Ms. Helen Sprinkle
Project Description and Text
Ms. Helen Sprinkle
The effect of enhancing the French class web pages on students’ listening and speaking proficiencies?
Background: Why select listening comprehension and speaking proficiencies?
In the communicative methodology of language instruction, listening comprehension and speaking are half of the proficiencies one must acquire in a Foreign Language. For several years, including the coming school year, the Foreign Language Department has chosen to focus on enhancing the speaking and listening proficiencies of our students. We have worked on in-class activities which develop these skills, such as paired conversational work, short presentations or dialogs performed by students, making videos of regular classes and prepared performances, and short interviews or discussions between individual students and the teacher. We have asked ourselves what kinds of drills or games help students both enjoy the learning process as well as thrive academically in the target language. This year we examined the production of ‘spontaneous speech’ in the classroom in particular. A working definition of this type of speaking for the Foreign Language class would be open-ended conversational topics or students using questions in the target language to ask to use the bathroom or get more clarification about what a word means, how to proceed with an activity or what the function of a grammar point is. This is as opposed to choral repetitions of the months of the year or filling in blanks with correct verb forms in a reading aloud exercise. Both types of activities promote learning; spontaneous speech allows us to gauge the functional abilities of our students once the initial learning process of a specific structure is over or how able students are to use the target language to learn that language. We have wrangled over how much to include these proficiencies in students’ grades and how to assess them, whether the speech and listening is part of a specifically graded activity or the usage of the target language in day-to-day classroom procedures on the part of our students. Issues have included evaluating grading rubrics, discussing how much in-class time to devote to oral activities and assessments, and where to put oral comprehension and production. Should they only be in the Quality of Work grade? Or also in the Investment in Learning grade? Parsing assessments from participation becomes thorny in the Foreign Language class in which teachers want to evaluate formatively spontaneous speech and developing abilities, as well as assess students’ abilities in listening comprehension and speaking on specific topics or structures in addition to their reading comprehension and writing capabilities.
Among the many facets of our work and ongoing discussions are several key facts which we cannot change and which we must consider in reference to building and improving our students’ speaking and listening proficiencies. Foremost, students need a lot of input of material in order to produce output. In plain language, they must hear a lot of spoken language as they are learning to speak, and this ratio will remain close to 75-90% of listening to produce 10-25% of related speaking abilities for the first two years of Foreign Language, the duration of the requirement for Foreign Languages at SAR. The ratio may become less divergent once students reach the intermediate or advanced stages of learning if they elect to take a third or fourth year of Foreign Language, but it won’t reach a 50%/50% ratio while they are in high school. The first days and weeks of Grade 9 we can readily accommodate this need. With much repetition by the teacher and choral responses on the part of our students, we can teach how to ask and tell one’s name, for example. In a class of 10-20 students, on the very first day we can introduce ourselves and repeat the question and answer, gesticulating to each student and repeating their name. This allows individual students to hear 15-25 repetitions of how to give one’s name as they listen to each other and in turn give their name. As the classes progress, we repeat this process and incorporate review of older material constantly, providing a phonic and spoken bridge between older and newer material, in every class. We encounter ever increasing amounts of vocabulary and knottier grammar per chapter or unit as even the first year is closing, and certainly during the second year of study. We are challenged to maintain all older material and provide enough listening and speaking practice of both older and newer items.
Why so much review? For all languages, there are a set of between 1000-5000 crucial words which build even the most elementary sentences. These must be regularly reviewed to allow the words and basic usage to move from short term memory into long term memory with as much of their functional purpose in play as possible. Individual words do not produce meaning other than to indicate simple identification such as ‘This is a pen.’ Knowing its gender, spelling, sound, pronunciation, and how to make it plural or put it in a sentence makes the word useful and therefore potentially meaningful. If a student memorizes Je m’appelle followed by their name, it is much more likely they will remember how to identify themselves than if they try to memorize the verb s’appeler by itself. Complex tenses are usually built upon the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ in French, as another example. These are the first verbs learned because they are basic to classroom procedures but also because they are the building blocks for later material. The verb avoir has many idiomatic usages in French besides its literal meaning of ‘to have’ and its use in compound verb tenses. When expressing one’s age and physical sensations in French, one uses the verb avoir and not the verb we use in English, ‘to be’ or être. Students need to review the verb avoir, learn the expressions for indicating one’s age or that one feels hot, cold or sleepy, and then retain these usages when a day or two later they are going to want to use the verb ‘to be’ unless they counteract interference from English with practice in every language skill. The words for hot, cold and sleepy, standing alone without the verb ‘to have’ will not allow an individual to remember how to use the vocabulary words properly in an understandable sentence about how they feel or while giving their age.
