THE USE OF ART IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

DEVELOPING LEARNERS' RECEPTIVE AND

PRODUCTIVE SKILLS BY ENGAGING WITH
MASTERPIECES FROM CLASSICAL TO MODERN ART
J’atteste que le présent travail de candidature a été réalisé de façon
indépendante sans autre aide que les sources mentionnées dans la
bibliographie. Les citations ainsi que les extraits de contenus provenant de
sources bibliographiques y sont clairement indiquées. Ce travail de
candidature n’a pas été publié auparavant. De ce fait, il n’a été ni présente à
d’autres intéressés, ni utilisé dans le cadre d’une autre structure d’examen.

Luxembourg, le 29 octobre 2013

Philippe Havé

2
 HAVÉ Philippe

professeur-candidat au Lycée Ermesinde Mersch

The use of Art in English language teaching:

developing learners' receptive and productive skills by

engaging with masterpieces from classical to modern art.

Travail de Candidature

2013

3
 Abstract:

Visual language is a very important means of communication in the modern

media society. The importance of photographs, for instance, has increased
enormously over the last century. Given the significance of visual communication in
real life, this thesis examines the role of visual material, and especially the visual
arts, in English language teaching (ELT). Since it deals with films, photographs and
paintings in the English classroom, the thesis also integrates findings and theories
from the field of art education with ELT. These two areas constitute the foundations
for an interdisciplinary project, culminating in an art exhibition organised by
intermediate level students for lower level students.
The first of the four main chapters consists of an overview of the theoretical
background to art education, which serves as a basis for the planning of the more
practical part of the project. The second chapter examines how art can be made
use of in the English classroom, especially in view of creating new learning
opportunities. Chapter three is a detailed description and analysis the of the art
exhibition project itself, which is essentially student-centred, with learner autonomy
and peer-teaching as important foci. The last chapter explores ways in which this
project could be recreated in other contexts.

4
 Table of contents:

Introduction 7

1. The Theoretical Cornerstones 11

1.1. Visual material 11

1.1.1. Visual material and language learning 11
1.1.2. Describing pictures 14
1.2. What is art? 15
1.3. Interdisciplinary teaching and learning: CLIL 19

2. Art in the Classroom 27

2.1. Methodology 27
2.1.1. Vocabulary 29
2.1.2. Committed students: learning by teaching others 34
2.1.3. The public face of the exhibition 39
2.1.4. Technology and learning 42
2.2. Assessing learning outcome 45
2.3. Art and critical thinking 46

3. The Art Exhibition Project 51

3.1. Class description: 4ème and 6ème 51

3.2. Preparing the project in the 6ème classes 52
3.2.1. Lesson 1: Getting started 53
3.2.2. Lesson 2: An improved version of the game 54
3.2.3. Lesson 3: Picture description 55

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 3.3. The art exhibition 58
3.3.1. Lesson 1: First steps 58
3.3.2. Lesson 2: Developing the concept 60
3.3.3. Lesson 3: Describing and interpreting pictures 61
3.3.4. Lesson 4: How to write an audioguide 64
3.3.5. Lesson 5: Writing a script 66
3.3.6. Lesson 6: Finishing the scripts 67
3.3.7. Lessons 7-9: Recording the audioguides 68
3.3.8. Lesson 10: Setting up the exhibition 70
3.4. The audioguides 71
3.5. The museum experience 82
3.6. Looking back on the project: student feedback 86

4. Conclusions and Outlook to the Future 89

4.1. Evidence of learning 89

4.2. Recommendations for the implementation in other contexts 95
4.3. Outlook to the future 97

Bibliography 100
Picture credits 105

Appendix A : Questionnaire 1 for 6ème students

Appendix B : Picture descriptions by 6ème students
Appendix C : 4ème students' first impressions of paintings
Appendix D : Reports about presentation 'How to write a good audioguide.'
Appendix E : Flyer and homepage for the art exhibition
Appendix F : Art exhibition feedback questionnaire and glossary
Appendix G : The Great Dictator still image description

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 Introduction

We live in the age of information and communication, and as a consequence

our lives are made more and more complex by a growing base of knowledge and
increasingly fast global exchanges. We are all eager for information about our
fellow human beings, and have provided ourselves with the technological means to
appease this hunger at any given time. Still, even if we are assisted by a multitude
of electronic gadgets, language remains our main means of social interaction, just
like it was in the last millennia.
If language is the most direct way of engaging with others, it is not the only
one, though. On the contrary, it can be considered one of the characteristics of the
modern media society that a considerable amount of exchange of information takes
place via visual language. Ever since the spread of mass newspapers the
importance of photographs has increased enormously, highlighted by the latest
craze of social media. This development has reached a point where on many
occasions the photographic representation of an event and its circulation through
the various online and offline media is more important than the event itself. Visual
communication becomes particularly significant if the public opinion is influenced by
manipulating visual records of events, for example in the context of politics, as
history has shown on many occasions.
It also is a well-established fact that we all communicate visually in the many
social situations of our everyday lives. Our eyes are drawn to the faces of people
around us, and we read them, consciously or subconsciously. We read other
people's body language in real life, as well as when we watch films or look at
photographs, because it gives extremely useful hints about their thoughts and
actions. Given the importance of visual communication in real life, discussing the
role of the visual in educating the next generation is a task that needs to be
confronted by teachers if English as a subject is to play a role in the larger context
of citizenship education.

