I teach FREN 3014 French Phonetics, which is a course that helps students improve their pronunciation of French and acquire a more native-like accent. In the past, a lot of the in-class time was spent on "coaching" students to improve their accent. Last summer, I was unsure how well I would be able to do that through Zoom – not entirely without foundation, as it turned out.  So early in the summer, I planned a hybrid delivery with five weeks of Face-to-Face (F2F) sessions (in weeks 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10) with a third of the class attending Monday, one third on Wednesday and the rest on Friday. Then the University said we all had to wear masks, so I revised for all Zoom delivery until I found out that face shields could count as masks.

Do you need to assign films for your Spring 2021 classes? The UMN Libraries and the Language Center are here for you.

My first reaction to Zoom for remote learning was quite Proustian, as the name brought back memories of a TV show largely created by kids for kids on American public television during the 1970s. The theme song which the kids sang at the start of every half-hour episode was: We’re gonna Zoom, Zoom, Zoom-a Zoom, come on and Zoom-a, Zoom-a, Zoom-a, Zoom! Come on give it a try, we’re gonna teach you to fly high!

CourseShare will remain a fully online program Spring 2021. Most of the classes offered are continuation courses, but there are a few entry-level courses of potential interest to graduate and upper-division undergraduate students. It is also possible for students to test into a course sequence.