Web 2.0 Test Kitchen...Featuring Yabla!

My latest discovery, thanks to a Google-sponsored ad that appeared on the bottom of the NY Times today is http://french.yabla.com. Okay, so it's a little weird that the interwebs can track my every move, but they did a great job this time.

Yabla features videos in lots of different languages that are fairly short and that star native speakers talking about all kinds of very common topics, such as food, music and fashion. You can watch the video, go backwards, forwards, or repeat the same phrase over and over by clicking "loop." You can even slow down the pace of speech in the video! What an ideal feature to include learners of all levels! What's more, you can choose to read subtitles in French and English. Following the video, you can play a game which closely resembles a Cloze (fill in the blank) activity.

I'm thrilled about the subtitles feature because these videos instantly become not only an excellent resource for listening comprehension, but it can also serve as a reading activity. Indeed, treating it as a reading activity FIRST, and as a listening activity second, would be a great strategy in order to increase aural comprehension. The teacher could transcribe the subtitles onto a worksheet, including supportive pre-reading activities that will lead to vocabulary and comprehension-building. I have been trying to find texts and videos that are relevant to my students' lives and interests and that are at the appropriate level for YEARS! Whereas a high school beginner French student would probably be well suited for a T'choupi book in terms of vocabulary, that would be way to juvenile for their maturity level. At the same time, Le Monde is way beyond them in terms of required vocabulary even if it is appropriate to expect that teenagers would want to read the news. My approach as a teacher has always been that a foreign language has to be fun. So I am thrilled to find videos on Yabla that will challenge my students at just the right level, exposing them to fun themes and native French accents.

Web 2.0 Test Kitchen

One of my goals while I'm home on child care leave with my son is to expand my repertoire as a French teacher. I find web 2.0 activities to be fun, funny, fascinating, and generationally relevant ways of playing with a new language. Project based learning is fully compatible with web 2.0, and there are both large and small activities that can be made using tech, from a French-speaking avatar on Voki to a digital story on VoiceThread.

I recently came across the wiki of Toni Theissen who presented at an AATF conference and who generously published her materials and presentations on her own wiki: tonitheissen.wikispaces.com. She has a fantastic PowerPoint from her 2013 AATF presentation called "Activating Communication" that lists applications that will get your students communicating in the interpersonal, presentational and interpretive modes. I will go through the list and make/share a model of each one she mentions, along with my thoughts on each one.

Got Books? Reading in the LOTE Classroom

For years I have been on a hunt for texts that are appropriate for the skill level of my students, but that are also really interesting and fun to read. I think that, in all honesty, unless you have the undying passion for a language that a French teacher has, you aren't willing to read just anything simply because your teacher thinks it's good for you. It has to grab you. I once tried to introduce extracts of Le Petit Prince to my students, but my best attempts crashed and burned. Was it that the text required a higher reading level than my French 2 students could reasonably manage? Probably. Was it that they hadn't had enough reading practice in my class prior to this attempt because I had such trouble locating suitable texts? I'm sure that was a factor. Was it that the subject was kind of alien and maybe kind of boring for them? Likely. 

I recently had a brainstorm: What about young adult fiction in French? When we used to have DEAR time once a week, even some of the students who were most resistant to reading got really into urban fiction. What if I could find something with relevant characters and plots, something that addressed the concerns and realities of teenagers lives today while still being an educational challenge? 

I think I finally hit pay dirt! Thank you, Brooklyn Public Library. In a recent search for "French children's books" for my son, I came across pages and pages of hits. I found the Kinra Girls series by Moka, in particular, Naïma et le Cirque de New York. I love it. I can't put it down! Although this series is likely geared towards tweens and young teens, I think it would be perfect for middle or high school French 3 and up or to be used as an independent project for heritage language students. This book fits the bill because it is written in French, of course, and especially because my students could definitely connect with the characters and the context of the story. I am a Brooklyn public high school teacher, and the title character Naïma lives in Brooklyn with an American dad who works at Coney Island and a francophone African mom from Benin. Naïma worries about encountering gang members and about being able to achieve her dreams in spite of her family's limited means. While her family doesn't have a lot of material wealth, they have a lot of love. Although I would enjoy bringing in a text that is situated in a French-speaking country, I think this story is a fabulous way to make a book in a foreign language feel a whole lot less foreign. It reflects the reality of many urban students while providing an accessible yet challenging opportunity to increase their vocabulary and ability to engage with a text in French. 

