SECCLL - March 26th - Savannah, GA
Panel: Foreign Language Pedagogy II: Foreign Language Learning
- Improvisation Modules in Foreign Language Learning
Olga Amarie, Georgia Southern University
O. Amarie started her presentation by reminding the audience that if the intellect examines the information too close, it may not be able to comprehend it. Indeed, intuition is a key in improvisation. A creative mind improvises.
O. Amarie stated that teachers usually give too many directions to their students on how to do things instead of letting things happen and the students figure it out. I think it is a good point but the down side of letting students figure out the assignment without giving them too much direction is that it may require a lot of extra time that a teacher may not have available.
She added that many students block their imagination because they are too scared of being unoriginal. A good improviser is accepting is first thoughts and use them as creative material. A good improviser is spontaneous and it can be hard to be spontaneous in a school environment. To create a successful and fun linguistic improvisation, the teacher has to create an atmosphere without judgment. She gave us some game ideas for us to try in our own classrooms.
I really like improvisation in language classroom as it is a good fluency exercise and it helps create a more relaxed atmosphere for the students. However, I do find it hard to organize in big classrooms (classroom of 30+ students) and with novice-level students. They tend to get more tensed and to loose interest.
O. Amarie gave us some very interesting game ideas;
- Le jeu du sac, which consists in bringing an empty bag to class and have a student put his/her hand in it and imagine what could be the content of the bag. (what’s inside, what is kind of food is it, what is written on the label, what are the composing ingredients ? etc.)
- Le dialogue: per group students would have to write a dialog starring a couple. The teacher would give them a few words to the class and they would have to include one in every sentence. For example, she would choose really nice pet names in French and students would create funny passive aggressive fight scenes.
O. Amarie emphasized on the fact that to ensure students’ participation and to keep a non-judgmental environment, the status of the students would have to be constantly changed, switched. To adjust student status, she advised to use games such as ones where students have to maintain eye contact during their dialog (without looking at their notes). In a second part of the game, students would turn their backs to each other and do the same dialog while speaking loud and clear. They would not be able to read but they would have to improvise. She noticed that the students, once that they had their back turned to their partner, felt the need to turn around and connect with their partner during the dialog. While they may have felt a little embarrassed to maintain eye contact during the first part of the exercise, they were now past judgment but relied on each other.
O. Amarie presented improvisation as a refreshing and fun exercise that students will likely remember. The presentation was very interesting and reminded me of Christopher’s Stillwell’s work on fluency by improvisation in language teaching.
- Coldplay, Stromae and Others: Using Music in Teaching French Phonetics
Florin Beschea, Davidson College
F. Beschea’s presentation focused on teaching French phonetics through music. Throughout his experience, Beschea realized that students considered phonetics are “arid” and “sad”. However, the learning of phonetics being a great part of improving one’s listening and speaking, he decided to use music to make phonetics “awesome” to students. Along with a group of songs of his choosing, Beschea works with the book Facile a dire! Les sons du Francais by Annie Dumenil.
To take his class, students are required to have already taken 3 semesters of French. Once they are in the class, they meet privately with the instructor, F. Beschea, to point their personnal area of difficulty and determine the degree of improvement. While studying with Mr. Beschea, students learn the formation of each individual sound through the IPA system, how to create them, how to recognize them. They also learn how to recognize an improperly pronounced sound and how to spell and understand the meaning of sentences.
One very interesting thing about the songs that he uses in his class is that he does not only use francophone pieces. In fact, he starts the semester with a song from Coldplay. The reason behind his choice is familiarity. Students have to make a conscious effort in recognizing and differentiating their own sounds such as the light –l- and the dark –l- in light or bell. After the students understand and are able to spot the difference between two sounds, Beschea uses choral repetition of words to print their pronunciation.
He uses songs from diverses music genres and diverses cultures such as Mika (a British francophone who write pop music), Sexion d’Assault (French rap), Stromae (a Belgium hip-hop singer and song writer who also excels in electronic music), or Radio Radio (a Quebecois Canadian rap band).
Using music in teaching phonetics interrupts the routine, lines with students’ interests and most of all, it’s fun!
What I particularly enjoyed from this conference, among a lot, is the tip that F. Baschea gave us concerning the correction of the –R-. I tried it on my students and it turn out to work wonders!