Inquiry 6: Mauril

Mauril is a free app by CBC that allows you to learn Canadian French or English by watching videos and answering questions about the videos.

You start by picking your level so that they can give you videos that match your language level.

With each video, they provide a list of essential vocabulary to help you understand the video, which you can practice beforehand if you are unfamiliar with it.

Once you complete the initial lesson, you can keep going in order of difficulty with the assigned videos under learn, or you can explore videos by theme and topics on the explore page if there is something particular you want to practice or learn.

Half way through the video and at the end of the video they ask you comprehension questions to see how well you followed the video.

Although you can only learn English or French and it is only with video. It seems like an excellent tool to use in classes with students learning French because it comes with built-in comprehension questions, which you could have the students complete individually or do together as a class. The topics and videos are mostly classroom appropriate, but of course it is best to screen the video you are going to show beforehand.

If you are learning French or English independently, it is also a fantastic tool to work on conversational understanding and listening skills. You would need to work on grammar and written language skills separately, but it is an ingenious tool for working on listening skills. Unlike simply watching videos with subtitles and trying to learn independently, it gives you targeted questions to help you understand the essential parts of the conversation and the essential vocabulary used in the video.