There is no point at which knowledge is gained and no further active learning is needed in the first two years of learning a Foreign Language. In fact, review not only provides necessary promptings to one’s memory; in a Foreign Language there are any number of nuances of meaning or idiomatic usages which are added to one’s basic skill set and knowledge. The 1000-5000 basic words are only the visible tip of the ice berg upon which further learning is built.
Frequency over time produces phonic memory and speaking fluency of material in a Foreign Language. At SAR, Foreign Language classes meet three times per week for three weeks and then twice during the week when the rotating Wednesday schedule has no FL class, or roughly 11 times per month. This equals about one third of each month’s days. Reading and writing practice outside of class can maintain older as well as newer material when students do not have class or if they need extra exposure in addition to in-class practice. How do we build into our teaching and learning strategies adequate opportunities for developing listening at 75% - 90% and speaking at 10% - 25% with 11 classes per month? Phonic memory is more fragile initially than reading or writing proficiencies. Listening is also the basis for speech, making speaking even more tenuous than listening comprehension in the beginning stages of learning a foreign language. If few spontaneous speaking or conversational opportunities exist outside of class, we need to at least provide listening exercises and repetition for speech practice in a ratio of two to three times as much listening as speech to build a phonic memory and pronunciation base. Audio lingual homework is not only crucial to succeeding in a Foreign Language; it provides needed extra exposure because 2-3 days per week is not sufficient in order to develop listening comprehension and speaking proficiencies.
Homework in Foreign Language covers a large range of possibilities as it does in any subject. Completing worksheets, rereading notes, returned homework, corrected assignments and passages in the textbook can help students retain the basic vocabulary and grammatical structures they need in terms of reading recognition and writing so they can proceed into and through each new chapter. Studying for a quiz or test at home can also create lasting knowledge. The sound recognition and proper pronunciation of any material can only be maintained with additional listening and speaking time at home; first among the two is listening at least twice as often to produce speaking of known material, and three times as much for newer structures. How can we provide this adequately in class, let alone outside of class?
Developments on the French class web-sites
Years ago I posted pages students could access with the French accent marks, the correction key I use for the multiple-draft writing assignments I give, worksheets for new material and review sheets for upcoming tests and the final exam. If students forgot their binders in school or had been absent, they could still complete most assignments and be prepared for assessments. We usually complete review sheets together in class before tests and the final; students have a fresh copy on the website to further test themselves if they wish to do so. These postings had everything to do with reading and writing proficiencies and assessments; they had nothing to do with the audio or speaking components of what we were doing in class. Students had the CD’s which accompany the book Voilà but had to either upload the CD’s onto a device or play them on a CD player. I did not insist on their usage as I was not sure everyone could access them. I was behind the times myself.
Three years ago I uploaded the CD’s onto the websites. Students could access the material on any device anywhere, in their rooms, on the bus going to and coming from school, and at any time. The CD’s have the basic vocabulary of every chapter, read in a list, and one dialog containing the major topics of the chapter. Now that they are available through the class websites, I instruct students to listen and not read the first time they access the spoken vocabulary list. They can acclimatize their ears to the language and its sounds without worrying about what words mean or how to use them in a sentence. They do not have to repeat either. Then as we progress through the chapter, I ask them to listen and read. The Vocabulaire de base and the Dialogue are among the last pages of every chapter in the textbook. The phonetic transcription of French features sounds that are no longer pronounced, and sometimes sounds which are only produced depending on what follows a given word. Once we are nearing the end of a chapter, I want students to read, listen and then repeat. Lastly, students should be able to listen and repeat only, keeping a marker on the vocabulary page in the book if they want to be prompted about what the words means.
Learning words standing alone helps one build vocabulary, offers phonic familiarity and helps one pronounce sounds without too many syllables or cadence issues. The list does not help one use the language in a meaningful way however. The dialog for each chapter features the major components of the chapter in a meaningful context. Initially, individual sounds may be slurred or dropped, as happens in normal, rapid speech among native speakers. The dialog is on a separate track. I encourage them to listen to it as often as they wish, beginning with the start of each chapter. Again, learning to listen without questioning the meaning is a learned skill; ears need more practice in a sense than the mouth or eyes early on. If a word is memorized without sound first and foremost, then pronunciation is haphazard and often erroneous. Allowing one’s hearing to distinguish sounds, some of which are not in the English language, is as vital as learning meaning. The dialog offers the cadences of sentences, the rising or falling of a voice in questions and answers, even if the clarity of individual words in the vocabulary list is somewhat muted.