And do I even need to mention the Common Core? Although we still don't have standards for world language under the Commom Core, I'm sure that there would be a lot of happy English and Social Studies teachers if you could pull off some really top notch reading comprehension, map work and extension activities. Even better would be to adapt structures that they use to serve your own purposes. Reduce the need to reinvent the wheel...Reuse the best ideas from successful colleagues...Recycle them to achieve your objectives. 

"Ad" it up!

Ads, whether they are in print, on the radio or on the TV, are a great way to bring in an informational text for analysis. The Common Core Content Standards emphasize the analysis of non-fiction primary source documents of all kinds. You can address ACTFL's 5 C's as well as the CCCS by having students analyze and interpret ads.

French McDonald's ads became a fascinating topic that students wanted to discuss with me both during and after class. This ad incorporates the theme of teenage homosexuality while promoting burgers and fries. This delicate subject matter is unheard of in American TV ads, and the fact that such a mainstream company treats it so matter-of-factly really blew my students away.

Some ideas for how you might use ads such as this one in a mini-unit for your course:
-Have students compare and contrast menu offerings in McDonald's chains in the U.S. and France.
-Have them write and present dialogues with partners about the menus in order to get them using the grammatical funtions you are teaching (imagine ordering, discussing which menu they prefer and why, what they would try if they were in France, etc.)

-Do a little pre-planning with an English or Journalism teacher in your school to teach about the role of advertising and what makes an advertisement powerful.
-View the commercial. Depending on the level fluency of your students, spend a class focusing primarily on the language or on the themes in the commercial.
-Students write a draft of an essay summarizing their thoughts.
-Organize a Socratic Seminar in order to promote analysis of the commercial and comparing and contrasting it to American commercials for the same product.
-Students revise their essays following the Socratic Seminar. Perhaps their thoughts and opinions changed when they heard others' commenting on it!

For my part, since I had a strictly one year language course for juniors, I found this kind of work to be most useful when conducted in English and used to support my goal of cross cultural understanding and comparisons while also supporting the non-fiction interpretation goals of my peers in the English and Social Studies departments. The beauty of the 21st century is that these kinds of ads are so accessible and you can get a lot of value out of one 30 second resource.

Reading, Culture and the CCCS

For five years, I was the only world language teacher in my small public high school. The autonomy was fabulous! I didn't have to use a particular text book, and honestly I seldom incorporated one at all because I prefered to find and create my own materials. I was able to teach students language that felt essential for communication in ways that worked for them and for me. I derived great pleasure from seeing my students enter my course with no knowledge of the French language and leave in June capable of writing paragraphs in French without notes or dictionaries. The feeling of success and accomplishment at seeing my students discover French culture was immeasurable. 

What was challenging about this kind of situation is that I didn't have a world language department with whom to discuss subject-specific issues. That said, I became a member of the English Department. I gained insight into the literacy needs of our students. Those needs were significant. The need for increased ELA instruction and preparation for the social studies state tests led to the eventual cutting of my French 2 course to make room for additional literacy preparation. Naturally I was disappointed, but it would have been unreasonable if I didn't understand that. 

Keeping your world language program alive often requires some creative thinking. In an era of budget cuts and the new Core Curriculum Content Standards, not to mention all of the accompanying standardized tests, world language teachers must find ways to keep their course exciting and relevant while responding to wider curricular needs. 

The need for greater student exposure to non-fiction texts is an invitation to world language teachers to increase students' literacy skills while deepening their cultural capital and knowledge of your subject. 

