Exercises are divided into three main groups, each group is divided into chapters:
- Part I: Verb Groups (conjugations)
- Part II: Function Words (articles, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns)
- Part III: Sentence Patterns (Negatives, Reflexives, Questions, etc.)
Remember that within a chapter, all the sentences of a given exercise are of the same difficulty level. After three correct answers, move to the next exercise.
When to Use ELFE
- You may be assigned specific exercises by your instructor based on your syllabus. (Before beginning ELFE exercises, review the grammar topic at hand using your textbook or follow the instructions from your course syllabus.)
- You can self study any topic at your own pace. (You can choose topics based on assignments, for example).
- You can review mistakes that you made on your last paper or quiz.
- You can quickly review your knowledge after a break in your study of French (at the end of the summer, for example).
Tips for Using ELFE
- You will find that each exercise is on just one grammar topic, so if you get three consecutive correct answers, move to the next exercise to change level of difficulty.
- If you have made several attempts to answer a specific question, you may wish to look up the correct answer in the 'Help' menu. If this happens, you should review the specific grammar point in your textbook before continuing the exercise to find WHY you could not answer the question and enable you to answer future questions.
- You should print the exercise index page and mark completed portions.
- You can use foreign characters from your Mac or PC as you would in any other program or use the characters printed at the bottom of each exercise window.
- Once done with an exercise, you can check the transcript of your answers by clicking on "Check exercise for completion." You will then get the full transcript of the exercise and will be able to print it. You can also use this format to do an entire exercise at a time.
- If you cannot understand a rule or the answer to an exercise, print the page "Check your exercise for completion" and bring it to your instructor.
ELFE Origin and Copyright Information
Elfe was originally developed at the University of Iowa using Dasher, an hypercard environment developed by Sue Otto and James Pusack. The French content was developed in the Department of French and Italian at Iowa under the direction of Geoff Hope. The current web-based version in CANVAS, our course management system was developed at Brown University by ITG with a grant from the Consortium for Language Teaching and learning (Yale) in 2013