Analyses of core French teachers' language use: A summary

Miles Turnbull

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

 

This paper presents analyses of the instructional language of four grade 9 core French teachers. I tape-recorded these teachers while observing their classes over most of one semester in the context of a process-product study designed to assess the impact of multidimensional project-based learning on students' French skills, cultural knowledge, attitudes and motivations to continue studying French (Turnbull, 1998, 1999a, 1999b). The analyses I report in this paper were conducted, following the completion of the original study, to describe the teachers' uses of French and English during their core French classes. The following research question guided the study I summarize in this article:

For what reasons do the four FSL teachers use French exclusively (L2), English exclusively (L1), or a mixture of both languages in their classes?

Rationale for the study

Although many teachers report that it is possible to teach core French almost exclusively in French, many others find it difficult or impossible. Although some research on this issue has been conducted in university foreign language classes (e.g., Duff & Polio, 1990; Polio & Duff, 1994) and in bilingual education contexts (e.g., Wing, 1987; Guthrie, 1987; Johnson, 1984), no research has been done to understand the contexts in which teachers use French, English, or a mixture of both languages in core French classes with adolescent learners whose target language (TL) proficiency is relatively low. As a former core French teacher, and a teacher educator in a pre-service program for future core French teachers, I am strongly motivated to explore the research question that guided this study.

Methodology

The four teachers

The four participating teachers taught in different schools in the same school board in eastern Canada. Recruitment of the volunteer participants took place at a province-wide in-service session for core French teachers. All four were native speakers of English and were experienced teachers. I asked the teachers to self-assess their proficiency in French by describing their comfort level for teaching in grade 9 core French. Teachers 1 and 2 reported that they felt "very confident" of their French skills for core French, whereas Teachers 3 and 4 reported that they felt "somewhat confident" of their French skills for the core French program.

Classroom observations

After an initial period to establish a comfortable rapport with the teacher and students in each class, I conducted detailed observations of the classes for approximately eight weeks. I observed an average of 10 classes per teacher, or an average of 400 minutes per class. For this paper, I analysed the transcripts of 6 classes per teacher, representing approximately 60% of the time observed in each class.

During the eight weeks, all teachers used the same project-based thematic unit (see below), interpreting and implementing it in a way that reflected what they would do normally. I tape-recorded the teachers during all observations, and used a newly designed observation scheme - MOLT - multidimensional orientation of language teaching (see Turnbull, 1998, 1999a, 1999b for more details) - to record each teacher’s classroom activity. In addition, I took field notes during and after each class observed.

Teaching Unit

Each participating teacher agreed to use the same multidimensional project-based teaching unit, La Mode et la publicité, during the eight weeks I observed them. According to the teacher's manual, the final project (either a fashion advertisement or a fashion show related to a line of clothing that the students would select or create) was to be introduced from the beginning of the unit. The prescribed unit included 16 recommended steps or activities, designed to prepare students to complete their final project. The multi-resource unit was quite flexible; teachers could choose, or negotiate with students, which activities they would actually do, including the final project.

Coding the teacher talk

When I began the coding process, I examined the unit of analysis used in similar studies that had conducted analyses of teacher talk: my methodology was inspired principally by Polio and Duff (1994). I adopted a qualitative-like approach to code the data. I divided the teacher talk into discourse units that I call functional units, corresponding to the communicative function of each unit. Although I adapted some of Polio and Duff's categories for language use as a starting point for creating categories of functional units, many of my classifications emerged from the data.

A graduate student research assistant, a native speaker of French, divided the transcripts into functional units and assigned each functional unit to one of 3 macro-categories: social, academic or management. Each functional unit was then coded as L1 (English only), L2 (French only) or Mix (both languages). A second graduate student, and I, did independent coding of 25% of all transcripts. Following discussion, all raters agreed on more than 90% of the coding decisions.

Summary of results

Although all four teachers were implementing the same thematic unit in similar classes (comparable overall academic abilities and similar socio-economic backgrounds), there was considerable variation in the four teachers' uses of French and English. Teachers 1 and 2 spoke French more often than Teacher 3 and especially Teacher 4. Teacher 3’s and 4’s discourse contained more mixed French and English than that of either Teacher 1 or 2.

A large majority of all four teachers’ discourse was academic in nature. Teacher 2 was somewhat different; his transcripts contained more social-oriented discourse and at least one quarter of his discourse was managerial-related. Social language was mostly in French for Teacher 1 and 2 and in English for Teachers 3 and 4. Teacher 2’s language use for managerial reasons was quite different from the others’: his managerial language was largely in French. All others, especially Teacher 4, used English for managerial functions in their classrooms.

Teachers 1 and 2 used French for most academic functions whereas Teachers 3 and 4 used both English and French for the same academic functions much more frequently than Teachers 1 and 2. All four teachers used French almost all the time for encouraging students to speak French and for reading French texts. Teachers 1 and 2 used translation in different ways from each other and from Teachers 3 and 4. A large majority of Teacher 1's and 2's use of translation was for isolated words; Teachers 3 and 4 translated phrases more frequently than Teachers 1 or 2. Teacher 1 used French for translation of isolated words most frequently, whereas Teacher 2 used English almost all the time to translate isolated words. All teachers used English or a mixture of English and French to translate phrases.

Limitations and future research

The insights gained from the analyses of these teachers' classroom discourse would be more powerful if I had talked to the teachers about their uses of French and English during their classes. However, the original process-product study for which these data were collected did not allow for interviews or reflective sessions on language use. The exploratory study I describe in this article will feed into future research in which I plan to observe and talk to beginning and experienced core French teachers about their beliefs and attitudes on TL use in core French. Using video recordings, I will also ask teachers to recall the factors that influenced their language use during classes I will observe.

References

Duff, P., & Polio, C. (1990). How much foreign language is there in the foreign language classroom? Modern Language Journal, 74, 154-166.

Guthrie, E. (1987). Six cases in classroom communication: A study of teacher discourse in the foreign language classroom. In J. Lantolf & A. Labarca (Eds.), Research in second language learning: Focus on the classroom (pp. 173-193). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Johnson, K. (1984). Bilingual switching strategies: A study of the modes of teacher talk in bilingual secondary school classrooms in Hong Kong. Language Learning and Communication, 2, 267-285.

Polio, C., & Duff, P. (1994). Teachers’ language use in university foreign language classrooms: A qualitative analysis of English and target language alternation. Modern Language Journal, 78, 313-326.

Turnbull, M. (1998). Multidimensional project-based teaching in core French: A case study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, OISE at the University of Toronto.

Turnbull, M. (1999a). Multidimensional Project-Based Teaching in French Second Language (FSL): A Process-Product Case Study. Modern Language Journal, 83, 4, 548-568.

Turnbull, M. (1999b). Multidimensional project-based second language teaching: Observations of four grade 9 core French teachers. In S. Lapkin & M. Turnbull, M. (Eds.) Research in FSL education: The state of the art. Canadian Modern Language Review (special issue), 56,1, 3-35.

Wing, B. (1987). The linguistic and communicative function of foreign language teacher talk. In B. VanPatten, T. Dvorak & J. Lee (Eds.), Foreign language learning: A research perspective (pp. 158-173). New York: Newbury House.

 

About the Author

Miles Turnbull is Assistant Professor in the Modern Language Centre at OISE/UT. He teaches in pre-service education program in FSL and in thegraduate program in Second Language Education. He is one of the associate editors of the Canadian Modern Language Review responsible for the pedagogical section, Touch of Class.

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