Session 06, Room B, Presentation 6 2023 FL OER Conference

and our next uh talk is called onigo hashtag onigo an inclusive Global accessible so I see you got Global in there you added to the title Global accessible multimodal oer in French and our speakers uh from uh Atlantic uh Florida Atlantic University Amanda De Lola from University of Minnesota and Stephanie hulon uh who is not with us but she's from Portland State University so I'll turn it over to onigo team okay thank you for this introduction Carl um so um today thank you for coming to our talk which is entitled onigo which is basically the title of our oer textbook that we are currently um finishing and it's a first year French textbook that will be available um shortly um so basically the outline of our presentation uh first we're going to talk a little bit about the method um that we based our textbook on which is fancy interactive which Carl is very familiar with uh as he was one of the developer of this uh oer from the University of Texas then we will look at the essential pedagogical concept that guided the development of uh our textbook only go which um is based on a multi multiliteracy framework it's also a textbook that is um inclusive that really tried to represent a different type of voices and uh students in general and then we also um are using the trans languaging um Concepts throughout the textbook then we will go through a series of Representative activities from our textbook so that you get a better understanding of what we did and how each of the chapter function and then we'll go through our conclusions and a timeline for our textbook so first uh as I mentioned uh onigo was based on uh Fraser directive so we really wanted to basically update this method in different ways so we wanted to modernize Concepts that were presenting the previous textbook we wanted to modernize the references the images and the videos which we all think are very important to keep our students engaged in learning um French we also wanted to introduce a more multi-model textual content throughout the curriculum we wanted to offer a broader representation in diversity because often in um not in fi particularly but not in other textbooks that are currently available on the market the focus is always on France and usually middle class French people um and so we really wanted to bypass that traditional representation and be more inclusive we also included a variety of digital media and social media and online translators and again Amanda is going to focus on this type of activities a little bit later we wanted to develop um authentic scaffolded target language activities that offer comprehensible meaningful and purposeful input to our students we also wanted to develop um online resources for in-person and online teaching the FI method um does not really allow for online teaching or it doesn't make it easy let's say so we wanted to make sure that our method offered access to multi-modal teaching and we also wanted to offer a method that is truly customizable to the need of the instructors and the students because we all know that we're teaching in a in a variety of region across the United States and the world and so some of the elements or some of the cultural aspect that I presented may not be as relevant to some or to others and then we wanted to introduce a more experiential pedagogical approach through multiliteracies so again um I'm not going to extend too much of our presentation on this but I just want to introduce a few key Concepts so the the framework that we're using is multi literacies basically foreign language literacy um is allowing the creation and interpretation of meaning through text and creating strategies for Learning and look at language in contrast to the um communicative language approach so we thought that was a really essential skill that we wanted our students to develop through the learning of French we also um use a trans languaging concept which is a gradual immersion method and a simultaneous support of meta-linguistic developments so we use we we do use the learner's first language and also use the second language to develop that sorry develops across chapters and raises the learner's critical language awareness so we um again are teaching in different regions and some of our speakers speak other languages than English so we wanted to include these um aspects in the learning of a French because sometimes it's really facilitating Learners to develop their understanding of a of French and then finally we really wanted to focus on diversity equity and inclusion um so multiple social identities are represented throughout the textbook to give students awareness of different intersectionalities in the francophone world and their positionality relative to them so again we wanted to stay away from the french-centric typical textbooks that are available on the market to present a more representative view of the francophone World um to our students so a typical chapter in onigo um is built as as such so we always have been here then we have the objectives of the chapters and we're not going to go in depth today about these then we have a section uh on vocabulary we have a variety of activities in the chapters and we will present quite a few today to help you understand the structure and the content of our textbook and then we have sections that are called variational social that Amanda again is going to present a sample of and we finish with the section that we call unfinition but not in which the students are basically reviewing the elements of the chapters and assessing assessing if they are able to use them and they truly understood these Concepts so um the first um element that we I'm gonna talk about is the vocabulary and again the vocabulary is a simple section in any textbook but even in our vocabulary I wanted to highlight the fact that we we do not focus on the typical uh French variation that have been presented in textbooks so for the numbers um we do um present the numbers from I guess a somewhat of a Swiss perspective here which is also a more simple perspective for English speakers um so the system is to just continue by Tenth so for 70 you're going to say SEPTA and then we stipulate for 80 retards and then we stipulate on belgic in some region of Belgium um they use the word octat and in in France and so on and then we