ABSTRACT
One of the challenges in my French Compressed Video course has been getting the students to “loosen up” and respond spontaneously during class. It is true that, as in a face-to-face class, there are always a few students with inhibitions about oral participation. However, for the others it is more of a challenge in a Compressed Video course because even though the total class size may be 20 or more, they may be sitting in a room with only three other people.
What’s the best way to engage this generation that put “google” in the dictionary, stays in touch with friends via MySpace and checks out YouTube daily? Take advantage of the easy access to technology in my CV classroom and find material on the Web that offers practical usage of concepts covered in class.
Introduction
The UW-Colleges offer four semesters on French via Compressed Video to 9 of its 13 campuses. One section has four campuses and the other (which I teach) has five – my home campus in Marathon County and four remote site campuses. The classes meet for 50 minutes, four times per week.
Students must turn on a microphone before they can be heard by me and the other students. This is a stumbling block to the laid back atmosphere I like to have in a classroom, where hands do not need to be raised before a question is asked and where discussions can happen spontaneously between students. Add to this the fact that many beginning language learners, even in a face-to-face setting, are hesitant to speak at all because of self-consciousness about how they will sound and the result could be a very quiet class.
In all my teaching experiences, including my days as a high school teacher before the internet had taken off, I have used pop culture as a means to engage students. They always perk up more when asked to list adjectives in French that describe George Clooney and Britney Spears rather than some unknown Chantal and Philippe from their text. With the ability to show anything from the web on a six foot screen on all of my campuses with a simple click of a mouse, I knew I had to find a way to use the web to spark participation in my class, all the while keeping in mind the goals of the course.
Description of Process
The web activities I have developed for my class require different amounts of engagement from my students, from simply watching or listening to completing various grammar worksheets based on what was played.
- Sit back and listen
- Watch and discuss
- Watch and complete an activity
The “World-Wide” nature of the web makes it especially user-friendly for the foreign language learner and teacher. My earliest use of the web in my class started before my first class even started. Streaming audio is standard on radio websites, so I found a French Top 40 station and played it as students walked in the first day, and most days thereafter. (http://www.radiofrance.fr) Our texts cover a different part of the French-speaking world in each chapter, so we are able to listen to music from Québec, Tahiti, Casablanca or anywhere else depending on a particular chapter’s theme.
This is simply a way of setting the tone, plus there is some cultural value in it as they hear that many of the songs that are popular here in the US are also getting air time in France. Listening to the DJ also gives them the chance to hear some native speech. Nothing is required of the students other than to listen.
I have always loved using popular music in my classes, so I am delighted that the internet has arrived at the stage where I can easily find a music video for any song I might want to play. When we switched to a new text for French 101, there was a reference made to a World War II era song, the lyrics of which were printed in the text. It took me about five minutes of searching to find not just one, but two modern-day remakes of the song, complete with wildly different music video presentations. The students’ first task is to watch both videos and compare the lyrics to each other and to those in the text (two were written in the first-person while one was in the third-person) . Their second task is to give their opinion of which video they prefer and why. This is strictly an oral participation task. Similarly, I have used music videos and given students the low-stress task of guessing what the title of the song is or picking out vocabulary words they have learned.
In addition to music, I have found other great French tidbits on the web. One semester I quickly learned that a number of female students were big Johnny Depp fans . Knowing that he lives in France, I figured there had to be some video online in which he speaks French. I found a video of him at a music awards show in England. He presented an award to a French-speaking musical group that did not speak English. Depp acted as the interpreter between the group and the English-speaking host. He took great liberty in his translation and the result was very funny. When I show the clip I ask my students , “Why is everyone laughing?” Because perceiving humor is a high-level of language function, it is usually one of my top students who can answer this.
Screen capture of Johnny Depp on French television
I always feel like I've struck gold during my web surfing when I can find a famous American attempting to speak French. My favorite was an interview Lance Armstrong did with French television following a Tour de France stage when he’d suffered a crash because the handlebars of his bike had become entangled in a plastic bag held by a spectator. Not only do students get to see what a Tour stage looks like and how very close the riders are to each other and to the fans, they also get to learn some new vocabulary. Armstrong was not very fluent at the time of this interview, so he speaks slowly enough for students to be able to understand him. Then, when it’s done we analyze the grammatical errors he made!
Screen capture of Lance Armstrong video in the Tour de France
I also use music videos for songs that make repeated use of grammatical structures we have learned in class. One grammar rule that is a challenge is the use of the conditional and the imperfect (I would dye my hair blond, if you asked me to). While in English we are rather lazy about putting those tenses in that exact order, in French it is only ever done one way – the correct one. One of Edith Piaf’s most famous ballads, Hymne À L’Amour, makes extensive use of this structure as she lists everything she would do for her true love, if all he did was ask her to. I created a worksheet with a cloze activity in which students must listen to the lyrics and fill in the blank with the missing verb, correctly conjugated.
I have a lot of fun with this activity because the video I show first is not of Edith Piaf, but rather Josh Groban. The students find this pretty amusing because one of the first things they learn about me is that I'm a huge Josh Groban fan and he has a way of working himself into our class exercises ( e.g. “How does Josh Groban’s singing compare to Bob Marley’s? Use the comparative.” “Translate ‘Madame has seen Josh Groban eight times. ‘ Pay attention to verb tense.”) What makes this especially interesting is that Josh is singing on the French equivalent of “American Idol”. We get to see the stunned faces of the contestants as they are surprised by his appearance at their rehearsal – much like their American counterparts.
After his rendition we go through the answers to the activity. Then I show the lyrics as printed on Josh Groban’s CD liner. There are numerous errors and I ask the students to find them (at this point I usually share that I have offered my services to Mr. Groban as his personal French translator, but am still waiting for a response.) Finally, I show a vintage video of Edith Piaf singing the tune which also has the English translation of the song. This concludes with another discussion of which video was preferred and why.
Screen capture of Edith Piaf video
Results
When asked what they enjoy about the web activities I have used in class, students most commonly mention that they enjoy getting a glimpse into French culture and being able to link it to the French we are learning. They say they enjoy the variety and change-of-pace from the ordinary class activities. Some have said it makes the class more fun.
One student added that viewing web videos in class gave her an idea of where to look for similar videos on her own. She made up her mind about which French music artists she liked based on what we listened to in class and then found more information about them for herself.
From the instructor’s desk, I note that students perk up more when we do something from the web. It is not uncommon to have the experience of several students turning on their microphones at once during these activities, something that rarely happens any other time, especially in the 8 a.m. class!
Lessons Learned
While it is enjoyable to toss in a music video every now and then purely for variety, what is most important is to link these videos to what we are learning in class and get students to make the connections between what can seem to be an abstract grammar point and how language is really used in the French-speaking world. Not only do students enjoy these clips, but when a week or two has passed without one I can count on them to request one!
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Last updated May, 2006