Guidelines

French materials Experimentation results

Experimentation Results

 

The program proposed by the Grundtvig partners (Italian, Romanian and Spanish) for the European project “French and Spanish language competence through songs” aroused and still arouses the interest of a great number of teachers, students and of many different adults who want to learn a foreign language through this method, which combines usefulness with enjoyment (utlie cum dulce), i.e. learning French and Spanish by means of a musical support (video and karaoke).

Following the stage of creating the teaching materials, the project foresaw an experimentation stage, which took place from November 2011 to April 2012. The teachers’ commitment to experimenting with the proposed teaching material was made possible thanks to the various disseminations and interactive workshops organized by the University of Bucharest and FENICE during the unfolding of the project (a Conference followed by the interactive workshop at the University of Bucharest, in May 2011, gathering about 50 teachers, a second interactive workshop with some 40 high school teachers in July 2011, also in the University of Bucharest; a third interactive workshop in November 2011 at the Bucharest Central School (38 teachers), an AUF international conference, gathering 30 professors, in March 2012, Bucharest; a fourth interactive workshop at the Tudor Vianu high school in Giurgiu, gathering about 30 teachers, and a fifth interactive workshop in April 2012 in Naples, Italy, gathering about 52 teachers. All these activities facilitated a better acquaintance with the project and therefore, a large number of teachers became willing to participate in either the experiment, or in the creation of teaching units (or in both.) 

  

1. The partakers in the experimentation
 

1.1. The experimenters

 

There were a total of 21 schools actually participating in the experiment with French language units. We provide below the list of the institutions which took part in this stage of the
project:

  1. University of Bucharest (RO)

  2. IES Val Do Tea, Ponteareas (ES)

  3. I.E.S Pazo da Mercé (ES)

  4. Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de A Coruña (ES)

  5. College of Hortiati (Asvestohori) 57010 Thessaloniki (GR)

  6. French Institute of Stockholm (SE)

  7. School of Chiscareni, Sipote, county of Iasi (RO)

  8. High school “Vasile Sav”, Roman, county of Neamt (RO)

  9. National high school ,,Mihai Viteazul’’, Slobozia (RO)

  10. Bilingual high school “DECEBAL” Bucharest (RO)

  11. Economic high school “Viilor”, Bucharest (RO)

  12. High school “Tudor Vianu” Giurgiu (RO)

  13. High school “Jean-Louis Calderon”, Timisoara (RO)

  14. School “Sfîntu Gheorghe”, Tulcea (RO)

  15. National high school of computer sciences “Grigore Moisil”, Brasov (RO)

  16. National high school “Spiru Haret”, Bucharest (RO)

  17. School of Erbiceni, county of Iasi (RO)

  18. “Avram Iancu” School, Baia Mare, county of Maramures (RO)

  19. School no. 109 “Serban Voda”, Bucharest (RO)

  20. National high school “Unirea”, Brasov (RO)

  21. National high school ”Unirea”, Focsani, county of Vrancea (RO)

 

The experiment was carried out by teachers of French as foreign language (FFL), coming from different countries, among these being Romania, Greece and Sweden.

 

1.2. The students

 
       A. Age intervals

A number of 643 students took part in this activity. The age interval distribution is presented in percentages as follows:

          B. Composition of the work group

 

The total number of students in a class fluctuates between at least 10 and at most 40.
As often happens, the work groups don’t have a homogeneous composition, which imposes the adjustment of the didactic material to the specific conditions of the class and to the
students’ needs. Besides, this is the justification of some of the experimenters’ remarks.
Teachers are free to choose the way of exploiting a didactic material in order to get results correlated to the level of knowledge for every group or student.

 

          C. Level of competences

 

According to the Common European Framework of Reference, the students’ level of competence ranges between the levels A2-B2. Level A1 is represented in only two cases,
level A1-A2 appears in 3 cases, pure A2 level appears in three cases, which generally corresponds to the pupils between ages 6-14; a level between A2-B1 shows up in most cases
(12), while the B2 level was noticed mainly by the professors of the participating university and of the French Institute.

 

 

2. The experimented material

 

The didactic material that our project proposes is offered as a reference point for setting up other documents that teachers can adapt according to their students’ needs.

 

2.1. The experimented units

 

The number of didactic units used in the experiment is four songs on average, with a maximum of 16 songs and a minimum of two. Thus, four teachers experimented with two songs each, two other teachers did not mention the number of units that they did, 10 worked with three units, two of them used four songs, six made practice with six documents, one used nine songs and one used 16. We can conclude that the reason for this variation in number of songs used from case to case is generally due to the willingness of the student to perform a certain activity, and also the students who committed themselves to this work.

