Une liste des ressources pour le français inclusif

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explore a variety of resources that discuss the use of Inclusive French.

Image source: https://givingbalkans.org/content/inclusive-language-principles

Below is an ever-growing list of resources that I have been collecting on the use of inclusive French. I will continue to add to this list, in alphabetical order of creator(s), as I come across more helpful or interesting articles and resources. Please feel free to share a link in the comments, which I will add to the list!

I think it is important to point out, as Kris Knisely, Julia Spiegelman, and Blase A. Provitola did in a recent presentation for the Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum virtual conference, as of 2022, there is no “right way” to use inclusive French. As with everything, context is everything, and it is our job as educators to present a variety of perspectives to our students rather than prescribing how they can be inclusive!

 

Alpheratz:  https://www.alpheratz.fr/linguistique/genre-neutre/

« Lexique de Genre Neutre », qui est un extrait du livre d’Alpheratz “Grammaire du Français Inclusif” (2018).

Florence Ashley: https://www.florenceashley.com/uploads/1/2/4/4/124439164/ashley_les_personnes_non-binaires_en_fran%C3%A7ais_-_une_perspective_concern%C3%A9e_et_militante.pdf

Un article académique : “Les personnes non-binaires en français : une perspective concernée et militante” par Florence Ashley de McGill University

Diver Genres: https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/guide-grammaireinclusive-final.pdf

Un guide pour comprendre et utiliser la grammaire neutre et inclusive par Diver Genres.

Annabelle Dolidon: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/pdxopen/40/

An open educational resource conversation tool, CITOYEN.NE.S is a French language method for the conversation class at the intermediate/ advanced level. Content and activities are built around the concepts of diversity, inclusivity and equity.

Égale: https://egale.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/French-Inclusive-Language-4.0.pdf

Une glossaire pour l’usage du français inclusif, avec les liens pour les autres ressources et plus d’information.

En Inclusif: https://eninclusif.fr/

Un réécriture automatique des mots de façon inclusive avec le point médian, le point et le tiret à la fois au singulier et au pluriel et avec des options binaire et non-binaire.

En Tous Genres: https://entousgenresblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/quels-pronoms-neutres-en-francais-et-comment-les-utiliser/

Un post sur “Le langage neutre en français : pronoms et accords à l’écrit et à l’oral”

Hélène Frohard-Dourlent et Gabriel.le Villeneuve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc78UH808zg

Webinar sur le français inclusif. I made a summary of their point, which you can see here.

https://www.krisknisely.com/resources-for-educators

Kris Knisely: https://www.krisknisely.com/resources-for-educators

Beaucoup de resources formidable, y compris les info-graphiques comme “Oral Communication Strategies used by non-binary speakers of French” et “Language forms used by non-binary speakers of French”.

Dr. Kiki Kosnick and Professor Vickie R. Phipps: https://properpronouns.com/

Un guide pour l’utilisation des “proper pronouns” (une mention d’une personne en particulier dans la troisième personne). En anglais.

Le Devoir: https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/649374/litterature-un-iel-vieux-comme-les-cultures-autochtones

Un article (2021), “Un «iel» vieux comme les cultures autochtones”

Lesson: Impossible (Aviva Levin & Spencer Cook): https://www.lessonimpossible.com/blog/inclusive-pronouns-en-franais-sam-utilise-iel

Une petite histoire illustrée pour les élèves pour expliquer comment on peut utiliser le français inclusif avec un.e. ami.e non-binaire (« Sam Utilise Iel »)

Office québécois de la langue française: https://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=5465

Une liste de termes épicènes ou neutres. Plutôt que de choisir entre deux mots (ex. un représentant et une représentante) on peut essayer de trouver un autre mot (ex. une porte-parole) 

https://juliaspiegelman.wordpress.com/resources/

Julia Spiegelman: https://juliaspiegelman.wordpress.com/resources/

Un google doc (A Student’s Guide to Queer and Non-Binary French) et un zine crée par un.e élève non-binare (“IEL: A Zine on Gender-Affirming Language for the French Classroom (by a trans* French student”)). Tous en anglais.

Trans Care BC: http://www.phsa.ca/transcarebc/gender-basics-education/education-resources/support-tools

French-language handouts, such as Langage inclusif du genre, Faire des erreurs et les corriger and Soutenir les jeunes trans et créatif·ve·s dans le genre.

L’Université Laval: https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/guide-redaction-inclusive-2020-femul-2.pdf

Un guide qui discute les définitions, l’historique, la démystification, les règles, les formes d’écriture inclusives et des exemples. 

Using Improv in the Classroom: Counting to 20

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use an improv counting game to reinforce numbers, build community, and practice improv skills.

Photo: Black Ice/pexels.com

Numbers are one of the first things that students are introduced to in language classes: they are concrete (no translation errors!) and useful (textbook pages, sharing ages, telling time).

I use this game with beginner students to reinforce numbers, but also with advanced learners to help build community and connection. This is also a game that I do minutes before every improv show with my troupe; we don’t go on stage until we make it to 21 (our chosen end number)!

The way it works is simple, but it is deceptively hard! A group gets in a circle (with my friends we huddle together like a football team, but that is likely too much touching for classmates) and closes their eyes. (The bigger the group, the harder this exercise is). Without consulting each other, and in no set order, the group must count consecutively. A first brave soul will say “one”. Another will say “two”. If two people say the same number at the same time, they need to start again at one. (If you’re afraid a group might default to a circle, you can make a rule that the next person who speaks can’t be to either side of the person who just said a number.)

The reason I do this before shows is that it forces a sense of togetherness and awareness of others. You start to really pay attention to the people around you and get into sync with them. You start listening hard to their breathing, to any minute movements you can sense. This is a game with winners and losers, but you all win or lose together, so you feel incredibly invested in getting this right. The feeling you get when you finally hear that final number is indescribable! If you want to build feelings of team togetherness, this would be a great way to start a class! This is also a great game for introducing improv as a concept, as you can talk about the importance of listening to others, working as a team, and building on what others contribute.

Adaptations:

  • You can choose any number as your end number (though go too high and it gets waaaaaaay to difficult).

  • You can also choose to go up by 2s, 3s, 5s, 10s to practice bigger numbers

  • You can count down from twenty back to one


NOTE: Although this is only tangentially related, I wanted to share my absolute favorite counting video for French. The director of the video found 100 French people of ages 0 through 100 and had them say their age’s number (young kids got some help).

Have you played this game or a variation of it? Share in the comments!

The 7 Cs of Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to consider the 7 Cs of drama (community, communication, creativity, confidence, cultural sensitivity, carrot (not stick), and content knowledge) that are research-supported reasons to incorporate drama into the foreign language classroom.

Drama, particularly improv, is often seen as the fun reward of language classes – students are allowed some ‘play time’ as a reward for doing ‘actual learning’. In fact, I would argue that drama/improv itself is the real learning, and that the inclusion of drama into the second language classroom is incredibly important for a variety of reasons!

There is a lot of research supporting this, and below, I’ve gathered all the studies, position papers, and books that I have come across that show how amazing drama is! I’ve divided the benefits into seven categories (all conveniently starting with a C!) to make the myriad of benefits easier to see. Feel free to share this with colleagues that may doubt your pedagogical choices or to motivate your like-minded colleagues (and yourself) to include more drama activities!

To summarize, academic research shows that:

  • Community – Drama/improv creates a sense of community in the language classroom

  • Communication – Students are able to communicate better when using drama/improv to learn a language

  • Creativity – Drama/improv lets both students and teachers be more creative

  • Confidence – Students become more confident in their use of the target language when engaged in drama/improv activities

  • Cultural sensitivity – Drama/improv allows students to better understand different cultures, as well as their own

  • Carrot (not stick) – Students are more motivated to learn a language when engaging in drama/improv

  • Content knowledge – Drama/improv improves student’s understanding of the target language (including grammar)

 

 To be specific: (Note: Drama is used below to refer to studies that are looking at ‘drama’ in general, and improv is used when the academic research is referring to improv activities specifically)

Community

  • Students develop cooperation, social awareness, and community-building skills through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

  • Drama creates group cohesion (Badie, 2014)

  • In improv, both teachers and students must let go of their own ideas and accept the other participants’ ideas as better than their own (Keränen, 2019)

  • Improv promotes inclusion of students with special needs, as “things that might be considered a disruption during other activities can be incorporated into the activity in a new way” and that “there is enough variety and flavor in improv to allow for anyone’s strengths to be made use of” (Lobman & Linquist, 2007, p. 25).

