The teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to continually evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community), and adapts practice to meet the needs of each learner.

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ARTIFACT 1

Name of Artifact: CALPER Webinar on Best Practices in L2 Pronunciation Teaching

Course: FRE 641: French Culture Through Comics

Date: Spring, 2023

World-Readiness Standards Addressed: Interpersonal Communication, Interpretive Communication

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RATIONALE

The artifact I have chosen to demonstrate my understanding of, and commitment to, ongoing professional learning is a webinar I attended during the course FRE 641: French Culture through Comics. Every course in the MATL has had a very positive effect on my growth both as a learner and as a teacher of the French language, and this course is no different. Prior to the course, I had always been dismissive of bandes dessinées as an effective resource for teaching and learning but my work in this course helped me to understand the multiple benefits of using comic books in the L2 classroom. I’ll touch more on how this experience has helped me grow as a teacher in the reflections section of this portfolio. Of more relevance to this artifact is an assignment I conducted during my first week of the course that required me to attend the webinar: Genre pedagogies in the world language classroom (Sommer-Frias, 2023). The webinar was hosted by the University of Arizona’s Title VI Language Resource Center (LRC): The Center for Educational Resources in Culture, language and Literacy (CERCLL). This was the first time I had heard of Title VI LRCs, and learned that these organizations had been developed as a public resource within a select few institutions of higher learning in order to further teaching, learning and research of foreign languages.

 

I subsequently visited the websites of the other LRCs in order to identify potential webinars of interest to my MATL coursework and teaching, and found one hosted by the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency, Education and Research (CALPER), at Pennsylvania State University. The webinar I attended was Best practices in L2 pronunciation teaching, presented by Ines Martin, a German language instructor at the US Naval Academy (Martin, 2023). The webinar went over the history and objectives of pronunciation teaching and then focused on Martin’s recent research into pronunciation instructional strategies.

 

Part of the reason I chose this artifact is that it highlights my commitment to bettering myself as a language instructor by seeking out meaningful professional learning experiences. The other reason I chose this artifact is that certain aspects of the content presented in the webinar caused me to reflect on my own teaching practice and to evaluate and adapt my approach. Two aspects of Martin’s research, in particular, had this effect on me. The first concerned the ways learners perceive sounds. Martin (2023) explained that just as learners have individual learning styles, they also have their unique way of hearing sounds. For this reason, when teaching pronunciation, no matter how advanced of a speaker the instructor is, best practices dictate that learners should hear the sounds they are going to pronounce from a variety of resources.  The second aspect of Martin’s research that affected me was her findings on peer feedback. When students were placed in pairs to provide each other feedback on their pronunciation, the research found that it was the student who was providing the feedback that benefited the most, and that the benefits were both long term and more effective than feedback provided by the instructor.  I contacted Ines Martin following the webinar with a couple of follow-up questions and asked if she would send me a copy of her research. She promptly sent me several published articles all containing her work on pronunciation. Later that week I shared the highlights of this webinar with my classmates during our online class meeting.

 

I learned through this experience how invaluable the LRCs are to the language teaching profession as resources for the latest research and also for continued professional learning opportunities. In the future I want to try and be more mindful, purposeful and consistent with my professional growth. I’d like to be more active with local and national world language and teaching associations. I’d also like to keep a teaching journal, a personal resource in which I’d write ongoing reflections on my practice, takes notes of what is working and not working in my approach and my lessons, ideas, and just a resource for overall self-monitoring (Richards & Farrell, 2010).

 

 

References

Martin, I. (2023). Best practices in L2 pronunciation teaching [Webinar]. Center for Advanced Language Proficiency

     Education and Research. https://calper.la.psu.edu/professional-development/advances-in-world-language-pedagogy/

Richards, C. R., & Farrell, T.S.C. (2010). Professional development for language teachers: Strategies for teacher learning.

     Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017.CBO9780511667237.007

Sommer-Farias, B. (2023). Genre pedagogies in the world language classroom [Webinar]. The Center for Educational Resources

     in Culture, Language and Literacy. https://cercll.arizona.edu/event/sommer-farias/arizona.edu

    

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ARTIFACT 2

Name of Artifact: Presentation of the Francophone film Un homme qui crie

Course: FRE 637: Francophone Cultures - Francophone Cinema

Date: Fall, 2022

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RATIONALE

The second artifact I have selected to demonstrate my understanding of the importance and value of ongoing professional learning is a presentation on a Chadian film which I prepared and delivered as an assignment in the course FRE 637: Francophone Cultures – Francophone Cinéma. The artifact is not a formal professional learning activity like a workshop or the webinar from the first artifact in which I learned about the latest research on pronunciation, but an activity nonetheless that allowed me to strengthen my standards based instructional practices as well as expand my content knowledge in my field of teaching. If the experience or activity is one that, once completed, will contribute in some manner to my ability to improve student learning and achievement, then it is a valuable professional learning experience (Steele et al., 2009).

 

I chose this artifact because it provided me with the opportunity to better my content knowledge and my practice as a French teacher. Francophone culture and film as a genre of study and instruction were areas in which I had little personal experience. This assignment resulted in furthering my understanding of these subjects to the point where I could lead a discussion on them and more importantly, use this knew knowledge to enrichen my students’ learning experiences. Steele et al., (2009) make the point that while teacher professional development focuses often on instruction practices, it is equally important that teachers engage in professional learning that improves their knowledge of the target language and culture. This artifact also highlights another crucial aspect to this standard which is the ongoing evaluation and self-assessment a teacher should do regarding their instruction practices. The process of developing this presentation, as well as other work in the course, showed me the richness and variety of Francophone culture and resulted in me evaluating my own practice and adapting it to include more Francophone language and culture into my teaching. To not do so would be a disservice to my students.

 

The artifact is a presentation of a Chadian film called Un homme qui crie (Haroun, 2010). The process of viewing and analyzing the film and then researching cultural aspects of the film in more detail, provided me with a significant amount of new knowledge that I am able to use to provide my students with meaningful learning experiences. I learned about the country of Chad and its culture; about its civil war; about the importance of family and other traditional African values; about how modernization is challenging those traditional values; about the role of the father in the family and the tradition of patriarchy in Africa; about the increasing role of women’s rights; and about the use of the French language in Chad and the situations that dictate its use versus the use of Chadian Arabic. I also learned about Film as a genre and how to use it as a tool for classroom instruction. Furthermore, despite my strong level in the French language, I still see myself as a student of the language in many respects, and this experience developed my competencies in film terminology and vocabulary.

 

This artifact represents a significant learning experience for me as a teacher and provided me with new cultural, content and linguistic knowledge that in turn will help me as a teacher to develop more meaningful learner experiences. Furthermore, this experience caused me to reflect on my own teaching practices. It broadened my horizons by helping me understand the richness and importance of Francophone culture and motivated me to find ways to integrate it into my classroom teaching.

 

References

Haroun, M. S. (Director). (2010). Un homme qui crie [Film]. Pili films. Goi Goi Productions.

Steele, T. M., Peterson, M. D., Silva, D. M., & Padila, A. M. (2009). A year-round professional  development model for world   

     language educators. Foreign Language Annals, (42)2, 195-211.

     https://cwlp.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj21146/files/media/file/a_year-

     round_professional_development_model_for_world_language_educators.pdf

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