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 Apart from this social responsibility that English as a foreign language has to
fulfil, there is also a very practical one. Being able to describe what one sees is one
of the basic skills one has to train when learning a language. This issue also has a
very pragmatical dimension, as students in the Luxembourgish education system
have to pass the 'examen de fin d'études secondaires'; an important part of the
English exam is an oral exam, where students have to analyse up to three pictures
or photographs.
When dealing with films, photographs and paintings in the English classroom,
great inspiration can be found in the subject matters of art education. This is the
conclusion I drew when outlining the basis of the interdisciplinary research project
that I am going to present on the following pages. My own personal interest in art
and my background knowledge were the significant motivational factors that guided
my initial research in this area, even if it was, of course, impossible to fully explore
the huge field of the visual arts in narrow confines of this project.
Another particular priority for its design was to make the project
predominantly student-centred, with learner autonomy and peer-teaching being the
important foci. I regard these as key concepts for my own professional development
in the on-going aim of improving my teaching practice. Moreover, they are relevant
to the further development of second language teaching and the Luxembourgish
school system in general.
Following the path staked out by the aforementioned considerations, my
thesis is divided into four main chapters. In the first part I provide an overview of the
theoretical background to the subjects of art education, both in the arts classroom
and when used in other subjects. The thoughts and reflections illuminated here
serve as a basis for the planning of the more practical part of my work.
This is why the second chapter is concerned with ways in which art can be
made use of in the English classroom. It is dedicated to an analysis of the role that
art already plays in English lessons, yet also aims to add new ideas to the current
practice.
I will then take a closer look at the art exhibition project itself in chapter three,

8
which comprises a description and a subsequent analysis of the different phases of
the project. As it was conducted in three different classes on two different language
learning levels, the tasks and activities the students worked on will be illustrated in
chronological order, meaning that the focus will first lie on the preparation of the
exhibition in 4ème as well as in 6 ème. Secondly, I will discuss the audioguides
themselves, the scripts and the finished product. Towards the end of the chapter the
focus will rest on the audience's, that is the 6 ème students', reactions to their
museum visit.
The last part, chapter four, is concerned with a conclusion, and with taking
stock of what has been achieved. The chapter ends with an outlook to the future, to
determine ways in which this project could be recreated successfully in other
classes or other schools.

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10
 1. The Theoretical Cornerstones

1.1. Visual material

1.1.1. Visual material and language learning

There is one certainty that every language teacher, and indeed any teacher,
can readily agree with. During lessons, students should engage in meaningful
activities, so that learning takes place, whichever the subject may be. Of course this
is a commonplace, yet it is the starting point for most lesson planning and research
about teaching. It is of some importance, moreover, because it is the last common
ground that researchers share, before moving off into different areas, or even
opposing hemispheres of learning theory. Different methods have surfaced, gained
popularity, and sunk into oblivion over the last decades. Some might be dismissed
as fads today, while others are still held in favour.
Some of the theories, methods and approaches that were involved in this
gradual, and still ongoing evolution form the theoretical foundations of this study.
They had a strong influence on the inspiration and the motivation for implementing
the project. This is why, before dealing with more practical aspects of working with
art in the classroom, this chapter provides the overview of the theoretical
foundations.
When working with visual material one needs to be aware of the main tenets
and the lasting influence of the direct method. In his very helpful dictionary of ELT,
Scott Thornbury writes that

This is an umbrella term for a wide range of language teaching

methods […]. They shared the belief that only the target
language should be used in the classroom, and that therefore
translation should be avoided at all costs. Instead of translation,

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 form-meaning associations should be established using real
objects, pictures, or demonstration. [...]
In the UK and Europe it became the fairly short-lived situational
approach, but its core principle, the exclusive use of the target
language, survives as an article of faith among many teachers
to this day. (2006: 66-67)

The advantages of pointing at real objects and telling their names in a classroom
where only the use of the target language is allowed is obvious. According to the
adherents of the direct method 'the real things themselves (called realia) […]' were
'even better than pictures of things.' (Thornbury, 2006: 11) The distinction between
visual material and realia is obviously an important one. It is a significant distinction
both for this project as well as for anyone using visual material in their lessons. It is
also a fundamental idea for one of the most famous surrealist paintings by René
Magritte, The Treachery of Images. For the observer the painting still serves as a
reminder that two-dimensional representations of objects are not the objects
themselves. The 4ème class that organised the exhibition chose to include it because
it is world-famous and because it has exerted an enormous influence on art history.
The imperative to only use the target language is somewhat dated, as
Thornbury writes. Therefore, this motive for using pictures and realia has fallen
away. 'Nowadays,' as he asserts, 'charts have largely been replaced with
projections from either an overhead projector (OHP) […], or a data projector.' (2006:
11) Technology has indeed simplified many aspects of teaching, while of course at
the same time creating new problems. Yet Thornbury adds that, 'for young learners,
where learning through activity and play is encouraged', realia still have their value
in the classroom. (2006: 11) This retrospective to the time when visual aids were
first used to assist the learning process, raises the question what function they can
still fulfil today.
Generally speaking, there are quite a number of advantages inherent in
including visual material in lessons, whether these are language lessons or other
subjects. Gower, Philips and Walters illustrate this thesis in their handbook
Teaching Practice. They explain that visuals 'attract the students' attention and aid