  • In traditional language classrooms, students are focused on individual improvement and teachers strive to meet individual needs. However, improv performers consider their scenes as collaborations between players, and sometimes even the audience (Perone, 2011).

  • The fundamentals of improv (‘yes, and’, ‘no mistakes, only opportunities’, and ‘make everyone look good’) create collaborative and supportive environments (Piccoli, 2018)

  • The use of improv increases engagement, which contributes to a stronger classroom community, which in turn makes space for previously marginalized students (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Image: https://bit.ly/3SsMyDn

Communication

  • The value of improv is that students can immediately apply new language structures and that students can focus on engaging with the language rather than rules (Florea, 2011)

  • Decades of research have shown that drama improves L2 speaking skills (Galante, 2018)

  • The repetitive nature of drama activities helped build fluency and helped students develop strategies for all types of novel speaking tasks (Galante & Thomson, 2017)

  • Improvised scenes disappear and forevermore unattainable, forcing teachers and learns to be in the moment (Keränen, 2019)

  • A priori scripts, such as written dialogues found in many language textbooks, are fixed, and therefore convey to learners that there is a right and wrong way to communicate. In contrast, emergent scripts, such as improv scenes, show that communication has infinite possible iterations (Perone, 2011)

Creativity

  • Student’s imaginations and capacity for independent, critical and creative thinking are developed through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

  • Drama in L2 learning can foster imagination (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

  • A theatrical focus in the language class makes students more spontaneous and creative, as well as less inhibited by their linguistic limits (Cristea, 2019)

  • Improv allows students to think and act more creatively and freely “by using their minds, bodies and voices to produce texts” (Lenters & Smith, 2018, p. 188)

  • The process-focused nature of improv allows students to explore an infinite number of possible scenarios (Piccoli, 2018)

  • Drama improves students’ creativity through the use of imagination, independent thinking, and risk-taking (Rojabi & Mustofa, 2021)

Confidence

  • Drama improves students’ self-confidence and communication skills while lessening speaking anxiety (Atas, 2015)

  • Drama in L2 learning can increase learner confidence (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

  • By allowing students to use fictional contexts, and therefore embody fictional characters, students are less anxious (Even, 2004)

  • Drama activities lower foreign-language anxiety (Galante, 2018)

  • Students can minimize anxiety by creating a target language-speaking persona who is able to take the risks while “mitigating the loss of one’s self” (Gillette & Perry, 2021, p. 586)

  • Drama creates an “error-tolerant instructional environment, distinguishing clearly between opportunities for communicative action and opportunities for communicative reflection (including systematic error treatment and language practice)” (Kurtz, 2011, p. 150)

  • In traditional language classes, learners see themselves as novices and can therefore be hindered by their own anxiety around making errors. When using improv, however, performers make the assumption that everyone is an expert and that there is no standard or expectations of perfection (Perone, 2011)

  • The most improvement in confidence for students using drama activities was those who self-identified as being the most anxious at the start of the course (Piazzoli, 2011)

  • Improv builds students’ self-confidence by letting them focus on their natural desire to play rather on the possibility of embarrassment (Piccoli, 2018)

  • Students were more motivated and confident on speaking and writing tasks when engaged in improv-based literacy activities (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Cultural sensitivity

  • Drama furthers cross-cultural understanding (Angeliannawati, 2019)

  • Drama in L2 learning can promote intercultural communicative competence (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

  • Students who learned through drama were better able to reflect critically about culture (Bournot-Trites, et al., 2007)

  • Students are better able to understand the target culture (Gillette & Perry, 2021)

  • In exploring, and creating dramatic texts, “students may explore their own cultures and identities rather than simply being exposed to the culture of the target language or rehearsing language in a behaviorist fashion” (McGovern, 2017, p. 10)

  • Drama allows students to share their own culture with peers (Ntelioglou, 2011)

Carrot (not stick)

  • Students who learned through drama had more intrinsic motivation and wrote more of their own volition (Bournot-Trites, et al., 2007)

  • By disrupting traditional language learning, students learning through drama are able to “negotiate and take control over their learning identities” (Cahmann-Taylor & McGovern, 2021, p. 32)

  • Students and teachers have more freedom, as unlike in most outcome-based instruction, the outcomes of improv do not have to be predetermined or the same for every student (Lenters & Smith, 2018)

  • Students are more motivated when using drama due to authentic texts and use of dramatic tension (Piazzoli, 2011)

  • The playful nature of improv increases student engagement (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Content knowledge

  • Students acquire fully contextualized vocabulary, grammar, and a better understanding of idiomatic expressions through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

  • Drama increases students’ engagement in, and understanding of, grammatical concepts (Even, 2004 & 2011)

  • Improv is an interrelated cognitive and social activity that allows students to help each other negotiate the gaps in their individual linguistic knowledge sets (Kurtz, 2011)

  • Vygotsky’s framework of the Zones of Proximal Development dovetail with improv, as both involve taking risks, making mistakes, and supporting others on their language journeys (Lobman & Lundquist, 2007)

  • Drama can be used to reinforce grammar concepts if students are given appropriate activities and linguistic guidance (Mochizuki & Ortega, 2008)

  • In a controlled study comparing a drama condition and a traditional instruction condition, students’ understanding of verb tenses improved when taught using drama (O’Gara, 2008)

  • Drama “revealed inadequacies of language skills which had somehow remained hidden from more traditional methods of assessment” (O’Gara, 2008, p. 163)


What are your thoughts about the 7 Cs of drama/improv? Is there an eighth C that you think I missed? Share in the comments!

 Sources:

  • Angelianawati, L. (2019). Using drama in EFL classroom. Journal of English Teaching, 5(2), 125-134.

  • Atas, M. (2015). The reduction of speaking anxiety in EFL learners through drama techniques. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 176, 961-969.

  • Badie, G. T. (2014). Using theater concepts in the TESOL classroom. The CATESOL Journal, 26(1), 23-28.

  • Belliveau, G., & Kim, W. (2013). Drama in L2 learning: A research synthesis. Scenario (Cork), VII(2), 7-27.

  • Bournot-Trites, M., Belliveau, G., Spiliotopoulos, V., & Séror, J. (2007). The role of drama on cultural sensitivity, motivation and literacy in a second language context. Journal for Learning through the Arts: A Research Journal on Arts Integration in Schools and Communities, 3(1), Article 9, 1-35.

  • Cahnmann-Taylor, M. & McGovern, K.R. (2021). Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. Routledge.

  • Cristea, E. (2019). Theatrical activities in the foreign language class: Activités théâtrales dans la classe de langues étrangères. Euromentor Journal, 10(2), 71-82.

  • Cunico, S. (2005). Teaching language and intercultural competence through drama: Some suggestions for a neglected resource. Language Learning Journal, 31(1), 21-29.

  • Dundar, S. (2013). Nine drama activities for foreign language classrooms: Benefits and challenges. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 1424-1431.

  • Even, S. (2004). Dramagrammar in Theory and Practice. GFL-Journal 1: 35-51.

  • Even, S. (2011). Drama grammar: Towards a performative postmethod pedagogy. The Language Learning Journal, 39:3, 299-312.

  • Florea, P. (2011). Using improvisation exercises for increasing speaking and listening skills. Asian EFL Journal, 52, 46-57.

  • Galante, A. (2018). Drama for L2 speaking and language anxiety: Evidence from Brazilian EFL learners. RELC Journal, 49(3), 273-289.

