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Showing posts with label 81 Reuber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 81 Reuber. Show all posts
Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching
Volume 3 (2012) Issue 2

.
From Association to the Acquisition, Process,
and Consolidation of New Language Material:
A Differentiated Approach to French Vocabulary Instruction

Alexandra Reuber (New Orleans, USA)

Abstract (English)
This article explores a differentiated approach to vocabulary instruction via the combination of textbook exercises selected from Vis-à-Vis (2010) and Tom Tykwer’s court-métrage Faubourg Saint-Denis (2006). By doing so, this approach offers authentic input, recognizes students’ individual intelligences and learning styles, and provides them with ample opportunities to express their personal opinions on the topic of la vie quotidienne (‘daily life’) in French. Because it allows students to experiment with language and to shape their lesson, they experience the foreign language classroom as one learning community where everybody has a voice. Consequently, this approach not only lowers students’ foreign language anxiety, but also motivates them for the study of the language and its culture. Hence, it supports the development of students’ linguistic, inter-social, and cross-cultural competence.
Key words: Vocabulary instruction, authentic input, individual intelligences, learning styles, linguistic competence, inter-social competence, cross-cultural competence


Abstract (Français)
Cet article présente une démarche différenciée pour l’enseignement du vocabulaire. En combinant des exercices du manuel Vis-à-Vis (2010) avec le court-métrage Faubourg Saint-Denis (2006) de Tom Tykwer, cette approche offre des ressources authentiques aux étudiants, reconnaît leurs intelligences individuelles, respecte leurs modes d’apprentissage et leur apporte une multitude d’occasions d’exprimer leurs opinions personnelles sur le thème de la vie quotidienne. Comme cette approche leur permet d’expérimenter avec la langue  et d’influencer le déroulement de la leçon, les étudiants perçoivent leur cours de français comme une communauté d’apprentissage dont tous les membres ont le droit de s’exprimer. Par conséquent, une telle démarche pédagogique ne réduit pas seulement l’angoisse de la langue étrangère, mais incite les étudiants à apprendre cette langue et sa culture. Cette démarche différenciée soutient donc le développement de la compétence linguistique, inter-sociale et interculturelle des étudiants.
Mots-clés : Enseignement du vocabulaire, ressources authentiques, intelligences individuelles, modes d’apprentissage, compétence linguistique, compétence inter-sociale, compétence interculturelle




1 Introduction

At the foreign language summit in December 2010, Arne Duncan, current Secretary of Education, openly admitted that the U.S. “is a long way from being the multi-lingual society that so many of [its] competitors are” (Duncan online). Nevertheless, educational funding for foreign languages has been cut in the most recent budget bill. Consequently, well established as well as newly developed foreign language programs are left in jeopardy or will be eliminated. The message communicated to students and parents alike is that foreign languages are not of importance.

This misunderstanding of the unimportance of foreign language instruction carries over to institutions in postsecondary education. Even though not all American colleges and universities require completed language-course work at the high-school level upon the student’s admission, it is a fact that every undergraduate student pursuing a B.A. must complete between two to three semesters of foreign language instruction prior to graduation. As Catherine Porter Lewis has pointed out in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Web, these undergraduate students often perceive this enforced foreign language requirement “as [an] obstacle to be avoided or an imposition to be endured” (Porter 2010). For frequently uninterested freshmen, these mandatory classes are a thorn in their side, and the fulfillment of the language requirement is usually their only source of motivation.

For inexperienced student teachers, these language classes are a pedagogical and methodological challenge. They often do not know how to address a diverse class consisting of students with a high integrative and instrumental orientation[1]. In addition, they often have difficulties selecting and presenting material in a coherent and meaningful way, and choosing activities and techniques that promote meaningful learning. Last but not least, inexperienced student teachers too often rely solely on the use of the textbook, without realizing that this one type of text within the educational curriculum is not enough to motivate students, to address their individual intelligences or learning styles, to expose them to the use of authentic language in real-life contexts, or to have them develop an understanding of the foreign culture whose language has to be learned.

