Improving Student’s Engagement of the Chinese Class

Improving Student’s Engagement of the Chinese Class: A Project-based Curriculum
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Introduction
Background
I volunteered to handle a 4th grade class at a Chinese Immersion Charter school. During my stay at the school, I observed that the school cannot choose the students enrolling in the different classes. Since it is a public school, students are chosen using a lottery-based system. Therefore, level of proficiency of each student will vary in every class. I observed that new students, usually have very limited to no Chinese language background. This language barrier among the students may increase the low engagement of the students in the Chinese class. This may also contribute to the student’s confidence due to the feeling of isolation. In order for the students to feel the belongingness in class, they need to use multimodal ways to improve their language expression such as having an immersive environment with hands-on activities through the consistent help from peers and teachers.
In this paper, I designed a project-based curriculum for 4th grade students of a Mandarin Chinese class. There is a total of 22 students enrolled in the class. The population demographic profile to the classroom includes, 14 students that are white American, 2 African-American students, 3 Latino students, and 3 students with Chinese heritage. Additionally, the home language of the students includes English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish. Regardless of the content of the curriculum, the students were generally observed to possess a relatively low proficiency to intermediate language proficiency level.
It is important to note that proficiency is the individuals use of language in the real world to communicate messages in an acceptable manner (ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners, 2012, p. 4). This means that the students have slight control of the simple language about everyday topics and vocabulary but has limited comprehension when it comes to more complex text and verbal expression (ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners, 2012, p. 17). Although some students show an intermediate level of proficiency, the student's engagement in the Chinese Class should be further improved using project-based learning and participatory approach to curriculum development since this class curriculum can improve the overall communicative ability of the students.
Issues
In this project, there are three main issues that this paper addresses: the lack of knowledge of the new students in understanding Chinese characters, both reading and writing, that hinders student's expression in class; the low engagement of the new students in the Chinese class; and the issues that are related to the student's everyday life like, what the students eat for lunch, how to help new comers, and improving left-handed student's satisfaction in school.
Objectives
The objectives of using project-based learning and participatory approach is to (1) improve their overall communicative ability, including interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication; (2) to gather and select the information that is useful to them through different methods; (3) use multimodal ways to record, report, and present their project process and outcome; (4) work on their project in teams; and (5) interacts with other people in school community while doing their project.
Additionally, this curriculum will help students to acquire life longs skills, including: (1) effective communication to function in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes; (2) ability to gather and select the information they need from different resources; (3) acquire and use digital literacies to function in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes; and (4) work cooperatively with others.
Theoretical Basis
Policy/Standards Framework: Communication Strand Goal Area
Based on the National Standards for Foreign Language Education of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), there are five C's involved in learning foreign language that serves as the strands of leaning: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities (ACTFL, 2013, p. 2; Miller, 2019, p. 238). In the communication strand, the students’ needs to use their skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In culture strand, the students need to learn and understand different cultures. In comparison strand, the students compare the foreign language to their original language. In connections strand, the students relate their other subjects to improve their learning of foreign language. In communities strand, the students need to join community activities at home or at school (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1999, p. 14; Mikulec & Miller, 2011, p. 82). However, among the 5C's, the communication strand is the center of language learning since it engages students to exchange information and ideas regardless of form (Mikulec & Miller, 2011, p. 82). Therefore, this curriculum will focus more on the communication strand to engage the students in the Chinese class.
In the communication strand, the students focus on the exchange of information, idea, opinions and the like through listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Mikulec & Miller, 2011, p. 82). Additionally, the students are given the opportunity to use the foreign language in a wide range of activities. Contrary to the traditional memorization of terms, the communication strand uses active learning, where the student dive into using the foreign language, to gather relevant and understandable information; to learn from mistakes and improve those areas; to practice the target language through active communication; to communicate with different audiences; and to become confident with the use of the foreign language through subsequent use (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1999, p. 18). The communication strand promotes practical intelligence that is more relevant in real life matters such as foreign language learning (Resnick, 1987, p. 13), the communication strand promotes practical intelligence that is more relevant in real life matters such as skill acquisition.
The standard of communication strand needs to explore the three communication types or 3P’s: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1994, p. 14). In interpersonal communication, the student will converse in the preferred language with other speakers with adequate proficiency of the language being learned. The student only needs to converse with simple oral vocabulary. This part utilizes two-way communication between individuals. In interpretive communication, the students will interpret symbols and ideas from using a written or spoken language. This is a one-way communication where a student will enhance his/her own compression in viewing, listening and reading. In presentational communication the students present different ideas and concepts of different topics in the language class to mediate their learning on whether it can be understood by the listeners. This is also a one-way communication where the students will enhance their skills by showing their work (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1994, p. 21).
