Every good scholar and teacher regularly looks for ways to challenge and improve her or his mode of thinking. I have actively furthered my own growth through conversations with my colleagues, participation in workshops and roundtable discussions and several projects which I designed to meet specific challenges that arose in my teaching of French language, literature and culture.
I. Adapting Teaching Strategies to Students' Needs At Penn State Altoona, I taught courses on French culture in the general education curriculum. These courses, conducted in English, are open to any student who needs general education credit in the humanities, or who needs to fulfill Penn State's diversity requirement. During my first semester at Penn State Altoona, I encountered specific challenges while teaching FR 139 "France and the French-Speaking World": a number of students would not view the required films, and many were hesitant to speak up during class discussions. Mid-way through the semester, I had the students complete a mid-term evaluation to help me assess what was going on. The results indicated that many of the problems stemmed from my lack of knowledge about the student population and the college. For example, most Penn State Altoona students hold jobs--often full-time positions--and struggle to balance work and school. Many students take evening courses, and a number of students live off campus, even as far as 50 miles away. The biggest complaint on the midterm evaluation was that I had assigned too many films to be viewed outside of class (six in total). While I had scheduled public screenings of each film, most students could not attend because of other course or job conflicts. This explained why class discussions of the films were so lackluster. The mid-term evaluation also revealed that the students believed they were learning a lot, but that they struggled with the reading material and were not confident in their comprehension skills. Half of all respondents wrote that they found lectures, Power Point presentations, and whole-class discussions more helpful than small group or pair discussions. This result was counter to all of my previous teaching experience which suggested that students absorb material more effectively and feel more comfortable in small group or pair discussions. (See "Facilitating Classroom Discussion" below). The students' own ideas for improvement could be broken down
into three suggestions: 1) students must participate more in
class discussion; 2) students should read and prepare material more
carefully ahead of time; 3) films should be shown during class so that
everyone can see them. During my first semester of teaching advanced literature courses in French at UVa, I observed that class discussion was more lively and fruitful in my 19th-century special topics course "Rêver le monstre" (Fren405) than in the 19th & 20th-century literature survey (Fren343) I was also teaching. In both classes there was the same relative mixture of language skill, ranging from strong to weak in oral expression. The major difference between the two was in number: 9 students in Fren405 and 18 in Fren343. I struggled all semester long to find ways to encourage 18 students to participate in class-wide discussion, but was dissatisfied with the results. The same handful of students felt comfortable speaking and the rest remained silent. My own frustration was echoed by many students in the course evaluations: some mentioned fear of speaking to a large group, some felt shut out by the stronger speakers, some did not believe that I fostered a comfortable atmosphere for discussion. Reading these comments alongside those of the students in the smaller Fren405 class was informative. The general consensus among the class of 9 was that discussions were interesting and inclusive of everyone; the atmosphere was open, laid-back and warm. A few commented that I welcomed and encouraged different viewpoints. What worked well for 9, bombed for 18. Clearly, I needed to think about different strategies for larger classes. An opportunity to do so presented itself the following semester. 30 students showed up to the first meeting of "Le Sommeil et les rêves" (Fren345-2); the final enrollment was 26. Completely overhauling my previous style of instructor-lead discussion, I employed the following strategies in the hopes of fostering not simply more student participation but student-lead discussion. Small Groups: I divided the class into groups of no more than 4 students. Each class meeting, we would break into groups for about half of the period. In their small groups, students would be responsible for completing some task: discussing questions, summarizing a point from a text, comparing viewpoints. These groups were also integral to the way I designed the writing assignments. Writing Assignments: Two 5-7 page papers were assigned in the course. For each paper, students completed a three-step process: 1) a one-page written summary or exploration of their topic to turn in to me; 2) a first draft which they shared and discussed with their group members; 3) a final draft which they submitted to me. Twice during the semester, I devoted an entire class period to small group paper discussion. Student Presentations (Exposés): As part of the 3-step writing process, each student was required to give a 10 minute presentations on the paper topic he or she had chosen. These exposés were very informal and conducted in the small groups. Student-Generated Discussion: Using a technique I learned about from Professor Marva Barnett of the Teaching Resource Center at UVa, I allowed the students to direct the topics of discussion for classes. Each student is responsible for bringing two (or more) questions about the day's reading to class. These could be questions about form, style, content, comprehension: basically anything goes. At the beginning of class, I elicit the questions and we make lists on the board, catagorizing and grouping questions as we go. Once all the questions are out there, we turn to discussing possible answers. Usually I would ask the students to break into their small groups and I would give each group a set of questions to discuss for a specific period of time. Then, after 10 minutes or more of small-group discussion, we would come back as a whole class and listen to the reports of the groups. I would usually summarize these on the board. Overall, Fren345-2 was much more successful in facilitating student discussion. In small groups students felt more comfortable speaking and had more opportunities to voice their viewpoints. I noticed that everyone felt more comfortable addressing the entire class after having met for a few minutes in the small group. The student-generated questions made for lively classes and I was pleased to see that even the more timid students did not hesitate to volunteer their questions. The question-method seemed to give students a sense of ownership in the class. Even though I was orchestrating the discussions, it was their voices, their ideas which determined the directions we would take. Morever, the quality (depth and thoughtfulness) of students' observations and comments on the subject matter improved significantly. The 3-step writing process was effective in improving also the quality of student writing. Each student benefitted from the comments of 2 to 3 fellow students as well as from my own suggestions on drafts. The students learned from each other, discussing ideas, methods of analysis, stylistics and language mechanics. The final polished papers were significantly improved and the students seemed more invested in their work because we devoted so much time in class to the writing process. Representative Comments on Course Evaluations: from mid-term evaluations: "I really like the group system. I like also that you introduce the subject for 10-15 minutes and then we can start to work." **[my translation from French] "I find discussion questions helpful and it's a good system to work in small groups and then afterwards with the whole class" **[my translation from French] "Overall class discussion is usually the most helpful after we've had a chance to discuss in groups." from semester evaluations:
"my groups were very fun to work with" "She always encouraged us to share our thoughts. She seemed to welcome different viewpoints more than most teachers I've had but also critically examine them." "It's a great class. Group work is a fantastic idea." [Classroom atmosphere] "Great--so comfortable; made me want to participate a lot." "Always interesting, always challenging very stimulating environment" "I think people really felt comfortable participating in class." III. Teaching Reading Skills: In January of 1995, I attended a seminar sponsored by UVa's Teaching Resource Center on how to lead productive class discussions on materials read outside of class. While the ideas were sound, they seemed difficult to implement in my intermediate language classes where students are asked to read and discuss in French and often have difficulty grasping the material and expressing their ideas. Along with two of my colleagues, Candace Cone and Cynthia Filer, I approached Marva Barnett, the director of the TRC with this problem. We decided to treat it in a workshop exploring methods of teaching readings in the intermediate level foreign language class: "Discussing Readings at the 200 Level." Using ideas presented at the workshop, I redesigned my classroom reading activities to focus particularly on teaching reading skills to improve students' comprehension (See Sample Reading Activity for French 101). The students in my Fall 1995 French 201 class responded beautifully to this new strategy and especially appreciated the emphasis on skill as well as content. Sample excerpts from their course evaluations even referred to specific skill-building activities "I think we should have more readings. But I still like the little matching/put the event in order games (like the goat story). They helped to put it all together;" and "We went over [readings], sometimes even taking scenes and putting them in chronological order." I later incorporated these reading strategies into both accelerated intermediate and elementary French courses. In November 1996, my colleagues and I shared our methods with a broader audience of language teachers in a workshop we lead at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages annual meeting: "What to Do When They Don't Understand: Teaching Reading Skills" (See workshop handout and letter from Cheryl Krueger). IV. Teaching Writing in First and Second Year Language Courses: Writing assignments pose a different set of challenges in language courses. Students often focus so much on grammar and spelling that they forget that style and organization are important too. Sometimes they neglect to carefully proofread their papers, or turn in sentences that are direct translations from English. Then there is the problem of grading them--what criteria are appropriate for the elementary and intermediate writers? During my first few years of teaching I struggled with these questions, trying out different methods to teach the students through peer-editing how to edit their own work. Many students benefited from this process but some writers always fell through the cracks. Some representative comments from such students in the Fall 1995 201 class include: "A little more explanation of the grade could have been nice;" "I completely cannot understand the self-editing. That was very useless. I think peer editing was probably the best-- I know that I learned as much if not more from proofreading another person's paper as I did writing my own." Clearly these students did not understand the grading criteria and did not understand why self-editing is a useful skill. In the Spring of 1996, I participated in a TRC certificate-bearing program for foreign language instructors called "Teaching in Tongues." One of the seminars I attended was a session on writing led by Cheryl Krueger. Professor Krueger presented a method she uses in her advanced grammar and composition French courses that guides the students through editing their own writing and guides the teacher through the grading process. After adapting her method for my own courses and writing assignments, I found that 1) students understood the criteria more clearly, 2) I was more easily able to arrive at a grade for each paper, 3) students learned how to edit their own work, and 4) the quality of final drafts improved (see Sample writing assignment and draft procedure from French 232 in Appendices). I now use this process at all levels. Student feedback about the process has been very positive: "We were required to do a fair amount of writing. Self-editing was useful and the topics were fun to write about;" (S98 101) "[Criteria] were made clear before we handed in the papers;" (F97 101) and this comment from a French 232 student in Fall 1996, "Sometimes I wished Mme Fay had helped us a little more on the rough drafts but I think she was just trying to challenge us to do the research ourselves." Students do rise to my challenge and are better prepared for more advanced writing assignments. V. Teaching with Technology: The very first time I "surfed" the World Wide Web in 1994, I came across a web site entitled "Le coin des grenouilles." The possibilities for exploiting this technology and the growing number of French language web sites was tantalizing. In 1996, when UVa installed an electronic classroom for foreign language departments, I began to explore the practical applications of the web and related computer technologies for my French courses. My colleague, Caroline Clifford, and I began by creating a resource page of links to French language web sites for teachers, students and scholars. We then designed several web activities for use in UVa's French language classes. Our premise was that web documents could be used in the classroom like any other piece of realia: texts, music, video. The added advantage of a web document is that it can include sound, video, images as well as text, and provide a current snapshot of life in the francophone world, exposing the students to a multitude of cultural issues and situations. I taught the first French language class (French 232, Intensive Intermediate) in UVa's new electronic classroom in the Fall of 1996. I was able to pilot my web activities as well as computer software (McGraw Hill's Collage package) in two sections of 15-19 students. After the initial orientation to the computers, one web activity and several grammar exercises using the computer software, my students completed mid-term evaluations specifically asking about the course's electronic component. The feedback was very positive: "It seems like a creative and useful way to learn French;" "I look forward to the days that we're in the computer lab. I wish we used the internet more;" Students liked the immediate feedback of the computerized grammar exercises. Most of their suggestions were that we spend more time using the web in class. As internet browsing can eat up a lot of class time, I responded by developing focused web activities that led into another activity: oral presentation, role-playing or writing. The end of year course evaluations did not ask specific questions about technology, but several students brought it up on their own, nearly all requesting more time on the computers. Since this initial experiment, I regularly incorporate web activities in my intermediate language courses. |