This article pursues three goals:
  • It illustrates how to motivate students in a second semester French beginners’ class (FREN 1020[2]) for the foreign language and its culture via a combination of regular textbook work and commercial French film.
  • It shows that an appropriate combination of textbook and commercial film provides students with meaningful learning opportunities which foster their linguistic, inter-social, and cross-cultural competence while decreasing teacher input.
  • It serves beginning teachers as a practical outline on how to plan and conduct a differentiated lesson on vocabulary instruction that addresses students’ individual intelligences and learning styles. Moreover, it shows how to create a classroom atmosphere in which every participant “feels valued and respected” (Greene 2012: 14).

2   Material Selection and Presentation

This article is based on personal experiences in one of the author’s own FREN 1020 classes, in which she used Tom Tykwer’s short film Faubourg Saint-Denis (2006) while studying Lesson One of Chapter 13 in McGraw Hill’s beginner textbook Vis-à-Vis. This particular combination of material was chosen for two reasons. First, both textual sources presented the topic of la vie quotidienne, comprising lexical fields such as friendship, love, marriage, daily activities, and the human body. Second, having taught Lesson One of Chapter 13 before, the teacher-researcher was aware that the lesson’s presentation of several semantic fields in combination with the introduction to and the use of reflexive verbs when discussing daily activities had been challenging for students. In the past, students had often been overwhelmed by the amount of new material presented to them in this lesson and had expressed their frustration.

To prevent this from happening again and to teach a meaningful lesson comprising vocabulary acquisition and introduction to the use of reflexive verbs presented on pages 354-357 in Vis-à-Vis, the teacher chose to complement regular bookwork with Tykwer’s film.

Tykwer’s film is a very helpful pedagogical tool in many ways:
  • Tykwer’s film concentrates on the notion of friendship and love. As such, it illustrates the topic of l’amitié et l’amour adequately.
  • The film suggests talking about the human body and the importance of physical appearance as a decisive factor when two people fall in love. Thus, the film facilitates the combination and contextualization of the individual semantic fields to be learned.
  • It is an authentic French film which connects “the educational school context,” in which the foreign language is studied, with its “cultural context” (Bernaus 2009: 26) in which it is used and lived. The film invites students to develop their cultural understanding of life in Paris through the “exposure of authentic input” (Paesani 2006: 763) and the visualization of la vie quotidienne of two young adults: the American theatre student Francine, who is working at the Conservatoire, and the French interpreter Thomas, who transcribes texts written in Braille into standard French.
  • Fourth, through the representation of this real-life situation which is communicated to the students “by visual elements as well as oral ones” (Markey 1976: 731), the film exposes students to more than just a picture-book representation of Paris including snapshots of Paris-specific products: the street Faubourg Saint-Denis within the 10th arrondissement, the Conservatoire, the Métro, the Gare Saint-Lazare, cafés and parks, and the Grand Arch at the Porte Saint-Denis (among other things). Thus, it opposes what Elsayed Modbouly Selmy calls a “klischeehaftes (Kennen)Lernen” (‘stereotypical learning’)  (2004: 77) about the foreign culture.
  • The film illustrates Francine’s engagement with and her “willingness to seek out or take up opportunities to engage with otherness in [her] relationship” (Schulz 2007: 15) with Thomas. The term otherness in this sense comprises several  meanings, as it refers to geographical, linguistic, and behavioral aspects. In short, the film shows Francine’s openness towards the foreign French culture. In this sense, the film helps students to stir their interest in and their willingness to discover other perspectives and to establish comparisons between their own and the foreign culture. It encourages them to leave their language ego behind and makes them realize that “apprendre une langue étrangère, c’est apprendre une culture nouvelle, des modes de vivre, des attitudes, des façons de penser, [et] une logique autre, nouvelle [et] différente” (Courtillon 1984: 52). Hence, we can argue that the film fosters students’ linguistic and cross-cultural knowledge, which are both key to linguistic and intercultural competence.