literally provide the students with a small explanation of the system so even through the vocabulary we basically present a very variety of of um of a linguistic variety basically so that the students start understanding very quickly that um the French language is not standard and there's a lot of variation within um the various speakers and the various continents where it's spoken in this particular case we really wanted to let the regularity of the linguistic system take over so that we could show this is the actual system in order to do that you kind of have to put into the background the hegemony of France and the prestige variety so we we kind of enjoyed this ability to talk about linguistic systems and not talk about France exactly thank you all right so another element um that is closely linked to the vocabulary vocabulary is the fact that we introduce um registers um I I believe I mentioned that this is a first year textbook so very earlier on in um the development the linguistic development of our Learners so we do that in a way that is extremely contextualized we really wanted to expose them to a variety of register and especially the family and Amanda is just going to click on the test the personality and I'm not going to go through the tester personality which is actually a pretty fun activity that we've integrated in in our chapter four but what I wanted to focus on here is on question eight and nine these are the type of ways where we introduce these familiar items such as vusquettes and they have to answer the question what do you want to do and so on so this basically informal words are not listed in the vocabulary of the chapter but they are basically used in different tasks where they are pertinently used um in a context that is appropriate and and so they get exposed to a variety and again um if the you know decide to use these forms later on they've been worn by our little stars as well that this is basically uh less formal and less standard forms but they get exposed to it and we really wanted to do that earlier on because we really um as um you know teachers and linguists with with basically throughout the years realized that our students are usually exposed to some kind of standard and then they're very uh unable to identify register later on when we're expecting them to do so so this is also one of the purpose of our textbook and this is how it's done another element which is a small element but is it's very important to us at the end of the vocabulary list of each of the chapter we have this small section where we put more vocabulary or my vocabulary and all of the students are basically asked to provide a list that might be more pertinent to their life to their reality uh with which they can add to the Thematic vocabulary of each of the chapters so in chapters such as the family for instance where a lot of people um have recomposed families they may have to add a particular item that is relevant to them or maybe in the chapter where we deal with professions we can never list all of the professions and we always have these questions so the students can actually list the particular profession that they want to do that one of their parents is doing and so on and have it as part of their vocabulary uh for um this chapter all right so now we're going to move on to the activities uh and Sample activities of the chapter so the first one that I'm going to cover is entitled we have these sections called osevad and basically these sections are what we call cultural discoveries um and basically they focus on different countries that are based on different continents and it's really elements that we wanted to use to again uh show the students that the francophone world is massive is extremely interesting and exciting and this particular chapter this activity comes from chapter seven which is um thematically uh focusing on celebrations so we decided to do a little activity on Voodoo which is huge in Bena and um I'm not going to go through the different questions that we ask the students because here the point is just to show you that um we've tried to incorporate again exposure to some uh African francophone countries we have um osevad about Swiss when they had to vote to approve it or to disapprove of it we have uh unsevad about spending vacation in Martinique we have others about the food in Morocco so we really try to to be very inclusive in these sections and these activities are always really engaging there's often videos linked to them and the students have to do not only cultural reflection but also we reiterate the vocabulary of the chapter we Richard the grammar points of the chapters and so on so it's very very contextualized all the time and we're very proud of this aspect of textbook so I'm gonna let Amanda continue she's going to continue showing you a variety of uh activities from the textbook thanks JJ okay so um the next category I'm going to talk to you about in the activity section is called social media French's this is one that we hold near and dear because we do a lot of research on our social media initiatives here um so this particular activity um that we'll talk about today is affectionately known as la foni tiktok which is a blend of funitique and Tick Tock um on everyone's lips these days um you may or may not be familiar with the uh sub-genre of tick tock that involves homophones where people use the translate function to come up with a bunch of words that sound the same in another language often it's French um and then they put together these wacky sentences and um sort of end up articulating them so I'll give you an example here of one of these and I think I've shared the sound so you should be able to hear it I'm sure you've seen these before tuna so you see where this is going right she's got a bunch of things that all sound like the same syllable which is Tom and now this particular user has taken the translation of those words and configured them into a sentence in English it doesn't make a lot of sense but that gives you a really exciting phonetic output in French and I'll play this for you your uncle knows your tuna so there's a lot of sort of fun that can go into this keeping in mind this is a beginner's French class so we're sort of using at first to sort of get students exposed to the idea that homophones are very well represented in French and um and