Teaching Foreign Languages K-12: Workshop
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Video Summary
In “Delivering the Message,” Professor Paul Kei Matsuda of the University of New Hampshire addresses how a consideration of the audience impacts presentational activities. Professor Matsuda also joins a round-table discussion on effective strategies for designing and assessing presentational tasks, moderated by University of Pittsburgh professor Richard Donato, and including teachers Jane Shuffelton of Rochester, New York, and Marylee DiGennaro of North Haven, Connecticut. The video also features excerpts from Ms. Shuffelton’s and Ms. DiGennaro’s classes, as well as other classes across different grade levels and languages.* The video addresses the following questions:
- Who is the audience?
- How does audience influence oral and written presentations?
- How does feedback improve presentational communication?
*The classroom excerpts featured in this video are from the Teaching Foreign Languages K-12 video library. To learn more about the featured lessons, go to the Library Videos Chart.
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- What makes presentational communication different from interpersonal communication, even if the audience is the teacher and/or other students? What role do interpretive and interpersonal communication play in preparing students for the presentational mode of communication?
- What kinds of audiences, other than the classroom participants, did the classroom excerpts show? What other kinds of audiences have you targeted in presentational activities in your class?
- Ms. DiGennaro likens presentational communication to the giving and receiving of a gift. Using examples from the classroom excerpts and/or your own classroom, expand on this metaphor to show the importance of making students aware of their audience. What other metaphor(s) might be used to describe this communication mode?
- What is the effect of a distant audience (such as a pen pal) on student motivation to write or to speak?
- How does the identification of audience influence the three stages of the writing process: prewriting, drafting, and revising?
- In the video excerpt, how does Ms. Lori Langer de Ramirez use audience to focus the writing task for her students?
- What aspects of a presentation do you focus on when providing feedback? What, if any, challenges have you faced in assessing and providing feedback on these aspects? What other key characteristics of presentational communication would you evaluate?
- What are the characteristics of a good rubric? How would you align letter grades and rubrics?
- What role would audience play in the design of a rubric? How does an awareness of the audience influence the degree of accuracy you expect from students?