Fostering Student Engagement and Oral Practise in an Online French Course During COVID-19

Abstract

Effective foreign language learning requires students to be engaged and to interact with the teacher and peer students in the target language during class. How can this be achieved effectively when the course is suddenly moved online? This chapter reports on the implementation of a Business French course in a business school in Norway using the flipped classroom method online during COVID-19. The author designed the course focusing on two key elements: fostering student engagement and creating a space for oral practise. Several measures were implemented: grammar and vocabulary lessons were moved out of class time, classes were synchronous and not recorded with activities in breakout rooms, and digital lunches were held to build a sense of community. The chapter provides an empirical case of course adaptation and draws on this experience to offer some recommendations that other foreign language teachers can use to implement an engaging course online.

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).…”