The difficulties at first were that students were often bored with the list-only listening. They were sometimes daunted by the dialog’s speed. As we neared the end of a chapter, the dialog would not seem so overwhelming but having listened to it so many times, it could also become boring. I also found that asking for written homework and/or reading added up to too much work and too much time with the added listening exercises. I am still in the process of reorganizing the course; I began to start each written assignment in class during the Lishma unit a few years ago. I found that students could ask me questions and there was a better completion rate on written assignments in addition to a better quality of work. Now it is even more important to plan added writing and reading time in class so that I stay within a reasonable amount of time for outside work. Students will skip the listening if they know they are marked for written work and not for accessing the audio files; if it takes too much time to write their French homework and do work for other classes in addition to listening to audio files, they likewise won’t listen to the files. If they become bored, especially with the lists, then there is little additional incentive to access the audio tracks. I felt the websites were helpful but not interesting enough. I needed to enliven them, assign less written and reading work at home to allow for listening time, and adjust the overall amount of material I was covering per chapter to accommodate these changes. I especially needed a way to grade the listening homework as I grade the written work.
Two years ago I began ordering French magazines through Scholastic for all four levels of French. There are 5 magazines per school year. Students enjoyed the enrichment and occasionally accessed the audio links featuring additional material. This past year each issue was accompanied by a CD featuring 5 tracks from the 10 or so articles or activities in each magazine. I uploaded the CD’s to the websites. Now there was material that was in interview format. Students could read the articles, listen to an interview or conversation loosely associated with the reading and complete comprehension activities. The magazines and audio tracks added liveliness and fun to the web sites. And these were not ‘assigned’ but an extra. But did students access them? Some did, others not. I had not written the audio components into the syllabus and guidelines but I began to take notes on what I would revise. The material on the websites was becoming diversified and interesting; I needed to figure out how to make it a requirement without ruining its appeal. An additional difficulty was that we lost so many days to weather or floods that we did not have the opportunity to begin the magazines together for each issue. I ended up handing out the last ones after students completed their finals. I also have not ‘written’ in time for these magazines in the over view of the French courses; they are fun and useful but they do require time so I have to add them as a component in my recalibration of activities.
I have also added a number of you-tubes over the last few years. These can be the alphabet song in French, a song about the days of the week, ‘Shana tova’ to the tune ‘Call Me Maybe’ and other such items. I usually play each one at least once in class, we discuss how we can use it to learn material, and then I ask students to access it on their own. Do these help? For one, students enjoy them and listen to them. When giving a written quiz on the days of the week last fall, students began to hum the ‘Days of the Week’ song. I said it was fine as long as they didn’t say the words aloud during the quiz. They all aced the quiz! This served as proof to the class that listening, with or without music, really does matter in the Foreign Language class, and not just for perfecting one’s pronunciation. And that something better than a boring list would be a further improvement.
So why fix what appeared to be already repaired? For one, I needed to acquire a lot more material. As with the magazines, I needed to fit these additions into the overall scheme of things. I felt I needed cultural material as well, not just linguistic or musical. Students’ listening comprehension and overall learning were improving, but pronunciation itself was not better. And it was becoming quite clear that the Syllabus I have for each level, and the Course Guidelines for Grades 9 and 10, were horribly out-of-date. I did not have the right ratio of listening to reading / writing in homework worked out. I knew I had to shorten the amount of material per chapter to accommodate more testing of listening and speaking and more class time devoted to it. My project for this year was therefore actually a continuation of a department-wide endeavor, a technological leap for me out of the Stone Age and the gathering of material for a rewrite this summer of the Syllabus and Course Guidelines. These last two are based on my work during this school year to recalibrate everything I do. Furthermore, the textbook I use is also outdated. We have not been able to get the workbooks which include written exercises and lab exercises for two years because there is a new edition and the old workbooks are no longer available. I believed there were additional new materials available from the publisher and I wanted to explore them.
Creating an Audio and Multi-Media Lab
My first objective was to change the way I thought about, set up and used the class websites. I had considered them as extra resources but not fundamental to the courses. What could be the websites’ greatest values for French classes? I knew I wanted to make them fun and instructional, but I needed to discover specific priorities in order to honor ‘enhancing’ them as a year-length project.