 

 

We can see that generally, there was a balance between the frequency of didactic units usage, but the documents most used were centered on the best known songs, even if they are not very modern. The last units were introduced on the site after the experiment ended, and for this reason they were not heeded by those carrying out the experiment.

 

3. Qualitative results

 
3.1. Clarity of objectives

  

The questionnaires filled out by the experimenters offer positive responses in most fields, as can be seen through the teachers’ testimony. Regarding the clarity of the objectives, the great majority of answers (98%) were highly favorable. We present a selection of testimonies:

3.2. Adequacy of the method

All the experimenters affirmed that the proposed method is well adapted to the didactic practice and that the type of musical approach gave them the opportunity of enriching their experience and professional performance. Each one could choose the contents which adapt at best to the level of his students. Thus, depending on the competences of the class, the songs responded in different ways to the students’ needs. Our statement will be certified by the answers of the experimenters, which we’ll quote below:

  • The chosen units were conceived for the A2 – B1 levels of the C.E.F.R. The classes which I worked on these teaching units were not homogenous; not all the students have the abilities required by supposed level – i.e. B1 – but the teaching units gave me the possibility to select suitable activities for each student.

  • The grammatical categories presented in the three units I worked on, were revised on this occasion and thoroughly studied by means of the songs and of the proposed exercises, therefore in an attractive way for all the students. Besides, they have all been very pleased to study French, especially grammar with this method. Moreover, it was an opportunity to introduce some notions of French civilization, well received by the students who study French as a second foreign language.

  • Sometimes, the contents of the teaching units published on the site, are at a higher level than the level indicated at the beginning of the unit, but I overcame this difficulty by modifying some of the provided exercises.

  • It depends on what the teacher intends to do with a song, during the class.

  • I think that the method and the songs are well adapted to my students’ level of language.

  • The students of the terminal class of high school understood by themselves 75% of the vocabulary of the song, but the exercises were quite easy for them. They are great fans of the True/False type of exercise and of the questions with multiple possible answers. The adults rather took part to the debate exercise, considering their age, but they encountered some difficulties in expressing themselves openly in French. However, I encouraged them to do it.  

3.3 The impact on the students

Besides the teachers, this method aroused the interest of the students who considered it a useful and pleasant way of learning French. The method permitted them not only to develop their linguistic competences, but also their cultural and encyclopedic level. We refer at a second type of experimentation, assumed by the students of the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, philological section (about 120 students). They applied this method by their own, individually (this way of individual learning encourages the autonomy of the student towards the professor. We provide below some tokens of the students:

  First Name, Last Name, Year of study Token
1.  Elena Simona Radu,I-st year The site is a tool which helps the students of a foreign language a lot. It appeals to the students’ imagination and judgment. It is an agreeable way of learning foreign languages.
2. Cristina Gabriela Stan, I-st year The proposed didactic units help us to learn easily and with more pleasure the cultural and civilization notions, together with the matters of grammar, phonetics, and pragmatics. Thank you for this site.
3.  Ileana Peca, I-st year The exercises were amusing and the grammar and phonetic summing up helped me a lot.
4. Raluca Saporiuc, I-st year The site www.languagesbysongs.eu is a practical and complex website which helps those who want to learn a foreign language. I had some difficulties with the sound [e] which is sometime mute in French. This way of learning French by means of songs is amusing and constructive. The difficulties I encountered depended on the way I interpreted some statements rather than on the grammatical exercises.
5. Patricia Dinu, I-st year I enjoyed doing this homework and I think there are

 We provide also some comments of the experimenters, who recorded a growing interest and an improvement in their students’ attitude towards the educational process:

The students appreciated the songs, they were pleased to go out of the routine of the exercises and texts of their textbook, they have also memorized easy enough some parts of the songs, they have hummed some verses and they willingly resolved the exercises. Some activities and exercises have become the object of an individual homework. The students showed more curiosity and enthusiasm for these teaching units than for the ordinary study cards. I think that working on these songs was, for most of my students, more motivating, less compulsive, and more agreeable. The students paid more attention and were more active than usually. Moreover they widened their personal horizon by listening to a kind of music that is not heard in their environment. They loved the idea of learning or of revising their knowledge starting with a song. They worked quickly, they have easily memorized some words or linguistic structures by listening to the songs, they had a greater personal satisfaction when they succeeded to reconstruct the text of the song, they have been enough assiduous in trying to interpret the message and mostly, they had an open attitude towards this method.
The cultural content of the proposed songs aroused the interest and the curiosity of the students, stimulating them to speak aloud, to tell what they were thinking about, to make personal comments, and therefore to use French for communicating even if with mistakes, during the class with myself and to one another. They succeeded in understanding the sense of the words and the message of the song; the vocabulary section was very helpful to them, but I also encouraged them to look up in the dictionary. The grammar section contains clear and adequate explanations to permit the students a good understanding of the linguistic structures of the song; it also contains varied exercises in order to enable the student to assimilate and to reuse the respective structures. I think that the exercises are useful and appropriate to reach the objectives, having an adequate difficulty level for my students. These exercises have been stirring, and thanks to them, the class has been very dynamic.

