Our group planned to teach beginner French class to K-12 students in English. Upon completing this course, our students should be able to understand a simple French conversation and respond to it both verbally and in writing. We designed a series of activities, including singing, debating, and other events, to meet our objectives. We do realize that these learning activities can be challenging to deliver under the circumstance of COVID-19; therefore, I would like to propose our possible adjustments under this particular circumstance.
Most likely, we will make the course online. In advance, we will train our staff to use online platforms such as Zoom, BlackBoard, or Google classrooms to give lectures and provide learning materials. We will upload recorded lectures that focus on our textbook to instruct students effectively. For the listening component, teachers will upload recorded conversations in textbooks to let students develop their listening and speaking skills. We will also use grammar exercises in our books to instruct students, and answers will be made available online at the end of the unit by teachers—other necessary learning materials will also be uploaded to meet learners’ needs.
Although it may seem that COVID-19 disrupted curriculums that require face to face communication, especially language learning at a beginner level, live sessions can be an excellent opportunity to trigger students’ interests with the learning materials they prefer. Students will have to follow live sessions to progress in the course. During live sessions, teachers will broaden students’ views by discussing Francophone topics related to the textbooks to make the course more engaging and diverse. Moreover, topics are not limited to textbooks; students can also let teachers know what they are interested in, and teachers can plan live sessions accordingly if the topic is worth exploring. In every live session, students will also be engaged in group discussions to develop their speaking skills. As Yi addressed the difficulty of performing speaking tasks online, we may will focus more on writing in the course. While we will attempt to give students chances to develop their speaking competence as much as possible, grammar practices and short essays may replace debates and presentations since it is challenging to perform these tasks.