Empowering and Motivating Language Students in an Online Environment

Abstract

This chapter explores pandemic-driven innovations in world language (WL) curriculum design and content delivery that encouraged student communication during remote learning. The study focused on questionnaire data from 49 WL instructors who identified specific pedagogical techniques acquired and honed during the COVID-19 pandemic, even amidst unprecedented hardships. Results indicated that WL instructors found most successful the types of activities which allowed for more timely feedback and student choice and built communicative skills for real-life situations. Furthermore, the instructors shared post-pandemic plans to employ more of these technological tools that fostered student collaboration and engagement, with a focus on building community and supporting social and emotional learning. Educators also emphasized deepened awareness regarding the myriad inequities among learners, the importance of establishing rapport with students, and the value of their own professional networks.

How students' writing motivation, teachers' personal and professional attributes, and writing instruction impact student writing achievement: a two-level hierarchical linear modeling study

“…Writing motivation has been a well-established area of research within the educational field, with recent conceptualizations highlighting the critical motivational and affective forces shaping students' perceived gains and losses in writing performance (e.g., Troia et al, 2013). Empirical evidence consistently suggests that motivated students demonstrate positive and strategic behaviors toward writing (e.g., Conroy et al, 2009;Wijekumar et al, 2019), expend extra effort on writing assignments (e.g., Hidi and Boscolo, 2006;Troia et al, 2012), persist in undertaking challenging writing tasks (e.g., Schrodt et al, 2019), actively seek feedback and guidance from teachers and peers (e.g., Williams and Takaku, 2011), collaborate with others to share writing ideas (e.g., Turner and Paris, 1995;Graham et al, 2017b), self-regulate their learning to write (Zimmerman, 1990), and evaluate their drafts periodically (e.g., Boscolo and Hidi, 2006). These behaviors enable students to complete writing tasks successfully, resulting in longer and better texts and further reinforcing their enthusiasm for writing (e.g., Graham et al, 2018).…”

Technology, the flipped classroom, and exigent paradigm shifts or being forced into the present

“…Of the many tools and approaches considered during this frantic and bewildering week, one stands out: the application of outside‐of‐class student‐to‐student communication via Zoom or other video‐conferencing technologies with written follow‐up to fulfill a number of desiderata: (1) that students speak more in an alternate assignment format given the realities of affective and technological hurdles while using video conferencing software; (2) that they are provided with an unsupervised opportunity to speak in an effort to reduce anxiety; (3) that self‐scheduled partner work might offer flexibility necessary during home‐based study and the various complications and distractions that entails, particularly during a period of ongoing disruptions; and (4) that a written response to this oral communication would generate classroom discussion, deepen engagement with materials, and present instructors with another avenue for teacher–student feedback and the assessment of sentence‐ or paragraph‐level writing. While other types of oral communication were considered, for example, asynchronous recordings (see Ly, 2022), unrecorded and unobserved communication was selected for one type of assignment in order to foster confidence in speaking in an unusual environment of increased affective hurdles (Conroy & Lykens, 2022, pp. 119–120).…”