  • Galante, A., & Thomson, R. I. (2017). The effectiveness of drama as an instructional approach for the development of second language oral fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness. TESOL Quarterly, 51(1), 115-142.

  • Gillette, C. A. R., & Perry, K. H. (2021). Performing fluency: Using improv and drama with adult English learners. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(5), 585-588.

  • Keränen, A. (2019). Finish language teaching through improvisation – Conforming the educational values within an improvisational frame. The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, 11:2, 63-78.

  • Kurtz, J. (2011). Breaking through the communicative cocoon: Improvisation in secondary school foreign language classrooms. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 133-161). Cambridge University Press.

  • Lenters, K., & Smith, C. (2018). Assembling improv and collaborative story building in language arts class. The Reading Teacher, 72(2), 179-189.

  • Lobman, C., & Lundquist, M. (2007). Unscripted learning: Using improv activities across the K-8 curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

  • McGovern, K. R. (2017). Conceptualizing drama in the second language classroom. Scenario (Cork), XI(1), 4-16.

  • Mochizuki, N., & Ortega, L. (2008). Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level foreign language classrooms: A study of guided planning and relativization. Language Teaching Research: LTR, 12(1), 11-37.

  • Ntelioglou, B.Y. (2011). Insights from a drama-EAL classroom: Using drama with English language learners in a Canadian high school. In J. Winston (Ed.), Second language learning through drama (pp. 93-103). New York: Routledge.

  • O'Gara, P. (2008). To be or have not been: Learning language tenses through drama. Issues In Educational Research, 18(2), 156-166.

  • Perone, A. (2011). Improvising with adult English language learners. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 162-183). Cambridge University Press.

  • Piazzoli, E. (2011). Process drama: The use of affective space to reduce language anxiety in the additional language learning classroom. Research in Drama Education, 16(4), 557-573.

  • Piccoli, M. W. (2018). Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners. TESOL Journal, 9(4). doi:10.1002/tesj.390

  • Rojabi, A. R., & Mustofa, A. (2021). Exploiting drama for children in EFL teaching to promote creativity, confidence, and motivation. Journal of English Education and Teaching, 5(4), 544-555.

  • Smith, K., & McKnight, K. S. (2009). Remembering to laugh and explore: Improvisational activities for literacy teaching in urban classrooms. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 10(12).

Inclusive Pronouns en français: Sam Utilise Iel

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use inclusive language when referring to your non-binary students.

I am SUPER excited to share a small book that I have been working on called “Sam Utilise Iel” (illustrated by the amazing Spencer Cook) which follows a young French immersion student who wants their class to be able to use gender inclusive language in French as well as English. It’s in black-and-white on 8x11 paper, perfect for printing out to use in your class or project onto the board.

As a non-native French speaker, I have had a several French speakers review the book, as well as those who work in the academic sphere writing about non-binary identities. Of course, if you find anything offensive, wrong, or misguided, feel free to reach out to let me know! You can also find out more about inclusive French in this blog post, or in the links included at the end of the story.

Without further ado: Happy Pride & please enjoy “Sam Utilise Iel”!

DOWNLOAD PDF: Sam Utilise Iel

Update: A big thank you to Dr. Bournot-Trites for pointing out some errors. As of 06/19/2022 the above PDF has been changed to a corrected version.


You can also check out some other resources to use in your classroom for Pride Month here.

LGBTQ+ Pride Month Activities

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incorporate LGBTQ+ content into your lessons and be inclusive of all students in your class.

School is winding down, and grades are almost in, but we don’t want the meaningful lessons to stop. June is also Pride Month, a celebration of LGBTQ+ people, so why not do some activities that require little planning for you and that also celebrate Pride?

I have a few activities that I created originally for the Edmonds School District to celebrate Pride Month within various content areas, such as Science, Math and Art, which you can check out here. In this post, I thought I’d share some of the activities I personally created that can be used in ELA, ELL and Socials classes. I also have one that I adapted into French!

ELA/ELL Middle & High School LGBTQ+ Activity: Communicating through Poetry!

I found an amazing Audre Lorde quote and it inspired me to do an activity where students explore LGBTQ+ poets’ poems to find lines that communicate feelings and moments in their lives. I was able to find some (new-to-me) poets from a variety of backgrounds, including one haiku poem that I found on Twitter!

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE: Communicating through Poetry

ELL/ELA/Social Studies LGBTQ+ Activity: The amazing story of Charity and Sylvia, two women who lived at the beginning of the 19th century as a married couple in their small Vermont town. This activity has students investigating social structures and traditional gender roles, as well as comparing our modern day to history. This lesson is based on a series of lessons created by Jennifer Brouhard and Jeannie Kohl for the Oakland Unified School District. Their lessons were based on a book by Rachel Hope Cleves called Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2014). The activity was also supplemented by information from NYHistory.org and themarginalian.org.

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE: Charity & Sylvia Reading, Questions, Answer Key

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE: Charity & Sylvia Reading, Questions, Answer Key (Adapted with Sentence Frame)

ELL/ELA/Social Studies Notable LGBTQ+ People Bingo: Have students discover a range of notable people in a variety of categories, from Artists, to Activists, to Athletes! Great for use with a substitute and some laptops/ipads or for a quick warm-up to the day’s lesson.

Note: WelcomingSchools.org has some excellent kid-friendly definitions for all the letters in LGBTQ and more.

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE: Notable LGBTQ+ People Bingo (in English)

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE: Notable LGBTQ+ People Bingo (in French)

If you’re looking for more resources, I highly recommend the following sites:

On the Lesson: Impossible blog, you can also check out:

How do you celebrate Pride in your classroom? Share in the comments below!

 

Using Improv in the Classroom: Games for Novices

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use improv games to work with novice language learners.

I want to be very clear that this is not about learners who haven’t done improv before (though these games are useful for that too!) but for students who are in the beginning of their interactions in the target language. That is to say, you can do improv with learners starting on DAY 1 of language class!

Image source: https://www.bbbpress.com/2013/10/drama-game-gibberish-conversation/

I’ve put links to videos explaining common improv games ( Zip, Zap, Zop and Gibberish) and included in the summary how to adapt specifically for a language class. All of these games come from Perone’s 2011 article “Improvising with adult English language learners” with some additional notes from Piccoli’s 2018 article “Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners.” Though, as I’ve mentioned before, these games are hard to attribute to anyone in particular!

  • Names and Motions/Names and Sounds: Each person says their name and does a spontaneous physical motion or sound. The group then repeats the name and motion/sound back to the person. Perone (2011) notes this was helpful in establishing a judgement-free environment and discouraging friendly teasing or negative feedback.

  • Zip, Zap, Zop: The sounds “zip”, “zap”, and “zop” are passed around a circle. Piccoli (2018) comments that this is an “excellent game to get the students excited about playing, to pay close attention to their classmates, and to stay in the moment” (p. 6). Perone (2011) adapted this game to include category-specific vocabulary, such as passing around “mother”, “father”, “daughter”, or creating sentences, such as “I”, “have”, “a”, “daughter”.

  • The Ball: An imaginary ball is passed around. One can focus on names and sounds (see above) or vocabulary words confined to a certain topic. If doing the latter, the category (i.e., numbers, family members, or symptoms and illnesses) can be changed at any time. Perone (2011) explains that he made an effort not to help with translations but encourage learners to support each other in order to remind them that “We all have English”. Piccoli (2018), in describing a similar game, notes that “is fast-paced and less stressful than obliging students to create full, grammatically correct sentences” (p. 6). You can also follow up with the game “Pass the Ball” which focuses on repititon of the same vocabulary or phrases with different volume, pace, expression, etc.

  • Gibberish: Students utter nonsensical sounds in order to convey meaning through non-word means. This is great for focusing on the non-word aspects of communication, like gesture, tone or pitch. Perone (2011) chose to use this activity when students were “overly focused on grammatical accuracy, judged the accents of one or more learners in the class, or deliberated too much on what to say or write during an improv activity” (p. 178).

