Incorporating Voice, Choice, and Student Inquiry In Your Languages Class

Voice, choice, and student inquiry are some of the surest ways to get your students learning and retaining information more quickly. This isn’t only because they’ll have more fun doing so, like I wrote about in a previous post.

Research shows that when students can try things out on their own, and make their own decisions, their learning process is accelerated. Research also shows that students learn when they can reflect on their own mistakes, as I’ve written about elsewhere.

This article looks at two ongoing projects that can be used in a World Languages classroom to let student voice, choice, and inquiry shine. Once project focuses on culture, and the other project focuses on language.

Audiovisual Research

For my beginning level students, I had them research an aspect of culture, and deliver the finished product in as much Spanish as they could. This project has students turn in an audiovisual presentation (most would do short films) that is researched akin to what a research paper would be.

I told students that they could research a topic of their choosing within a designated broader theme. According to the marking period, students could research:

1. A tourist attraction