3   Getting Started

Using the court-métrage Faubourg Saint-Denis as a pedagogical tool in combination with Lesson One of Chapter 13 requires a fine tailored pre-screening activity to prepare students linguistically for the understanding and discussion of the film. A semi-controlled question-answer exercise (Set 1) was chosen to inquire first about the students’ understanding of friendship, then about the desired physical appearance of their imaginary future boyfriend / girlfriend or husband / wife.

Set 1
1.     Décrivez votre meilleur(e) ami(e) ! Il / Elle est comment ?  

2.     Comment est votre homme ou femme de rêve ? Décrivez sa personnalité et
son apparence physique.

With the help of these questions, students’ existing knowledge of the use of descriptive adjectives, vocabulary studied in previous chapters could be assessed as well as verbal constructions expressing likes, dislikes, and preferences, and negative structures (e.g. “ Je n’aime pas les garçons qui parlent toujours du foot.” At the same time, this pre-screening activity allowed the researcher to teach students new vocabulary by filling vocabulary gaps or resolving so far “unresolved language problems that the collaborative dialogues” (Lapkin 2002: 498) revealed. Exposing students to new material which was contextualized, “easily assimilated, or ‘attached,’ to [their already existing] cognitive structure” (Hadley 2011: 144) helped to foster meaningful learning.  

Since this initial exercise addressed students of all language levels equally, the entire student group was motivated to participate. Whereas weaker students reviewed and practiced previously acquired material and speaking skills, students of a more advanced linguistic level were able to contribute their knowledge of new or related vocabulary to the semantic field that was developing on the board (Tab. 1) in the form of word-clusters which reflected the knowledge of each individual student (Bräuer 1997: 4).

All students were actively engaged in this collaborative process of vocabulary acquisition, a process consisting of what Kevin Flanigan and Scott C. Greenwood once defined as “Level 1 words (critical “before” words)” and “Level 2 words (“Foot-in-the-door” words)”[3] (2007: 229). Whereas Level 1 words belong to the field of vocabulary which is essential to the understanding of the language presented in the film as well as in the textbook, Level 2 words represent a category of words which typify either new or familiar concepts. Table 1 exemplifies the created list containing both Level 1 words (normal font) and Level 2 words (italics).


Vocabulaire exemplaire : L’apparence physique


La personnalité 


le corps athlétique
gros(se) / mince
grand(e)
petit(e)
de taille moyenne
le cœur doux
la tête
les cheveux (m.pl.) noirs, blonds, châtains etc.
le visage
le nez
l’œil (m.) / les yeux
le sourcil
la joue
la bouche
la lèvre
la main
la jambe
le bras



intelligent(e)
honnête (honnête)
franc (franche)
amusant(e)
sincère
bavard(e)
sportif (sportive)
dynamique
riche
chique
sérieux (sérieuse)
charmant(e)
travailleur (travailleuse)
beau (belle)
mystérieux / mystérieuse
Tab. 1: Level 1 and Level 2 words: L’apparence physique

This 10 minutes icebreaker to Chapter 13 proved to be a good means to fight against students’ feeling of self-doubt, to foster their belief in self-efficacy and achievement, and to “increase students’ awareness of the values of participation” (McKeachie et al. 2011: 45). As such, the activity promoted the idea of the classroom being one language community in which nobody was favored or left out, but where everybody could “learn actively from each other” (Ryder 1985: 254).


4   Processing and Connecting of New Material

After the acquisition of “new features of the language” (Hadley 2001: 237) had been completed, students were asked to make “connections between new and known information” (Stahl 1986: 664) via a second set of questions addressing their intra- and interpersonal learning styles.

Set 2
1.       Vous êtes comment ? Décrivez votre apparence physique et votre personnalité
2.       Et votre camarade de classe à votre gauche / droite, il / elle est comment ?

3.       Est-ce que vous préférez sortir seul(e) ou avec un(e) ami(e) ? Pourquoi ? 
Pourquoi pas ?

Within the next five minutes, students answered these personalized questions, which encouraged them to use the new vocabulary while speaking about themselves, reflecting on their values, and expressing their personal opinions. Since this activity required a “two-way interactive communication” (Phillips 2009: 31), in some cases even leading to follow-up questions from their peers, we can argue that it fostered students’ interpersonal communication skills while consolidating the material just learned. At the same time, this activity served as an introduction to a third set of questions exploring another so far unknown semantic field, the vocabulary of l’amitié et l’amour  (‘friendship and love’).