  • Word Cards: Students have a collection of index cards that are blank or have words. The teacher says a sentence or question aloud and the students find (or create) the cards to form what they heard. Students can also embody the sentence or question by standing with the index cards in their hands, in order. This activity can also be used to create emergent scripts where students create sentences by putting together their respective cards in order. Perone (2011) notes that he modeled communicative competence by focusing on the collaboration of making sentences and questions rather than focusing on grammatical rules. This is also similar to Soup, which is the same as words cards, but with individual letters on index cards instead of words.

  

References:

Perone, A. (2011). In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 162-183). Cambridge University Press.

Piccoli, M. W. (2018). Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners. TESOL Journal, 9(4). doi:10.1002/tesj.390

April: Celebrating Neurodiversity!

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate neurodiversity in your classroom during April (and all year long!).

Image: https://today.uconn.edu/2020/01/engineering-new-learning-environment-neurodiversity/#

DID YOU KNOW? In the 1990s a journalist named Harvey Blume and an autism advocate named Judy Singer wanted to create a new political category so that they could fight for the rights of those whose brains worked differently. They also wanted to celebrate the strengths that many neurodiverse people have. For example, people with ADHD are often creative problem-solvers, and people with dyslexia will often have great visual thinking abilities. Now in the 2020s there is a better understanding that there is no ‘normal’ brain, and that everyone’s brain is unique and works ‘differently’. However, many people with conditions like autism choose to continue using the term ‘neurodiverse’ because, according to an article by Howard Timberlake, “it is a useful and positive way of defining their identity and community.” Now, the United Nations has a World Autism Awareness Day every April 2, and many countries use April as the month to raise awareness and celebrate the contributions of neurodiverse people.

 

How can you celebrate neurodiversity in your ELL or language classroom this April?

  • Talk explicitly about neurodiversity and how it helps us create a tapestry of different minds in our society that can contribute different perspectives. For example, Billie Eilish recently won an Oscar for her song “No Time to Die”. In class, you can mention that Billie is neurodiverse: she has Tourette syndrome, which means that she has involuntary tics, and she is synesthetic, which means her senses, like vision and hearing, can blend together.

  • Share resources with your colleagues on ways to celebrate and support neurodiverse students. Shameless plug: On the Lesson: Impossible site, there are two podcast episodes that you can listen to with Michael Weingarth and Drew Thompson and a blog post (with a PDF you can share, below) about “5 Minute Differentiation Strategies”. That is the tip of the iceberg for podcasts and posts about neurodiversity!

  • Highlight neurodiverse individuals in your classroom while making connections to the content. I have a few activities that I created originally for the Edmonds School District to celebrate neurodiversity within various content areas which you can check out here. For example, I drew connections to Alan Turing for a cryptography math lesson and Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock for a science lesson on making a spectroscope.

  • Listen to neurodiverse people about their experiences, and avoid organizations that center anyone other than the neurodiverse person themselves. Beware of resources from organizations like Autism Speaks, which according to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “uses damaging and offensive fundraising tactics which rely on fear, stereotypes and devaluing the lives of people on the autism spectrum”. Both Michael and Drew, the two people I’ve interviewed about neurodiversity, identify as neurodiverse, and you can follow Michael on Twitter!

 How do you celebrate neurodiversity in the classroom? Feel free to share in the comments!

Using improv in the language classroom: Core Values

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incorporate improv games and activities into your language classroom.

What some view as the only rule in improv: “Yes, and…”

Image source: https://www.amindapart.org.uk/blog/the-real-meaning-of-the-improv-rule-yes-and/

This is part II of a series of posts on using improv in the language classroom. 

As I mentioned in part I, there really are no supplies needed for most improv. However, there is something that the teacher needs to do when incorporating these kinds of activities, or any activities that involve students taking risks with language: create an environment of physical and emotional safety. Once that is in place, really anything can happen!

Some teachers recommend discussing the ‘rules of improv’ with students. If you’re only planning on incorporating small games here and there, I don’t think that the rules need to be explicitly discussed. However, if you’re wanting to do more free scenes, this is a must.

Everyone has their own opinion on what the ‘rules of improv’ are. Depending on who you ask, there might just be one (usually ‘yes and’) or ten. When working with students, I like the ‘rules’ proposed by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Kathleen McGovern in their fantastic (and highly recommended) book, Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. Their four rules are:

  1. Be Present & Pay Attention

  2. Say “Yes, And”

  3. R&R (take risks and be ridiculous)

  4. Endow Scenes with Meaning

Personally, I think talking about the values of improv, especially in the context of education, is equally as important. Anja Keränen outlines what she believes to be the four main values of improvisational theatre:

  1. The first value is that improvisation is suitable for everyone, and that lack of talent is not a barrier to participation.

  2. The second value is that mistakes are not errors, but opportunities to learn and increase confidence. Trying and failing is encouraged in improv, as students are expected to learn by doing. Moreover, errors can be liberating as they are possibilities to learn new words or strategies while still staying within the frame of mind of communication.

  3. The third value is that participants must say ‘yes’ to all ideas presented.  Both teachers and students must let go to their own ideas and accept the other participants’ ideas as better than their own.

  4. Finally, the fourth value is that the improvised scene disappears and is forevermore unattainable. This puts the focus on the communicative skills being demonstrated and the learning happening within the scene, forcing teachers and learners to be in the moment. Moreover, this can be perceived as a rebellion against traditional education systems that focus on creating error-free, concrete products.

 Some claim that the rules and values of improv will make you a better person, or a better leader, or a better school. While I can’t speak to all of that, I can say that improv makes for better lessons, which I can’t wait to share with you!

Inclusive Textbooks

Your language teaching lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to critically examine the texts you use in your language classroom through the lens of Moore’s Taxonomy of Representational Heteronormativity.

“Part of our job as [language] teachers will always be to help our students find the language to describe the world around them” (Moore, 2020, p. 123)

Sometimes I come across academic articles that I want to share in detail, and this is one of them! Ashley Moore, a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia, created a taxonomy so that language teachers can examine our textbooks and figure out what kind of LGBTQ+ representation is present. Why does this matter? Well, the reality is that heterosexuality is represented as the default in all language textbooks. In a 2013 study, a review of 10 ELT textbooks found that seven made no reference to any non-heterosexual relationships or identities, and the three that did fell into the “good gays” trope (see below). While this is also true of a majority of the media that we consume (though that’s changing more and more!) heteronormativity (the assumption that the heterosexual experience is the human experience) is not healthy for our students. Once we have more inclusive resources we are not only better reflecting the real world that our students live in, but we’re sending the message to our LGBTQ+ students that their full selves are welcome in our classrooms.  

Moore’s taxonomy (which I’ve posted below with the permission of the author) looks at queer representation in language textbooks from the most to least damaging perspectives:

Basically, what he has done is given us the language to use to best describe what we find inside our textbooks in regard to inclusion of different sexualities. The way I see it, this taxonomy is a tool to pull out at department meetings when discussing old resources or new purchases, or to have on your wall to evaluate a film/reading/graphic novel that you’re about to use with your class. Most of us know to avoid anything blatantly homophobic, but how often are we pushing ourselves to go beyond that?

My challenge to you is to join me in examining your texts using Moore’s taxonomy. If you pull out your books, I’ll pull out mine and we can do it together! I’ll wait… and for those who already have your textbooks beside you, while we wait for the others, I encourage you to watch Moore’s fantastic video (21 minutes) where he explains his taxonomy in a very clear and detailed way!

Everybody’s here? Great! Let’s get started.

I’m going to be using the textbook series “Entre Nous”, which is for French learners. It has four volumes (for levels A1, A2, B1, B2), is suitable for teens and adults, and my editions say they are published in France by the Centre de Recherche et de Publications de Langues.

We’re going to run through the taxonomy from most damaging to students to least damaging:

“Entre Nous” - Example of heteronormative erasure

Explicit heterosexism: this is when heterosexuality is explicitly valorized in contrast to any other identities, which are presented as abnormal. Fortunately, I was unable to find any examples of this in my textbooks. However, Moore uses the example of an episode from Friends, a commonly used series for English-language learners, where Joey and Ross are mocked for taking naps together.