I began by learning with Rabbi Avi Bloom that I can check up on students’ access of the website. Even without graded exercises that are handed in, I can find out as often as I like who has been accessing the site via the Page Management tab available to the teacher of each course. I polled students verbally about what they liked, disliked and used on the web sites. I created questionnaires which will be used starting next year so I can evaluate the material in a more professional manner. I am in the process of going through this year’s 9th grade course and adding time in class and at home for website based activities.
I had already seen improvements in listening comprehension and overall learning of material with the websites, but as I mentioned before, not in pronunciation. And I knew we needed to look at the new edition of our textbook and evaluate its potential. Avi and I ordered a complete set of the textbook, annotated teacher’s edition, the DVD which accompanies the new edition, and the updated audio lab CD’s. I reviewed the new edition, which was second only in length and effort to my yearlong re-evaluation of Grades 9-10. I realized that putting the audio lab to use in class and on the website would be one way to target improvements in pronunciation. Avi requested permission from the publisher because unlike the textbook CD’s which are inserted into every textbook, the audio lab CD’s are not given out to every student and we did not yet have the 6th edition workbooks anyhow. It took three months but Avi eventually received permission in April. He uploaded the audio lab material and we are now figuring out how to organize the 5-6 pages I have for every class. Page One features you-tubes, the French accent guide, the correction key for written assignments, and current uploaded material like review sheets or worksheets. Page Two has the CD’s from the textbook. Page Three has the CD’s from the scholastic magazines. French 11.41 has a Page four with readings from our literature reader. French 12.41 has the same and a Page Five with a reading of Le Petit Prince. And now we will add two pages for the Audio Lab. Is this the best arrangement? At the moment, Avi has created an Audio Lab which any student can access so the number of pages per website is not exorbitant. This is an ongoing project and I hope to explore what will look the best and serve the needs of students most effectively as I move forward. I keep adding material; I need to evaluate how it is set up and not just what content it possesses.
We have ordered the new textbooks for this year’s incoming Grade 9. I am going through the Audio Lab and DVD again while I rewrite the Syllabus and Course Guidelines for Grade 9. The new material will be available to all students but I am concentrating first on a new approach to Grade 9. I will rewrite the upper-level courses but changes I introduce will not be as drastic. These students already have at least some of the fundamentals of French. I can use the Audio Lab material for next year’s Grades 10 -12 as part of the initial review process we do each fall. Once I am through literally putting myself through the Audio Lab, and working with additional pronunciation materials I have, I may choose a few exercises to do per chapter as opposed to assigning everything in the early chapters so it will not be too much or too repetitive for say, the 12th grade students. I can add items as I work my way through the Course Guidelines and Syllabus for Grades 10-12.
I have concentrated so much on listening and speaking material that I fear losing sight of the forest for the trees. I need to add more cultural knowledge to the curriculum. Presenting monuments of France and the Francophone world would add beautiful visual elements to the websites and increase students’ interest. I have had students make travel brochures as a way to explore France; it would be great to enlist their help in adding these facets to the websites. I hope to set to work on these additions to the websites once I complete my other work. These may well be projects for next year.
In answer to my essential question, yes, enhancing the websites has offered students the additional listening opportunities they need. The Audio Lab section will add the speaking and pronunciation practice they need. My work has only just begun however. I need to rewrite the courses to make listening and speaking at least 50% of what constitutes homework in French class. I would like a 5 to 10-minute minimum per day, excepting Shabbat, and a total of 60 minutes per week on average. I am literally timing every vocabulary list, dialog, and now the Audio Lab tracks for each chapter. These initial estimates may well change. If students want more time they of course will be free to do more. For some, they may need additional time to stay on top of the work. This will mean revising the worksheets I assign; their length must be adjusted as well as how many of them I hand out per chapter. I also need to model use of the websites in class and set up a way to assess students’ use of the websites as I would grade their written homework.
I have to evaluate these changes as I progress through each chapter next year. I must see what effect less written and less reading homework will have on the amount of material we cover, and how well we do with what we learn. Conversely, I must see what more listening, speaking and pronunciation practice produces for the same. I believe there will be a number of adjustments as I move forward on this. Adding cultural material will also be a project most likely for next year. How can I combine listening and speaking practice with these visuals? And Avi and I need to find a way to make the websites look great, be easily useable, and interest students in French culture and language. Last but not least, I have prepared questionnaires and I need student input as we go from chapter to chapter. What do they enjoy? What do they find useful? Not useful? What are their suggestions? I imagine that my department mates will also be willing to look over the websites, evaluate them, and discuss the shifts I am making in the Course Guidelines and Syllabi.