Some of the ways to do this are:

1. You don't have to reinvent the wheel when incorporating non-fiction. Find out what kinds of routines students are accustomed to in their classes, and you will be able to seamlessly incorporate such strategies in your classes. For example, I learned how to hold Socratic Seminars from a history teacher and how to have a gallery walk from a special ed. teacher. 

2. Find juicy readings! Anytime I see a compelling article on the Francophone world in the NY Times, I hit "save." While I was spending long afternoons holding my newborn son in my arms, I was also reading Bringing Up Bébé and French Kids Eat Everything. Reading selected extracts from one or both books would be a fantastic accompaniment to a foods unit, for example. Students love comparing cultural practices and attitudes, and by high school they start taking an interest in the psychology behind the way that they were raised. Go with it!

3. Go Out on a Limb! If you don't often incorporate English language, non-fiction texts in your classes, you are already trying something new...go all the way with it!  You might consider holding a debate, having an essay contest, creating a game, facilitating a discussion between your students and students abroad using www.epals.com, bringing in guest speakers, creating a skit, having jigsaw activity or gallery walk to create even more depth to your work. The more students dig into a text through various activities and approaches, particularly ones that incorporate different kinds of thinking and appeal to multiple intelligences, the more cultural capital and literacy skills they will gain. 

You are not surrendering to the other departments by incorporating skills that they prize. Au contraire! You are effectively creating value and ensuring relevancy to the wider curricular goals of our times by supporting skills that will help students succeed both in school and in life. By selecting non-fiction readings that support your units, you have final say over the direction you wish to take with this work. Make this an opportunity to provide your students with cultural capital and support your colleagues teaching goals, and you will help secure your department's role in your school.

Reading Skills Activities

I have long aspired to increase the amount of reading my high school French 1 students did. I had a hard time achieving this goal because I had great difficulty coming up with readings that felt interesting and feasible. Sure, fairy tales are available in books and online. They are timeless and can be read on many levels, but talking animals and ogres aren't exactly top of mind for my Brooklyn 17 year olds.

I'm going to hunt down the juiciest and most accessible reads for beginning French students and share them here!

How about this for starters: If your students like CSI, have them  read about and solve a murder mystery! Follow Detective Roger Duflair as he investigates a murder. What I love about this is that they have built in modifications for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, making it appropriate for both absolute beginners and heritage speakers in your class. I love the way the French use the word "exploitation" to mean "ways to squeeze every last drop of value out of an activity" (my translation, obviously). Polar FLE has tons of great handouts already created, and of course you can modify them to meet your own goals and teaching style. Students can either listen to the story being read as a whole class activity, with you to interpret and guide along the way, or they can listen independently. This kind of activity is perfect for differentiating instruction for your struggling learners, because you can pre-teach and re-teach the lessons you create around this text very easily.

And how about putting on your own French play after completion of this unit?

English isn't Enough!

Talk the Talk is an outstanding publication by the British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences advocating for the importance of learning world languages. It highlights the importance of language study for career advancement and for the joy of it with brief interviews with successful polyglots. I love that the interviews are with a diverse group of men and women, some of whom admit to having difficulty with languages at first. Inspire your students and come back to school with a colorful and relevant answer to the question, "Why do I need to learn another language?"

Active Listening Series, Part 7: Heritage Language and Near Native Speakers

How do you keep your heritage language and near native speakers engaged in your course? This is a major differentiation challenge, especially when there is not a separate course for such students. I had the experience of teaching a few heritage speakers each year in a school where there was only a beginner French course. Such students come in feeling quite confident because they understand everything you say in the target language, and any spoken language or listening activity you give them is a piece of cake for them. Instead of finding the course to be an exciting opportunity to share their cultural heritage with other students and to expand their capacity to utilize the language in both formal and informal communicative settings, heritage speakers will often disconnect from the course out of boredom if we aren't there to keep them challenged and interested. But how do you get them to take their speaking and listening to the next level (I will address heritage speakers' reading and writing skills in an upcoming post)?

