Rachida Primov Department of Modern Languages and Literatures University of Miami

 Student Evaluations Student Evaluations  205 Lab calendar 205 Lab calendar  201 Lab calendar 201 Lab calendar

At the beginning, we encouraged our students to use their own computers, assuming that they would prefer to do so and that it would be more efficient. We quickly learned that it was much more efficient for everyone to use the Lab computers. This allowed us to give the same instructions and procedures to all students, thus avoiding the operational idiosyncrasies of different computers and programs. Furthermore, this approach facilitated the process of allocating session partners by randomly assigning students to a Lab computer and, thus, simultaneously to a partner.

 Having all computers connected before the students arrive for a session, not only provides maximizes the time that students can interact with their partners, but has three additional advantages: 1. It allows the staff to identify and solve any unexpected technical or connective problems that may arise immediately before each session. 2. Students do not need to use or create personal Skype accounts. 3. All students can start and end their sessions at the same time.

Although self-evident, the issue of technical support is crucial for a successful session and for student satisfaction with the session. Immediate technical help to resolve connectivity problems makes a significant difference in how well sessions proceed. Long pauses caused by technical problems tend to undermine the rapport developed by partners and result in frustrated students who do not benefit very much from the session.

 The primary lesson here is that students are very enthusiastic about virtual immersion sessions and that once they get over their initial apprehension about having to speak the target language to a native speaker in real time, they become excited at having actually communicated in the target language and were quite ready to repeat their experience.  A secondary lesson is that our students found it quite satisfying to be able to help their partners communicate in English. This was especially true when the topics of conversation were about everyday life issues and cultural preferences.

We learned here that our initial apprehensions that the utilization of technologies like Skype, for conducting dialogues between students that were strangers to each other and that came from different cultures and spoke different languages, would create additional constraints on their ability and willingness to participate and engage successfully with each other. We found out that, on the contrary, students on both sides of the partnerships, were so familiar and comfortable with Skype that instead of being a distraction, it facilitated social exchange. In fact, it may have made the interactions less awkward than they would have been had the students engaged in the same task had they been both physically present with each other.

Students regarded their first session with some trepidation but once they were done, they seemed to enjoy the realization that they could actually converse in the target language. For many of them, this is quite a realization. Learning foreign languages is commonly seen by students as a difficult and uninteresting task of just learning nouns, conjugating verbs and memorizing idiomatic expressions, with no real purpose, all of a sudden had an interesting and unexpected payoff – they could actually speak to someone and be understood! What we have learned from this is that it is never too early to expose our students to immersion sessions because it provides them with a positive reinforcement when they actually do something with the language that they have started learning and it gives them with an incentive to learn the language.

The lesson learned from the responses to Q6 must be tempered by what we learn from Q7. Although students were very positive about their experiences with an immersion session, it is also clear that the experience was stressful for many of them and that they would not welcome a very frequent exposure to them. It appears that even one weekly session would be a bit too much. There is a strong preference by the students for a biweekly sessions. We should heed this as a cautionary note against scheduling too many immersion sessions in any course in order to avoid the sessions becoming uninteresting or too routine.

The lesson here is that a significant majority of the students prefer to be paired with a new student each session. One conclusion about this preference is that students view the immersion sessions as an opportunity to meet new people their age, especially if they are from another country, and to meet as many of them as possible. Another conclusion, is that from a pedagogical point of view, it is probably better to avoid pairing up the same students because they are more likely to go off topic or run out of topics to discuss.

The important lesson to be drawn from the responses to this question is that this is not a very good question, since the responses to it are highly predictable. Students view the immersion sessions as an enjoyable experience and do not feel that it should be a graded component of their course. Instructors who wish to grade the sessions may want to wait and grade only the last, or last two, sessions. Presumably, by then, having had experience with one, two or three previous sessions, students will be more at ease and will perform better under graded conditions. If a grade has to be involved, then the effort as much as the outcome should be considered.

Clearly, most students would choose a class with an immersion session component, if they had a choice. This shows strong support for the program. A small minority would prefer a class without an immersion session component. But what about the twenty-five percent of students who seem indifferent to the experience? We suspect that they are indifferent for several different reasons. They may have had disappointing sessions, the sessions may have been too stressful for them, they may have disliked their partners, they may be very shy and introverted, or they may not have had enough sessions to become comfortable with them.