The effect of enhancing the French class web pages on students’ listening and speaking proficiencies?
Background: Why select listening comprehension and speaking proficiencies?
In the communicative methodology of language instruction, listening comprehension and speaking are half of the proficiencies one must acquire in a Foreign Language. For several years, including the coming school year, the Foreign Language Department has chosen to focus on enhancing the speaking and listening proficiencies of our students. We have worked on in-class activities which develop these skills, such as paired conversational work, short presentations or dialogs performed by students, making videos of regular classes and prepared performances, and short interviews or discussions between individual students and the teacher. We have asked ourselves what kinds of drills or games help students both enjoy the learning process as well as thrive academically in the target language. This year we examined the production of ‘spontaneous speech’ in the classroom in particular. A working definition of this type of speaking for the Foreign Language class would be open-ended conversational topics or students using questions in the target language to ask to use the bathroom or get more clarification about what a word means, how to proceed with an activity or what the function of a grammar point is. This is as opposed to choral repetitions of the months of the year or filling in blanks with correct verb forms in a reading aloud exercise. Both types of activities promote learning; spontaneous speech allows us to gauge the functional abilities of our students once the initial learning process of a specific structure is over or how able students are to use the target language to learn that language. We have wrangled over how much to include these proficiencies in students’ grades and how to assess them, whether the speech and listening is part of a specifically graded activity or the usage of the target language in day-to-day classroom procedures on the part of our students. Issues have included evaluating grading rubrics, discussing how much in-class time to devote to oral activities and assessments, and where to put oral comprehension and production. Should they only be in the Quality of Work grade? Or also in the Investment in Learning grade? Parsing assessments from participation becomes thorny in the Foreign Language class in which teachers want to evaluate formatively spontaneous speech and developing abilities, as well as assess students’ abilities in listening comprehension and speaking on specific topics or structures in addition to their reading comprehension and writing capabilities.
Among the many facets of our work and ongoing discussions are several key facts which we cannot change and which we must consider in reference to building and improving our students’ speaking and listening proficiencies. Foremost, students need a lot of input of material in order to produce output. In plain language, they must hear a lot of spoken language as they are learning to speak, and this ratio will remain close to 75-90% of listening to produce 10-25% of related speaking abilities for the first two years of Foreign Language, the duration of the requirement for Foreign Languages at SAR. The ratio may become less divergent once students reach the intermediate or advanced stages of learning if they elect to take a third or fourth year of Foreign Language, but it won’t reach a 50%/50% ratio while they are in high school. The first days and weeks of Grade 9 we can readily accommodate this need. With much repetition by the teacher and choral responses on the part of our students, we can teach how to ask and tell one’s name, for example. In a class of 10-20 students, on the very first day we can introduce ourselves and repeat the question and answer, gesticulating to each student and repeating their name. This allows individual students to hear 15-25 repetitions of how to give one’s name as they listen to each other and in turn give their name. As the classes progress, we repeat this process and incorporate review of older material constantly, providing a phonic and spoken bridge between older and newer material, in every class. We encounter ever increasing amounts of vocabulary and knottier grammar per chapter or unit as even the first year is closing, and certainly during the second year of study. We are challenged to maintain all older material and provide enough listening and speaking practice of both older and newer items.
Why so much review? For all languages, there are a set of between 1000-5000 crucial words which build even the most elementary sentences. These must be regularly reviewed to allow the words and basic usage to move from short term memory into long term memory with as much of their functional purpose in play as possible. Individual words do not produce meaning other than to indicate simple identification such as ‘This is a pen.’ Knowing its gender, spelling, sound, pronunciation, and how to make it plural or put it in a sentence makes the word useful and therefore potentially meaningful. If a student memorizes Je m’appelle followed by their name, it is much more likely they will remember how to identify themselves than if they try to memorize the verb s’appeler by itself. Complex tenses are usually built upon the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ in French, as another example. These are the first verbs learned because they are basic to classroom procedures but also because they are the building blocks for later material. The verb avoir has many idiomatic usages in French besides its literal meaning of ‘to have’ and its use in compound verb tenses. When expressing one’s age and physical sensations in French, one uses the verb avoir and not the verb we use in English, ‘to be’ or être. Students need to review the verb avoir, learn the expressions for indicating one’s age or that one feels hot, cold or sleepy, and then retain these usages when a day or two later they are going to want to use the verb ‘to be’ unless they counteract interference from English with practice in every language skill. The words for hot, cold and sleepy, standing alone without the verb ‘to have’ will not allow an individual to remember how to use the vocabulary words properly in an understandable sentence about how they feel or while giving their age.