Set 3
1.      Pouvez-vous vous imaginer de tomber amoureux avec un(e) de vos ami(e)s ? Pourquoi ? Pourquoi pas ?   
2.       Pourquoi est-il facile de tomber amoureux, mais difficile de trouver le vrai amour ?
3.       Quelles sont les étapes naturelles après être tombé amoureux ?
4.   Qu’est-ce qui se passe si on ne s’entend plus ?

The entire student group answered these questions in discussion style. Whereas the first two questions allowed students to consolidate and use the acquired vocabulary of the semantic field l’apparence physique (‘physical appearance’) and la personnalité (‘personality’) through personal communication, the last two questions required further language input and vocabulary instruction from the teacher. Here it needs to be noted that at no point during this class period did the teacher (researcher dominate the process of foreign language instruction. On the contrary, teacher and students acted more and more as communication partners (see Kommunikative Methode online). 

With the help of the sketches presented on page 354 of Vis-à-Vis, the teacher  (researcher) was able to introduce students within the next ten minutes to this second semantic field of l’amitié et l’amour including reflexive verbs[4]. As earlier in the lesson, the teacher created a word map (Tab. 2) listing Level 1 (normal font) and Level 2 words (italics).


Vocabulaire exemplaire : L’amitié et l’amour


Quelques activités que nous associons avec l’amitié et l’amour


l’amitié (f.)
meilleur(e) ami(e)
tomber amoureux
être amoureux de
le coup de foudre
l’amoureux / l’amoureuse
le rendez-vous
l’amour
les fiançailles (f.pl.)
le mariage
la séparation
le divorce


s’embrasser
s’aimer
aimer bien / mieux
adorer
détester
se fiancer
se marier
s’entendre
se disputer
se fâcher
se disputer
se séparer
pleurer
divorcer
se réconcilier

                                     Tab. 2: Level 1 and Level 2 words: l’amitié et l’amour

During the next ten minutes of class time, students practiced and consolidated the new vocabulary by completing exercise B, on page 355 of Vis-à-Vis (Tab. 3).


   Posez les questions suivantes à un(e) camarade. (‘Please ask a classmate the following questions.’)
1. Est-ce que tu préfères sortir seul(e), avec un ami / une amie ou avec d’autres couples ?
2. Selon toi, est-ce que les jeunes d’aujourd’hui tombent amoureux  trop vite ou trop souvent?
Est-ce que tu crois au coup de foudre ? Pourquoi ou pourquoi pas ?
3. Est-ce que tout le monde doit se marier ? Pourquoi ou pourquoi pas ? Si ou, à quel âge ?
(Amon 2012: 355)

                              Tab. 3: Practice and consolidation of the new vocabulary

Whereas the first three questions found elaborate discussion, students fell silent when attempting to respond to question four. To keep the active learning process going, the teacher replaced question four with the following: “Selon vous, que doit-on faire quand il y a des problèmes ou quand les sentiments changent ?” Students were divided in their responses. Whereas some expressed the necessity to s’exprimer, discuter, and to se réconcilier à tout prix others chose the easy way out, namely se séparer. No matter which position students took, all of them used the new material, exchanged their personal opinion on the subject of friendship and love, and practiced the vocabulary as well as the reflexive verbs in basic French sentences, for example: On s’exprime et discute tous les problèmes .   

This learner-centered interpersonal activity was an important assignment within this lesson. While being engaged in what Jean-Pol Martin once defined as “Lernen durch Lehren” – i.e. learning by teaching - (Graef 1990: 1), students in the class, first, had to understand the new material and then practice the material in authentic communicative exchanges with their peers. Via this particular method, students were able to develop their linguistic knowledge as well as their methodological competences (see Graef 1990: 2). Hence, it provided students with a true learning experience, which fostered their self-confidence and language autonomy while being engaged in their own learning process. 