Heteronormative erasure: this is when heterosexuality is the assumed norm, which then sends the message to students that discussion of non-heterosexual identities is not appropriate in the classroom. I definitely found examples of this in the “Entre Nous” textbook family: in fact, this was (other than one example in the next category) the only category that I found. All photos of couples were heterosexual… and white (another big issue!).

“Entre Nous” - Example of heteronormative marginalization

Heteronormative marginalization: this is when non-heterosexual people are only included when talking about social justice issues (i.e., talking about HIV/AIDS or discrimination). This is well-intentioned, but actually marginalizes LGBTQ+ people further. This is the one example I found that didn’t fit into the above category.  

Heteronormative mainstreaming: this is when only the “good gays” (gay people that imitate Western heterosexual norms) are accessible. While having representation is important, Nelson (1999) notes that “Solidifying fluid sexualities into fixed sexual identities… [has] more to do with social control than with empowerment” (as cited in Moore, 2020, p. 122). While “Entre Nous” doesn’t have any examples of this, Moore points to another popular show used for teaching English, Modern Family, and the two “good gay” characters of Cam and Mitch.

Queer inclusion: this last category is when queer people are included in textbooks and are viewed not just through the lens of their sexuality, but are presented as complete people with intersectional identities. Additionally, those featured do not always fit into Western heterosexual norms. The textbooks I was looking through definitely did not do this, but Moore recommends a text made by Taylor Made English. Personally, I found a Guardian article about the “new American family” that I thought would make a good text to use with students that would fall in this category.

So, in conclusion, my textbooks don’t reflect the reality my students live in. Why is that? If your first guess is money, then you are completely correct. Textbook companies want to be able to sell their textbooks in as many markets as possible, and that means playing it safe (i.e., sticking to the hetero norm) for fear of alienating more conservative districts.  However, if we start asking questions of textbook representatives or directing our textbook budget towards more diverse resources, we can start sending the message that if they want our money, they need to be more inclusive. Moore also notes that most teachers will need to find “hacks” for our curriculum, which means supplementing what we have with resources we find elsewhere (check out the list below).

Also, more and more (or should I say “Moore and Moore”?... I’ll show myself out) I’ve been thinking about the author-text connection. For example, do I encourage my students to read Harry Potter in the target language? The texts themselves are not “explicit heterosexism” (though they would be “heteronormative mainstreaming”) but the author has said really damaging things about trans people. Should I instead redirect them to other great YA books that feature magical schools, but are more inclusive, like Naomi Novik’s fabulous Scholomance Trilogy or other sci-fi/fantasy trans-inclusive books? Should I also let them know about the amazing queer fandom that has grown alongside the books? Or should I just let them enjoy reading something in their L2 and make sure I’m peppering their language education with other LGBTQ+ inclusive resources? I’m sure my opinion on this will continue to evolve, but I’d love if you shared your own perspectives in the comments.

Lastly, when I reached out to Ashley Moore for permission to use his taxonomy in this post, he very generously invited any readers who want to learn more to reach out to him. You can also follow him on Twitter @AshleyRMoore.

 Some supplemental resources:

 ELL:

French:

  • Coucou French Classes’ “The Best French LGBTQ+ French movies” (not all films would be classroom appropriate)

  • French Today’s short text “Being LGBTQ+ in France” (this falls into heteronormative erasure, but is an interesting read, and frankly the only text I found that is written for language-learners)

  • I have a ton of links about using inclusive language in your French class here

Spanish:

 

What resources do you use in your classroom? Share below in the comments!

A.I. in Education

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explore the potential positive and negative outcomes of the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education.

I follow a lot of great language teachers on Twitter and Instagram. And I also follow a robot who teaches French. Nao, a humanoid robot from Sligo, Ireland, and the Masters project of Debbie Woodward, inspired an article I wrote for schoolrubric.org. In the post, entitled “Artificial Intelligence in Education: Robots are coming for our jobs… and I’m only slightly worried”, I explore the good, the bad, and the weird of AI in education while I also ponder whether or not I’m worried about Nao taking my job.

Nao the French-teaching social robot, screenshot from Twitter twitter.com/NAORobotIRL

While that article wasn’t written specifically with language teachers in mind, it applies to any educator who is working in education today. I also think there is a fascinating tangent to explore about how AI is impacting language education specifically. If you are interested, a great article is intellias’ “Essentials of Artificial Intelligence for Language Learning” (2021). There’s also this informative article by Marcel Pikhart (2020) about how language learning apps employ AI technology. Also of note is Edwin, the AI-powered English tutor who was featured in Chatbots Magazine (isn’t the future amazing!?!) Interestingly, Edwin and his ilk have also caused some serious debate in the realm of language testing. Finally, the article “Preparing teachers for the application of AI-powered technologies in foreign language education” (2019) has an overview of all the major language-learning AI technologies. Additionally, it includes a summary of previous research findings about why language teachers are reluctant to incorporate AI into classrooms, including lack of information, experience, or motivation; struggle to integrate this technology into existing teaching practices; and fear of losing a dominant position in the classroom (p. 145). What it doesn’t include is “vague unease about technology based on watching too many Terminator movies”, which is how I’d probably have described my thoughts before writing the piece for School Rubric!

UPDATE 01/19/22: Former Lesson: Impossible podcast guest Orly Klaphotz has a really interesting Twitter thread about the use of AI in language education when it’s built on biased data.

How about you? Do you look forward to more AI in your language classrooms and/or are you slightly worried about it as well? Let me know in the comments!

Considering Ungrading

This blog post is my response to a Lesson: Impossible podcast episode with Agent Jessica Zeller where we discuss ungrading, which got me thinking about how this applies to second language acquisition contexts. As you will read below, this is a concept that intrigues me mightily, but I’m still trying to figure out what it would like for me in my classes!

Lafeyette College defines ungrading as “an umbrella term for any assessment that decenters the action of an instructor assigning a summary grade to student work. While there are many ways to do ungrading, instructors generally provide students with formative rather than summative feedback, which may be combined with student self-evaluation and/or peer feedback, as well as dialogue with the student.” It can manifest in a variety of forms, but my understanding is that at the base, it means decoupling assessment from traditional ideas of evaluation and authority. While I’ve heard a lot about ungrading in the past, particularly from my podcasting colleagues Batsheva Frankel of Overthrowing Education and Natalie Vardabasso of EduCrush, as well as an episode on my own podcast, this interview finally made it click for me. I think it’s because Jessica is an associate professor of dance, and when talking about assessing something physical, rather than mental, I am better able to comprehend how ungrading really works. I can imagine how every dancer’s body is different in a way that I can’t see that every student’s intellectual strengths are different.

Personally, from the beginning of my career until now, I went from grading everything, most of it out of 10, to minimal grading accompanied by a lot of student reflection. However, I have yet to take that final step and, as Jessica describes it “turn over the authority of the red pen to students.” She also goes as far as to turn much of the criteria and even the curriculum over to the students. As much as I see the potential, it has been really hard for me to wrap my head around a) me not having the final evaluative say and b) letting students guide the learning outcomes. I was a guest on the BigEDidea Podcast recently, talking about, as usual, incorporating improv into my teaching practice. One of the comments that the host made was that simpler lesson plans are almost always better for student learning than complicated ones.  And I agreed wholeheartedly despite absolutely loving making complicated, detailed lesson plans. Why do I love my multi-step, super-involved lesson plans? I think that it’s based on a sense of control, the feeling that if I can roadmap my students’ learning journey down to the second, then I can make sure that we all get to the pre-programmed destination. But, as Jessica points out, road-mapping the journey means that we never get a chance to explore any interesting things that pop up along the way. She also said something that hit a little too close to home: “The feeling of authority and holding on to authority is something that as individual teachers we need to look at in ourselves.” How can I be saying that the key to improv is to trust students when I am not trusting them in other facets of my teaching? Perhaps I need to think more about what Jessica says about her pedagogy, which is that she “put[s] most of [her] eggs in the basket of trusting students.”?

