Learn Swedish (Loecsen)

2004 – updated in 2021

Lecturers
Students

Business & Communication
Tourism

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Swedish

English
Swedish

A1

Guiding resources (online course/book)

Vocabulary
Pragmatics
Prosody

Listening
Speaking
Reading

The digital learning tool under analysis consists of a website, whose aim is to help its users learn and develop basic conversational skills in Swedish by listening, reading and repeating words and short phrases at a beginner level.
The website covers a total of 17 topics, mainly related to tourism and travelling. Its main asset is the fact that it enables users to learn interactively through three different types of activity: listen and record yourself; listen and match; and read and match. This allows students to develop their skills autonomously and at their own pace, getting immediate feedback on their performance.
Besides this, it also suggests other resources, namely Swedish novels, songs, films and emissions/series, which can be used in higher levels and can also be explored by teachers

This resource is ideal for A1 level students of Tourism and focuses mostly on vocabulary and short phrases. The default language of tuition is English, but other languages can be selected to mediate the learning process.
It is mostly suited for autonomous learning and practice, but it could also be used within a classroom context as some of the quizzes can be done with the whole class, or the lecturer could even set a competition among students or groups of students during the lesson, as some quizzes are timed and all give feedback on the number of correct/wrong answers given.
It is an excellent tool to learn and develop reading, listening and speaking skills in Swedish.
Besides this suggestion, this resource was also tested with 8 students of the Master in Translation. They were asked to test the resource in an autonomous way and at their own pace. They considered the resource to be pretty interactive and appealing. The option of displaying students’ own progression throughout the games/activities they played represents a strong asset. They also considered the option to use the microphone new and very helpful.

Suggestion 1: after working on topics such as Hotels, Restaurants, Transportation, etc., in class and using a coursebook or any other resources, students are given the link to the website for further practice of the vocabulary and phrases at home.

Suggestion 2: after working on a specific topic in class, the lecturer projects the listen and match or the read and match quizzes and elicits answers from the whole class. After this, students open the website on their own devices and individually or in groups (depending on the number of students), they do the listen and record yourself quiz. I believe at a beginner level, students will have fun trying to reproduce the right sounds and intonation.

Suggestion 3: students are given the link to the website and asked to learn and practise the words and phrases of a certain topic. Then, in the following lesson, the knowledge acquired is checked by projecting the same words and phrases and getting students to read them out loud and to translate them into English. After this, some of the phrases/sentences are used to elicit and teach some grammar contents, such as pronouns, the present tense, the negative, the interrogative, etc.

Suggestion 4: in a paid version, it is possible to download the pdf files and the audios, which can be useful to lecturers as they can then create and implement other activities without an internet connection, such as dictations for example. Also, the other resources suggested on the website (novels, songs, films, TV sessions, series) may be of use for lecturers to develop further activities.