Pandya, Sonal

FL 515 Winter 2016

Teaching with Technology Philosophy Statement

As a French teacher, it is important to me that my students develop the ability to
communicate in French. My goal is that as a student progresses through our French
program, each year she will be able to communicate about more things with other French
speakers who have less experience with non-native speakers. She will also be able to
comprehend more nuanced messages from varied media as she progresses through each
level. In order to make this goal a reality, I focus heavily on developing basic
communicative competence in the first two years through comprehensible input in the
form of class stories constructed around target structures and comprehension checks in
English. With authentic texts often targeted at elementary level native speakers, students
are pushed to make inferences and demonstrate comprehension of gist as they develop
an awareness of the patterns and formats of the authentic materials. They are asked to
use the visual support provided in infographics to make meaning of the texts and to
justify whether words that appear to be cognates are true or false cognates. They also
work with accessible materials created for language learners that give them the repetition
they need to build confidence in their abilities and push them to demonstrate their
comprehension and inference abilities using the target language.
In more advanced classes, students read continue to read articles, listen to podcasts and
watch videos from diverse Francophone communities. They analyze texts for audience,
point of view, authors purpose, quality of argumentation, information content and
messaging. They discuss opinions and argue positions citing evidence and providing
examples as they interact with each other and the teacher in French. They also use a
variety of strategies to negotiate meaning.
From level 1 to Advance Placement, students access authentic materials from their
sources the websites of the Francophone world. They use Wikipedia in French as a
starting point for research and can evaluate the trustworthiness of a website by looking
for who is producing the media for what audience. As they work to develop their
language skills, they use apps to manage flashcard decks, look up words in French to
French or French to English dictionaries, listen to Francophone radio and music, and
practice basic skills. Through a cloud-based learning management system, they
participate in discussions, post assignments, keep track of class events and access
agendas, links and resources for computer assisted lessons.
Technology is an integral part of experiencing French as a living language. Being able to
experience francophone culture without translation pushes students to broaden their
perspectives and learn to see things from other points of view. I believe that in terms of
foreign language study, the overarching purpose of technology is to empower students to
be lifelong learners of language, culture and our diverse multicultural world.