Foreign Language Student Motivation

My paper for this class will be on motivation in foreign language learners and how knowing what motivates US students to learn a foreign language and reach advanced-level proficiency or higher can be used to improve future L2 teaching practices. I will be comparing the results of two online surveys I have been giving to UNH language students during the past few weeks. While each of the surveys contain the same questions about what motivates them to pursue proficiency foreign language, the first survey was given only to students currently taking a language at the 631 level or above and the second survey was given to beginning (401) level students.

I am curious to see how the two groups compare, and I have my own predictions about how the data might look, but I'd like to ask you guys what you think motivates FLLs at the beginning level vs at the advanced level. Are they motivated by the same factors by the time they get to 631 as they were when they began? Would their motivation levels change over time? How might the teacher be able affect student motivation?

Teaching/Learning gender of nouns

Right from the beginning in French 1 I had to memorize the gender of nouns for every test and quiz. Later on, my teachers tried to teach us how you can often tell what gender based off of things like suffixes, but I never memorized any of the rules they told us. However I do really well knowing what words are what gender when I speak and write getting it right about 95% of the time. I have no clue how I compare with my peers; perhaps everybody just figures it out without realizing it or thinking about it. I think my brain has probably just figured out the rules on its own, maybe partly through the forced memorization in the beginning of my French instruction. 

I wonder how exactly we learn and memorize the gender of nouns; there are a ton of them. How should we as teachers teach it? When I first had to learn gender it was hard for me to memorize, just like verb conjugations, now I have no problem with either of them and have not had a problem for a very long time. Did that mandatory memorization in the beginning set me up to establish a system of rules in my head that I do not think about, or was it a waste of time and I would have figured it all out eventually without that tough memorization?

Knowing gender is really important in French and as I can see in German and Spanish as well. It would be interesting to see if there are any scholarly articles on it, any research. But I definitely do not have time to research it now! J

Making Connections with Foreign Students

The first topic that I have questions on that I could think of was setting up a pen pal system. I never did this in school, but liked the idea of it. I have friends that did this in high school and loved it, but I do not know much about it. I know we have talked about this before briefly, but some of the logistics are interesting. Mainly as teachers, how do we monitor if the exchanges are happening, and how do we base a grade on it? Do we grade it on participation? Or do we grade on the level of discourse that is being had? If so how do we create a criteria since the discourse depends on both people that are involved. Also, at what level is it appropriate to try an exchange like this? Plus just finding a group to exchange with sounds like it could be very difficult. I don't know if anyone here has had any experience with this type of exchange, but I would like to hear your input.

Flipped learning in the foreign language classroom

For my final paper for this class I will be writing about flipped learning in the foreign language learning environment.  Flipped learning is the idea that students learn the concepts on their own outside of class so that class time can be used for skill application.  Usually instructors assign their own video lectures or already made ones for homework.   Students may have to answer comprehension questions to show they've done the work outside of class.  Then class time is free to put the new concepts to use.

I went to a workshop on flipped learning last spring led by my former AP biology teacher who has now flipped her classes and is having a lot of success with it.  I would like to know how this would go in the foreign language classroom.  From the brief and less-than-adequate description I gave above, do you have any initial feelings about how this would work for language learning?  Advantages?  Disadvantages?

Online Learning at a Local Middle School

I decided to write the blog post in order to solicit your help/input in relation to a group of middle school students that I just started working with. Just a disclaimer: I am not trying to bash the school, but am simply looking for input. Last week was my first week working with seventh and eighth graders from a K-8 public school with 80 students total. Due to the very small number of students, the seventh and eighth graders (there are only 12 of them) have, beginning this year, enrolled in an online middle-school Spanish course via the Virtual Learning Academy (Vlacs), which is an online charter school for New Hampshire middle and high school students. The students spend three 40-minute periods per week working towards the completion of their year-long Spanish course in the school’s computer lab. Although all students are enrolled in the same course and are more or less working at the same pace, they are expected to work individually and in some cases actually get in trouble for working together and/or sharing information.

The course was created and is currently organized by a teacher from the Holderness School in Plymouth, NH, who acts as the “teacher” and evaluates student work. The curriculum incorporates reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, making use of technology to do all student evaluation online. It is structured so that students read “lessons” related to different thematic units, and then complete a series of evaluations that test their comprehension of what they have reviewed. The “teacher” never actually “teaches,” but simply writes the lessons and creates course materials. Unlike many UNH courses that are taught online, the Vlacs course does not include any audio or video of the instructor; students are expected to learn the language simply by reading the lessons.

The school recently hired me to tutor the students three times a week, as students and parents had voiced strong frustrations with the online Spanish course. The students are accustomed to having “real teachers,” and so do not like having to learn online without being able to work directly with a live instructor. This past week I conferenced individually with the students to see how each is doing, and realized that their online course has been a complete disaster. Students generally do not understand the material, and simply fill in answers without actually retaining any language skills. They want to learn Spanish, but struggle immensely with online learning and the independence that it solicits. Beyond the students’ lack of personal motivation to make use of the online program, the course itself is not well structured. The lessons are extremely confusing, and assignments often do not relate to what students are learning. My SPAN 401 students would not be able to understand the lessons, let alone a group of seventh and eighth graders.