1. For goodness sake, make it really fun! Differentiating your course for your heritage speakers shouldn't feel punitive for the teacher or the student. Don't make it feel like more work-make it feel like more play! We world language teachers got into our profession because using language as the key to unlocking another culture excites us. Join your heritage speakers on this journey.

2. Make them feel special, not singled out for extra work. Give them some special treatment in the form of really exciting projects, and they will surely enrich the entire class. Make it feel special. Let them use an iPad, a laptop or desktop, or download the tech resource to their smart phone to use with headphones. Some heritage students will long for the "easy A" they could earn by conjugating "to be."

3. Reinforce their heritage. Any time you can refer back to the student's home culture, add to the student's knowledge or better yet, have the student teach you something new, the better.

4. Use The ABC Approach. In her compelling book, Can We Talk About Race?, as well as in her article entitled "The ABC Approach to Creating Climates of Engagement on Diverse Campuses," Spellman College President Dr. Beverly Tatum expounds on three habits of mind that educators must embody: Affirming Identity, Building Community and Cultivating Leadership. These techniques are just as true in primary and secondary schools as they are in post-secondary education.

5. Use technology. Listening to other native speakers is what is going to expand your heritage speakers' vocabulary and range. Find podcasts on topics that grab a teenager's interest (love, relationships, psychology, sports, etc), videos of news reports that relate to the student's country of origin, episodes of a compelling show, music videos, or any other resource you can think of. Before you even get started researching a course of study for your heritage student(s), ask them what their interests are. You are sure to get deeper engagement, deeper learning and better productivity when your students get a choice.

6. Same Rubric, But Go Beyond. We all know that sometimes creating a separate course of study for a few heritage students in the class doesn't feel sustainable or realistic.  Take the rubric you are currently using for the whole class, and offer modifications. For example, if you are doing a unit on clothing and students are creating projects about their favorite looks, you might engage your heritage language students in sharing clothing worn for traditional celebrations and get them to elaborate on their significance. Challenge them to go beyond  and to share their culture with the class.

What have been your successes, challenges and approaches to teaching heritage language students?

Active Listening Series, Part 6: Partner Listening

Partnerships are the core of my French class. Why? Communication occurs when there is a message that is sent and received. With partnerships, everyone gets more of a chance to actively participate and be held accountable for producing writing or speaking and listening. With a class size of 25-30 students, this is crucial for skill development. The partnerships are typically heterogeneous by skill level, although at times I do pair students at the same level. Friendships and positive peer relationships often form between unlikely pairs in my classes because the challenge of learning a new language exposes the vulnerable side of many students. Finally, the classroom setting is an artificial one; one on one or small group conversations are the norm in real life, so I want students to experience that kind of communication in the target language.

One of my favorite techniques is the information gap activity. I love to create them by using students names when I can, and I can tailor any activity to incorporate the vocabulary or grammatical function we are studying. It is a flexible activity that requires exclusive speaking, listening, and writing in the target language. I circulate with my clipboard to ensure that I don't hear any English, and if I do, students lose points. Most students don't "cheat" in this way, because they are motivated by the challenge of engaging in a French conversation with their partner. 

When creating an info gap, ensure that you have a document just for Partner A and just for Partner B. One has information that the other students needs, and vice versa. For example, imagine that students are having a discussion with their sibling or future college roommate about the division of chores. Each student has a list of possible chores, and based on whether they would be willing to complete each chore, they write "oui" or "non" on the checklist. Students take turns asking each other questions, such as "Est-ce que tu acceptes de passer l'aspirateur chaque week-end?" As Partner A listens to Parter B's answers, she makes a note on her checklist about what her partner said. Partner B does the same. Each student must separately complete a summary paragraph stating who will complete each chore.  

Active Listening Series, Part 5: Self-Reflective Listening

Students are used to listening to their teachers and their peers...but they could also use practice listening to themselves! This is not only a strategy that will lead to improved pronunciation, but it will also enhance mindfulness and auto-correction of errors (especially the most common ones that you are TIRED of addressing!).