12
concentration', that they 'add variety and interest to a lesson', but they also 'help to
make the associated language memorable'. (2005: 70-1) The two former positive
aspects to using visuals are especially valuable in a school that works with ninety-
minute lessons. Concentrating for ninety minutes requires much more of an effort
than doing the same for fifty. Yet it is true that these attributes of visuals are also
useful in all other schools.
The handbook then illustrates how visuals achieve this effect. Gower, Philips
and Walters argue that visuals can be used to 'arouse interest and concentrate
attention at the beginning of a lesson', to 'elicit already known language' and 'create
a need for language which the teacher then satisfies', but also to 'stimulate
discussion'. (Gower, Philips, Walters 2005: 70-1) Arousing interest and focusing the
students' attention are always positive. Similarly, occasions where students can use
the areas of language they have already learnt are always worthwhile creating, as it
reinforces their capability in those areas.
The third point mentioned above concerns creating 'a need for language'.
This occurs when a learner wants to communicate about a certain topic, but lacks
the necessary vocabulary or tenses. When the teacher provides this language the
student is using the target language in, what Vygotsky calls, his zone of proximal
development (ZPD), the next level of linguistic development. The teacher supports
him in his use of the new language elements, and gradually removes this
'scaffolding', until the learner has enlarged his grasp of the language by a small
amount. (Pritchard, 2009: 24-25)
The last way in which visual material can support the language learning
process mentioned by Gower, Philips and Walters was by stimulating discussion.
Discussions are useful classroom activities in their own right, because learners
engage in meaningful conversations in the target language. Furthermore, they help
develop their analytical and critical thinking skills, because discussions usually
force the speakers to form and voice their opinions.
The overarching motivation giving the students the occasion and the time to
talk is the aim to reach a healthy balance between teacher talking time (TTT) and

13
student talking time (STT). Research suggests that teachers should not give
lectures, yet they should not talk too little either. Teacher talk has essential functions
in the language learning process, namely input, feedback and learner-teacher
interaction, as Thornbury writes. (2006: 225) All of these functions further the
students' language learning process.

1.1.2. Describing pictures

When showing a photograph or a picture in class, the answers and reactions

the teachers get from the students depend to a large extent on the questions they
ask. Designing lessons that rely to a large extent on questioning the students is a
form of teaching that has been developed to a high level of refinement in the
teacher-centred area of classroom methodology, the ‘Fragenentwickelnder
Unterricht’, as it is called in German. (Mattes, 2011: 90-91) According to some,
there are indications that a teacher-centred approach has many advantages.
Herbert Gudjons wrote an entire book in the effort of rehabilitating its positive
aspects:

Frontalunterricht ist tatsächlich – bezogen auf bestimmte Ziele –

eine sehr effektive Unterrichtsform. Die Lehrerin kann sehr
sorgfältig vorausplanen und vorbereiten, Alternativen für den
Unterrichtsverlauf vorher überlegen. (2007: 47)

The important point to stress here, is that, as Gudjons writes, teacher-centred

is effective, if used for appropriate aims, and at the right time.
Some of the prompts or questions that a teacher asks in a lesson might
engender a relatively large amount of reaction from the students, others relatively
little. In the latter case, however, one should not conclude that they have nothing to
say about what they are being shown. On an unspoken, subconscious level, we
always process what we see. We also think about it on a conscious level.
Instinctively, when we look around us, or if our attention is drawn to something, we

14
are able to observe an impressive amount of detail. Nevertheless, when they are
asked to explain what they see most people find it difficult to put all this detail into
words.
Even the most simple example will serve as illustration here for many
situations encountered in class in the course of this project. Students are shown a
photograph of a chair and asked 'What is this?' or 'What can you see on the
photograph?'. A typical student answer would be: 'It’s a chair.' An imprecise
question such as this requires a follow-up question. This could have been avoided
by asking a more precise question in the first place, for instance about the defining
qualities of the chair. Students might describe whether it is made of wood, metal or
plastic, what colour, shape and size it is, and whether it is old or new.
Sometimes we are inhibited because of the context of the situation: we do
not know how much, or which kinds of detail the other person wants. Students
behave similarly in class. Frequently we can observe that some, although perhaps
not all, depending on personality, are inhibited to describe an object or a picture
they see for the first time while having to use their still imperfect English in front of
their peers. One can conclude that how much and what kind of information is
elicited from the students depends to a large extent on the teacher's skill in asking
questions.

