Step 1: Go to the Academic Software page of Hogeschooltaal and click the 'Login' button on the right.
Step 2: Check your details, indicate if you want to help improve the product and click on 'Akkoord'.
Step 3: Click on 'I Agree' to agree to the terms and conditions and privacy policy.
Step 4: Choose whether you want to receive news and tips from Hogeschooltaal.
Using Hogeschooltaal for the first time
When you open Hogeschooltaal for the first time, you will be asked to take a language test. If you do not see the test, but end up in the exercise environment, click on the button below to take the activation test. This test will determine your language level.
Returning to Hogeschooltaal
If you have already logged in a number of times and you have already taken the test, you will be taken straight to your exercise environment. If you use both Hogeschooltaal Dutch and Hogeschooltaal English, you will see the following screen when you log in. You can now choose which programme you want to work with. Of course, you can always switch between the programs. You can do this by clicking on the selection menu at the top right of the page.
Study advice from Hogeschooltaal
After you completed the test, your language DNA is activated. You will now see study advice and your current level per topic, as in the example below. If your environment does not yet have visible score bars, go to 'Using Hogeschooltaal for the first time'.
In the example above, you can see that the programme recommends starting with exercises on the Possessive pronouns of the module Words. You will also see an exclamation mark next to the module Words. This is how Hogeschooltaal helps you to make study choices.
Even if you have scored very well on the language activation test, the score bars of the Basic Skills (Basisvaardigheden) will never be green. This is because the activation test only contains a few questions per topic and Hogeschooltaal cannot sufficiently assess whether you really master something or not based on these questions. So you will always have to answer multiple questions per topic.
Are you curious about your progress? You can view it by clicking on the Results button. Hogeschooltaal recommends a score of at least 80% on all topics. If your score is lower than 80%, continue practising.
Practising with Hogeschooltaal
Practising with Hogeschooltaal is very easy. In the training environment, you can see five main modules of the basic skills: Tenses, Verbs, Sentences, Words en Spelling. When you click on one of these modules, you will see that it is divided into different subtopics. Below, you can see the sub-topics of Tenses.
This overview gives you two options:
- You can click on a specific topic to practice it
- You can start a mixed exercise
Practise a specific subject
When you click on a topic, you will first get to see the theory with examples. After you have read these, you can click on 'start met oefenen'. After answering each question, you will see whether you answered the question right or wrong. If you answer the question wrong, you will automatically get a tip. If you still don't understand what you have done wrong, you can always consult the theory again.
The score bars of the topic you are practicing move along with the exercises you make. If you answer many questions correctly, the percentage on the bar will increase. If you don't score well on a few exercises, the percentage on the score bar will drop. You can also see this on the results page.
Make a mixed exercise
If you choose to make a mixed exercise, you will get an exercise that covers all the topics of the module. Here too you will get a tip and a reference to the theory after answering each question.