I am not entirely sure as to how I should approach the task of the working with these students, as it seems to me that the course itself is not appropriate for them. The school’s principal had envisioned that I work with students one-on-one, in order to answer questions and help them with things like pronunciation, but I’m not sure how effective this strategy will actually be given the fact that most students are completely lost. I am thinking of potentially working with small groups of students, in order to conserve time and target major issues (like verb conjugation), but am generally just overwhelmed by the task at hand. It is obviously not my job to fix the situation or teach the class, as I was hired simply to tutor the students, but I feel as though my work will be like simply putting a Band-Aid over a massive problem.         

Bilingualism and language aptitude

I thought that I would take the opportunity to share my final project for my ESL Methods class that you might find interesting.  It focuses on the effects of early bilingualism (before the age of 10) on future language learning experiences. Many cognitive studies have been conducted in this area of interest, studying the executive function (mostly with word recognition tasks) of early bilinguals compared to monolinguals. The results show a clear advantage for the bilinguals, though not a drastic one (sometimes a difference of .10 of a second). Nevertheless, it does have statistical significance.

I used these cognitive studies a basis for my personal question: how do early bilinguals perceive their aptitude in language learning? I conducted a basic survey with 16 participants that analyses their thoughts on the importance of bilingualism/language learning and their ability/ease of learning in past FLL experiences. As expected, most of the participants felt that learning language was relatively easy for them, and that being bilingual was a beneficial life skill for them.

This research has really imprinted in me the importance of learning a second language at an early age: the advantages are clear and strong. I am truly an advocate for FL education in elementary school.

Have you taught or known any early bilinguals and found them to be particularly proficient in LL? Do you support early FL instruction based on this research?

Movies in a Foreign Language Classroom

I have been thinking about this a little bit as I have been going through my internship:what is the role that movies should play in a foreign language classroom?

I believe that playing movies is an important, and necessary, part of a foreign language classroom. However, in my personal experience as a student, I remember my teachers playing the movies and then they just had a worksheet at the end of the movie. Is that enough to test the comprehension of the students? We have played a couple of movies so far this year, and for each movie, we have stopped the film at certain parts to ask comprehension questions and explain what is going on, if necessary. I think that a lot of the time (and maybe this is more prevalent in high school than in college), teachers use movies as more of a break than as a helpful teaching tool. I do not think that that is the case all of the time, but I think that that is a factor.

Also, when playing movies, what do you think about the use of subtitles? Thus far, when we have played a movie in class, it has been in French with English subtitles. My concern in that case is that the students are reading the dialogue rather than listening to it. However, if you do not add the subtitles, I fear that they would be lost and they wouldn't understand. Something we haven't yet tried is playing the movie in French with French subtitles, which would be interesting. When you play movies in class, what do you think are the ways you would go about teaching the material during, or after the movie?

I think that movies can be an extremely useful tool to teach culture and language, but sometimes I think that the students do not see watching a French movie as learning. Rather the students see it as a day off from learning.

Testing anxiety: a perspective

Since a lot of us talked about testing anxiety in our blogs but don't have a lot of experience with this ourselves, I decided to ask a friend of mine about her experience with testing anxiety.  She is my age and very successful academically and professionally.  She's currently holding down a job in her field of study and will finish her master's degree in the spring.  Although it wasn't her main focus, she did study Spanish during undergrad and studied abroad.  I asked her how testing anxiety affects her and what she does to mitigate those effects.  Her answer is copied and pasted here:

"For me confidence definitely plays a huge part in anxiety with tests. I don't think I necessarily get more things wrong, it doesn't necessarily affect my accuracy in responding. When it builds up, what's most affected is my ability to focus. I just either flip through the test a million and a half times or stare off or get up and leave. I just get super overwhelmed and shut down.

The two biggest things I've learned is really planning out how I will use my time during the test and when I start preparing for a big test. When I'm good (which is rare) I will start to study for exams about two weeks before daily. That way I can tell myself that I absolutely know the material and self doubt doesn't become a big issue during the test. Also, when we first get the test I go through and decide when I should get to certain parts or I do the biggest part first and give myself a time limit (If there are multiple choice and two essays and the exam is two hours long I may do the essays first and tell myself I should complete them in the first 45 minutes.) Learning to time manage during the test is the most important. Breaking it into sections and thinking about that amount of time rather than the test as a whole makes it considerably less overwhelming. "

I asked her when she figured out those strategies for herself and she said,

"I think I actually didn't really figure any of it out until I started taking education classes. So probably college. Through high school I had a lot of teachers who learned to check in with me during tests and remind me of where I should be but that never taught me to self monitor. I definitely wish somebody had taught me how to do it myself earlier."