1.2. What is art?

From a certain point of view, a work of art is quite simply a visual message.
Depending on the context it tells the audience something about the artists, about
ourselves, or about society in general. From this rather pragmatic perspective,
anything, perhaps even everything could be regarded as art. However, this has not
always been the case. It is easy to forget that the definition of art has broadened
over time, especially during the last century. For there is another, very different and

15
more narrow way of defining what is art and what is not. For a long time, the
profession of the artist was dominated by men. Consequently, even during the first
half of the twentieth century, most successful artists in Western society were white
men. Even if there are exceptions, this summary is true in the perception of most
students who discuss art history in class. They learn that most of these artists have
in common that they usually painted with oil on canvas, that some of them also
created watercolours, drawings or engravings.
Of course it is obvious that there are still white men alive today who put oil on
canvas with remarkable commercial success, for example Lucian Freud or Gerhard
Richter. Yet the artistic, or indeed visual, landscape has become much more
diverse, thereby altering and expanding our understanding of what it is exactly that
constitutes art. It is helpful, again, to consider Freedman’s views on visual culture:
‘In the past, types of media, levels of technical skill, and compositional
sophistication played a large part in determining whether an object was considered
a work of art. [...] what was once considered mundane, has become profound in its
effects.’ (Freedman 2003: 11) In other words, the definition of what constitutes art
has widened. It now includes techniques, professions and people that would not
previously have been regarded as art or artists.
This paradigm shift is connected to the simple inevitability of technological
progress and social change. The possibilities, in other words the material means,
used to be much more limited fifty, and most certainly a hundred years ago. Apart
from the tools, like paper, computers or musical instruments, time is another luxury
good that is a necessary resource for producing art. Today, a much larger
proportion of the population have easy access to these resources. Industrially
produced paint has become affordable, electronic devices have spread to every
household, even every room, and most people who have benefited from a state-
subsidised education in Western societies do not have to labour from sunrise to
sunset to earn a living. Consequently, many people are actively producing art, often
without having had a formal training in one of the classical branches of the fine arts.
Making art, or spending money on art, has become a feature of everyday life, not

16
least because the new art forms, like pop music or graffiti, have an extremely
positive image. A parallel development is the reason for this. Many activities that
are recognised as art today were formerly defined as crafts, and therefore not
worthy of 'real' artists attention.
Dave Allen writes about the role of oil painting in the context of contemporary
events of global importance. It is the technique par excellence traditionally
associated with high-brow art, yet it seems to have lost some of its significance
today, at least in his opinion:

[…] few people will forget the immediate visual horror of the
terrorist destruction of New York's World Trade Center in
September 2001. Major events are now mainly visual and
immediate and oil paint just is not quick enough to compete with
digital representations. It has a role, but documenting the
present is not it. (2003: 100)

His argument is based on the fact that world events become globally important
because in the wake of the digital revolution almost everyone on the planet has the
means to see the visual representation of an event relatively soon after it happens.
Close on 3000 people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the event had serious
and far-ranging repercussions, so that some define it as the real beginning of the
21st century. (Shashi Tharoor, Times of India, 2007). In describing the visual horror
of the attacks as 'immediate' he points to the instinctive pitying revulsion one feels
at the pointless deaths of so many people. He also indicates the speed with which
news of the event raced the globe and the fact that millions of people followed the
dramatic developments live on television.
In terms of immediacy, the internet and television, at one remove also old-
fashioned printed newspapers, beat the 'slower' media like films, books and, of
course, oil paintings. Those who use these different means of communication, as
they might be called, all react to an event at the same time. Yet the reaction time for
film makers is longer than for people who post photos or videos recorded by their
mobile phone cameras on Twitter. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the

17
slower media are also longer lasting. A book has a longer life expectancy than a
twitter message, even if it is not a bestseller. In Allen's example of the 9/11 attacks,
everyone remembers and is constantly confronted by press photographs and video
footage, mostly this is because they are being reprinted or recycled in books and
films.
Posts on Facebook, Youtube videos and tweets on twitter are quickly
produced and in some cases have a wide audience, just because of their
immediacy. While it is true that, for example, Facebook does not forget any
information, it lives off the fact that there is a strong and constant influx of new
information. As soon as older messages are superimposed by new posts or tweets,
new impressions, they go the way of all yesterday's news: to oblivion. Joseph
Beuys' might well fit all this online activity into his concept of the Erweiterten
Kunstbegriff, were he still alive to witness it. (Chilvers, 2003)
Nevertheless, for a majority of people who do not live in Silicon Valley the
virtual reality, just as virtual art, has not quite yet reached the same level of
importance as the real world. For these people it is important that they can see,
touch, and possibly gift-wrap real objects. This seems paradoxical, since a film can
impress, move or bore just as well if it is watched online via an illegal video
streaming channel than if one appreciates it at home on DVD. Yet the fact remains
that a DVD box makes the film seem more real. It seems, therefore, that we have
assigned the new media on one hand, and the traditional on the other two distinct
roles. This has happened without there being any kind of vote, or international
agreement. It has simply become, for the time being, the status quo. One could
infer that the value of a work of art, in a certain respect, increases alongside the
time it takes to produce it, not because the cost of labour is higher, but because it
leaves a perceptible mark in our personal reality.
Naturally the relatively recent development of what a work of art actually is
has direct consequences on how art is taught in schools. Freedman notices an
imperative need for art education to adapt to the changed circumstances.