then there are lots of sort of funny things that condense on each other um this sub talk or this sub-genre of tick tock is particularly interesting because the linguistic interaction doesn't stop here what usually happens here is then the user Rifts on this in some cultural way and introduces cultural elements or or other things to sort of make fun of the pronunciation Meme and in this particular case the user is into music are you thinking what I'm thinking right so you get the idea we want to listen to a bunch of EDM but basically she's taken this and she's sampled it over a dance beat um and so then there are other times people will put on costumes and they'll use backdrops from French movies or whatever but they're sort of inflecting into it this cultural experience associated with with using the language um so what we do at first again this is beginning French so we don't assume students have much awareness of homophones in French at all um except for the ones that they maybe have come in contact with um and so we just asked students to watch a series of these tick tocks because there are many we've just showed you a clip of one um and we asked them to sort of play around with that are the homophones always um unique homophones like do they sound exactly the same or in some cases do the words sound similar but they're not quite true homophones um we asked them to sort of listen and observe we ask them if they recognize any of the words that appear in the tick tocks this is really important the noticing function for Learners at the beginning level the next part is one where they get to sort of play around with the meat and potatoes if you will of the activity which is often fun we actually give them a series of homophones and we say okay you're going to do this for yourself here's some ammunition um so you see we have them collection we have Palm de la and we say like here's what these words mean um and we encourage them to sort of play around this is cool because when you think about like sentence building and and morphology in terms of how do you change the way verbs are conjugated but it sort of draws them into that in a very organic way that's fun um but that is also sort of for some greater wackier cause so we encourage them to write a sentence um that sort of capitalizes on this um and then do the same thing they put it into translate in English and then they get the French output um and then they sort of practice articulating it a lot of our research looks at how the pronunciation of certain sounds changes over time and so we've been able to sort of see the measurable gains that happen even when you do really funny interventions like this um and then ultimately what we do um to sort of address that trans languaging principle with JJ mentioned this idea of supporting simultaneous codes at the same time we asked students to do this in English or to do this in their native language and so this can yield some really cool results and in some cases it yields exposure to languages that other students in the class might not have right because they might not be Heritage because of a certain variety or they might not be aware of how homophones are present in in other languages so um that's the funny tiktok activity I'll take you next to um which is with online translators we get a lot of pushback from French instructors about using online translators and we do it on purpose so we are of the mindset that these tools yes can be used sort of used inappropriately misused but our goal isn't to cover our eyes and pretend like they're not there our goal is to help Learners be able to use them and teachers be able to help Learners use them in ways that can give them access at a faster rate and in a different way to cultural content as they're acquiring the language and so we have this activity called with an online translator again this is beginning French and so what we like to do is is use it to give students access to the kind of text that they couldn't analyze at this point so it's a lot of it is poetic or literary language in this particular activity we have versus from a song that they've analyzed earlier in the chapter and what we've done is we've actually gone ahead and put it through the online translator for them keeping in mind that these translators get smarter every day but we've sort of um Frozen it here in this mode because there are a couple of things that stand out we ask students to juxtapose these two um these two texts and to look at them in tandem of each other and to say you know what doesn't quite work or what do you notice about the way things are translated is it the same word order is it the same kinds of languages are they using pronouns or you would expect them to Etc and it gives them in a very focused way the ability to access the content of a song or a poem or a text using this particular tool the last one I'll take ether is called voice typing so this actually utilizes the text to speech function um sorry speech to text function that you have on Google Docs or in Google translator this is where you speak and it listens to your voice and then puts it into written language um this is basically where we give students little bits of language to try to practice that they would need in real life so presenting themselves introducing themselves to someone ordering something from a restaurant Etc and so what we do here is we give them small targeted texts and we say okay speak to your Google Translate so what does um what does the voice recognition function in Google Docs make of you articulating this paragraph and it seems really straightforward but what we found from our Pilots is that it's not um and in a lot of ways it really points students to the aspects of language that you can tell them about things like prosody things like um articulations that are close together um and you know you can't really tell them until they see it fail for themselves and then they think oh okay this must be what I'm doing wrong so it brings a level of linguistic awareness that's been really helpful unfortunately it's also brought a level of awareness of linguistic bias and so many voices are not recognized with the same level or facility and that forced us to have difficult conversations with our students about issues like race ethnicity bilingual trilingualism and why it is that the algorithm recognizes