Eagle

Student Perception of Learning in the CBI French Classroom

Clarissa Eagle, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, USA.

Abstract:

Those who notice most, learn most (Schmidt, 1990): This is a claim that can be seen to guide research in Second Language Acquisition over the past thirty years. Since Schmidt’s seminal study of Wes, the likable but inattentive language learner, we know that students need to regularly attend to a whole host of linguistic concerns in order to continue to progress in their L2. But to what extent are they aware of how they learn? Following thinkers such as Dornyei (2009), I consider students’ perceptions of their own learning to be critical to their success, especially in the content-based language classroom. In this action research study, cyclical and iterative by design, I gather data on my students’ perceptions of their own learning during two task-types of different complexity levels in an attempt to isolate and ultimately replicate conditions that maximize learner perception of learning. My findings show learner perception of learning to be demonstrably more obvious to students during tasks of lower complexity. There nonetheless exists a relatively large gap between what learners articulate as learning, and what they experience as such, attested to by the qualitative data. I conclude by reiterating the limitations of action research in the classroom and suggesting a possible learner training as follow-up to this study.

Five key words: French; Language; Learning; Perception; Task-based.