Today, art education must have less to do with information

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 distribution and more to do with ideas, analysis and appraisal.
Teaching visual culture is about students making and viewing
the visual arts to understand their meanings, purposes,
relationships, and influences. (2003: 11)

This is one of the important fundamentals that I focused on especially when

researching and planning this project. Ex cathedra lectures are not at all useless in
themselves, yet a large part of pedagogical research up to now has been devoted
to finding alternatives.

1.3. Interdisciplinary teaching and learning: CLIL

The teachers of the three main languages that Luxembourgish students are
learning, German, French and English, are constantly in search of topics to discuss
in class. The reason is of course because almost at every occasion when we use
language, we use it to communicate about something. The only exception is
linguistics, where the language and languages themselves are examined. The
traditional topics encountered in lower level classrooms are the language needed in
everyday exchanges, whereas reading and analysing literature are reserved for
higher level classes. It should be clear, though, that this can only be a narrow view
of reality.
In recent decades, however, the topics traditionally treated in other subjects
have found their way into English language classrooms. It makes sense, after all,
for students who are learning a language, to improve their knowledge of the culture
and the history of the people who speak it. An important factor to consider is that
even those Luxembourgish students who study history at leaving class level do not
get to know very much about the history of the English speaking countries. The
national history curriculum is too focused on Luxembourg and its immediate
neighbours to allow for this. The main reason for this narrowing down are time
constraints. Most classes only have one or two history lessons per week, which is

19
why priorities have to be set. The only possible exception is the history of the USA,
as it is at the origin of many recent developments, not only in art, but also in society
as a whole.
This is why the history of Britain and the Commonwealth, to use an umbrella
term, has to be dealt with in the English lessons, if at all. There is a beneficial side
effect to including a wider range of topics, for example music, science or food, in
the English lessons. It makes learning and teaching more varied and more
interesting for those involved in the learning process, the learners and teachers.
Therefore, ideally, lesson time would be used more efficiently, and more learning
should be taking place.
There certainly are teachers who know this instinctively, or by being able to
judge their learners' reactions and progress due to their professional experience.
For all those without the benefit of these insights of instinct and experience, or
those who are more easily convinced by scientific arguments than instinct and
experience, learning theory has produced highly interesting research in this context.
The researchers inquiring into the use of elements from other subjects in English
language classrooms have come to the conclusion that it has a beneficial effect on
the language learning process. For example, this method allows discussing events
and developments in English history in a more flexible way. Nevertheless, it is
justified to ask in the context of the art exhibition project whether art should be
discussed in an English lesson at all. After all, one could argue that art rightfully
belongs into the subject of art education that has its established place on the
curriculum.
In the most simple terms, interdisciplinary learning and teaching means
combining two or more subjects in one lesson, or course. As always when setting
out into this particular direction one needs to be aware of the difficult decision of
how much of the two or more subjects to include, and how to combine them.
Neither are they going to be perfect art lessons, as in the example of this project,
nor are they going to be perfect English lessons. The reason why interdisciplinary
sequences, projects or activities are nevertheless beneficial in view of the learning

20
outcome is that there is an added value resulting from the combination. Art
education is a very interesting topic, offering manifold opportunities for language
lessons. However, in this research project English language teaching (ELT) was the
main focus of attention.
Teachers who use English to teach other subjects, like science or geography,
are working in the area of content and language integrated learning, or CLIL, as
Thornbury writes. He further describes it as belonging ‘firmly in the tradition of the
strong form of the communicative approach, in that there is no predetermined
language syllabus. Instead instruction is organized solely around the content.’
(2006: 51) This description fits particularly well the philosophy of how English is
taught in the Lycée Ermesinde. In contrast to most of the other schools in
Luxembourg no subject has a fixed syllabus, as it functions under its own school
legislation. Therefore the national curricula do not apply here. The only exception
are the 1ère classes, since they do the standard national ‘examen de fin d’études
secondaires’ together with their counterparts in the other ‘lycées’ across the
country. This is why integrating a wide variety of topics and activities into a
language course, for example, is not an exception, but the norm. Here, the theory
of CLIL is put into practice.
In his explanation, Thornbury goes on to clarify the close relationship of CLIL
to ‘immersion teaching,

whereby learners in a situation of additive bilingualism [...] take

all or some of their school subjects in a second language.
Immersion teaching has been shown to be effective in some
contexts, such as Canada. Here, English-speaking children
receive content instruction in French, with no detriment to their
English nor to their subject knowledge, and with impressive
gains in French. (2006: 51)

The situation Thornbury describes here is very similar indeed to the current state of
the Luxembourgish education system, where immersion teaching is an important
part of the philosophy behind the system.
At the very start of primary school, in their first year, all Luxembourgish

