Revolutions, Literature, and Change in 19th and 20th Century France (Spring 2017)
I designed this writing intensive intermediate-level French class around the history of technology and its effects on modernity in 19th and 20th century France. I asked students to compare authors' and artists' responses to new inventions such as photography, cinema, the submarine, and the railroad to contemporary technologies such as Instagram, Self-Driving Cars, and virtual reality. Students developed a final paper over a series of writing assignments that included close readings, comparisons with key course texts, and engaging with current critical scholarship. The biggest challenge of this class was engaging students who had never taken a literature class before and making sure they could participate in discussion. To help ensure participation, I asked students to keep a daily reading journal and built our in-class work around the critical and creative responses I asked them to write outside of class. By stressing the connections between historical texts and contemporary issues around technology I was able to engage students with historical connections and stimulate conversations about their everyday experiences in Silicon Valley. The highlight of this class was working with students on their final papers across the final five weeks of the quarter. Their final papers were divided into three assignments: the first, a close reading; the second, a comparison with a key course text; the third, engagement with secondary sources and criticism. I met with each student after each assignment to discuss their evolving ideas and arguments and found it immensely rewarding to watch how their projects grew. French Language 21C (Fall 2015) This class is designed to review the basics of French grammar while extending the depth of their communication. I created assignments and discussions to move students away from simple sentence responses towards paragraph-type responses. We also incorporated discussion of current events and prominent issues of modern French culture including major political structures of France, gender in the workplace, and race relations in the suburban and urban areas of France. The biggest challenge of this class was structuring lessons to elicit complex responses from students of varying facility with French. This was one of my most challenging courses because it required a lot of preparation as well as extensive feedback on journals and assignments, but it was one of the most rewarding as I watched my students transition from talking about their own experiences in French to discussing larger social issues. The highlight of this class was organizing a debate about whether it was better to live in the country, the city, or the suburbs, drawing on both the students’ own backgrounds and on the texts and articles we had read on the subject. I formatted the debate so that before any student could add to the discussion they had to summarize what the previous student had said and put their own point in context with this statement. I was so proud to see them begin to not only speak but also think spontaneously in French. French Language 3 (Spring 2014) This class was designed to push students towards the intermediate and advanced ranges. After 10 weeks students were able to narrate in a variety of tenses including the simple past and future, as well as to incorporate hypothetical constructions, conditional constructions, and the subjunctive. We also worked intensively on developing descriptive language, including comparative adjectives and constructions and relative pronouns. The biggest challenge of this class was to push students to use a variety of verb tenses and constructions in their responses. I had to come up with a variety of assignments, whether retelling stories, imagining future events, or explaining the present in depth. The highlight of this class was organizing a discussion about the film Entre les murs, where groups of students discussed each of the main characters (using the past tense), compared them to other students, and hypothesized about how the film would have changed if characters had behaved differently. This activity let us discuss a primary French text in context with major socio-cultural issues in France. French Language 2 (Winter 2014) In this class I brought students to the intermediate level of French, which focused on improving their facility to create with language in a variety of situations. After 10 weeks students could communicate in the present tense using a variety of verb forms and temporal structures, we also began work on the simple past and imperfect tenses. The biggest challenge of this class was balancing lessons between students who had just come from French 1 and students who were returning to French after a break of several years. Because this was a large class I used group work to my advantage, pairing more experienced students with newer French speakers and tailoring activities and assignments to target specific areas of weakness. The highlight of this class was seeing students’ creative responses in daily journals and student presentations. My favorite activities were in-class presentations explaining a famous French quote of their choice, an in-class discussion of the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks, and a simulated cooking show in French. French Language 1 (Fall 2013) In this class I brought students with little to no experience with French to a novice-high range. After 10 weeks of daily practice, students were able to comfortably express themselves in the present tense, ask simple questions, and describe their daily life and family. The biggest challenge in this class was coming up with a variety of pneumonic devices to reinforce irregular verbs and exceptions to grammar rules. I frequently relied on my own experiences learning French grammar and on one or two occasions asked my mother, who is a high school French teacher, for suggestions. The highlight of this class was seeing students’ feeling of accomplishment and creativity in role playing exercises that asked them to put their French into practical use such as finding a new apartment and interviewing roommates, calling a French family before an exchange program, and organizing a week long vacation to a Francophone country. Performing the Middle Ages (Fall 2013) I co-taught this course with Dr. Marisa Galvez. This class was designed as an introduction to medieval French literature, with a special emphasis on Occitan troubadour poetry. In addition to weekly reading responses we encouraged students to pursue creative final projects, which included a web app proposal and a music video. The students also visited Stanford’s special collections and developed a presentation on one of the 12th century facsimiles. The biggest challenge of this class was introducing critical theory (specifically Roland Barthes) to students who had never used it before. After an initial discussion of the theory we asked students to find several quotes they found inspiring and to use these quotes in their weekly responses throughout the quarter. The highlight of this class was working with musicians who performed troubadour songs in Occitan with authentic instruments. Working with them helped the class to better imagine the performance of troubadour poetry and to better understand the musicality of the language. Intensive Beginning French 5A (Summer 2016) This intensive class compressed a 10 week course of French Language into 13 class sessions, which met for 4 hours a day. Because there was less time for vocabulary and grammar review, I had to tailor lessons to practice the most necessary words and expressions. The biggest challenge of this class was using our limited class time to best support individual students’ needs. I often had to create activities and games on the spot in order to target specific language and practice challenging concepts. The highlight of this class was seeing how flexible my students were and how quickly they were able to grasp grammar concepts. Because the class was so small (only 4 students), I regularly asked them to answer questions as other people (e.g. as family members or celebrities) so they could practice more vocabulary.
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