In Session: Video-Chats Hone Students' French Conversation Skills
It’s hard to have meaningful engagement with another culture if you can’t speak the language at least moderately well. Global communication took another step forward this academic year, as intermediate French-language students at MHC conversed over video links with intermediate English-language students at the Université de Haute Alsace in France.
Donning headsets at computer terminals displaying live images of both students, the participants spoke ten minutes in one person’s native tongue, and then switched languages. Every twenty minutes, new teams of French and English students took their seats in each of the four “chat rooms,” language learning center workstations topped by spherical video cameras.
The conversation topics during the getting-to-know-you phase may not have been profound (“The campus is awesome.” … “I love U2, you know, with Bono?” … “Help me with my grammar here …”), but the experimental practice has become a valuable addition to campus language-teaching techniques. “The students are ‘swimming’ in French now,” said Catherine Bloom, visiting instructor in French, with each student speaking for far longer at a stretch than is common in group discussions.
MHC language students usually gather in small groups once a week and take turns conversing with a language assistant who’s a native speaker. These video discussions, says professor of French Nicole Vaget, are “a better alternative because it’s a one-on-one conversation of several minutes, so the pressure is on.” Sarah Reusché ’10 didn’t seem to feel pressured, though. In fact, she said speaking with another student “reduced the embarrassment factor that’s there when you’re speaking with someone who’s fluent in French when you’re not.”
Each duo spoke online three times during spring semester, supplemented by e-mails between video sessions. By April, Sarah and video-conversation partner Ludovic Jost had moved from simple questions to discussing subjects as complex as the political platforms of the French presidential candidates. “Conversing in French with a native really helps make concrete what verb tenses to use where,” Sarah said. “Ludovic assured me that even the French get the complicated verb tenses confused!”
Nana-Yaa Appenteng ’08 said she liked the video conversations because “we learn things that you won’t find in textbooks.” She spoke with her video partner about differences between the French and
U.S. educational systems, and where each had traveled. This twenty-first-century version of writing to a foreign pen pal, she says, also “helps build my confidence.”
—E.H.W.