Image source: https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-to-use-ungrading-when-you-teach-writing

Reflecting on language classes, I think that it’s actually a perfect place for ungrading. Like in the dance classes Jessica describes, students have a pretty clear feeling of improvement: they can speak and write with more detail, more fluidly, more accuracy, etc. However, when I went looking for resources I found a ton for other types of classes, particularly English Language Arts, but really had a hard time finding resources or examples for world language/ELL settings. There are many, many excellent books and blog posts (see: Jesse Stommel’s “Ungrading: A Bibliography” or check out the references on this post) about going gradeless/ungrading, but they are not specific to language teaching. Here’s a sample of the few that I did find:

 If you want to learn more about ungrading you can also check out these podcasts (in addition to my interview with Jessica Zeller):

  • Teachers Going Gradeless Podcast (no featured language teacher, but maybe in the future?)

  • Overthrowing Education’s episode “Starr Sackstein: How to Go Gradeless and Assess Better” (again, not specific to languages, but I’m a fan of the podcast!)

  • Teachers on Fire’s GOING GRADELESS: Katelynn Giordano, Deanna Lough, Jeffery Frieden, Aaron Blackwelder, & Abby French (and it continues… not specific to languages but super interesting, AND pinged on my search term for “French”)

  • Lesson: Impossible’s episode with Katelynn Giordano (also featured above)

 

Have you gone to, or ever considered going to, an ungrading model? Do you have any language-learning ungrading resources to share? Feel free to comment below about your experiences!

Mixin’ It Up: Ways to Pair Students with New Partners

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to encourage your students to converse with a variety of speaking partners by using fun and unique partnering strategies.

Image source: https://sites.google.com/a/fpsct.org/iar-school-counseling/mix-it-up-day

I’ll often tell my students that they should ‘mix it up’ and find someone new to talk to. Sometimes they do, but most of the time they end up talking to the same people they always do. For me to admonish them would be hypocritical, as I too am guilty of this: I tend to sit in the same chair in the staff room, talking to the same people, every lunch time. Therefore, as the teacher, it’s my responsibility to give them opportunities and encouragement to meet and work with new people. However, there are more fun ways to do this than telling them to “find someone new” and hoping for the best!

Methods for Mixing Up Partners:

Clock Partners

This is great at the beginning of a semester when students are getting to know each other. Students are given a ‘clock’, and make appointments with another student. For beginner students I’ll have a script on the board that will be something like:

“Hi, my name is ________. Can I be your ____ o’clock clock partner?”

“Hi ________ , I’m _________. I’d be happy to be your ____ o’clock clock partner”

“Hi ________ , I’m _________. Unfortunately, I cannot be your ____ o’clock clock partner. How about ____ o’clock?”

Once everyone has their ‘appointments’ they keep the sheet in their binder. Then, when we have conversation prompts, I’ll tell students to find their _____ o’clock partner. When I’m particularly on the ball, I’ll keep track of which ‘times’ I’ve already called so that they visit with everyone prior to repeating the time. Two problems I’ve had with this are a) if a student is away, (but you can easily toss them into a group of three), or b) you have less than 24 students in the class, (which you can remedy by having certain ‘times’ blocked off).

RESOURCE: Clock Partners sheet (French)

RESOURCE: Link to the many, many clock partners sheets to choose from (English)

Find someone who

 Give an arbitrary criterion so that students can reasonably find someone who fits. For example, “find someone who has the same color shirt as you” or “find someone who also does or does not have glasses”. You can use less obvious physical cues that force students to chat, like “find someone who has the same pet as you” or “find someone who has a similar hobby to yours”.

Take a card (any card!)*

All you need is a deck of cards. Have as many cards as students, and hand them out randomly. Then say “find the person with the same number card”. This one is great because if you want to start with a group of two, and then transition to a group of four, you can start with “find the person with the same number and color card as you” (ex. the six of diamonds and six of hearts are now partners) and then “find the group with the same number but different color as you and your partner and make a group of four” (ex. the six of diamonds and six of hearts are now also partners with the six of spades and six of clubs). I had some comically large playing cards that were a hit and less likely to get lost.

Take a postcard (any postcard!)*

I bet if you ask around, there’s people with postcards they’ve never sent (I certainly have great intentions and poor follow-through for postcards when on vacation). Take the postcards (or really any image) and chop them in half. Randomly distribute the half-cards to students and then they need to ‘match’ up with their new partner. If you have an old game of ‘memory’ for kids, that would be even easier.  

Vocabulary Partners*

This is a way to review vocabulary and find a partner (mwahahahaha!) Half the students are given a word in the target language. The other half are given either a picture that matches one of the vocab words or a matching vocab word in the L1 (If you’re interested, I have a blog post about how vocab learning is one of the times using students’ L1 in the classroom is beneficial). They must find the person who is their match, and that person is their partner. You can also do this as an introduction to new vocabulary, which takes considerably longer, but it’s interesting to see students using inferences to guess the meaning of the word and helping pair each other up.

Walk ‘til the Music Stops

Students wander around the room while the music is playing. When the music stops, whoever is closest to them is their partner. In some classes the students clump together to guarantee they’ll end up with their friends, which means I don’t do this with them again. However, some classes love the chance to get up and walk (and dance around!), so participate in the way it was intended in order to keep doing it.

Handshakes

 This one is good for the beginning of the year and it is definitely a pre-Covid activity (but hopefully we’ll be back to this kind of interaction again!) Instruct students to find someone, introduce themselves and shake that person’s hand. Then, find someone new and shake their hand. Then find someone new and shake their hand. By the fifth time they’ll have started branching out to new people, which is when you say “okay, the person’s hand that you just shook is your partner”. I like to switch it up by having a different ‘hello’ task each time, so I’ll use a variety of:

Image source: https://www.mashupmath.com/blog/handshake-math-challenge?rq=handshake

  1. Shake the person’s hand

  2. Fist bump

  3. High-five

  4. Low-five

  5. Elbow tap

  6. Bow

  7. Train-handshake (I usually need to demonstrate this one, but you grab the other person’s elbow and saw your arms back and forth saying “choo choo!”. This gets a lot of laughs, and is usually where I stop and say “this person is your partner”)

This is also an opportunity to talk about cultural mores around greetings. For example, in France it is very common to do La Bise (cheek kisses) when seeing someone, even for the first time! Depending on which region you are in, you start on the right or the left, and give either one, two, three, four, or even five, kisses. (The English comedian Paul Taylor has a hilarious video about this, though there is some swearing.) I don’t feel comfortable asking my students to se boujouter (as they say in Normandy), as culturally in North America, this is not a common greeting for people who are not already pretty intimate. However, it does spark some interesting conversation!

 

* If you have the time and energy (or, have an eager student volunteer) you can tape the cards or a slip of paper with a vocab word under their chairs or desks. There’s something magical about being told “check under your seat!” and grabbing something!

 

How do you pair students up to make sure they’re talking with new people? Feel free to share in the comments!

Inclusive Language & Français Inclusif:

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make all students feel welcome in your class by using inclusive language.

I’ve been working hard to make my speaking and writing in English more inclusive, and finally feel like I have a handle on the singular ‘they’ and finding better ways to talk to groups of students other than “ladies and gentlemen”. However, although I’ve talked to my students about non-gendered pronouns, I’m still figuring it out myself. This post is all about French specifically, as there are so many issues to consider in a language that has adjectives and verb endings that need to match gender, not to mention the use of gendered titles for everything (writer, teacher, translator, etc.). Although the rest of this post is for my fellow French teachers (and therefore in French), I think that regardless what language you use, it’s worth reflecting on how you can best make your students feel safe and included while using that language!

This is not an uncontroversial subject. The Académie française has released a statement condemning gender neutral language. This is part of a debate within many gendered languages, and I’ve found some interesting articles (in English) to perhaps explore:

Personally, I think this is an example of languages responding to cultural needs, and am excited to see these inclusive changes!

