The declining enrollments in French can be partially explained by the ever-increasing utility of Spanish in our country; the sheer volume of immigrants and citizens who speak Spanish makes it a very useful – in some places, necessary – language to know. But another part of the enrollment picture is student attitudes and goals in learning a second language. Is utility their main focus (see Siskin’s Table 2)? Are they searching for a transformative tool for better understanding of themselves and the world at large? Do they have integrative goals, of being able to communicate with friends and family? These are widely differing motivations that will be unique for each student.
What might we as French language instructors do, then, to combat this declining enrollment? As suggested by Siskin, we can start by capitalizing on our strengths, emphasizing the transformative and aesthetic functions of French, without completely abandoning the utility function. (I, for one, owe my three years of employment immediately preceding grad school to my ability to speak French. Not Spanish. French! So the utility function exists, but minimally.) Siskin recognizes that overall we will never be able to challenge the utility of Spanish in this country, so let’s provide students who are searching for something beside utility an opportunity for exploration. I really like Siskin’s discussion of “second” language versus “foreign” language, as I think it characterizes the situation nicely. So why not emphasize the foreignness of French, and how it enables world travel and cultural exploration. And let’s not just talk about France! By opening students’ eyes to the rest of the Francophone world, we will likely attract and retain students who might not be interested in hexagonal French literature, culture and cuisine. Another idea for increasing the reach of French has already been discussed in a previous online forum: offer interdisciplinary courses that address French and business, French and history, French and security issues, French and the environment...courses like these that focus both on the French language and on broader issues that appeal to more students are likely to increase enrollments in “French” courses.
One specific issue that Siskin mentions is the strategy of tolerating more error in order to make French seem less difficult to learn (p. 56-7). To this I say “No!” While we as instructors should have a realistic understanding of the strengths and limitations of L2 learners, our job is to teach the language as it is...students should be made aware of the target, even if they fail to reach it. I’m not saying that we should be mean, merciless language tyrants meting out the prescriptivism of the Academy, but as Siskin points out, native French speakers will hold learners to a fairly high standard and so should we.
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I strongly agree with your opinion. We cannot tolerate mistakes only to make French less difficult to learn. We realize that language acquisition might have different path. Learners learn through mistakes and it is not possible to avoid this process (unless somebody is extremely talented). Sinskin continues this idea. He declares that “ Students should be aware that native speakers may idealize how French should be spoken” (p. 57). Maybe this is a case when native instructor is not prepared for teaching SL. The question is what is the role of the teacher? If we have to ignore correction our role is limited to the regular attendance in the class. Students can learn all by themselves, talk, pronounce and write how they want. As I said in my previous posts and comments some languages are easy and some are not. This is the fact and I think students are aware of this. Language is a key of communication. Imagine a student who wants to spend one academic year in France or who wants to spend one week during his vacation. In my opinion he could be completely shocked by the fact that he "parle comme une vache espagnole". After coming home he will be frustrated by the fact that he had problems. We will create indirectly the psychological barriers. By ignoring mistakes we can discourage student to continue French study. I think students expect correction from us. The cause of the decline might be various and very deep (WWII etc). Therefore the question is how to convince students to French language. The answer is not so evident. I would say that it is necessary to create friendly environment in our classroom. We should show that even the study of the most difficult language is fun (not snobbish). Language is like 10000 pieces puzzle that students put together. Some elements fit and some do not and require more work and corrections. Therefore it is necessary to try and try to put all elements together (grammar, vocabulary and all 4 skills) until the final successful result.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you that we must not sacrifice 'error corrections' to make it more attractive. I feel that to do that would be to lie to students. As Justyna said if we do so they will hit a wall when they go abroad, and it will backfired at us: French enrollment will fall even lower because students will spread the word that they aren't correctly prepare to face real life interactions in the language. Thus all possibilities to present French studies as useful will be lost.