Since this approach focused on the “konzentrierte Vernetzung aller Schüler” – i.e. the concentrated interconnectedness of all students’ - (Ldl online), it should be noted that this type of activity can only be executed successfully when students of the respective learning group feel comfortable within their learning setting. If this is not the case, students might not be willing to reveal and discuss some of the issues addressed in this set of questions.


5   From Text to Screen

In order to maintain students’ interest and motivation the already personalized topic was then connected with Tom Tykwer’s court-métrage Faubourg Saint-Denis. Even though Tykwer’s film is only about 7 minutes long, its screening was divided into two parts.

Part I (00:00:00-00:06:02) consist of a series of flashbacks which Thomas, an ambitious blind Frenchman, experiences while being on the phone with Francine, an American theatre student. These flashbacks inform the viewer about their first encounter, their developing friendship, and their evolving love for each other. This first part offers many points of discussion, as for example a description of Thomas’ and Francine’s daily routine, an evaluation of their different personalities, or an analysis of their relationship. Part I ends with Thomas’ utterance, “ Pardonne-moi Francine ” (‘Forgive me Francine.’) (00:06:02). Part II consists of a follow-up telephone conversation between Thomas and Francine; a conversation with a twist, showing Francine’s natural talent as an actress.

To assess students’ global understanding of the film’s first part, the teacher started with a brief brainstorming addressing all students equally. In answering the teacher’s question “De quelle situation s’agit-il ?, every student was able “to draw together content knowledge gained” (Paesani 2006: 770) throughout the screening and, while doing so, to consolidate once more the new vocabulary written on the board. The fact that students could easily relate to the content of Tykwer’s film was very beneficial for the lesson’s goal of vocabulary acquisition and introduction to reflexive verbs. All of the students had had disputes with friends or partners in the past. Most of them had travelled abroad. Even though not all of them had visited Europe, every single student had left home in order to go to school in another city. Hence, every student could relate to Francine’s situation of being in a foreign city, making new friends, and exploring the new surroundings.

To encourage and also guarantee a more detailed understanding of Tykwer’s court-métrage, students were then asked the follow-up question, “Francine et Thomas, comment sont-ils ?”, which they addressed in writing. Even though this assignment asked for display[5] and not for real writing, it was significant at this point as it required each individual student to process and apply the newly acquired vocabulary in written form when describing and characterizing the main characters and also their relationship. As such, this writing activity was very different from the “writing down” practiced earlier in the lesson.  

This semi-controlled composition was important for two reasons: First, it allowed all students to verbalize their opinion. Second, it also gave those students a voice who were generally too shy or insecure to participate, or who usually needed more time to phrase their comments prior to uttering them.

At the end of this 10 minutes’ writing phase, students presented their work to the entire class, forcing them to demonstrate their “reading” of Francine and Thomas to their peers and to the teacher. Whereas some students only gave a description of the characters’ physical appearance and professional avenues, others took the assignment one step further. They described Francine’s and Thomas’ relationship first as friends, then as a couple. In order to “foster their self-confidence to present their opinions” (Reuber 2010: 27) to others in the foreign language, the teacher gave every student enough time to read out his / her answer to the question. To stimulate students’ critical thinking, the teacher challenged them with a third set of questions which was discussed as a group:


Set 4:

1 .Comment est-ce que nous pouvons caractériser leur relation ?
2 .La relation, est-elle stable ou plutôt labile? Sont-ils heureux ?


Their answers reached from simple statements such as, “Non, ils ne sont pas heureux. Ils se disputent souvent” to the expression of more complex thoughts, as for example: “D’abord, la relation est stable. Ils s’amusent et s’aiment beaucoup. Plus tard ils ont des problèmes. Ils travaillent trop. Ils se disputent souvent. Je pense qu’ils vont se séparer”.

The individual presentation of their written responses in addition to the discussion of the teacher’s follow-up questions was essential to the students’ learning process, as it strengthened their reading skills and developed their analytical and critical thinking. Moreover, this exercise reinforced their linguistic and social self-confidence to share their personal opinions with others of the foreign language community. In this respect, this performance task helped them “learn to evaluate the logic of and evidence for their own and others’ positions” (McKeachie 2011: 36).

