Page 49 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Forms of evaluation and assessment of student videos

Regarding issues related to plurilingualism, as we can see above, almost two-thirds of stu-
dents said that they believe that by watching YouTubers and their multilingual channels,
they can learn/practice several languages at the same time. Some students explicitly ex-
pressed that after this project they were more aware of the effectiveness of the simultane-
ous perception of the heard form and/or written form of a language. At the same time, they
also repeatedly mentioned the effectiveness of watching multilingual channels of YouTu-
bers. According to the responses, working in multilingual teams on a common task allowed
the students to become more familiar with another foreign language, to gain understanding
of many unfamiliar words, to become aware of the similarity between words or whole lan-
guage structures, and to overcome fears of lack of comprehension when watching foreign
language videos.
The relatively high number of positive responses to the plurilingual aspect of the project
is probably due to the personal experience of the students, since the plurilingual approach
to language learning was new to most of them. Although the vast majority of students at
the beginning of the semester found watching foreign language YouTubers as an effective
means of learning a foreign language, 80% did not practice this activity (the question was
related to their second foreign language, not English). The project allowed students to get
acquainted with some foreign language YouTubers, to work more closely with a student of
another foreign language and to interact (dialogue, subtitling), albeit in a prepared way, in
the foreign language being studied.

Forms of evaluation and assessment of student videos

Good assessment is best achieved through the gathering of information about learners over
time, and through a combination of methods. It is up to the teacher to encourage learner
awareness, and to make the process as effective as possible. This is why we are inclined
to an action-oriented approach to teacher assessment in the classroom. As stated in the
CEFR Companion Volume (Council of Europe 2020), “the aim is to switch the focus to what
learners show they can do, providing assessment as and for learning (“learning-oriented
assessment”) and not exclusively assessment of learning.” The students’ work during the
entire didactic project was therefore assessed in different phases by several subjects, and
from different perspectives and with different aims.

Teacher – evaluator

The teachers provided oral and written feedback during the entire project, especially when
comparing the selected three YouTube videos in week 4, when creating the glossary, and
during the inal evaluation of the bilingual videos. We provided mostly formative feed-
back with an emphasis on how the teachers and learners perceived the program’s goals
and learning experiences.

Peer viewing of selected videos, peer review
In weeks 10–12, students had the opportunity to watch and comment on each other’s
videos. The students had to choose the three most interesting videos in their language

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