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.
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