The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that makes these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of the content.

​

ARTIFACT 1

Name of Artifact: Leçon sur la Prononciation

Course: FR 641: French Culture through Comics

Date: Fall, 2023

World-Readiness Standards Addressed: Interpersonal Communication, Interpretive Communication,  Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives, Language Comparisons, Cultural Comparisons

​

​

 

RATIONALE

The artifact I have chosen to demonstrate my understanding of the nature and key concepts of the French language, as well as challenges typically faced by students when learning the French language, is a lesson plan I designed on developing learner pronunciation skills.  The lesson plan is written in French and was designed as part of an assignment in the course FR 641: French Culture through Comics. This artifact not only demonstrates my understanding and knowledge of the French language, but also highlights my ability to adapt what I learn from the latest research trends in the field, and then use that research to design an engaging and meaningful learning experience to aid student growth and mastery of the subject.

 

I believe the goal of pronunciation improvement should not be to sound like a native speaker, but rather to improve comprehensibility. It is now quite documented that improvement in comprehensibility is the key benefit from explicit pronunciation lessons, as well as increased confidence, reduced affective barriers and improvements in other areas of language development such as grammar (Sturm, 2019). Pronunciation is one of the hardest skills for students of the French language to master, and yet despite the significant benefits from explicit training in pronunciation, it is surprising that so few second language programs and textbooks focus on it (Sturm, 2019).

​

The lesson that I created has the objective of developing learner ability to pronounce four French vowels that do not exist in English, and create challenges in comprehensibility for English native speakers. The four vowels are /y/, /u/, /ɔ̃/ and /ɛ̃/. After a fun warm-up activity comprised of French tongue twisters using these vowels, students participated in two main activities. The first entailed working on minimal pairs in small groups and the second was a larger team activity using the French comic book, Astérix,  to identify the vowels when they were read aloud in the context of a dialogue from the book. The lesson was based on a multiliteracies approach and required students to collaborate and engage actively in both speaking and listening comprehension. The lesson also integrated two aspects from recent research into explicit pronunciation teaching that I discovered during a CALPER presentation given by Dr. Ines Martin. I reached out to Dr. Martin after the webinar and she shared an article on her latest research that highlighted two significant findings.  First, students need to perceive a sound before they can pronounce it correctly and because the ability to perceive a sound is a learner difference, they need to hear the sound from a variety of sources, regardless of how fluent the instructor may be. Second, peer feedback during a pronunciation activity can have a more longer lasting impact that feedback from the instructor. Most importantly, however, the research showed that it is not the student receiving the feedback that benefits, but rather the student who is providing the feedback (Martin & Sippel, 2021). Both of these insights were integrated into my lesson plan.

 

I feel quite strongly that this activity helped me develop as a professional French language instructor. It provided me with more insight into key concepts of the language and also developed my ability to design meaningful learning experiences based on the latest research trends.

 

References

Martin, I. (2023, April 19). Best practices in L2 pronunciation teaching [Webinar]. CALPER.

     https://calper.la.psu.edu/news/webinar-on-l2-pronunciation/

Martin, I., & Sippel, L. (2021). Is giving better than receiving? The effects of peer and teacher

     Feedback on L2 pronunciation skill. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation. Online

     publication retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.20001.mar

Sturm, J. L. (2019). Current approaches to pronunciation instruction: A longitudinal study in

     French. Foreign Language Anals, 52(1), 32-44. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12376

​

​

​

ARTIFACT 2

Name of Artifact: Leçon sur la langue française et la culture en Louisiane

Course: FR 536: French in the Americas

Date: Summer, 2023

World-Readiness Standards Addressed: Interpersonal Communication, Interpretive Communication,  Presentational Communication, Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives, Language Comparisons, Cultural Comparisons

​

​

​

 

RATIONALE

One of the most significant experiences in the MATL program on my growth as an instructor and as a student of the French language is the tremendous appreciation that I have gained regarding the richness and variety of the French language existing in various countries, cultures and communities across the Francophone world.  The artifact I have selected for this Standard is a French lesson plan that I designed during the course FR 536: French in the Americas. I designed this lesson plan because I believe it is important for students to develop an awareness and appreciation of the richness and varieties of the French language in the Francophone world. Much of the French that is taught in the classroom and that appears in many textbooks is a standard continental French, but in reality, the French spoken on an international level is very diverse and reflective of the cultural differences that exist in the various Francophone cultures (Redonnet et al., 2010).

 

The lesson was developed as part of a series of lessons on the varieties of French across the world, with this specific lesson focusing on Louisiana French spoken by the Cajun and Creole communities. It is comprised of three main activities that have the goal of developing student awareness of the linguistic and cultural richness of the French-speaking communities in Louisiana. The activities are based on listening comprehension and speaking, and require students to work collaboratively on research, discovery and presentational communication of vocabulary and expressions particular to Louisiana French. 

 

This lesson demonstrates my knowledge and understanding not only of structures and key concepts of standard French, but also of the linguistic differences existing between standard French and the French spoken in various Francophone communities.  It also highlights my ability to assess potential knowledge gaps in current textbooks as well as my own teaching practices, and then from that assessment, develop effective lessons to meet student needs. This lesson creates a meaningful engaging and collaborative learning experience in which students learn through discovery of how rich and varied the French language is across the world. They also learn how the French language is a living thing, and how it is subject to societal and cultural forces within France and other Francophone cultures (BBC news, 2019).

​

The lesson also demonstrates my understanding of how developing student awareness of the varieties of the French language across the world will help them in turn develop their intercultural and communicative competence within the difference language communities of the Francophone world.

​

References

Why the future of French is African, (2010). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47790128

Redonnet, J.C., Onge, R.S., Onge, S.T., & Nielsen, J. (2010). Héritages francophones- Enquêtes Interculturelles. Yale University.