This assignment provided the teacher with the opportunity to informally assess the students’ listening, writing, reading, and speaking skills, as well as their contextual comprehension of textbook material and film. Students’ execution of the exercise illustrated that, at this point of the lesson, they had mastered what Benjamin Bloom once defined as the first four levels of “cognitive operations” (Eisner 2000: 3) necessary in foreign language learning: knowledge, comprehension, the application of new structures, and the analysis of the situation which was visually and linguistically presented to them. 


6   Collaborative Creativity after the Viewing Process

Since language learning and development relies as much on collaborative interaction as on individual cognitive learning processes addressing students’ verbal, visual, and intrapersonal intelligences, the following 15 minutes of class time targeted students’ interpersonal intelligence.

In partner-work, students first discussed the meaning of Francine’s highly symbolic telephone message[6] and how the relationship between her and Thomas had changed over time. Then, they wrote a possible follow-up dialogue between Thomas and Francine, in case he or she called back.

At this point, writing was no longer a support skill for vocabulary instruction. It now had reached the level of what Gerd Bräuer calls expressives Schreiben (‘expressive writing’) (1997: 4), a collaborative free-writing activity whose primary goal is a written exchange of ideas related to the topic to be discussed (see Bräuer 1997: 4) via a contextualized and personalized use of the vocabulary. As such, this interpretive communication focused on the understanding and explanation of the (linguistic, cultural, emotional) other via the understanding of the self. It was a good opportunity for students to express their personal opinions about the topic in general, and about the couple’s relationship in particular while practicing the use of the newly learned vocabulary and structures. Hence, it was a highly motivating assignment which fostered students’ autonomy, self-determination, authentic language use, as well as their interpersonal and communicative competence.

In regard to Bloom’s taxonomy, this assignment exemplified students’ mastery of Bloom’s last two levels of learning objectives: the level of synthesis and of evaluation and creation. In their dialogues, students assessed the couple’s current relationship, argued for and against it, and defended the characters’ feelings. Most dialogues were characterized by an expression of extreme arguments and emotions illustrating love, pain, sadness, disappointment, and hope.  

Students were only able to evaluate this situation and “make judgments about the value of ideas” (Bloom online) presented to them, as they had mastered the preceding four cognitive levels mentioned before. During the last 10 minutes of the 75 minutes class, students first presented their dialogues, then watched the end of the court-métrage holding a surprise.  

Whereas time was not an issue in this 75 minutes class period, it has to be acknowledged that a teacher who only has a 50-minutes’ time span may not be able to follow this proposed outline. If time is an issue, the author advises screening the last minute of the film and assigning a brief composition, in which students express their opinions on whether or not Francine’s rehearsal on the telephone was appropriate, for homework. Since Tykwer’s court-métrage is accessible on youtube[7], the viewing of the remaining film segment should be feasible even outside the classroom.


7   Conclusion

In conclusion, we can state that through the combination of traditional bookwork and commercial film, students were naturally introduced to new vocabulary and grammatical structures. This particular combination facilitated students’ learning as it recognized students’ individual intelligences and learning styles (verbal-linguistic, auditory, visual, intrapersonal-introspective, and interpersonal-social), initiated a positive classroom energy fueled with a lively interaction between the individual students, and allowed for students’ choice, creativity, and autonomy.

This differentiated approach was highly motivating as it allowed students to relate their own experiences to each other, and, by doing so, to contribute to the creation and progression of the lesson as a whole. By making “les apprenants acteurs de leur apprentissage” (Gouillier 2011 : 25), students were offered many occasions to develop and demonstrate their linguistic competence.

