Like most people, I could sit with my iPhone and play Words With Friends for hours on end – so I have to exercise extreme self-discipline. I am a bit of an App junkie – well, as my son would say, an App geek. My favorite Apps aren’t the norm, though. I don’t have “Angry Birds” or “Super Monkey Ball,” but am totally addicted to my Molière App with ALL of his plays in French, bien sûr! Ok, I also have an App with all of Shakespeare’s plays… so maybe my son is right!
My absolute favorite, “guilt-free-‘cause-I’m-learning-stuff” App is, without question, the “7 Jours Sur la Planète” vocabulary game App from TV 5 Monde. I am completely addicted to this and it has helped my French vocabulary immeasurably! There is a free version, but the full version is only $4.99 – so it’s a seriously affordable way for an American to work on their French vocabulary.
Each week, they choose three video news stories and select 12 – 15 words from each story. You can then 1.) View the newscast 2.) Read the transcripts of the stories in French 3.) study the vocabulary words and, finally, (my favorite part) 4.) play the six different games (2 levels each game).
This has been a highly instrumental tool in increasing my vocabulary knowledge outside of my profession (entertainment). When there’s a story regarding film or theatre, I’m usually able to blow right through all of the games and all of the levels. However, when it comes to a story about the Bhopal anniversary, for instance, I realize that I have virtually no knowledge of French words dealing with an industrial chemical disaster. So it can be really challenging some weeks.
If you also want to feel just a little smug when someone looks knowingly over your shoulder on the subway – thinking that you’re wasting your life playing games on an iPhone – “7 Jours sur La Planète” is perfect. The realization that you are, in fact, using your smart phone to actually get “smarter” puts people right in their place!
By Jackie Sanders