One way that I have had success with this practice is through the use of voice recordings. Those headphones serve the students well! By recording projects using a VoiceThread, a movie maker or even a simple application like www.voki.com (fun talking avatar!), students can record a prepared text. In theory, they should be doing their best work as they record, since they are producing a project that is visible on the web and is preferably published on a class blog or wiki. But we know that even our best work almost always contains some errors, and learning to reflect upon our work and identify our own strengths and weaknesses is not only a critical academic skill, but a life skill that will serve our students forever.

You will definitely need to model what it looks like to complete a listening evaluation of oneself. You might record a demo project yourself. Using a projector, project the checklist/rubric of requirements for an excellent recording. Demonstrate what it looks like to listen for each element of the checklist. Think aloud. Call on students to assist. Make it a fully interactive reflection session so that students are aware of what you are asking them to do. Make sure they understand that they DO posess the skills necessary to do this. They may use their notebooks, their text books, online dictionaries that offer pronunciation, Quizlets or podcasts you have made...any resource that supports their learning is great.

Give students an opportunity to find their errors, and also to correct them for an improved score on a project. When growth, improvement and self-reflection become clear classroom goals, your students will feel empowered and motivated to speak the target language more mindfully and accurately.

Active Listening Series, Part 4: Authentic Listening Texts

I came across a multi-part lesson on the skill of listening, taught by Professor Mahmoud Al-Batal of UT Austin. In his lessons and discussions with his students, the use of authentic listening texts is explored. They readily admit that one of the biggest challenges is finding authentic texts that are challenging yet on level for beginners. It is definitely more engaging for students to listen to an authentic piece such as a radio broadcast, a music video, a clip of a TV show, etc. but it is difficult to find something that is on topic for your unit, and neither too difficult nor too simple.

I agree completely with Professor Al-Batal that 21st century technology gives us a great connection to authentic texts in the languages we teach. However, sifting through the materials can be time consuming, but if do the work and save the links, you can have what you need for years to come. Take a look at this fabulous list of resources curated by Michèle Campbell.

The temptation to stick with the ancillary materials provided by the text book publisher is tempting...but is that what is really going to make language "click and stick" with our students? Will it make them order for themselves when we take them to the French restaurant, or better yet, when we take them to France? Or will it leave them only feeling "safe" using the language within the confines of the classroom?

When working with authentic texts for listening activities, it is up to you how deeply you want to explore the text. Since I spent the last five years teaching French 1 in a school with no French 2, I would often focus on a specific element of an authentic text, and not necessarily exploit all possible levels of meaning in the document. However, if I had a French 5 class, I would absolutely take one text and squeeze out every drop of meaning as long as it was engaging and useful.

Check out www.lyricsgaps.com to find lots of great songs for Cloze activities.
Here is an example of a Cloze listening activity that is always one of students' favorites:

• When I teach the days of the week, I love to use the song "Quand Vient la Nuit" by French pop star Nâdiya. Give it a listen here. With a clear class objective (to learn the days of the week and to practice reading, writing, speaking and listening to them), we listen to the song three times with three different goals. The first time, we listened for the structure of the song. Students must identify where in the song they hear the days of the week. This tends to be fun and students simply enjoy the music, while preparing themselves for the written activity. They notice that the "hook" is sung by a little girl. She sings the song containing the days of the week that accompanies a popular children's game that resembles "Duck, Duck, Goose." (You can read the rules of the game here). But each time she sings, she mentions only a few days of the days of the week, until the final hook of the song. 
• During the second listening, students have a listening sheet on which they fill in the blanks with the days of the week they hear each time they hear the "hook."
• During the third and final listening, students check their work and complete any missing blanks before we check out work.
• Once the work has been checked, if you can, have students play the game! Even if they are in high school, they will love to play like children again, and it is a great opportunity to encounter French culture in a playful way.

Students know a "fake" when they see it. Right? Whenever you can, offer them authentic listening passages that will give them insight into both language and culture. 

Active Listening Series, Part 3: Self-Guided Listening

Give students a chance to make choices about how they want to learn or demonstrate what they know and you will see that they will be self-directed and engaged.