their classmate speech but doesn't recognize their own so that's something we have been trying to support these can be uncomfortable discussions but they're really meaningful ones to have particularly in this kind of context the last thing I'll take you through here is um another category so we're moving out of these activities and we're moving now to the the sort of stock categories in each chapter this last one is one I love I'm a sociolinguist and so we talk a lot about social variation we call this is so the example that I'll give for you today is in our food chapter and the virus does the cell tend to be little subunits um they're often in English and what they do is they point out some cultural um variation Geographic variation social variation gender variation um and they explain it sort of from a simplified but linguistic standpoint here we talk about the notion of what the tacos means in France um so for those of you that aren't aware the word Taco obviously has been borrowed in many languages um and it has a particular meaning um in so in Latin American countries but the word tacos in France doesn't mean that at all it's actually a Savory meat sandwich that you often find served in a tortilla and what we do is we explain this we talk about how this is actually an icon it's become an icon of the next generation of French youth because we have a large representation here of immigrant populations and this reflects many of their cultural heritage in terms of the kinds of food and the way in which it's it's celebrated um so we have a little reading we ask students to go back to the main source which is an article from The New Yorker so that's in English and it's there to support them and then what we like to do is give an application activity um and so in this particular case what we do is say all right well you can read about it and you can have people tell you about it um but we want you to go find about it for yourself and so we actually encourage them to go to Instagram and look up this concept and so in this particular case what I've done is I've done a hashtag search for La tacos and there's a series of sort of small scaffolded questions that lead them through what do you notice about the common themes in what you're seeing and so you can see this is what tacos means in Paris and you can see there are menus in some cases you get burgers you have these flatbread sandwiches in some cases you have menus like tacos and dessert Etc but it gives them this really Vivid really personalized image of what this means and this is out there in the world right so this isn't something that we have to necessarily bring to them we show them how to find it and this has been a really gratifying way for them to study these these topics so I'm going to wrap up um and we just want to say that um you know onigo is a labor of love we've all been working on this for a couple of years and it's sort of coming together um our goal here was really to make something that was free open and accessible um for the high school set but mostly we all work at universities um recently we have been in contact with the Florida Virtual School which is K-12 and they previously had been using constant actif and they're going to be using and you go um and so what we're really interested in doing is is bringing this awareness this new awareness of the francophone world to people who want to have access to that in many cases that students and teachers and in some cases it's autodidacts we really wanted to do something that was inclusive and representative of what the francophone world looks like now we want to move away from these sort of static um images of of the way it used to be um mentioned this is really important we're all coming off of this pandemic experience where we needed to teach in all the modes um and so we want this to be adaptable to hybrid teaching to online classes to face to face we want to embrace the multimodality of it we want this to be customizable in a short term like 10 minutes before classes update your links add your own pictures and we really wanted to emphasize this experiential approach so um our timeline is we're Focus grouping it um from here through the summer we're piloting at various universities this fall onigo will be available for public consumption on January 2024 we've got some people write to us and we're actually working on the next year second year French when you go Cruise um for the following year um we'd like to invite you if you are a teacher of French to Pilot or review a chapter um if you're interested in knowing more we would love to hear your input this this tool can only be as strong as the number of voices we incorporate into it so consider this an open invitation if you are interested in knowing more thank you thank you okay thanks to both our speakers and now we have some time for a little bit of a q a um I'll just start things off this was something that was mentioned in the chat um they noticed that you use a lot of you um of links obviously so like YouTube videos um what do you do to keep some a lot of these these links are no longer active or are they they may become dead links what do you do in that case yeah so that's a great point and that's that's sort of the reality of Our Lives now right um so we are um we envision that there will be a process of Maintenance that will absolutely involve sort of going through and making sure that these links are still active in a lot of cases when we've been able to Archive the dynamic media so I'm thinking of like tick tocks um or Instagram reels what we do is we archive it and then put it um in our own space online so that we don't have to worry about those kinds of things but yeah ultimately we can't archive everything so um what we do is we monitor it closely and we seek to replace when it's possible but we also try to link to places that tend to have um Regular we'll say presence things like things like new news databases like television now databases they tend to be more heavily monitored than YouTube but yeah that's a great point and when it's text sometimes we actually PDF them and incorporate it in the text itself so they're permanent text if you wish so the if the website goes under we still have the content to cite right um there was a comment let's see uh somebody said that they what they appreciated and uh you what you're