Projects

Progress reports 2002 - 2003

King Edward VII School / Lycée Jean Vigo

Staff

Eva Lamb / Claudine Sassiat

Email exchange

During this academic year Y13 students studying A-level French took part in an email exchange with students in terminale at the Lycée Jean Vigo. This proved to be very successful. It was a popular activity amongst both sets of students and both my French colleague Valérie Frayssinet and I believe that the project has had an important impact on the students’ motivation and their learning.

Although our original plan for this year was to run the exchange with Y12 students at King Edward’s at the start of the year we decided that it was easier to get regular access to our computer room when Y13s were timetabled. The Y13 students were also of the same age as the students which Eric Moulin and his new colleague Valérie wanted to include. These were to be catering students in terminale. We had initially had some reservations about a mismatch between these vocational students and ours who were following a more academic route. Nevertheless given that this was to remain purely an e-exchange I was confident that their different experiences would bring an extra interest to their correspondence.

Subsequently Eric Moulin was unable to get access to a computer room with his class and therefore the link worked between my two Y13 classes and one French class. This meant that some of the French students had two e-partners and they were asked to write one email addressed and sent to both of them. All emails sent were also copied to me and Valérie so that we could monitor the impact of exchange. Students were quite happy to do this and there were none of the anticipated complaints about an invasion of privacy.

Students sent one email every two weeks between mid October and the start of March. Our plan for this year was also to run the exchange with one Y10 class. Unfortunately Eric and Valérie only work in the lycée technique, did not have classes of this age group themselves and were not able to convince their colleagues to participate.

I chose some key topics from the A2 syllabus which I decided I would like our students to use as a basis for discussion on top of the ‘chat’ element which was proposed by the French school. These were transport, science and technology, politics, and racism. Valérie and I agreed that it would be best for the French students to write about these topics in their own language so that the English students could both acquire knowledge of modern French life and vocabulary and phrases for discussing these subjects. This was probably the most successful aspect of the exchange. Evidence of this can be seen in the appendix in Nadia’s comments on the research on human embryos. Tom’s lengthy message expresses clear opinions on the same topic and uses a pleasing range of topic specific phrases. Both of these qualities are important in A-level assessment criterion. However, according to my students the contact with a ‘real’ person of their age and the chat dimension to the messages were more important in maintaining their enthusiasm for this activity. Others spoke about having a genuine purpose for practising their writing skills and they were always more keen than usual to ask me vocabulary and to critically analyse their own writing. It was interesting that the peer correction of their e-partner’s writing, which I had envisaged, was rare. Students were clearly keen to respond to the content of their partner’s message and as long as communication was maintained they saw no point in correcting each other’s mistakes.

Until February half term we stuck pretty rigidly to the timetable of sending one message every two weeks. Students were aware of this and understood that if they were absent they were expected to ‘catch up’ by emailing their partner in their own time. Students on both sides were quite disappointed when they did not receive a message due to absence and clearly felt there was less point to putting down their own thoughts on the next topic. This was only a genuine problem in the case of two poor attenders one of who eventually dropped French. After February half-term the e-mail sessions got squeezed out by the pressure of completing coursework and exam preparation. For this reason we stopped the in-class sessions completely after Easter. Next year we should establish a timetable from the outset so that students are aware when they are writing their last messages in class. This will encourage greater numbers to continue to communicate outside of class.

Our plan for next year is as follows

To start the exchange with the new cohort of Y12 students as part of the GCSE – AS transition.
To establish by 21st September whether other staff at Lycée Jean Vigo are willing to co-ordinate a link involving KS4 classes. If not I will contact the TCT about finding another partner school for these classes.
To send digital photographs as attachments to letters of introduction.

Appendix: Examples of students' messages

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