experiential Module
Learning Italian & Pedagogical Takeaways for my Classroom
Embedded Files
Between February and April 2023, I participated as a student in an online Italian course for adult beginners, offered through the Community Language School (CLS), part of MSU’s Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA). The group met synchronously on Zoom for 90 minutes over the course of ten Thursday night sessions.
After each weekly lesson I took notes in a personal journal, cataloguing my reflections on the experience. My log covered a variety of topics, including what I learned, how Italian compared to French, my proficiency growth, my student experience (including successes, frustrations, and anxiety), and inspiration for application to my own teaching. The documents below provide more details on what I learned and how this experience impacted me as a language user and a teacher.
certification of participation in "italian for adults- beginners"
certification of participation in "italian for adults- beginners"
Waite_FLT898_CLSParticipationCertificate_ItalianforBeginners.pdfI attended all ten lessons in this series, fully participating as a learner in all activities, including interpretive reading and listening tasks as well as interpersonal and presentational speaking in Italian.
The teacher strove to use as much Italian as possible, although she did use English for explanations and clarifications when needed.
The activities and prompts all required students to form a complete sentence describing what we saw on the screen or what one might say in response to the given prompt or situation described.
We were often able to extend the communicative theme to our personal lives, expressing our own opinions or feelings on topics such as food preferences, travel, and family members.
By the end of the course, I was indeed capable of completing all communicative goals: I can…
Introduce myself and others, Say how my day is going and how I’m feeling, Tell where one is from,
Describe myself and others, Ask someone about themselves, Express agreement or disagreement,
Give and ask for directions, Express location, Express relationships & belonging
Reflective essay and pedagogical implications
Reflective essay and pedagogical implications
Waite_FLT898_ReflectiveEssay_SS23fromFLT885.pdfThis reflective essay details my entire experience, from the successes and frustrations I felt as an Italian student to the takeaways that helped improve my own teaching.
I particularly enjoyed the instructor’s use of visual aids, comprehensible input, and personalized questions and support for each learner.
In order to decrease moments of frustration, I would have recommended a reduction of the amount of material covered, an increase in input provided prior to expected output/production, less reliance on the learn-by-guessing approach, and a preview of the final performance task at least a week in advance.
My renewed outlook on the student experience has reminded me to speak patiently with students (providing frequent positive reinforcement and celebrations of growth) and offer more scaffolded supports for reviewing prior learning.
See pages 9-12 of my reflective essay above for a comprehensive list of other takeaways for teachers, including a special focus on the importance of community building in online classes to mitigate anxiety and attrition.
Click here to continue to the next page where I outline the second stage of my project,
most notably the guide that I was inspired to create for online language teachers:
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