There is no point at which knowledge is gained and no further active learning is needed in the first two years of learning a Foreign Language. In fact, review not only provides necessary promptings to one’s memory; in a Foreign Language there are any number of nuances of meaning or idiomatic usages which are added to one’s basic skill set and knowledge. The 1000-5000 basic words are only the visible tip of the ice berg upon which further learning is built.
Frequency over time produces phonic memory and speaking fluency of material in a Foreign Language. At SAR, Foreign Language classes meet three times per week for three weeks and then twice during the week when the rotating Wednesday schedule has no FL class, or roughly 11 times per month. This equals about one third of each month’s days. Reading and writing practice outside of class can maintain older as well as newer material when students do not have class or if they need extra exposure in addition to in-class practice. How do we build into our teaching and learning strategies adequate opportunities for developing listening at 75% - 90% and speaking at 10% - 25% with 11 classes per month? Phonic memory is more fragile initially than reading or writing proficiencies. Listening is also the basis for speech, making speaking even more tenuous than listening comprehension in the beginning stages of learning a foreign language. If few spontaneous speaking or conversational opportunities exist outside of class, we need to at least provide listening exercises and repetition for speech practice in a ratio of two to three times as much listening as speech to build a phonic memory and pronunciation base. Audio lingual homework is not only crucial to succeeding in a Foreign Language; it provides needed extra exposure because 2-3 days per week is not sufficient in order to develop listening comprehension and speaking proficiencies.
Homework in Foreign Language covers a large range of possibilities as it does in any subject. Completing worksheets, rereading notes, returned homework, corrected assignments and passages in the textbook can help students retain the basic vocabulary and grammatical structures they need in terms of reading recognition and writing so they can proceed into and through each new chapter. Studying for a quiz or test at home can also create lasting knowledge. The sound recognition and proper pronunciation of any material can only be maintained with additional listening and speaking time at home; first among the two is listening at least twice as often to produce speaking of known material, and three times as much for newer structures. How can we provide this adequately in class, let alone outside of class?
Developments on the French class web-sites
Years ago I posted pages students could access with the French accent marks, the correction key I use for the multiple-draft writing assignments I give, worksheets for new material and review sheets for upcoming tests and the final exam. If students forgot their binders in school or had been absent, they could still complete most assignments and be prepared for assessments. We usually complete review sheets together in class before tests and the final; students have a fresh copy on the website to further test themselves if they wish to do so. These postings had everything to do with reading and writing proficiencies and assessments; they had nothing to do with the audio or speaking components of what we were doing in class. Students had the CD’s which accompany the book Voilà but had to either upload the CD’s onto a device or play them on a CD player. I did not insist on their usage as I was not sure everyone could access them. I was behind the times myself.
Three years ago I uploaded the CD’s onto the websites. Students could access the material on any device anywhere, in their rooms, on the bus going to and coming from school, and at any time. The CD’s have the basic vocabulary of every chapter, read in a list, and one dialog containing the major topics of the chapter. Now that they are available through the class websites, I instruct students to listen and not read the first time they access the spoken vocabulary list. They can acclimatize their ears to the language and its sounds without worrying about what words mean or how to use them in a sentence. They do not have to repeat either. Then as we progress through the chapter, I ask them to listen and read. The Vocabulaire de base and the Dialogue are among the last pages of every chapter in the textbook. The phonetic transcription of French features sounds that are no longer pronounced, and sometimes sounds which are only produced depending on what follows a given word. Once we are nearing the end of a chapter, I want students to read, listen and then repeat. Lastly, students should be able to listen and repeat only, keeping a marker on the vocabulary page in the book if they want to be prompted about what the words means.
Learning words standing alone helps one build vocabulary, offers phonic familiarity and helps one pronounce sounds without too many syllables or cadence issues. The list does not help one use the language in a meaningful way however. The dialog for each chapter features the major components of the chapter in a meaningful context. Initially, individual sounds may be slurred or dropped, as happens in normal, rapid speech among native speakers. The dialog is on a separate track. I encourage them to listen to it as often as they wish, beginning with the start of each chapter. Again, learning to listen without questioning the meaning is a learned skill; ears need more practice in a sense than the mouth or eyes early on. If a word is memorized without sound first and foremost, then pronunciation is haphazard and often erroneous. Allowing one’s hearing to distinguish sounds, some of which are not in the English language, is as vital as learning meaning. The dialog offers the cadences of sentences, the rising or falling of a voice in questions and answers, even if the clarity of individual words in the vocabulary list is somewhat muted.
