- Form 4
- Form 5
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Future research
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In the future I aim at initiating a procedure to obtain approval from the CPP to be able to collect data to conduct research about learning through the application SimpleFrench .
Indeed in France, the conduct of medical research is governed by the “Loi Informatique et Libertés” [23], the “Règlement Général sur la Protection des Données”(RGPD) [24], and the public health code [25]. In addition, the above-mentioned texts are subject to European directives.
In March 2012, the publication of the law on research involving the human person , commonly known as the Jardé Act, resulted in new regulatory submission procedures when conducting such research.
Behavioural research, which would be my main research within the framework of this internship, is considered as non-interventional research (NIR) and requires a file to be submitted to the “Comité de Protection des Personnes” (CPP) in order to collect personal data.