EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES TO LEARN FRENCH GRAMMATICAL GENDER IN AN ALLOGLOT CONTEXT: A CASE STUDY OF YOUNG NOVICE LEARNERS IN SAMARAHAN

Background and Aim: Learning grammatical gender, especially of a foreign language in an alloglot context, is a difficult task. Grammatical gender acquisition process is in parallel to lexical acquisition (Boloh, Escudier, Royer, & Iberon, ۲۰۱۲), and the recall of the latter is a problem that every language learner face, resulting to problems of grammatical gender recall (Waring, ۲۰۰۲, in Amoli & Karbalaei, ۲۰۱۲). Multiple studies have identified the effectiveness of visual mnemonic, color coding, and cue strategies in helping language learners acquire and recall foreign language grammatical gender in alloglot contexts. Despite that, the studies were done for adult learners for non-French languages and does not look into learners' engagement learning the languages grammatical gender using the mentioned strategies. Methods: Using a mixed-method research method, the learning strategies effectiveness was made accessible via posttests, and learners' engagement was accessible through open-ended questionnaire and group interviews. Results: This study thus investigates the effectiveness of each learning strategy to help young novice French language learners learning French grammatical gender in local context and also learners' engagement using each learning strategy to learn French grammatical gender. Novice French language learners from a national secondary school in Samarahan was recruited to fulfill the objectives of this study. Conclusion: Despite the use of the strategies being equally effective to learn French grammatical gender, learners' learning engagement was found to be different for each strategy. The findings of this study could provide implications for foreign language learning and teaching, specifically for learning French grammatical concepts in Malaysian context.

کلیدواژه ها:

learning strategy ، grammatical gender ، alloglot context ، memory