21
children are taught to read and write in German. Although there is an ever-
increasing number of non-Luxembourgish children who go to school here, German
is a second language for most students. Most of the subjects in secondary school,
like history, maths and sciences are taught in this language, until German is
eventually replaced by French, another second language. At the end of their career
in secondary school, young Luxembourgers have become extremely proficient in
these languages, in comparison to teenagers in the other European countries. The
overall aim of this development in the education system is to prepare them well for
their professional lives, where they will be expected by colleagues and superiors to
successfully deal with intercultural encounters where they will have to use multiple
languages, often at the same time.
The reason why this works particularly well for most students and teachers is
explained in the next part of Thornbury's text. He continues:

Content and language integrated learning instruction probably

works best where teachers are adept not only at teaching the
subject matter, but also at addressing their learners’ language
needs, such as being able to modify their own classroom
language, and to provide ‘in flight’ assistance when necessary.
(Thornbury 2006: 51)

This ''in flight' assistance', as Thornbury calls it, is undoubtedly most needed in the
lower level classes in secondary school, the 'cycle inférieur'. Teachers are aware of
this, and most of them went through the same system that employs them later in
life. Moreover, most teachers acquire their degrees in a country where the language
that they will later use to teach, the 'langue véhiculaire', is a first language. Maths,
for instance, is taught only in French all through secondary school, which is one of
the reasons why most Maths teachers completed their studies in a French-speaking
country. As it is taught in German in primary school, Maths teachers have the
sometimes difficult duty to accustom the 7 ème students to using French in the first
year of secondary school.
It is clear, therefore, that the situation in Luxembourg is very similar to that in

22
Canada. The only important difference is that in our school system, students have
to be able to cope with being taught more subjects in second languages than their
Canadian contemporaries. It is only logical, therefore, to make use of the benefits
inherent in CLIL and the Luxembourgish students' proven capacities for content
instruction in a second language. Consequently, designing a lesson sequence that
has a topic from outside the usual scope as a central element is well founded in
ELT theory.
After asserting the benefits of including other subjects in English lessons, a
final question remains to be answered, however. Why should art take precedence
over music, for example, or drama? After all, they also represent very traditional art
forms. Moreover, they are both essentially language based, to a very large extent,
which would seem to make them ideally suited for such a project. Indeed, most of
the music that Luxembourgish secondary school students listen to has English
lyrics, as long as it has lyrics at all. Almost all the popular musical trends of the last
decades originated either in the United States or in Britain. Similarly, there are
many plays that could be staged with students at intermediate level. These are
certainly ideas that lend themselves to project work with students at all secondary
school levels. Films, I find, are a further art form that is often rewarding to deal with
in class, as they usually arouse students' interest very easily. Many excellent films
were originally produced in English, even if students might watch a synchronised
version on German or French television.
Nevertheless, my final choice was in favour of the visual arts, or, more
precisely, painting. One reason for this decision was my competence in this area,
as opposed to others, as well as personal preference. I consider myself as more
competent in teaching art-related topics than in teaching music or drama. By
teaching drama I mean, in this context, the staging of a play, which is very different
from analysing the text. Analysing a play in class is, of course, an important part of
my repertoire as an English teacher. I know more about the topic, firstly because I
was in a 'section E' myself, the art class in 1ère, but also because I have retained a
strong interest in art ever since.

23
 Art, as a subject, has its place in the traditional Luxembourgish school
system, although it only has secondary importance in the well-established, yet
controversial system that attributes a coefficient to every subject. The weighting is
distributed in such a way that Mathematics and the three languages, German,
French and English, are the most important, carrying the coefficient 4. For most
1ère students, art is simply an unimportant subject that used to be part of their
timetable before they started focusing on the more 'serious' subjects during the last
two or three years in secondary school. The only exceptions are the art class,
‘section E’, in certain schools, and the art class in the Lycée technique des Arts et
Métiers.
Even if many teachers do not share this somewhat snobbish attitude towards
art, they were nevertheless trained to focus exclusively on the narrow confines of
their own subject. This is why they have no interest in, and do not put into practice
the possible advantages of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Naturally, there
are also quite a few teachers who do think outside the conventional avenues and
do remarkable work that is inspiring for their students as well as for their
colleagues.
My choice to focus on art, however, was mainly based on the current design
of the ‘examen de fin d’études secondaires’. Luxembourgish students need to pass
this exam in order to complete the classical branch of the secondary school system.
For most students, English is one of the subjects that constitute this final exam.
Although some students have the possibility to drop one language in their final year,
only a minority choose to drop English. French and German generally seem to be
less popular as exam subjects, or less likely to yield high marks, in the students'
opinion.
One part of the English exam is the oral exam, or oral interview. It is divided
into three parts, all of which focus on the same topic. The first part consists of up to
three pictures or photographs, which the students first have to describe, then
analyse and interpret. The second part are up to three text extracts, usually taken
from newspaper articles about this topic, which students have to read and comment

24
on. The last task is a more general discussion question. The first task in the oral
interview usually sets the tone for the exam, being the first impression that the
examiners get of the students. It is of some importance, therefore, to perform well in
this part.
It is undoubtedly a significant advantage for the students to have done
regular training in this type of activity before they take their final exams. It is
certainly true that it is not necessary to start practising the oral exam at 4 ème level.
Preparation for this will start in their penultimate year and continue throughout their
final year before the exam. Nevertheless there is no harm, and quite a lot of good,
in learning the necessary basic speaking skills and analytical techniques earlier
than in 1ère.

