Language Sensei

A Language Teacher's Journey

Read and Discuss…My Steps to Teacher-Free MFL Discussion

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Like many language teachers I often use a story to illustrate a particular theme in a unit. I choose to use a story from the textbook – as it dovetails nicely. But what to do once it is read? How do I ensure comprehension of the Target Language (TL)? This is a special challenge for beginner and novice learners who have minimal language at their fingertips.

The starting point – One solution for me is to orally re-cap the story via a class question and answer time. In order to make sure that students understand – the comprehension questions are in English. Students jot down up to 5 words or phrases in the target language (not sentences to be read) to use when answering the questions. On the next day (recap day), we listen to the story again and have 5-10 minutes to practice answering with our partner. Then as a group I ask the question and students raise their hand to give answers. To get maximum points they were asked to answer at least 6 times in the session. They are encouraged to use synonyms, adverbs, adjectives to produece a relavant answer. For example if the question was “What was the day like” answers could be ‘it was hot’ ‘it wasn’t cold’ ‘it was really warm’ etc. I never chose ‘first hand up’ and always work to ensure every student made their goal of six if they tried. Sometimes it takes 3-4 minutes to get through answers to a question. It is effective. But it is not that communicative -and after one or two times boring even for me.

The discussion – In our latest story round things appeared for the students to be the same; read the story, answer questions and then the usual answers for ‘recap’. This time, however, recap day was different. As usual they listened to the story again, and practiced answering in the TL with their partner. But then the change. They chose a group of 4 and moved so that they were facing each other. On the screen I posted several conversation starters – “favorite food, most annoying singer etc” and at the same time handed them a  set of phrases to help them in the discussion. Things such as “What do you think?”, “I don’t agree and here’s why”, “However..” etc. Once they had finished an opening discussion they then received the story questions (in the TL). With a reminder of “TL only”…they were off. And off they were – for my Grade 10’s (2nd year in the language) more than 30 min. of TL work. Once done they self-evaluated using my standard discussion rubric that includes the section “why I gave myself this mark”. Many students cited a willingness to risk and even their efforts to facilitate the discussion in selecting their mark. Finally they were asked to note down any phrases they needed to know – but didn’t at the time. The next day they received an updated discussion phrase sheet – which now comes out anytime we are talking to each other in class.

I won’t return this year to the teacher-centred activity. However I do believe their comfort in the discussion was due to the initial recap style. Knowing how to do it  contributed to a greater freedom of expression in the student-centred one – and that’s the goal of the MFL classroom isn’t it?

Colleen

PS – If you want any more information on the acitivity drop me a line!

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