Obviously it's different for every person, but I never though of self-doubt being what causes people to be unable to focus.  Psychologically it's smart to eliminate that problem by starting to study way ahead of time, but I understand all too well how hard it can be to do stuff that far ahead.  I also liked her emphasis on time management as a test taking strategy, which also happens to be a skill that every single test taker, anxious or not, needs to employ to successfully complete an intensive test.

Foreign Language Assessment

How accurately do you feel that classroom-based tests reflect student abilities? What are your experiences as a test-taker? Do you think there are students that do not test well? What method of testing do you think is most effective to measure students' language skills? Use examples to justify your point of view.

As an intern at Exeter High School, I have handed out, corrected, and handed back close to 12 in total throughout the semester. As I correct the exams, I often find myself thinking about these discussion questions. Did this test accurately reflect my students' abilities? I often find that students who do not do well in class are the students that do not perform well on the exam, and students who participate and make connections in class do well. As high schoolers, I think this has a lot more to do with their study habits, attention span, and interest in the material than it does with the test. I had a couple of students come into class one day and say that they didn't like my class because "they had to try". I do agree, and have first-hand experience that foreign language comes more easily to some than it does to others, but even those that understand it need to put in effort. When students do not perform well on an exam, I go back over the parts that they got wrong and I constantly ask myself if I covered that section enough? Was I clear enough in my presentation? Was the question confusing? Every time I found the question to be clear and the material to be covered well. Therefore, when students do not do well on an exam, I think it has more to do with their study habits than the quality of the question.

With that being said, I do not think that written tests are always a great indication of the knowledge that our students have. I do believe that there are some students who are genuinely poor test-takers, and let anxiety and stress interfere with their ability to portray their knowledge of the subject. I find that this is more likely when the subject doesn't come easily to students. When I was a student, I would study for a French test, go into the exam with little stress and do well. However, the story was completely different when it came to calculus or chemistry. I could study for hours on end and I would go into the test shaking with nerves, and get a mediocre grade. The grade didn't always reflect that I didn't know an aspect of the subject; when I was anxious or stressed I would have a much harder time recalling the information, which I think happens to some students. 

With foreign language, I think that there are a variety of tools and methods to test students' ability. I remember when I was in high school, my teacher had a test with four separate parts on it: a listening, a speaking, a reading, and a writing component. I think that if a written test is the preferred method then these are the four areas that need to be tested. However, technology has added more ways of testing students. Exeter high school has a wonderful language lab where students have headphones with attached microphones, and students can record a conversation, or answers to a question. This is a great tool because the teacher can assess pronunciation, without having to take time out of class to do so. Presentations can also be a form of summative assessment. My ED500 experience was at Noble high school and the teacher was wrapping up a unit on restaurants and food, and the exam was a café experience in class that the students had to act out. They had table cloths, plastic silverware and menus, and they had to display their knowledge of the roles of waiter and customer through acting it out. I think that when it comes to assessing students, variety is a good thing because if the same teacher uses tests out of the book all of the time, the students come to expect it.

Testing

I believe classroom-based tests are usually pretty good indicators of how a student is performing in a class. They are better for testing particular knowledge or skills that a lesson or a course is aimed at teaching though than they are for testing overall proficiency. So for example, a test would be good for seeing if a student learned particular rules of grammar in a foreign language class, but probably not as good for testing how well they are able to employ those grammar rules in their speech and writing on a consistent basis.

I believe I am a good test taker and know all of the good strategies and thought processes for taking a good exam. For many students, I do think there are many factors that can affect test scores more than just how well a student knows the material. Some possible influences are nerves, lack of test-taking strategies, and weird questions like those that are worded badly or are ‘gotcha’ questions. Still, I think a well formed exam will elicit responses that indicate whether a student knows what they need to know or not. So to me, being a bad test-taker is not a very good excuse, but maybe someone will make me change my mind on that!

Testing language skills can be done in a ton of ways. It’s not like a math class where it is hard to deviate from just one way of testing. I think it’s important for a teacher to know what they want to test when making an assessment. If you only want to assess if the students know how to conjugate particular verbs, make sure other parts of the conjugation test, like reading comprehension, are not going to be what messes them up. The test should be simple enough that if a student gets something wrong, you know that it’s only because they do not know the conjugation, and not because of some other aspect of the question. It’s okay to test overall comprehension, proficiency, or another skill as well in other assessments, or other parts of this one, but not where you want to know their conjugation skills/memorization.

I think when testing overall proficiency, it may be better to test on one of the four core (reading, writing, listening, speaking) at a time. If you want to test their writing abilities, make sure you have set up the exam so that it will not be their lack of reading comprehension abilities to perform well on the writing part. This is just like what I was saying above with the conjugations.

Finally, I think quizzes and tests, even in the language classroom, are best, especially for summative assessments. They are efficient, careful, and direct. However, I am not at all opposed to using projects, presentations, etc. every so often too.

Formative assessments is a whole other category that I did not really talk about here, but you can do this in a ton of different ways. Formative assessments can be much more diverse and creative. And they can tell you what you need to teach better efficiently and before it is too late.