Sunday, December 7, 2014
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.
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I have also thought about this, as interacting with native speakers often encourages FLL. At EHS, we had a group of French students come to our high school for about a week. One day was set aside for our classes to sit with the French students and have them ask each other questions. Our students learning French had to ask the French students their questions in French and the French students asked their questions to our students in English. Our students thought that this interaction was really fun and eye-opening because they enjoyed learning from students that were their own age.
ReplyDeleteI know that this is different than a pen-pal, but that made me think that students might like to have a pen-pal with whom they can interact and learn from. I asked my co-operating teacher at EHS what she thought about pen-pals, and she liked the idea of it. However, she found that the French kids were much more anxious to talk to our students than our students were to talk to the French kids. Therefore, it was difficult to grade and a lot of the students thought that it was too time-consuming. However, that may have been a particular group of students. In my opinion, it might be worth asking if the students want to try to get a pen-pal. If they are enthusiastic about it, then I think it would be worth it. I think that this is an activity that would work best with high schoolers, who may be at a more advanced level of FL. However, if you find an appropriate fit then maybe it would be possible at a younger age group as well.
You asked very interesting questions here. There is a site called Language Twin where you can connect with native speakers. You will exchange both languages (English vs. Spanish). Native speakers are from a variety of Spanish-speaking countries. The site is safe because they run by professors from different countries. Sometimes professors collaboratively work together and create activities for students to engage in intercultural exchange. I've not used this site officially yet but I was involved in their pilot study. As for grading, I would just use 'credit' and 'no-credit' system because the motivation is to encourage students to use the target language outside the classroom. Teachers, however, need to monitor the exchange and provide students with some linguistic feedback.
ReplyDeleteI agree with a credit/no-credit system for grading. However, I feel the exchanges should be between the tandem partners and should be viewed as an opportunity for the students to do some real communicating in the target language without the teacher hovering over them too much as I feel that filtering everything that is written through the teacher would take away from the authenticity of the experience.
DeleteThose are interesting points. I'll definitely have to look at that website. That definitely helps the logistics. Jess, you also make a very good point in asking the students since it is pointless if the class is not motivated. It also is not fair to the foreign group. But I would love to see this idea in action.
ReplyDeleteI would say the grading should have two parts, 1) participation (that they exchanged with their pal when asked), and 2) effort—that they wrote enough and with care.
ReplyDeleteI wish that my teachers had facilitated this for me, but I think that we were just really coming to understand the power of the internet as an educational tool at the end of my HS career. I am sure this method is more widely used now.
I think that the pen pal idea is another example of an activity that students may be apprehensive to try but actually really like once they get involved. Pen-palling seems like a lot of work for students, and it may actually be a lot of work, but I do not think that anyone would regret having exchanged with someone from another culture after having done so for a semester. As Lina noted, I think that it would be a good idea to grade the pen-pal entries credit or no credit, but perhaps at the end students could write a final reflection paper in which they explain what they have learned, how they felt about the project, etc. This would also allow instructors to see how the students have reacted to the activity, and give a good sense of how valuable (or not valuable) these types of exchanges really are.
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