So often I remember sitting in Spanish class and hearing people complain about the class. They did not see the point and were not engaged. I personally think that the teachers that I had were pretty good, but they could not engage everyone. Another thing is that most of the engaged students were only engaged because they wanted a good grade, not because they enjoyed the subject matter. So my question is how do we get students interested in the languages we are teaching for the sake of learning the language?
Obviously languages are not for everyone, and you will never get everyone to like them, but I would like to find ways to get more students engaged for the sake of learning the language versus just getting a good grade. My main thought is to expose them to the culture associated to the language as much as possible and show them that it is something that exists outside of the classroom. To me as a language student this is the best part about learning a language, making connections with a different part of the world.
The question that stems from that is how do we make these connections without it seeming like a chore for the students. I know lots of teachers try to use the pop culture of the target culture, which does work, along with showing students places they could go to. These work, and I will use them, but I want to learn some new ways to get students interested. There are so many aspects to a foreign culture that could attract the attention of students, but which ones are the most effective, and the most teachable? Ideally we would all just take our students to the countries of our target languages but we can not do that. Photos of interesting aspects of the cultures help, but are not the same either. Bringing in native speakers would help, but can be difficult to arrange, especially for multiple classes. So what other methods can you guys think of?
I think that it is really difficult to make language learning fun, or at least interesting, for each and every student, especially in a large class. I agree that cultural activities or the use of authentic material may excite many students, as such activities make language learning less dry and connect one's L2 to the real world. At the same time, foreign cultures are also not interesting to everyone either. Perhaps a good strategy would be to assign writing assignment or creative projects in which students have the freedom to connect their language learning to their own academic or non-academic interests. A science student, for example, could write about a particular scientific finding in a country where the target language is spoken, or a drama student could use the target language to write/act out a creative scene. Such individualized projects are obviously more difficult to execute, though, when working with beginning students who have a very low level of proficiency in their L2. For these very novice students, you could maybe make the class more interesting by allowing them to write basic example sentences that connect to their personal interests or daily lives.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part of language learning is also learning about foreign cultures, and I think it's a great way to hook students. What could be more interesting in a foreign language class than learning about how things actually are in the Spanish-speaking/French-speaking/German-speaking/etc world? You're not going to hook everyone, but in intro classes especially it makes for a break in the grammar and in the overwhelmed feeling of starting a new language. This is by no means revolutionary, nor is it exactly a method you can work into a lesson plan, but it's been working for me: I just drop relevant language/culture facts in the lesson whenever appropriate. Today, after a not-particularly-thrilling grammar lesson, with an audience of groggy post-Homecoming weekend students, I told a joke about how dropping accents off words can drastically change their meaning. I got a big laugh, and I could tell everyone woke up for a bit. I also have what I consider to be an great, if slightly cheesy, YOLO/verb conjugation joke up my sleeve for a rainy day when I need to get people engaged again. A non-joke-related example: At the beginning of the semester, I showed a slide show about why Spanish matters to me (trying to hook them with real-life experiences, culture, and people). I included 2 screenshots of a Whatsapp conversation I had with a friend in Chile, and I brought up the subject of slang and how it fascinates me in social media. Just last week, slang came up again in class, and one student raised her hand and brought up those screenshots of the conversation that I had showed on the first day. This was exciting to me because it showed that amidst the syllabus explanation of the first day, something had stuck with her. The point being that when I add these details to class I can feel the whole atmosphere change because people are more interested in how Spanish is applied in the real world, so I think your quest to incorporate it into your classroom is a worthy one.
ReplyDeleteYou both have really good suggestions! Connecting to the students lives outside of the L2 class would definitely help get students engaged. Plus they might end up thinking of the ways to think about their activity in Spanish while doing it (I would anyway). Audrey, your methods also seem really good. It is definitely good to show your own experiences and how you have used the language in your own life. Jokes are always good too. I'm going to have to remember all of these things!
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