In 2009, I was extremely fortunate to ask for, and receive, a set of 30 USB headsets with microphones for making and listening to voice recordings. What an invaluable tool! I used these headsets to make my own podcasts to support each unit. But students did the lion's share of the creating. They made their own Web 2.0 projects such as VoiceThreads, Voki's, videos and more. They were also able to plug into enrichment activities, such as cultural or tutorial videos. I can't encourage you enough to try to come up with this technology for your students!

One way that I used the headsets for self-guided listening was to set up individual students at a computer with a headset in a quiet corner of the room in order to practice vocabulary using either my unit podcasts or Quizlet flashcards that I made. Click to view podcasts I have made for my students as well as other MP3's I regularly use in my classes. This was a great differentiation strategy to use with my students who were frequently absent, easily distracted, feeling lost, having a lot of trouble with pronunciation, or generally struggling to keep up. It gave them an opportunity to get up to speed and return to the main class activity feeling confident. But of course, I encouraged all of my students to make use of these listening activities as part of their homework. In fact, the first year I used these, the student who won the French award at graduation for the highest GPA proudly show me that she had all of my podcasts on her phone by the end of the first week of school. She listened to them on her subway rides almost every day and it really showed, which created a lot of buzz and got other students into it, as well. As I told her, and all of my students, language enters in through the ear and comes out the mouth. Listening truly is the key to speaking.

Another way I used the headsets was the day that unit projects were due. I have zero tolerance for late projects, which facilitates giving students 100 different projects to listen to and choose from. Take a look at a sample digital portfolio page here. Instead of having all 25 students take turns displaying their recorded projects, students selected ten projects that they wanted to listen to. Of course, they often chose their friends, but sometimes a project "went viral" and became a popular pick. They were required to take notes on the quality and content of the VoiceThread while listening. This technique facilitates writing, speaking and listening at the same time. It ensures that students have an engaged audience of eager listeners who choose to listen to them. And what was kind of nice, too, was that I had a silent class that day so that I could circulate and collect the written version of projects and privately conference with students.

I just came across the web site www.lyricsgaps.com, which is a fantastic resource for self-guided listening. Students can complete Cloze activities on their own, whether in the classroom using headsets or at home for homework. The site even offers pre-made worksheets, classifies songs by easy, medium and hard, and enables teachers to see who has logged in and completed the assignment. For language teachers who are non-native speakers like me, this is a great way to familiarize yourself with more musicians and songs so you can bring more music into your classroom.

The difficult part for me, as the teacher, was listening to all of the projects and completing the learning targets rubrics for each student. It is time consuming, but it gives the students very specific feedback about how they are doing. By using digital portfolios of Web 2.0 projects, students also have a concrete record of how their pronunciation has developed throughout the year. As an 11th grade teacher of French 1, I regularly wrote around 30 letters of recommendation for college each year, and I found that including the students' portfolio pages in the letters enabled me to share concrete work samples with admissions officers. Having such a permanent and public record of work is highly motivating for students, and I can say that the work is worth it because of the results.

Active Listening Series, Part 2: Listening for Quality

I hope that the document I shared on peer evaluations was helpful for you!

Today I want to share my work around listening for content. As students become more at ease with the target language and with the qualities of an excellent presentation, they are ready to respond to questions about what they heard. This holds students accountable for listening to each other. It gives them increased comprehensible input. It gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their comprehension and to add something to what they heard. The learning does not stop with the writing, memorizing and presentation: the role of the audience is just as essential as the role of the speaker. Shouldn't communication be that way, anyway?

By teaching students to listen for content and share their ideas after each presentation, they become co-creators of each presentation, and demonstrate support for the student presenter.

Click to view a sample Listening for Content document that I use.

If you are familiar with the film Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, you know that there are some eccentric and truly "fabuleux" characters who are great fun to describe! Viewing this film and preparing characterization presentations was always my lead in to the Café Unit. This is a part of my French 1, Marking Period 3 work, so I feet confident that students can listen attentively to the presentations given by their peers and take notes on what they hear. After each presentation, we discuss what we heard. Call on several students to keep them all participating and engaged. See if anyone disagrees with the speaker's point of view or has other ideas to offer. Give the speaker a chance to correct herself/himself if necessary.

