Evaluations

The following are selected comments from my students. I have chosen those that best represent the majority of comments, as well as those that demonstrate my goals as a teacher and indicate areas for improvement.

Selected comments

• She had us all practice our speaking equally and even took the time to get to know us personally.
• She interacted well with the class, getting even the shy students to participate.
• I really appreciated all of the extensive notes given after presentations.
• I liked how we had a lot of classroom interaction. I felt that Rebecca facilitated it well.
• I really liked the instructor’s teaching methods; they were fun, creative, and interactive.
• Rebecca was enthusiastic about teaching and made students feel comfortable. I feel like the personal introductions/meetings helped with this.
• I liked that Rebecca fostered a very comfortable and open atmosphere where I always felt free to give input or ask questions.
• The instructor successfully created a healthy learning environment – she was very encouraging and gave great feedback.
• Rebecca was an amazing instructor. She explained things well and class was very relaxed so that it was not intimidating to speak in class. She was also very fun and open so it made the class more interesting and the material more fun to learn.

Areas for improvement

Most of the students wished for more open-ended conversations in class, to get away from the contrived scenarios of the textbook, and more chances to talk about real-world events. One of their favorite assignments was a news article activity where they prepared a summary and led a discussion of an interesting topic in the news. They liked the relevance as well as the debate aspect of this activity; I think it would be possible to incorporate much more of this into a conversation class. Generally, they wanted the class to be harder and to include even more idiomatic French. As one student put it, they wanted to “learn more skills pertaining to ‘sounding French.’” I would be reluctant to give up the textbook entirely, but getting away from it a little more could spice up this class in the way students would like.