The difficulties at first were that students were often bored with the list-only listening. They were sometimes daunted by the dialog’s speed. As we neared the end of a chapter, the dialog would not seem so overwhelming but having listened to it so many times, it could also become boring. I also found that asking for written homework and/or reading added up to too much work and too much time with the added listening exercises. I am still in the process of reorganizing the course; I began to start each written assignment in class during the Lishma unit a few years ago. I found that students could ask me questions and there was a better completion rate on written assignments in addition to a better quality of work. Now it is even more important to plan added writing and reading time in class so that I stay within a reasonable amount of time for outside work. Students will skip the listening if they know they are marked for written work and not for accessing the audio files; if it takes too much time to write their French homework and do work for other classes in addition to listening to audio files, they likewise won’t listen to the files. If they become bored, especially with the lists, then there is little additional incentive to access the audio tracks. I felt the websites were helpful but not interesting enough. I needed to enliven them, assign less written and reading work at home to allow for listening time, and adjust the overall amount of material I was covering per chapter to accommodate these changes. I especially needed a way to grade the listening homework as I grade the written work.
Two years ago I began ordering French magazines through Scholastic for all four levels of French. There are 5 magazines per school year. Students enjoyed the enrichment and occasionally accessed the audio links featuring additional material. This past year each issue was accompanied by a CD featuring 5 tracks from the 10 or so articles or activities in each magazine. I uploaded the CD’s to the websites. Now there was material that was in interview format. Students could read the articles, listen to an interview or conversation loosely associated with the reading and complete comprehension activities. The magazines and audio tracks added liveliness and fun to the web sites. And these were not ‘assigned’ but an extra. But did students access them? Some did, others not. I had not written the audio components into the syllabus and guidelines but I began to take notes on what I would revise. The material on the websites was becoming diversified and interesting; I needed to figure out how to make it a requirement without ruining its appeal. An additional difficulty was that we lost so many days to weather or floods that we did not have the opportunity to begin the magazines together for each issue. I ended up handing out the last ones after students completed their finals. I also have not ‘written’ in time for these magazines in the over view of the French courses; they are fun and useful but they do require time so I have to add them as a component in my recalibration of activities.
I have also added a number of you-tubes over the last few years. These can be the alphabet song in French, a song about the days of the week, ‘Shana tova’ to the tune ‘Call Me Maybe’ and other such items. I usually play each one at least once in class, we discuss how we can use it to learn material, and then I ask students to access it on their own. Do these help? For one, students enjoy them and listen to them. When giving a written quiz on the days of the week last fall, students began to hum the ‘Days of the Week’ song. I said it was fine as long as they didn’t say the words aloud during the quiz. They all aced the quiz! This served as proof to the class that listening, with or without music, really does matter in the Foreign Language class, and not just for perfecting one’s pronunciation. And that something better than a boring list would be a further improvement.
So why fix what appeared to be already repaired? For one, I needed to acquire a lot more material. As with the magazines, I needed to fit these additions into the overall scheme of things. I felt I needed cultural material as well, not just linguistic or musical. Students’ listening comprehension and overall learning were improving, but pronunciation itself was not better. And it was becoming quite clear that the Syllabus I have for each level, and the Course Guidelines for Grades 9 and 10, were horribly out-of-date. I did not have the right ratio of listening to reading / writing in homework worked out. I knew I had to shorten the amount of material per chapter to accommodate more testing of listening and speaking and more class time devoted to it. My project for this year was therefore actually a continuation of a department-wide endeavor, a technological leap for me out of the Stone Age and the gathering of material for a rewrite this summer of the Syllabus and Course Guidelines. These last two are based on my work during this school year to recalibrate everything I do. Furthermore, the textbook I use is also outdated. We have not been able to get the workbooks which include written exercises and lab exercises for two years because there is a new edition and the old workbooks are no longer available. I believed there were additional new materials available from the publisher and I wanted to explore them.
Creating an Audio and Multi-Media Lab
My first objective was to change the way I thought about, set up and used the class websites. I had considered them as extra resources but not fundamental to the courses. What could be the websites’ greatest values for French classes? I knew I wanted to make them fun and instructional, but I needed to discover specific priorities in order to honor ‘enhancing’ them as a year-length project.