Yes, the messages of the two songs I chose were appealing to the students; in fact, I chose the songs according to their centres of interest. Somehow, they identified themselves to what happening in the song. Celine Dion’s song was useful because it served as a starting point for a debate on francophonia. We insisted on synonymy, homophony, derivation, the right meaning of an expression – these are motivating activities which the students take as a game.
“Moi, Lolita” was interesting from the point of view of the explanation of the name Lolita – its significance, the creative phenomenon and the novel written by V. Nabokov. “Pour que tu m’aimes encore” insists on the use of subjunctive after some expressions, in different subordinate clauses – which represents, in fact, the syllabus-curriculum of the terminal class of high school, studying French as a second foreign language (the syllabus provides, for the study of the verbal tenses, as passé composé, for narrating and future tense for projecting actions in the future.
“Moi, Lolita” insists on the correct use of tout – as an adjective, adverb and pronoun and on the way of giving an order, an advice, a suggestion – and these grammatical items are very useful in everyday communication.

I think that now the pupils like French a little more than English. They asked me to tell them some more titles of the artists we’ve just listened to together; they solved all the exercises and activities I proposed to them and they were very excited. It was a sort of contest between them in order to decode the songs and to learn more on the singers. The grammar items were sufficient for understanding the song. Nevertheless, the grammar notions exceeded now and then my pupils’ level (6 – 14 years old) but I adapted some exercises on their level.
• Yes, especially for improving their knowledge and their grammatical competences: the simple future tense, its values and uses, the opposition imparfait – passé composé, Si conditionnel by the songs and exercises written on slips. The students which thought these items were difficult or even incomprehensible declared themselves very satisfied because they succeeded in understanding them. The songs were fit for the majority of the students, who love music in general; for the others, who prefer the music of nowadays (hip-hop, rap etc.) the songs were considered as too slow and out of date. But for all of them, the cultural and civilization elements were welcome, especially for learning French as a second foreign language. The grammatical summing up (by schemes, examples and explanations) were also welcome by the students and the teacher, who is no longer obliged to look for supplementary didactic materials. The exercises were well-conceived, from simple aspects to complex ones, of a great diversity, and the students found their way out taking the highest advantage of their study.

3.4 Some suggestions of the experimenters

Both the students and the teachers gave some suggestions concerning the songs of the teaching units: they proposed to introduce more recent songs, of the rap or the slam-style. It is true that the content of these songs may be interesting, but mainly for students with a very high level of French, both at the level of comprehension (oral and written) and at the level of expression (oral and written), for which the important aspect is the ability of communication, of knowing different levels of a language (slang, colloquial, popular or regional – like the beur language. Our method doesn’t intend to
tackle these aspects, but to teach the standard and elegant French language.
It doesn’t mean that, in order to improve our method, we will ignore the experimenters’ suggestions, which we deeply thank. The diversity of their suggestions will permit us to carry on with this method at another level, of higher performance. We remember some of these recommendations:

• It is probably better to introduce some present songs, well-known by the pupils, besides the old fashion songs.
• I suggest providing more cultural information about France and the francophone countries in the teaching units.
• I would like a little more activities of a ludic, amusing aspect. But for the rest, it is excellent.
• You must aim to concision and avoid the superfluous cultural information.
• I suggest that the students should choose themselves the songs they would like to study (by doing this, the teacher implies them directly in the process of learning). Afterwards, the teacher can create some adequate activities starting  from the song during the French class.
• Some other records, of contemporary singers as Lara Fabiani, Obispo, and Grand Corps Malade etc. would rather have awakened the students’ interest.
• I’d like to find more teaching units on the beginning level, because of my pupils’ learner level.
• Considering the fact that the foreign language is taught two hours a week, we didn’t have enough time: the teaching unit was too thick.
• The musical approach is important for teaching the musicality and the rhythm of the foreign language. The didactic material is very interesting and well conceived.

