Innovation in Language Learning

Today, business-related higher education in Belgium has to deal with a complex situation in foreign language education, and specifically for French. First, we see how the general level of incoming students decreases every year. Often, first-year students barely achieve level A2 at the start of their higher-education studies, where the expected level is at least B1. Even though French is the second foreign language in Flanders (Dutch speaking part of Belgium), and children are introduced to the beautiful French language when they are 10 years old, today's students are barely motivated to learn and speak French. They assume they can solve everything with English, which is absolute nonsense considering the bilingual context of Belgium. Further, we notice a growing influx of foreign students (e.g. from the Netherlands), and these students often have little or no basic knowledge of the French language. But in this group, we also find bilingual students with French as first or second language. The significant discrepancy between the different language levels of the students causes traditional education and classical teaching methods to fail, as there is always a specific group of students who are insufficiently supported or challenged and thus drop out. Up to about two years ago, we used to focus on the average students, but we were often criticised by French-speaking students, who found the lessons to be uninteresting, not challenging enough and lacking in quality. From the professional field we received feedback that the French language level of our graduating students was insufficient. As a result, many students did not qualify for certain jobs, even though they had the right diploma. As a motivated and passionate French lecturer, these past few years I have been looking for methods to deal with the linguistic diversity in my class groups and to support and coach every student individually to help them achieve a higher level. Thus, blended learning and flipping the classroom became the basic principles of my approach. With these two principles, I was able to make my lessons interactive, motivating, authentic, language-supportive, self-guiding and talent-creating. I like to get the opportunity to tell my story and to share my good practices with colleagues during this conference.

Keywords: Blended learning; inspirational session; French; foreign language education; learning paths; flipping the classroom;