ReplyDeleteI promise I won't go on another tirade here, but I really feel that I have to express, once again, that this article really seemed to give a negative (and erroneous) view of instruction in other foreign languages. Why should we assume that Spanish teachers are more tolerant of errors than French teachers? It seems completely unfounded! I agree with all of the above that avoiding error correction to save face with students is not such a hot idea. Furthermore, I have to express some skepticism with regard to this network of students that supposedly establishes the hierarchy of desirable foreign languages. It is, of course, quite true that students can be overheard in hallways discussing their cruel French teachers with much luckier students with permissive Spanish teachers. However, I'm sure the opposite case is equally prevalent. The bottom line is that nobody enjoys doing something they don't do very well while constantly being corrected; it is an unpleasant reality of second language acquisition. That said, one way of dealing with this inevitable stress is to vent to one's friends (or even total strangers) while in the corridors. I'm also not sure that this is as central an issue as it's been made out to be, that is, I don't see the problem of students' perception of difficulty as being limited to FL instruction. Who among us has not made the difficult choice between physics and, let's say, astronomy based on commonly held (yet unfounded) perceptions of these respective fields? Taking that one step further, who found that astronomy is considerably more difficult than it at first seemed to be?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Aline. I would like to add also some comments about how to convince students to study French. I said that it would be nice to relate / to link the cultural module to students' interest. I know, and it might sound strange, but students expect from us some fun cultural and interesting topics that they can really enjoy. I think the diversity of movies and songs would resolve partially this problem (the most famous comedies and dramas, classical and modern music etc.) Maybe the contrast and diversity would help them understand that French can be also interesting and entertaining. Maybe it would be also fun to show pictures made by Sempé, cartoons (also in movies) such as Tintin, Asterix and Obelix. A lot of students complain that movies are interesting but boring (do you know that 90% did not know the movie “French kiss” or “one year in Province-book also). They are young and we have to recognize their needs, but at the same time to help them. I know that classroom is not a market but maybe we (or students) can recommend French books, music and places where they purchase, listen these French items. Maybe (inspired by last technological week) it would be nice to create a blog where students can share their favorite French music and songs etc. There are so many options.
ReplyDeleteFrench is overloaded by French grammar definition and terms. In my classes about 50% (or even more) is not able to recognize the infinitive and imperative or indicative. I have impression that they do not have any idea what I talk about. And obviously I do not have time to explain deeply the difference between these terms. Students are very resistant to grammar and everything that is related to grammar is automatically boring and frustrating.
I think also that it would be nice to prepare a kind of brochure about French language and useful cultural links and to discuss. While I was teaching French at IUPUI I let students to discover French culture all by themselves. Each student had to write a brief commentary or reaction paper (one-two pages in English) about a topic pertaining to French culture (or any other francophone culture) and will share it with the class for brief discussion. The cultural commentaries were given during last 5 minutes of each class. According to course evaluations students enjoyed this assignment very much. They discovered French culture individually and shared with the class. I can admit that I learned also a lot from them. We have to remember that the initial impression is crucial and it decides whether students will enjoy French or not.
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ReplyDeleteThank you Jennifer for not ceding to such a ludicrous claim as "We should tolerate more errors in order to increase the appeal of French." That's akin to saying that we should tolerate less well-developed papers and analyses in order to bolster enrollment in the English department. If we rewrote Shakespeare in order to pander to students, they might understand it better, but it would undermine the artistic integrity and the natural beauty of language that is contained therein. The same can be said of French. While I do not advocate the "purism" of language supported by some, I think we need to honestly evaluate the margin for error and language and be especially cognizant of the fact that a significant percentage of our students have only an adequate knowledge of English grammar and structures. I hate to use my students as examples of the state of education in America, but I have had to explain to students that in order for a sentence to be complete, there must be present a subject and a verb, to which the student responded, "What do you mean, subject." While some might laugh this off as one instance among thousands, and thus statistically unimportant, we must allow that teaching complex grammatical issues is further encumbered by the lack of knowledge of the same structures in English and that the problem becomes even more pronounced when there is no such correlation between the two. In F150, we introduce the subjunctive, a structure already quite rare in spoken American English, so it is hard to explain to students that the same thing exists in English. We must strive for an appropriate level of linguistic and grammatical accuracy, but we do need to allow for a larger margin of error, not in order to dupe students into thinking that French is easier to learn, but in order to compensate for a lack of knowledge of corresponding structures in English. Our students know how to read, write and speak, or they wouldn't be at a university. That which must be acknowledged is that they are not necessarily aware of the mechanisms and terminology that we use so readily in our explanations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Betters, on the point that we shouldn't be more lenient about mistakes just because we may posit that Spanish instructors are more lenient. Note that in the survey the authors conducted, most people were disillusioned about the difficulty level of Spanish. (Note also that no students were disappointed in their French instructors, while this wasn't the case for Spanish...)
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of this ties in with Kelly's idea that Spanish *seems* a lot easier than French phonetically speaking (due to the more transparent correspondence between written and spoken Spanish). I doubt beginning Spanish teachers are going to correct students using a stop when they should be spirantizing. It's easy, however, to imagine a French teacher correcting students on a wide gamut of pronunciation issues.
I don't think we should be more lenient. I think with proper error correction technique, the difficulty of French shouldn't be too much of an obstacle for enrollment. Since we can't combat the misconception that Spanish pronunciation is easy, maybe we could highlight not the difficult phonetic/orthographic issues of French and instead promote similarities or areas where French can be easy for Anglophones (e.g. lexicon)?