In addition, this learner-centered approach provided students with an instruction which was based on the interconnectedness of schoolwork and foreign-culture product. When students realized that “la langue [étrangère] et la culture sont en étroite corrélation” (Manaa 2009 : 211), meaning that they are always acquired together and cannot be separated from another, their attitude towards expressing themselves in the foreign language changed. In the class in question, the teacher had the impression that students no longer perceived the combination and practice of the semantic fields and reflexive verbs presented in lesson 1, Chapter 13, of Vis-à-Vis, as artificial, but as complementary tools. In contrast to previous semesters when students often fell silent during this particular lesson, this time, students were engaged and eager to express themselves in French. The fact that every student was included in the teaching and learning process allowed for personal growth and achievement through a natural progression of difficulty and complexity of the individual activities.

As students became more autonomous, the teacher’s role changed. Her role was no longer perceived as the sole resource pool of information. During this lesson, the teacher functioned as a facilitator and coordinator, and first and foremost, as an equal member of the classroom conversations. She was part of a group that learned, discussed, and shared new ideas. Hence, this differentiated approach to vocabulary acquisition created an atmosphere that allowed students “to try out language, to venture response” (Brown 2007: 74), and to perceive the foreign language classroom as one learning community in which everybody’s voice was equally important and respected.

This sense of community is a decisive factor for learning to take place. It is important for all students, but especially for those who are mostly instrumentally driven or who suffer from anxiety and / or apprehension in regard to the foreign language to be studied. Only in an environment in which students feel safe (to make mistakes) and understood, can  teachers do their work and, at the same time, fight against students’ foreign language classroom anxiety, which all too often blocks them from learning and performing well.


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Author:

Alexandra Reuber, Ph.D.
Director 
French Language Program
Professor of Practice
Department of French and Italian
Tulane University
New Orleans
USA
E-ail: areuber@tulane.edu




[1]  Whereas students with a high integrative orientation are intrinsically motivated and desire to learn a foreign language because they want “to communicate with members of a different culture out of respect for and appreciation of that culture”, students with an instrumental orientation are extrinsically motivated and desire only “to meet concrete educational, vocational, or economical goals” (Goldberg 2006: 426).

[2] The language competence of undergraduate students at this advanced novice level of language acquisition can be compared to a high A2 or low B1 level within the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR). Students at this level are able “to communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information” and are able “to describe experiences and events, […] dreams, hopes, and ambitions” (CEFR online) in various tenses and contexts.

[3] Flanigan’s and Greenwood’s categorization of word levels applies to vocabulary instruction and learning at all times. Thus, it relates to words, expressions, and structures which will always need to be taught prior to engaging students in any more complex while- or post-reading / writing / screening activities. From this follows that a continuous instruction of Level 1 and Level 2 words provides students with linguistic tools which are necessary for a basic understanding and discussion of the subject matter at all language levels. In this sense, Flanigan’s and Greenwood’s categorization differs from le français fondamental that comprises a fixed and not developing collectivity of frequently used words, phrases, and grammatical structures. Perceived as “une base indispensable pour une première étape d’apprentissage du FLE pour des élèves en situation scolaire ” (‘an essential lexical base for students during their first years of learning French’) (Ff online), le français fondamental counts a total of about 3100 words to be acquired at the novice and intermediate level of language instruction. It does not account for a continuous growth of foreign language vocabulary.

[4] The grammatical rules of reflexive verbs will find explanation at a later point in the Chapter. At this point, students will only learn them as part of the new vocabulary. The use of reflexive verbs was reduced to the first and third person singular and the third person plural.

[5]  Whereas in real writing “the reader doesn’t know the answer and genuinely wants information,” in display writing, as is often demanded in tests and textbook exercises, writing serves primarily “for the display of a student’s knowledge” (Brown 2007: 395-96).

[6]   Francine leaves the following message: « Thomas écoute ! Parfois, la vie exige un changement. Une transition. Comme les saisons. On a eu un printemps merveilleux, mais l’été est fini et nous avons manqué l’automne. Tout d’un coup, il fait froid, si froid que tout se met à geler. Notre amour s’est endormi et la neige l’a prise par surprise. Et si tu t’endors dans la neige, tu ne sens pas la mort venir. Prends soin de toi ».  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7omytFn4M74 ).

[7]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7omytFn4M74