trying to do was that you didn't just have like a little capsule about linguistic variation or some kind of meta-linguistic topic but that you were actually embedding into the materials and into the activities themselves yes and that was the main point because um I think we were getting you know I've been teaching for many years and and these little boxes in textbooks uh great uh they're full of information but if they're not engaging and if they're not requesting a a follow-up step uh of reflection or thinking about their language and and if they don't take it further it's not um it's not something that is going to stick with the students and so we really wanted to make this section not only just a factual section but an engaging section right so I um I want to ask you a question then about just variation in general because a lot of people in first year language teaching they often say that uh variation is something that you should only do in later stages yeah so they want us do something um I don't believe in that we categorically disagree yeah variation for many language teachers is a Pandora's Box it goes on and on and on and on and on so how do you strike some kind of balance are you teaching them just the concepts of like register or whatever the variation is I think the overall concept is to make them aware of register we're not saying that they're gonna remember and be able to use all these words and forms in the best um shape and possible form and in the right context but it's about exposure it's about providing them with inputs and it's about providing them with an input that is contextualized because if again these new words or if we have a sexual section about verlo and they just read about it but we have a sexual section we talk about very long but then we have uh us we have a song that uses very long and then they have to identify the values song and then they have to create their own you know their law and they have to reflect if something of a similar content exists in English or in Spanish or in the other languages and so on so it really goes a step further and it really makes them you know think about it because we want them to be linguistically aware and and develop this awareness that you know first year French they're not going to be fluent and I think the goal is not to just develop your linguistic ability but you also reflect on your knowledge of English and I think as educator that's what we should be focusing on and I think in many of these textbook this Focus has been lost yeah okay good um I maybe I would I'll ask a question about uh instructors because it variation is seen as often as a Pandora's Box it's just too much variation out there but sometimes it can be face threatening for let's say um a TA who is a non-native speaker or even if you come from part of the francophone world and you're talking about variation that you really don't know very much about what would you say to those people who feel a little bit intimidated by approach subject of linguistic variation because it makes language so much more Dynamic right so um I'll start Judy and you can intervene um yeah so we've tried a couple of things I would say a couple of things the first thing I would say is you speak a variety too so don't think that you speak the standard Norm that doesn't exist so what I think the point is and I think that this is where people get overwhelmed is that we introduce this concept of variation meaning saying oh no I could teach all the things all the variations I have to be aware of them but you don't I mean you bring your own um sort of dialect or version maybe elect whatever you want to call it into the classroom or into the teaching situation um and do you bring your own areas of expertise with that and so I think what we try to do is we have sort of a document in the teacher's guide where we explain these kinds of things for people who don't have any kind of background awareness so we can say look this is what it's like but we also encourage them to do what they can do well so if you have had an experience in a part of the francophone world where you could speak to a certain variety by all means this is probably the perfect context for that so we give the larger layer of the land but then we also say um ultimately you are going to excel in the classroom by speaking from your own experiences and we encourage you rather than to normalize your French and normalize your own identity in the francophone World which is bogus we encourage you to sort of use French authentically with your students and to not be afraid to show them you know what I don't know how they say this but they're a way for us to find this out and you know I can only speak from my experience in Strasburg or your experience in Belgium um but that's okay and they need to kind of understand that we are linguists and we are teachers but we're not dictionaries and we're not encyclopedias of the world we're trying to show to them that there are mechanisms and skill sets out there that we can teach them in a language class that they can use to find all this stuff out for themselves so not necessarily seeing it as like something too overburden people or overwhelm them they're seeing it as a point of contact that you can personalize to show your students that language is inherently personal there's really nothing beyond that and if I can add again we really wanted to emphasize the fact that it's customers customizable and and if there's a section that you really do not feel comfortable about you don't have to to to you know to present that and and I also think it's it's validating this uh variation so going back to the numbers that is a great example you know typically because I am Swiss I would use the septum three nonsense but it's never been validated it's never been printed in textbooks so they kind of look at you awkwardly thinking is she inventing things here or what's going on because here we have the variation and then you can do and use whatever you feel comfortable with and so do the students whatever system they prefer they can use and and you know as a Swiss I keep joking when I go to France obviously I'm totally capable of of modifying my numbering system however you know what's the worst insult that is gonna uh emerge oh I use Swiss yes right well um thank you all for this presentation thank you again onigo team uh