The standards provide necessary skills that should be learned, these frameworks don’t necessarily improve engagement. Based from the study of Miller (2019, p. 239), having a mastery approach goal setting improve the engagement of the students in school. For example, goals in mastery approach would be "One of my goals in class is to learn as much as I can (Miller, 2019, p.239)." Added by Miller (2019), this goal setting provides a student a positive orientation with regards to academic excellence and persistence in learning.
Massachusetts Foreign Languages Appendix J: Technology Literacy Competencies
In studying foreign languages, we need to take into consideration the multiple literacy in modern society. Therefore, the practice of teaching, especially language acquisition, needs the different medium of literacy to empower the students in appreciating their learning as valuable in addressing the demands of society in both the present and the future (Kellner, 1998, p. 103). Technological tools are known to significantly improve the learning curve of the students (Goodwin-Jones, 2009, p. 4). The technology literacy competencies improve the student’s awareness and analysis skills by using and understanding educational technology (Kellner, 1998, p. 104).
Based on the Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework (199, p. 81), technology competencies are divided into six categories: basic skills and operations; social, ethical, and human issues; technology productivity tools; technology communication tools; technology research tools; and technology problem-solving and decision-making tools. In basic skills and operations, the students should be able to learn to operate devices and communicate about technology using the appropriate terminologies. Technology, specifically computer assisted speech analysis, help the students to closely monitor their language acquisition by paying attention to the proper pronunciation of the speaker (Goodwin-Jones, 2009, p. 4). In foreign language class, the students use the appropriate applications and programs to speak, write, check grammar or pronunciation, and print a document (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1994, p. 81). Using these technologies, the students can receive feedback on the areas that needs improvement like sentence patterns, visualization of the mouth formation and proper sound production (Goodwin-Jones, 2009, p. 4). In social, ethical, and human issues, the students should be able to work with other students, analyze proper etiquette when using technology, and analyze advantages and disadvantages of technology in society. This category will help the students understand the guidelines, where the students will learn to know acceptable behaviors and learn to be accountable for their own ideas (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1994, p. 81-82). In technology productivity tools, the students should be able to use tools and resources to manage and communicate information. In foreign class, the students can be tasked to write a story using the target language and edit the story afterwards. In technology communication tools, the students should be able to use technology resources to transfer information using emails or create web pages using the target language. In technology research tools, the students should be able to evaluate the accuracy and relevance of online information in target language using an online dictionary. The students can evaluate newspaper articles or peer reviewed journals in the target language, then synthesize the information to produce relevant end products (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1994, p. 82). Lastly, in technology problem-solving and decision-making tools, the students should be able to learn what tools are useful in addressing a certain task or problems. By identifying the research question, the students will learn to decide accordingly in analyzing the information needed and technology needed to complete the task (Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework, 1994, p. 83).
Project-Based Learning (PBL)
Project-based learning (PBL) is a model of learning that organizes the learning curve a student by making a project. Projects are complex activities in working towards a specific goal (Thuan, 2018, p. 329). Additionally, these projects are based on challenging questions or problems, projects involve students in design, problem-solving, decision making, or investigative activities. It often has three steps: illustrating problems, identifying problems and proposing a solution to the problem (Thuan, 2018, p. 329). Since the goal of this curriculum is to improve language proficiency of the students, projects that are integrated with language skills, which includes reading, writing and oral reporting, will be utilized. Unlike that traditional way of making the students learn by rote memorization, PBL promotes the idea of learning using meaningful instruction, that is known to create a long-term retention of the students compared to rote learning (Mikulec & Miller, 2011, p. 81).
Meaningful learning is useful in language acquisition since the learners engages with meaningful tasks (Mikulec & Miller, 2011, p. 82). For example, a teacher, rather than making the student complete routine language drills, the teacher can ask the students to draw a poster or bring a picture and describe the images in either written or oral form. In this situation, the student needs to talk in the language that he/she wants to learn. This activity presents a task that have an immediate meaningful purpose that is easily understood by the student.
In the study of Duman & Yavuz, (2018, p. 187), they presented the effect of PBL on increasing the academic excellence of the students including motivation, cognitive abilities, creativity and attitude. Among all these qualities, attitude is one of traits that contributes, either directly or indirectly, more in learning a foreign language (Duman & Yavuz, 2018, p. 187). Based on their study, PBL is effective in changing the attitude of the students towards their engagement in Chinese class.
In Stoller (2006), the following are the key criteria for effectively implement PBL: (1) must have a clear process and end product; (2) must have student participation when making the process and the product; (3) the project must be extensive and not just in a single activity but in all activities in a giving period of time; (4) must help the students integrate language learning with other skills in the project; (5) must the students develop understand language and content; (6) students must work with other students to promote sharing of ideas and collaboration; (7) must let the students be accountable with the results of their project including the ways of completing the project and the knowledge the students will learn while doing the project; (8) must have time for ...