UPDATE 12/2021: The Gender in Language Project has a guide for Spanish and Mandarin!

UPDATE 10/2022: For International Pronouns Day @SaraSavoia_ has a thread of some great pronoun resources to use in elementary school classrooms!

Le français inclusif:

Je me suis retrouvée ignorante du français inclusif. Pour changer ça, j’ai regardé un vidéo avec Hélène Frohard-Dourlent et Gabriel.le Villeneuve: « Webinaire sur le français inclusif ». J’ai appris qu’on parle de l’inclusivite, il y a une différence entre la langue inclusive et neutre. Le langage inclusif est pour parler de groupes mixtes (ex. traducteur.rice) et le langage neutre est pour parler de personnes non-binaires et propose un nouveau genre grammatical (ex. traductaire). Les deux présentataires (<– regarde ce que j’ai fait là ?!?!) discutent l’un et l’autre.

Il y a beaucoup de façons que le français serait inclusif pour les femmes, comme créer des termes féminins (ex. écrivaine ou inspectrice), donner le féminin l’emporte (ex. « La plage et l’océan sont belles »), faire l’accord basé sur la proximité (ex. « L’océan et la plage sont belle ») ou inclure un double flexion totale (ex. les collaborateurs et les collaboratrices (ou « collaborateur.rice.s »). Ces stratégies pour la féminisation sont plus bien connues, mais les stratégies pour la neutralisation étaient nouvelles pour moi. Pour exemple, il faut utiliser le syntaxe et vocabulaires épicènes (c.à.d. androgynes), comme « collègue », « scientifique », ou « une personne étonnante ». Aussi, il suffit qu’on utilise les néologismes neutres. On le fait ça avec les pronoms (ex. iel, ol, celleux, elleux), un article neutre (ex. an, san, man), des mots-valise ou modifications (ex. toustes, froeur / adelphe [de grec], Mondame, Minêtre, heureuxes) ou une omission (ex. an traduct*).

Je pense que j’aurai besoin de pratique pour faire mon langage plus inclusif. Les choses que je peux immédiatement changer sont : utiliser une double-flexion partielle (ex. mes ami.e.s), respecter si quelqu’un utilise le pronom « iel »,  et dire « une personne » + un adjectif pour éviter d’identifier un genre. Plus, j’aime beaucoup « toustes » pour s’adresser à un grand groupe ! J’ai appris aussi un nouveau verbe pour quand on utilise un pronom ou accord grammatical qui ne correspond pas au langage que la personne utilise : « mégenrer ».

ALORS j’ai tellement aimé cette vidéo que j’ai fait un aide-mémoire à envoyer à mes étudiant.e.s et collègues pour qu’ils l’utilisent ! J’en ai mis une copie ici aussi : Strategies pour une langue neutre et inclusive.pdf

Des ressources supplementaries:

Des ressources supplémentaires:

NOTE: As of November 4, 2022, I’ve started a separate blog post collecting resources, which I will continually add to. You can find it at https://www.lessonimpossible.com/blog/ressources-francais-inclusif

Une liste de termes épicènes ou neutres : https://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=5465

Plutôt que de choisir entre deux mots (ex. un représentant et une représentante) on peut essayer de trouver un autre mot (ex. une porte-parole) 

Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive : https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/guide-grammaireinclusive-final.pdf

Un guide pour comprendre et utiliser la grammaire inclusive par Diver Genres

Guide pour la rédaction inclusive à l’Université Laval : https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/guide-redaction-inclusive-2020-femul-2.pdf

Un guide qui discute les définitions, l’historique, la démystification, les règles, les formes d’écriture inclusives et des exemples. 

Guide pour désigner les personnes non binaires: https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/fr/cles-de-la-redaction/ecriture-inclusive-lignes-directrices-ressources#lignes-directrices

Un guide écrit par l’Office québécois de la langue française.

Un article academique: https://www.florenceashley.com/uploads/1/2/4/4/124439164/ashley_les_personnes_non-binaires_en_fran%C3%A7ais_-_une_perspective_concern%C3%A9e_et_militante.pdf

“Les personnes non-binaires en français : une perspective concernée et militante” par Florence Ashley de McGill University

Les formidables ressources de Kris Knisely: https://www.krisknisely.com/resources-for-educators

Les info-graphiques comme “Oral Communication Strategies used by non-binary speakers of French” et “Language forms used by non-binary speakers of French”.

 Un post sur le blog “En Tous Genres”: https://entousgenresblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/quels-pronoms-neutres-en-francais-et-comment-les-utiliser/

Un post sur “Le langage neutre en français : pronoms et accords à l’écrit et à l’oral”

Écriture inclusive en correspondance : https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/cles-de-la-redaction/ecriture-inclusive-correspondance

Une guide pour la correspondance par le Bureau de la traduction du Governement du Canada

Sam Utilise Iel: https://www.lessonimpossible.com/blog/inclusive-pronouns-en-franais-sam-utilise-iel

Une petite histoire illustrée pour les élèves pour expliquer comment on peut utiliser le français inclusif avec un.e. ami.e non-binaire

Lexique de Genre Neutre: https://www.alpheratz.fr/linguistique/genre-neutre/

Extrait du livre d’Alpheratz “Grammaire du Français Inclusif” (2018). Merci à @YaruSol de m’avoir présenté ce site.

Guide & Zine d’élève: https://juliaspiegelman.wordpress.com/resources/

Un google doc (A Student’s Guide to Queer and Non-Binary French) et un zine crée par un.e élève non-binare (“IEL: A Zine on Gender-Affirming Language for the French Classroom (by a trans* French student”)). Tous en anglais.

Le Devoir Article: https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/649374/litterature-un-iel-vieux-comme-les-cultures-autochtones

“Un «iel» vieux comme les cultures autochtones”

Open Educational Resource Conversation Tool: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/pdxopen/40/

CITOYEN.NE.S is a French language method for the conversation class at the intermediate/ advanced level. Content and activities are built around the concepts of diversity, inclusivity and equity, and engage students to practice French while questioning and participating in the world they live in – to be full citizens whatever their background, their race or their gender identity.

How to Use Proper Pronouns: https://properpronouns.com/

Un guide pour l’utilisation des “proper pronouns” (une mention d’une personne en particulier dans la troisième personne). En anglais.

Warm-Up: Find 5 Things

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to start class with a fun, visual warm-up game that enhances students’ vocabulary knowledge.

The “5 things” game is one that was modeled for me at a professional development session, and I used it the very next day in my classroom! My students like it, it’s easy to explain, there are literally infinite variations on it, and it somehow manages to be both competitive AND team building!

STEP ONE: Students are put into pairs (or threes if needed). They do not need to be sitting close to their ‘partner’, in fact, it’s better if they are not!

STEP TWO: The teacher puts up an image. Literally any image, as long as there are at least five things (hence the name) that can be identified.

STEP THREE: Ultimately, the goal of the game is to gain points by having the same five words as your partner to describe the picture (one point per answer, maximum five points per round). Once the image is revealed, I’ll give students a few minutes to write down their answers silently and secretly. So, for example, if I show this picture, a student might write down:

Image still from: The Princess and the Frog (Disney)

  1. Princess

  2. Frog

  3. Night

  4. Kiss

  5. Tiara

This can be made harder or easier, more focused on grammar or less. For example, the first image I used was pretty simplistic. I’m not saying you should use Where’s Waldo, but an image of a Haitian market, for example, might make the game more difficult! If the parameters I give are just to have the same words, I always have the rule that all nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs are all allowed EXCEPT for colors! Unless it’s a beginner-level class, having to rely on colors seems a bit like cheating to me. However, you can definitely make this more complex by putting stricter parameters around the image. For example, I may say that students need to find two nouns, two verbs, and one adjective.  Therefore, the imaginary student’s list might look like this:

1.     NOUN: a frog

2.     NOUN: a princess

3.     VERB: to kiss

4.     VERB: to blush

5.     ADJECTIVE: romantic

If you’re working on a particular grammatical construction, then you can put up an image and say “find five of the same verbs in the imperfect form”. Or if there is an image that involves a lot of unit vocabulary you can say “find five of the same words (doesn’t matter what part of speech), but spelling counts!”