I began by learning with Rabbi Avi Bloom that I can check up on students’ access of the website. Even without graded exercises that are handed in, I can find out as often as I like who has been accessing the site via the Page Management tab available to the teacher of each course. I polled students verbally about what they liked, disliked and used on the web sites. I created questionnaires which will be used starting next year so I can evaluate the material in a more professional manner. I am in the process of going through this year’s 9th grade course and adding time in class and at home for website based activities.
I had already seen improvements in listening comprehension and overall learning of material with the websites, but as I mentioned before, not in pronunciation. And I knew we needed to look at the new edition of our textbook and evaluate its potential. Avi and I ordered a complete set of the textbook, annotated teacher’s edition, the DVD which accompanies the new edition, and the updated audio lab CD’s. I reviewed the new edition, which was second only in length and effort to my yearlong re-evaluation of Grades 9-10. I realized that putting the audio lab to use in class and on the website would be one way to target improvements in pronunciation. Avi requested permission from the publisher because unlike the textbook CD’s which are inserted into every textbook, the audio lab CD’s are not given out to every student and we did not yet have the 6th edition workbooks anyhow. It took three months but Avi eventually received permission in April. He uploaded the audio lab material and we are now figuring out how to organize the 5-6 pages I have for every class. Page One features you-tubes, the French accent guide, the correction key for written assignments, and current uploaded material like review sheets or worksheets. Page Two has the CD’s from the textbook. Page Three has the CD’s from the scholastic magazines. French 11.41 has a Page four with readings from our literature reader. French 12.41 has the same and a Page Five with a reading of Le Petit Prince. And now we will add two pages for the Audio Lab. Is this the best arrangement? At the moment, Avi has created an Audio Lab which any student can access so the number of pages per website is not exorbitant. This is an ongoing project and I hope to explore what will look the best and serve the needs of students most effectively as I move forward. I keep adding material; I need to evaluate how it is set up and not just what content it possesses.
We have ordered the new textbooks for this year’s incoming Grade 9. I am going through the Audio Lab and DVD again while I rewrite the Syllabus and Course Guidelines for Grade 9. The new material will be available to all students but I am concentrating first on a new approach to Grade 9. I will rewrite the upper-level courses but changes I introduce will not be as drastic. These students already have at least some of the fundamentals of French. I can use the Audio Lab material for next year’s Grades 10 -12 as part of the initial review process we do each fall. Once I am through literally putting myself through the Audio Lab, and working with additional pronunciation materials I have, I may choose a few exercises to do per chapter as opposed to assigning everything in the early chapters so it will not be too much or too repetitive for say, the 12th grade students. I can add items as I work my way through the Course Guidelines and Syllabus for Grades 10-12.
I have concentrated so much on listening and speaking material that I fear losing sight of the forest for the trees. I need to add more cultural knowledge to the curriculum. Presenting monuments of France and the Francophone world would add beautiful visual elements to the websites and increase students’ interest. I have had students make travel brochures as a way to explore France; it would be great to enlist their help in adding these facets to the websites. I hope to set to work on these additions to the websites once I complete my other work. These may well be projects for next year.
In answer to my essential question, yes, enhancing the websites has offered students the additional listening opportunities they need. The Audio Lab section will add the speaking and pronunciation practice they need. My work has only just begun however. I need to rewrite the courses to make listening and speaking at least 50% of what constitutes homework in French class. I would like a 5 to 10-minute minimum per day, excepting Shabbat, and a total of 60 minutes per week on average. I am literally timing every vocabulary list, dialog, and now the Audio Lab tracks for each chapter. These initial estimates may well change. If students want more time they of course will be free to do more. For some, they may need additional time to stay on top of the work. This will mean revising the worksheets I assign; their length must be adjusted as well as how many of them I hand out per chapter. I also need to model use of the websites in class and set up a way to assess students’ use of the websites as I would grade their written homework.
I have to evaluate these changes as I progress through each chapter next year. I must see what effect less written and less reading homework will have on the amount of material we cover, and how well we do with what we learn. Conversely, I must see what more listening, speaking and pronunciation practice produces for the same. I believe there will be a number of adjustments as I move forward on this. Adding cultural material will also be a project most likely for next year. How can I combine listening and speaking practice with these visuals? And Avi and I need to find a way to make the websites look great, be easily useable, and interest students in French culture and language. Last but not least, I have prepared questionnaires and I need student input as we go from chapter to chapter. What do they enjoy? What do they find useful? Not useful? What are their suggestions? I imagine that my department mates will also be willing to look over the websites, evaluate them, and discuss the shifts I am making in the Course Guidelines and Syllabi.