AbstractOver a two‐year period a similar course was taught to successive years of second‐year undergraduate students of French at the University of Salford. The course was aimed at language development in the context of learning methods of self presentation, learning about the Francophone world, learning to do technical translation and learning about French politics. During the second year, changes were introduced into the teaching/learning framework in order to place more emphasis on task based self‐access learning. The effect of the changes was monitored by means of diaries, questionnaires and examinations. This article sets out to examine the relative contribution of each of these methods in providing the feedback required to guide future develop