>> Okay so I chose this little, what's a called a contexte
because this is the very first page of this chapter
which is a vocabulary presentation.
As you can see it's very richly contextualized,
all of the vocabulary that's appearing.
So keep in mind that these are first year students in French.
Some of them have had some high school French
but the course is developed
for beginning learners, for true beginners.
Okay? So I will just read you this little paragraph here.
I'll give you an English translation.
So my native country is the island of Haiti,
I love in Port au Prince.
I am a civil servant.
When I work, I am very friendly and polite with the public.
I look for and often I find solutions to problems.
I have a very demanding job, therefore, I really need rest
and relaxation in my free time.
I often spend my Saturday afternoons at the seaside,
that's my favorite pastime.
Okay, so this is page one of Chapter Two,
for what we are often assuming
to be true beginners in a French course.
So what do you think the reaction might have been
from our students when they encountered this?
>> Frustrated.
>> Sorry?
>> Frustrating.
>> Frustrating, exactly.
>> It's overwhelming for them.
>> Absolutely, overwhelming.
>> Yeah.
>> You agree?
Okay.
>> I probably wouldn't even look at it, like if I were a student
in class I would just skip that page and move on to exercises.
>> Right. Yes.
Okay well it gets worse because the vocabulary list is
at the very end of the chapter and unfortunately,
most of the words in here are not in that vocabulary list.
So students then flip back to the glossary
in the back of the book.
Well, the words aren't there either.
So what do you think the number one concern becomes
of the students when they come to class the next day?
>> Being prepared.
>> They don't know what they're exactly supposed to know.
>> Exactly.
They don't know what they're supposed to know especially
for the looming test, which is coming
up in a week and a half, right.
Which words do I need to know for the test?
You know, that's the number one question.
You know, what do I need to know for the test.
It's very hard to tell them, you know.
What do you say?
Well you're only responsible for the words in the vocabulary list
at the end of the chapter.
If that's the case, what is their motivation
to learn these other words?
There really isn't one.
So let's see.
So the students were extremely frustrated.
So what they were requesting, again kind of based
on their experiences with this book,
they were requesting a slower progression
to language appearing in rich context.
So we had to kind of strike a balance
between what we knew students needed in order
to learn vocabulary effectively and retain vocabulary
and what students were requesting.
They wanted vocabulary lists and vocabulary lists were kind
of a thing of the past and vocabulary lists appeared
in most textbooks at the end of chapters,
kind of to pull everything together
that students had seen throughout the chapter.