Kevin Jenson and Dr. Christopher Oscarson, Scandinavian Studies Director
One of the most difficult aspects of teaching a foreign language course is finding materials that are in line with the methodology and learning objectives specific to the class being taught. In the case of languages that are more commonly taught, such as French or Spanish, there is a lot of sorting that needs to be done in order to find the right text. For languages that are less commonly taught, however, such as Danish, there are only a handful of resources available, and unfortunately, many of them are not designed for an American university education. Since the vast majority of all Danish speakers live in Denmark, a small country of about 5 million people, most Danish textbooks are designed for foreigners living in Denmark, so the approach and learning outcomes are different than those of BYU students learning Danish.
The purpose of my project was to create a curriculum and materials for Danish 202 which would build upon the pedagogical style used in teaching languages at BYU, as well as serve as an introduction to Danish literature and art as mandated by BYU GE requirements, thus preparing the students to take advanced courses such as Danish Literature. Our goal was to create about 30 lesson plans that included in-class and out-of-class activities that would guide them in exploring the literature and art of Denmark and help them to form and express their own opinions about it. All of this was to be in the form of an interactive website that would function as an online textbook, workbook and assessment tool all in one.
During the summer of 2009, with the assistance of Dr. Oscarson and the resources available through the ARCLITE Lab associated with the BYU Center for Language Study, I began to compile a list of language functions that ought to be covered, as well as a list of the pieces of literature, music, art, architecture and film that would be the basis of the coursework. This basic framework served as a springboard for the work that I did after receiving the ORCA grant, namely the actual creation and implementation of the lesson plans.
Most of this was done concurrently with my teaching of Danish 202 in the winter semester of 2010. This was ideal because I could try different approaches and adjust my methods as I went. For example, it became clear to me early on that it would be more beneficial for the students if I were to cut down on the amount of material covered and focus instead on going into greater depth in our discussion of the literature. So I condensed my list and spent more time coming up with discussion questions and activities that would get the students more involved in their own learning. I feel that the students not only enjoyed it more that way, but I think they got more out of it as well, and acquired analysis skills that will be valuable to them in any field of study.
Though much of the project went as planned, I did encounter some difficulties that I hadn’t anticipated. From the beginning, we had decided to post the literature, assignments, quizzes, grades, etc. on BrainHoney for the students to access. The website was very helpful and intuitive in many ways, but the limitations of the possible assessment types made it difficult sometimes, and in some cases, I had to settle with a final product with which I wasn’t completely satisfied.
For example, online assessments on BrainHoney could only show one question on the screen at a time, so sometimes I had to format my quizzes differently from how I would have liked. In the future, it would be nice to create a website independent of an existing system, so I could customize the format to work better with my materials.
In the end, I was very pleased with the results of the project. Not only did I feel like the students were better able to use the Danish language effectively to express themselves by the end of the semester, but I also felt like they had gained valuable insight into the Danish culture by means of the cultural artifacts which they had studied throughout the course.
Last semester, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be a TA for Danish Literature, which is the returned missionary Danish class, and one of my previous Danish 202 students was a part of the class. In reality, this was the ultimate evaluation of the effectiveness of the curriculum project, since it made it clear whether or not we had met our objective of preparing the students for upper-level coursework. I wondered how a student who had learned Danish from the bottom up, and who had never lived in Denmark, would fare in a class designed for returned missionaries, but she ended up speaking and understanding at a similar level to everyone else in the class, and she even had an advantage when it came to analyzing literature, because of her experience in Danish 202.