Integrating Faith and Learning in the Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

Among the biggest challenges of teaching at a Christian institution of higher education is determining how best to integrate issues of faith into our teaching. Beginning level foreign language classes pose unique challenges for this integration because the students' language skills do not allow them to engage in extended discourse. Referring to both the Oral Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, and Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, I will demonstrate how issues of faith, religion, and spirituality do not necessarily need to be addressed at an advanced level of intellectual skill but can be accomplished through other student competencies that more accurately reflect their foreign language proficiency. This paper will examine this problem from two angles: incorporating a faith component into coursework (beginning level French), and incorporating a field of study (French) into a faith-based setting (weekly French chapel, or convocation). As a result of grappling with these two approaches, I have sought ways to bring them together to work in a mutually beneficial way so that there is a confluence of faith and learning between the French classroom and French convocation.