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.

Beyond the Text: Assessing and Reflecting on Chp 4 Exam in FREN 103 fall 2018

Over the years my written exams have evolved so they are much less focused on form and much more focused on substance. This semester in particular I used videos of native speakers from the Français interactive website in the listening comprehension. I've given them more open ended questions like describing the weather and scenery they see in a photo. They get full credit for identifying 8 elements, the 8 student A picks could be different from those student B picks and that's okay. They're both working with elements that are meaningful to them. The final section is an essay question that asks them to apply autobiographical information to a logical setting.

The chp 4 exam was similar in format, yet after 47 minutes not one student was finished and with the other exams several had finished after just 30 minutes. When I graded them almost everyone did much worse than the past exams. I mulled over what to do and then decided upon giving them an anonymous survey with questions on a Likert scale to find out if they studied for it differently than the others or if I failed to design a test that aligned with what they actually learned.

Here are the questions I asked:

Please answer this survey anonymously to give me feedback on the chp 04 exam.

1.    Approximately how much time did you spend preparing for this exam?

0-30 minutes           30-60 minutes              1-2 hours         more than 2 hours

2.    How much time did you spend on this exam compared to the others? More time  / less time

3.    Did you run out of time to answer the questions as completely as you wanted?  Yes /  no

4.    Do you think we needed to spend more time on this chapter before taking the exam? Yes /  no

5.    How well do you think the exam matched the activities and assignments you did for chp 4?

Not well at all       not well       no opinion       pretty well    extremely well

The results were equal parts reassuring and maddening. They spent between 30 and 60 minutes preparing. This was about the same amount of time as for other exams. They did run out of time. They did NOT think we needed to spend more time on the chapter before the exam. They thought exam matched the activities and assignments very well. I shared the results and said I couldn't really draw any conclusions about what I could have done differently. 

I did allow them to redo the essay questions at the end and I would average their score on that section with the original score. Of 8 students only 1 opted to do that and she already had a B+ grade. 

I guess this is when horses and water come into the picture. You can get a teacher to reflect and offer students opportunities to do better, but you can't make the students come to the water and actually do the work to do better. 

Target Language Use in Partner Work

Intermediate French students recently worked in pairs to rewrite Candide, either a single scene or a modernization. There were 3 groups. One group (the most seasoned-upper level Spanish students taking French) did ALL the preparation in French. They suggested a complex rewriting of the play that involved changing the setting to modern day Alabama, Candide to a woman and a lesbian, and the whole thing explored a kind of fallacy theory for a result that was philosophical, substantive and lengthy.

The other two groups handled the project in English with a lot of joking and screwing around thrown in. How to make those groups more like the first? How to incentivize speaking in the target language?

• The course syllabus notes the importance of staying in the TL during pair and group work, but I don't enforce it like I should. I need to circulate and redirect them to English early and often in the semester.
• The grading for such assignments never takes into account HOW the project was planned. I will add that to the guidelines and rubric and attach points to it. It's actually not a bad idea to make them more cognizant of the processes they use to learn anyway. 
• The directions always say both people need to take notes but inevitably only one does. I can build in points for the notes.
• I can build in a reflection that asks them to comment on their language use while preparing the final project. 
• The reflection could include a question about what words or expressions they heard their partner use that they can add to their own repertoire (thus learning from their peers, something to be celebrated)
• I could direct each group to a different location and record themselves, then ask them to listen to themselves and reflect on THAT.