How do you encourage students to listen and respond in the target language, either at the beginner level or in more advanced language classes? Please comment and share your strategies!

Active Listening Series, Part I: Listening for Quality

Being an active listener is an essential habit of mind for success in school, relationships and throughout life. What I'm talking about here isn't simply listening to the teacher (although that is definitely something we all want!)...the key here is to teach students to listen to each other.

What are the benefits of teaching students to listen to each other in the context of a world language class?

• Authentic Communication in the Target Language Every speaker deserves a listener. Communication only occurs when a sent message is received. 
• Comprehensible Input In order to learn a language, students need to hear it. Although I love to get students speaking French on the very first day of school, noted linguist Stephen Krashen explains that it is still much more valuable for students to actively listen until they are ready to produce the language. Read Krashen's views on listening here.
• Raise the Stakes Require students to memorize their presentations. And then have students hold each other accountable. And then watch the magic happen! When I ask students to write a conversation, it needs to be memorized and presented before the class as soon as the next day. And it needs to be good. 
• Cultivate Classroom Community Studying a new language is inherently risky business. When students listen to each other and learn to give constructive criticism related to spoken language quality, they became each others' accent coaches, but they also become a team. The teacher is no longer the only one who knows how the language should sound. What I love is to watch 40 minutes of memorized French presentations, calling on students to share their critiques and only intervening when a necessary point wasn't raised. When students learn to actively listen to each other, they realize that they have knowledge and insight to share that they can use to help each other improve. It is so empowering for students to feel some authority over a subject that is inherently "foreign" to them.
• Self and Peer Editing Novice language students often protest that they don't know enough of the language to give each other coaching or to edit each others' work. Not so! If all students are using what has been taught, then all students have access to the same language. They are able to comment on the quality and content of presentations in order to improve each others' accents, syntax, word choice, and public speaking skills. When you empower students to teach each other, the knowledge is shared, and a stronger sense of ownership and engagement results.                                              

Here is one of my strategies for teaching students to listen for quality and offer peer evaluations during presentations. 

1. Teach students the language (either in English or in the target language) that you want them to use when they give constructive criticism. Require specific and clear feedback. "It was good" is far too general to be of any use to a peer who wants to improve!

2. Model it. 

3. After each student presentation, call on peers to share their feedback. Do not always choose the same students; call on those who don't have their hands raised to remind them that their listening is an essential part of helping the class improve! 

4. Require students to complete the written evaluation during each and every presentation. Collect it. Check it thoroughly, especially the first few times, so that the procedure becomes ingrained as a class expectation. 

Click here for the document. Feel free to modify it for your language.

Please comment below to share your thoughts on how or why to teach students to listen actively to each other!

Sharing Our Best=Giving Students Our Best

I decided to begin this blog as a means of exploring my own values as a world language teacher. My objective is to create a meeting point for all world language teachers to seek ideas and inspiration. Although my experience is as a teacher of French, it is always possible to modify my ideas to suit your curricular goals. I invite readers to share their own best practices, so that all of us can deepen student engagement and success. I am going to share my own best practices related to:

• Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening
• How to meet The Standards for Foreign Language Teaching in the 21st Century/the Five C's: Communication, Culture, Comparisons, Communities and Connections
• How to support students and teachers by incorporating the Common Core Curriculum Standards in a fun and engaging ways
• How to differentiate instruction in a world language classroom
• How to appeal to different learning styles and preferences
• How to use technology to enable students to practice the target language and discover the culture for themselves
• How to add value: make your subject feel relevant and important to students and colleagues in an era of severe program and staffing cuts

Furthermore, I hope that aspiring world language teachers will find this blog to be a source of ideas and support. The more we share our best ideas, the more engaged our students will be. If you share my goal of multilingualism an American value, please join me in reflecting and sharing what we all do best!