Put a Ring on It
Commit to the book you have and
create the program you need.
Put a Ring on It
• Identify and understand your course goals
• Seek out textbooks that align with these goals
• Commit to the Text with supplementary
materials that will help you to get the job
done
The Why, What and How
• Program goals of the French Major
• Course Goals for FR320E and FR322E :
‘Advanced’ French 1 & 2
• Specific Language Proficiency Goals for the
Intermediate to Advanced Language Learner
Consider program goals
• Students will be able to understand and produce written
and spoken French in order to communicate complex ideas
effectively, in standard French, to a general audience.
• Students will be able to think critically and creatively when
faced with an abstract question and topics of culture and
literature.
• Students will be able to appreciate French and
Francophone literary and cultural production within the
context of an increasingly interconnected world.
• Students will be able to understand with depth and nuance
French history, culture, society, and politics.
Consider course goals
• Students will improve their language proficiency
and linguistic competency
• Students will begin to use argumentation and
stylistics and will develop critical thinking
• Students will acquire vocabulary to support
discussion of current topics and cultural literacy
• Students will review grammar
• Students will learn to write short dialectical essays
Consider level
•
Expand their grammatical competence, including acquiring new ways of using known
forms, as well as adding more complex language resources to their linguistic repertoire.
•
Become more fluent and accurate language users.
•
Develop the capacity to monitor their own language use as well as that of others, and
to notice the gap between their productive competence and those of more advanced
language users.
•
Continue to develop their vocabulary, particularly at the 5,000 to 6,000 word range.
•
Develop a greater awareness of and familiarity with patterns of lexical collocation.
•
Master the use of conversational routines and other means of participating actively in
conversation and other forms of spoken discourse.
•
Further develop their proficiency in listening, reading, and writing.
From Intermediate to Advanced Levels in Language Learning : Jack C. Richards (2008)
Build on a good text
• Themes are more academic,
highly present in current media
AND recognizable in other
cultures
• Based on authentic language
samples
• Moves from word level
presentation to contextualized
discourse.
• Presented to allow for open
interpretation and discussion
Controverses Themes
• Friendship
• Privacy
• Gender Parity
• Individual rights vs. common good
• Globalization
• Immigration
• Education
• Bilingualism (Language in Society)
So, why do we need
more?
To improve students productive language skills.
Without them there is not enough input to
expect students to succeed in discussion and
conversation.
Even the most elegantly stated discussion
prompt that lines up perfectly with all your goals
will fail if students do not have enough
background preparation to support them.
Supplementary Materials
Should…
• Increase frequency
• Develop saliency
• Lead students to make their own connections
through generative tasks
To this end, you can gather, create and adapt
audio and video materials that are based on or
related to the textbook.
Audio Adaptations
• Recordings of vocabulary lists
• Dictation exercises using the vocabulary
• Recordings of included texts (literary excerpts)
• Recordings of summaries of included texts
(journalistic articles)
• Recordings of proficient speakers discussing and
reacting to readings
These recordings provide
• Recycling and repetition of the language.
• Recognition of the language when heard.
• Pronunciation practice.
• Examples of the language in context.
Examples of Recordings
Vocabulary List
Dictation Exercise
Article Summary
Student tasks:
• Vocabulary expansion exercises
• Listen for differences with printed material
• Sequencing exercises
• Comprehension questions
• Complete cloze passages
• Transcription of short passages
• Orally summarize
• React to recording
Vocabulary Expansion
Though this level begins to focus on collocations and text or
sentence frames the method is the same.
• Create word families: students focus on the grammar of
vocabulary
• Create word associations: students distinguish the shades of
meaning synonyms and antonyms have
• Create sentences that use these words and especially that use
several at a time.
• Do dictation exercises to hear the vocabulary in context
Vocabulary (cont.)
• For more context, look for use of the vocabulary
in other examples of authentic language. Use
Google or WordReference, or even better, use
Bab.la or Linguée
• Give feedback in vocabulary notes.: Address
common mistakes as a class like problems with
polysemy [words with several related meanings
like the head: of a person, of a pin, of an
organization,] homonymy [words with unrelated
meanings like a file: used to put papers in or a
tool,] syntax, style and register
Longer Recordings
• Summarize main points of the recording
• Review it for problems (missing information or misstatements. )
• Compare their summary with a recorded sample by a native
speaker
• Compare their summary with a classmate
• React to statements made in the recording
• Interview a classmate about their reaction to a recording
Make sure students have the words they need, or have a way to get
the information they need or it will fall apart!
How to create recordings
• Use one of the many programs like Audacity,
Windows Sound Recorder, or GarageBand to
create a recording yourself. You can do this
for vocabulary lists and short passages today.
• For longer recordings, for conversations
between two or more people, and for more
spontaneous examples of languages (anything
that will require more editing) make an
appointment with LAITS.
Hosting your recordings
• Blackboard – useful for files that may otherwise
have copyright issues since they are only available
to students for this educational purpose
• Departmental Website – LAITS can help with
simple design
• ITunesU – you may want to make your work open
to all and this is a great way to do it, it is also VERY
good for a podcast style, where you may be
adding to material as you go along
Don’t forget the radio
• Search the online radio for pre-recorded audio
files related to your theme.
• Many of the foreign radio services’ websites
have already created pedagogical portfolios to
accompany audio that they have produced.
• RFI
Student created audio
• Students are usually much better at creating
amazing audio than we are. Give them the
chance to show off a bit by having THEM
create podcasts. These are great ways to
assess oral skills.
• Even ‘quick and dirty’ can be revealing
• Have students record themselves reading aloud
• Use smartphone ‘voice memo’ during small
group work
All of this works for video
as well
• Video (and still images) allow students to
connect to visual representations of the
subject. Music videos are especially good for
this.
Un Africain à Paris
• Use the same sequence of activities moving
from viewing, to answering questions about
the clip, to repeating phrases, to transcription.
Other Video Adaptions
• YouTube clips of interviews with similar themes
• Movie Trailers for related movies
• News clips about the issues
• Clips from other sources (government, nonprofits, etc.)
• Online TV like TV5 also has tons of usable activities
How to guide viewing
• Ask students to identify speakers, locations,
relationships in the video
• Give students pivotal vocabulary if it is new
• Ask students to raise their hands when they
hear certain expressions that have been in
focus in the classroom
• Ask questions that will allow them to follow
the general discourse
Put a Ring on It
• You can commit to a text and still get the
course the students need
• Often the supplementary materials will be
what the students remember
• The supplementary materials are how you can
keep the course current