What is very important for this project is that the experimenters showed appreciation and interest to continue the application of this method, while at the same time recommending it to other colleagues (98% of them). They favorably appreciated the results that such a method would have on the students. In this respect, we offer the following testimonies:
• [we can obtain] Positive outcomes because through singing we can memorize the lexicon more quickly
• The students realized they can learn a foreign language in a different manner – in this case, French through songs. This method is very enjoyable for them, preferred over the traditional method, using the student’s book. [I recommend this method because] “the result of employing it was positive, since learning is made more pleasing in this way, and it motivates students a lot.”
• Highly positive results on my students:
1. Students wanted to listen to other French songs. This project contributed therefore to my students’ becoming acquainted with French music.

2. The musical approach makes students more attentive to cultural information. They said that they prefer songs to long texts in the book, because the songs do not bore them.
3. They showed interest in the artists’ biographies, so this method enriched their repertoire of French and Francophone personalities.
4. The musical approach enhances all skills, and especially the listening ability.
5. The musical approach gives students a personal satisfaction (that of having understood the text and its message), because it is a very enjoyable non-conventional method, which further motivates them.
6. The approach gives a certain independence to students: the activities and the exercises can be browsed individually and differently in class, depending on the level of the group; the exercises can also be used as homework, or as instruments for evaluation/ autoevaluation. This is why I recommend to my colleagues that they use the musical approach and the educational materials from the project, because I consider it to be an efficient learning method. The didactic units are well-constructed, facilitating the teacher’s effort to make the lesson more dynamic. Moreover, it’s pleasant to work with this method, and I also think that it is more enjoyable for the students to learn French or another foreign language in this way.

• My pupils reacted just as I expected: they much liked the French music, but they often found themselves having trouble to express themselves, due to their limited vocabulary, this being due to a lack of thorough personal study – reading in French, listening to TV programs, etc. I think they would like all French classes to be like this, but unfortunately the time, the means and the syllabus-curriculum do not always allow it. There were only benefits from using songs: the students responded positively and now show less inhibition.
• It’s a pleasing way to work with a language.
• I think that working on songs makes the foreign language courses more attractive and, consequently, more motivating for pupils. They see it as something different; the melody associated with the text rouses their curiosity to learn more, to be able to individually understand other songs. The impatience with which they waited for the next foreign language class centered on a song, and the enthusiasm with which they worked on each song can be seen as a positive feedback from the pupils.
• My implication with this project is special in the sense that I am responsible for distance learning. The project was adapted for distance learning, because the students could get ready. Yes, this being said, I had colleagues working with approaches similar to the high school chronicles project. There will be choices to make, but the approach is good.
• The students were more motivated to learn French.
• I already recommended to my colleagues the project website with the proposed activities, and the response was positive.
We must also notice the intention of certain teachers to bring their own contribution to the enrichment of the project, by proposing new didactic units, centered on more recent songs, better adapted to the level of understanding of their students. The curriculum is open for all
those who want to contribute.

3.5. Commentaries

Commentaries at the end of the questionnaire:

• Thank you for giving me the chance to participate in your project, and I hope to be able to take part in future projects, equally motivating and enriching.
• I’d like this project to keep on going, and hope there will be more didactic units added to the site, conceived around other songs, either classical or more modern/ recent.
• I used the method for another song: “I will always love you” (Whitney Houston).
• I thank you a lot.
• Congratulations! I consider you did a good job!
• The project can be perfected, we worked on rap and slam productions in the context of the Sweden Francophone Contest; students may also be encouraged to produce themselves, in order to be more involved.
• Music makes people better, students are more motivated and interested, so “Let the music play!”
• Thanks for this initiative.
• I’d like to continue; I’m interested in the approach to teaching French.
• Congratulations! Even if I did not manage to cover the entire unit in 4-6 hours, because for my pupils (A1, A2), the time to go through the entire unit and for learning the song was insufficient; so I added more hours to the unit.
• Just “Thanks!”
• We’d like to develop and enrich the songs analyzed.
• I plead for simplicity, for more music in French classes, especially for beginners.
• My warm congratulations! You did an excellent work, managing to be original and interesting, even if the field was always exploited (sometimes too much).

These encourage us to move forward on this track, while constantly perfecting it. Anything can be bettered. If all was perfect, there would be no more room for innovation. We thank the experimenters for giving us the chance to measure the feedback to our endeavor, always allowing us to improve and refine the exercises and the activities, giving us the assurance that the method proposed is useful for a more agreeable and efficient learning of a foreign language.
4. Conclusion
The impact this project had on those targeted – teachers and students – was favorable, which we can see from the remarks and commentaries made in the questionnaire. Teachers and students alike found the material enriching; it gave them another perspective on how to teach/learn a foreign language. The documents proposed ease mental progress, which favors a better learning of linguistic and civilization individualities of French in particular, and of any foreign language, in general.