STEP FOUR: Partners tally up the points (the silent and secret part is now over). Using the above first example, if Student A wrote princess, night, frog, kiss, tiara and Student B wrote princess, frog, kiss, gloves, dress then they would have 3 out of 5 possible points because they chose three of the same words. It’s then the honor system for students to share out how many points they have. Sometimes I’ll do multiple images and we’ll have a ‘winner’ for that day’s total. Other times, I’ll do an image a day for a week and we’ll have the ‘winner’ for that week’s total.

STEP FIVE: Share out some the answers! It’s a great way to build vocabulary for the rest of the class, and some of the answers can be really fun or surprising. My favorite question to ask is “what is a word that your partner had that you didn’t?” because those are usually the more unique words and students are more likely to share their partner’s answer in order to showcase their partner’s brilliance than they are their own (though that’s high school students, elementary students might be more open to sharing their own thoughts!)

STEP SIX: Continue using it as an intermittent warm-up for class and change it up however you see fit. I like using themed images (example, fairy tales for my fairy tale unit) but as long as the image is appropriate, why not use it! Like I mentioned above, I’ll put different parameters around the words they need to find and sometimes I give the ultimate difficult instruction: find five words that your partner DOES NOT have! Students only get points if their words are totally unique… so they really need to dig deep into their vocabulary knowledge stores. The other thing you can then do is use the same picture, now that they have a bunch of vocabulary at the ready, for a quickwrite.

 Some examples of dynamic pictures to use as prompts:

Have you ever played this game or a variation on it? Are there any constrictions or images you prefer using? Share in the comments!

5-Minute Differentiation Strategies

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make small changes to your language lessons in order to support all of your learners.

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On the Lesson: Impossible podcast this week I’m talking with Drew Thompson about supporting neurodiverse learners. In honor of his sharing his perspective and tips for supporting diverse students, I thought I’d share the strategies that I try to use in my language classroom, most of which can be implemented in less than 5 minutes!

We know that each of our students have strengths and weaknesses that we need to adapt to, but differentiation can seem overwhelming, no matter how long you’ve been teaching. The idea of reaching each individual learner seems like an incredibly time-consuming pursuit: if it takes me X hours to craft a lesson, does not mean I need 30 times that amount to sufficiently plan for my 30 students? However, the good news is that there are a TON of ways that you can make your lessons more accessible, and most of them can take less than 5 minutes to prep. A colleague and I developed this list of small adaptations in 2016, and I taped it on my desk. Before each lesson I’d run my eyes down the below questions and see what I could do to make one or two changes to what I had planned. In my opinion, that’s the key: if you try to change everything at once, you’ll get overwhelmed quickly and it will feel impossible. However, adding one or two tools to your teacher toolbox at a time is doable!

These questions are meant to be for all subject matters, though the examples below are specifically for language teachers. Feel free to share with any colleagues you think might benefit!

RESOURCE DOWNLOAD AS PDF: Quick & Easy Strategies for Differentiation

Examples:

Example of a quick check for understanding: If I have time, or I’m covering a really important concept, I like to use CSI (Color, Symbol, Image) , which is explained in more detail in this post.

Example of a reference guide: It can be as simple as a hand-out with verb conjugations or as complex as a guide on how to be better communicators (see post on the TALK Strategy)

Example of self-differentiated learning targets: In order to practice their use of the future tense, I have a fun, easy “Game of Life” that students can play in small groups. When we play, I’ll put up a slide that outlines my expectations for ALL, for SOME, and for only a FEW students:

Let me know in the comments what strategies you use and if they should be added to list!

T.A.L.K. Strategy

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to support your students as they engage in dynamic discussions in the target language.

TALK strategy.png

As teachers of communication, I think we can often forget that we need to teach how to communicate, not just how to use the target language. Participating in a group discussion in an active and respectful manner is a skill as much as correctly conjugating verbs. Those of us who became language teachers probably do a lot of the skills I discuss below innately, but some students, especially the younger ones, can really benefit from explicit teaching. 

So, several years ago, after realizing that I needed a strategy to get students to be better group communicators, I talked to the literacy coordinator of my district and together we came up with ‘TALK’ (which we thought was an original idea but is actually similar to a strategy with a different acronym that is found in Shrum & Glisan's Teacher's Handbook and is referenced in the ACTFL Keys to Planning for Learning book by Terrill & Clementi).

 I have had a lot of success with this strategy, and it only takes about three to five minutes out of class time but has improved the small group conversations my students have been having in my language classes (see how I adapted into French below) as well as my Social Studies classes!

The beauty is that this can work from elementary school all the way through to senior students and can be used for almost any cooperative task students are engaged in, though I primary used it for small discussion groups.

How it works:

I’ll let students know we’re going to ‘TALK’ today in class, and remind them of the four components:

T – tell an idea

A – ask a question (these can be content based questions or questions that involve someone who hasn’t told an idea yet, such as “what do you think about this Billy?”)

L – listen to others

K – knit ideas together (able to help the group solve a problem or make connections between what everyone has said)

I made big signs for my classroom (printed each page on 11x17 paper) so I could point to it and use it as a reminder.

RESOURCE: TALK classroom signs

talk table mat.png

I also made table mats that could be printed and laminated as TALK reminders. Another possible use would be to print them and have students put them in their notebooks.

RESOURCE: TALK table mat

 At the end of all the class activities and discussions I give them time to reflect.  The goal is to be “all talk” but sometimes a student can be an ‘alk’ (asked, listened, helped problem solve, but didn’t contribute new ideas), a ‘lat’ (listened, asked, told, didn’t problem solve), a ‘ta’, ‘kat’ – you get the idea.  It gives them concrete goals to work towards and a very quick way of reflecting on how they did that day. 

I also would occasionally ask students to reflect more concretely on their TALK skills and use an exit slip to see how they thought they were doing.

RESOURCE: TALK self-evaluation

In doing this activity I actually had one student say “I’m glad I worked with [classmate] because I’m a ‘tk’ and he’s an ‘al’ so together we can help each other be ‘all talk’ – I ask him what he’s thinking so he can add a ‘t’ and then I stop talking while he’s answering so I can be an ‘l’.”  While ideally, I’d like them to be sharing and listening for the sake of sharing and listening, if it’s about ‘winning’ the cooperation activity, why not!

How to use this in a non-ELL/English L1 classroom:

I love this strategy so much that I would encourage you to take the time to make an acronym in your target language. It could even be a fun activity to brainstorm ideas with your students and utilize their creativity in creating it. Please also consider sharing what you came up with in the comments!

For my French students I developed P.A.R.L.E (literally “talk” in French).

P – Posez une question (ask a question)

A – Aidez une autre (help another person)

R – Racontez des idées (tell some ideas)

L – Lisez-les ensemble (tie them [ideas] together)

E – Écoutez attentivement (listen carefully)

PARLE.png

You’ll notice there’s an extra letter than the English TALK, so I was able to add “Help another person” which is especially important in a language class when some people struggle to find the right word or get their ideas out the way they want to. We also discussed how helping someone else can mean NOT supplying the right word, but letting them engage in productive struggle by using their language strategies (like rephrasing, gesturing, finding a synonym, etc.)

RESOURCE: PARLE signs

I also developed a guided conversation tool for more advanced French students to use. It guides groups through using a variety of tenses but talking about the same subject (in the example, books) and also gives them a chance to practice PARLE! In my classroom I liked to keep a bucket of activities that were self-explanatory in case I was ever so sick that my note to the substitue could be one line: “please use any activities you want from the green bucket”. In said bucket were some games, improv prompts, and this guided conversation.

RESOURCE: Multi-tense guided conversation for French