Beyond the Textbook: Intellectual Rigor vs Communicative Skills in Essay Questions from Chp 5 FREN 103

One of my goals in moving "beyond the textbook," was to give students more authentic opportunities to use the language. Actually, that was practically the only goal. I hadn't adequately considered how those opportunities would compare to typical abilities for their level such as those articulated in the ACTFL Can Do statements. I hadn't considered if they would get enough practice attending to form (accurate verb conjugations, matching verbs to subjects, dropping the e in je when it precedes a word with a vowel, etc). I hadn't thought enough about the cultural knowledge they would develop.

This past semester (fall 2018) I embedded more authentic cultural resources into the curriculum and students generally did well on them. Those who did the homework did well on those assignments as well as the cultural questions on the exam. When we debriefed at the end of the semester they were able to discuss many cultural features about different countries, not just their own for which they were an "ambassador." While I used summative assessments with similar if not identical questions on the unit exams, I didn't use a course-level summative assessment that asked specifically about the knowledge they learned about French pastimes, global environmental management, single-parent families, etc. I wish I had so I had some data on their ability to handle more abstract, cultural knowledge.

After a semester of relegating the textbook to the backseat I think I can conclude that students can handle greater rigor in the form of intellectual knowledge, but I think their basic communicative language skills have suffered, compared to past semesters. When I think back to FREN 103 the fall of 2017 it seemed that almost everyone spoke with greater ease. I haven't compared exam scores, and since I modified the exams, the data might not be that relevant anyway. Maybe my feeling comes from a general lack of maturity in this year's group over last year's. This year there were more freshmen and more immature upperclassmen who struggled to attend regularly and come prepared when they did. Last year's group had a pre-med student, an honors student, and an overachiever adamant about learning French, among others with other strong qualities. I think last year's group was just better prepared to do the work necessary to gradually acquire language proficiency. Had I used more authentic resources last year, I may have found that group could handle BOTH the increased intellectual/cultural rigor AND more challenging communicative situations.

There is no way to know for sure, but I hope the students who continue on next semester are more committed to their schoolwork than they were this past semester.