Interpersonal Task Design in a Mixed French IV Class
At a French immersion middle school, Ms. Chen’s French IV class of 30 includes six heritage speakers who grew up speaking French at home and eight students who have never traveled. The current interpersonal task asks pairs to plan a three-day trip to Montréal with a budget of 300 Canadian dollars and present the itinerary to the class. During the first trial, three pairs completed the planning in English, two heritage speakers did almost all the talking, and the presentations were mostly read from notes. The rubric rewards accurate verb forms, pronunciation, and a complete itinerary; negotiation of meaning is not mentioned. Ms. Chen has two 45-minute periods before the assessment and wants the task to measure interpersonal communication, not just vocabulary recall or presentation polish.
1. Revise the task and grouping so that the assessment actually elicits interpersonal negotiation rather than a rehearsed presentation. Include at least three specific changes and explain why each matters.
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First, change the product from a polished itinerary presentation to an information-gap decision that requires exchange: each partner gets a different set of constraints (one has a museum pass valid only on Saturday; the other has a host family curfew), and they must agree on a plan without showing their cards. This creates a genuine need to ask, clarify, and compromise. Second, assign roles that rotate and require each student to initiate at least two moves-proposing, questioning, disagreeing, summarizing; the teacher can collect a simple tally. Third, group deliberately: avoid pairing two heritage speakers together and avoid pairing the strongest with the weakest in a way that lets one dominate; use triads with a defined observer role or pairs matched by complementary strengths, and give heritage speakers a different kind of contribution, such as requiring them to ask for justification rather than supplying vocabulary. Fourth, remove the whole-class presentation; present to one other pair in a 90-second recap, which reduces reading from notes.
These changes matter because interpersonal communication is unrehearsed negotiation of meaning, not memorized display.
2. Propose a revised rubric with three criteria and describe what a score at the middle of each criterion would look like. Explain how the rubric shifts attention from accuracy to interaction.
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Criterion 1: Task completion and negotiation. Did the pair reach a justified itinerary within budget? Middle: reaches a workable plan but needs teacher prompting once; some constraints are ignored.
Criterion 2: Interactive moves. Initiating, responding, clarifying, and repairing. Middle: asks and answers questions, but clarification is mostly “Comment?” and repair is limited; participation is uneven.
Criterion 3: Language resources and comprehensibility. Vocabulary, time and money expressions, verb forms, and pronunciation as they support meaning. Middle: understandable with some errors that occasionally require repetition; uses familiar structures but limited range.
The rubric shifts attention because accuracy is one criterion among three and is described in terms of comprehensibility, not native-like form. A student who makes errors but sustains the negotiation can score well on criteria 1 and 2. The teacher should also weight evidence from the interaction, not the final itinerary’s polish, and should not award high scores for a rehearsed script.
3. How should Ms. Chen handle the heritage speakers’ dominance and the use of English without turning the heritage speakers into co-teachers or punishing them? Give a plan for the two class periods.
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She should treat the dominance as a task-design and participation problem, not a heritage-speaker problem. In period 1, she models the information-gap task with a student, publicly charts the moves she wants (proposer, demander une précision, refuser poliment, résumer), and assigns a timekeeper and observer role that rotates every five minutes so no one controls the conversation. She gives all students a participation tally with a target of two initiations and two responses; heritage speakers are not exempt. If English appears, she uses a consistent signal (“En français, s’il te plaît”) and provides a useful phrase bank rather than shaming.
In period 2, she pairs heritage speakers with students who need a model for a short warm-up, then returns them to mixed pairs for the assessed task; this uses their strength without making them responsible for others’ learning. She also conferences briefly with the heritage speakers to ask what they want to work on-likely formal register or writing-so the task is challenging for them too. Equity means everyone has a demanding role.