25
26
 2. Art in the Classroom

The aim of teaching is to make learning take place, broadly speaking. Since
time and energy of both learners and teachers are limited, every teacher’s efforts
should focus on making as much learning take place as possible. If this job
description is understood as a responsibility and a duty towards the learners, it is
also a social responsibility. Teachers’ salaries and the material used in public
schools are paid by the taxpayers’ money. In addition to this parents also have to
face considerable additional expenses for books and other material during the time
their children go to school. This is why this time and money should be used as
efficiently as possible, even if this assertion runs the risk of sounding like a political
statement. Access to a good education should not be a privilege of the wealthy, as it
is the case in too many countries.
Therefore, the aims and objectives of this thesis are to find ways in which as
many learners as possible can profit from a minimal investment of the resources of
time and money. One way in multiplying the usefulness of a project developed for
and with one class is to make it available to other classes in the same school as
well as ensuring it is adaptable enough to be useful to other classes in other
schools. This is one of the questions that will be answered in the concluding
chapter.

2.1. Methodology

The chief aim of this project is to determine how successful 4 ème students are
at writing and recording a set of audioguides about a specific topic. A secondary
aim is, if possible, to achieve an exhibition as a final product using these
audioguides, with one or more lower level classes as intended audience. With the

27
skills and competences developed during this project learners will develop their
explanation and presentation skills. By practising on this specific topic, the 4 ème
students will further their ability to use these skills more successfully in unfamiliar
situations. This will undoubtedly help them in the next school years, as well as after
they will have left school.
In practical terms, this means that the students will learn how to describe
something or to talk about something in situations where their interlocutors know
less about the topic than they do, but also have a more limited level of English than
the 4ème students themselves have. They will need to structure their discourse,
explain the context, and relate the exhibit to the recipient. In order to achieve the
latter, they must recognise that engaging with their audience, finding out more
about it, and empathising with it, is a necessity. In other words, the students will
have to convince the listeners that their audioguides are interesting and worthwhile
listening to.
However, writing a good audioguide is not the only desirable outcome for this
project. Reaching this final point requires several important preliminary steps.
Students will have to research detailed information about their exhibit, and engage
with it on different levels, for example critically or emotionally. There are some
positive side effects that are worth bearing in mind. For instance, engaging with art
from different centuries in a meaningful way obviously entails the acquisition of a
considerable amount of general knowledge by both the writers of the audioguides
as well as the listeners.
These are the initial considerations that mark the starting point of the
development of this project. In the following pages they will be thoroughly
questioned, illustrated and developed.

28
 2.1.1. Vocabulary

One of the pillars of progress in learning a foreign language is enriching one’s

vocabulary. Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada support this claim in their excellent
work How Languages are Learned. According to them, 'the acquisition of
vocabulary has become one of the most active areas in second language
acquisition research.' Not only this, because they add that 'the importance of
vocabulary can hardly be overestimated.' (2006: 96) There appears to be general
agreement on this among researchers, for Thornbury confirms that 'Vocabulary
learning is a major goal in most teaching programmes.' (2006: 240)
This is also one of the aims of this research project. The intention is to
demonstrate the opportunities for vocabulary acquisition offered by the
incorporation of art in an English course. On one hand, the learners will be dealing
with the more technical, art-related words and expressions, like 'painter', or 'to
arrange a scene', and 'background', to mention but a few examples. On the other
hand, students will have to use the vocabulary needed to describe the scene that is
depicted and its context, which are as wide-ranging as the subject matter of the
paintings.
Having established that vocabulary is an extremely important aspect of
language learning, it is worthwhile to illustrate the research in this area in more
detail. Thornbury reports that

It is now generally agreed that, in terms of goals, learners need

a receptive vocabulary of around 3000 high-frequency words
(or, better, word families) in order to achieve independent user
status. This will give them around ninety percent coverage of
normal text. For a productive vocabulary, especially for
speaking, they may only need half this number. (2006: 240)

He goes on to remind teachers of the fact that ‘It would be impossible, in class, to
teach all the words the learners need. Learners therefore need opportunities for

29
incidental learning, eg through extensive reading.’ (2006: 240) This observation
appears evident enough, as reading is an obvious inroad for new vocabulary.
However, reading is not the only source of input. 'Input is the spoken or
written language that learners are exposed to. In order to underline the significance
of input, he adds that 'You cannot learn a language without input.' (2006: 105-106)
If input is not only generated by reading, but also by listening, lower level students
will also gain from listening to audioguides, for example. On the basis of this
knowledge about the importance of input and the way in which it affects the learner
I decided to make exposure to new vocabulary one of the main foci of this project.
One of the important factors in this context is the amount of exposure
students have to vocabulary. Thornbury explains that ‘The frequency of an item in
the input that learners are exposed to may also be a critical factor in the acquisition
of that item. It has long been known that the more times a learner encounters a new
word the more likely they are to learn it.’ He adds that research suggests that ‘at
least seven encounters over spaced intervals are necessary’ (2006: 87)
Consequently, one aim of designing a lesson sequence should be to try and
increase the frequency of encounters with the specific vocabulary that the students
are intended to learn. The following chart illustrates this rather well:

(Wolf, 2008)

30
There are two key concepts to the issue of vocabulary that are worth further
clarification.
Lexical set:
These are ‘sets of words that share a meaning relationship, eg [sic] because
they relate to a particular topic or situation.’ (Thornbury, 2006: 120) An obvious
example from this sequence would be the set: 'paint, painting, painter'. Focusing on
lexical sets is intended to maximise vocabulary acquisition by the learners in the
course of the sequence. If one specific topic runs like a thread through a lesson
sequence, students' attention will orbit around the intended lexical set, because
they will need to use this group of words again and again. Lesson sequences,
therefore, have the advantage that they increase the number of encounters with
lexical sets in a relatively short space of time.
Word family:
Whereas the items belonging to a lexical set have in common that they are
attached to a certain topic, word families are a more narrow category in the
taxonomy of vocabulary. Word families can be defined as ‘a base word plus its
inflections and its most common derivatives.’ Thornbury also provides a helpful
illustration for the concept: ‘Careful, careless etc. are all derivatives of care, in that,
through the process of affixation, new lexical words are formed.’ Changes to a word
that are due to the demands of the rules of grammar fall under a different category,
though: ‘[...] grammatical forms of care, such as cares, caring and cared, are called
inflections.’ (Thornbury, 2006: 246) This way, the same occasion, this might be a
writing or listening activity, or a text that is being read in class, can generate a much
larger amount of vocabulary. If students ask about the meaning of one word, one
can easily attach a short, but worthwhile digression about its inflections, derivatives,
synonyms and antonyms. Thus, the same amount of lesson time is spent more
efficiently.
The simple decision to mention vocabulary in a lesson, does not
automatically entail a growth of the students' vocabulary. In other words, input is not
intake. The question of how vocabulary input becomes intake is addressed by Tricia

31
Hedge. She writes that

Cognitive psychologists […] have suggested that learners are

more likely to remember a word if they have worked on its
meaning actively; in other words, input becomes intake if there
is a depth of processing. (2000: 121)

This is only one suggestion, however. Generally, she adds, that there is some
doubt, disagreement and a lack of exact knowledge about the issue of vocabulary
intake amongst researchers: 'it is at present unclear exactly how learners store and
organize words in the mental lexicon and what kinds of relationships are built
among the words as they are stored.' (Hedge, 2000: 122) Although science has
made incredible progress, some fundamental questions remain unanswered. The
intricate workings of the human mind are one of these questions.
As there is no direct way of assessing how the mind processes vocabulary,
researchers have to rely on indirect evidence. One way of analysing the acquisition
of a second language is to compare it to how young children make a first language
their own. Lightbown and Spada report that

Some second language theorists have argued that second

language learners, like children learning their first language,
can learn a great deal of vocabulary with little intentional effort.
Stephen Krashen […] has asserted that the best source of
vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure. (2006: 100)

When recognising that learners of a second language build up their vocabulary

without effort, 'en passant' so to speak, does not allow the conclusion that the
teacher has become obsolete and that students will learn new words whatever
classroom activities they are engaged in. Krashen's suggestion that reading is the
'best source of vocabulary growth' also has some limitations, as Lightbown and
Spada point out in the following example:

[…] Dee Gardner […] has shown how rare certain types of
words are in narrative. Thus, students who read mainly fiction

32
 may have little chance of learning words that are essential for
their academic pursuits. (2006: 100)

Therefore, Lightbown and Spada recommend that students also engage 'in
activities that require them to attend carefully to the new words and even use them
in productive tasks.' (2006: 100) Therefore, another factor in vocabulary acquisition
is the variety of contexts in which new words are encountered, as Tricia Hedge
argues:
As learners develop their vocabulary knowledge, they acquire
not only new words but also new meanings associated with
words they have already learned. These are acquired gradually
as words are met in different contexts and eventually a word
might have extensive and complex meaning associations.
(2000: 123)

She makes clear that vocabulary intake is facilitated by repeatedly encountering

words in different contexts. Therefore, the conclusion must be to offer a variety of
activities designed in such a way as to guarantee this variety. If it is difficult to
include this variety in one lesson, one can easily distribute the activities on the
different lessons in a sequence. For these reasons I endeavoured to assemble a
project that would engage more than one sense, as well as stimulating critical
enquiry.
It is clear, therefore, that teaching vocabulary can assume different aspects.
Hedge summarises the different routes that are available to teachers in the
following paragraph:

The general issue for teachers seems to be whether learners

should simply be encouraged in non-specific ways to actively
build their own associations for new words and thereby extend
the networks of the mental lexicon, or whether vocabulary
learning activities should include direct instruction which aims to
shape the associations learners make. (Hedge, 2000: 123)

Generally, it is my intention to use a combined approach, both in the

implementation of this project, as also in my other classes. It should be clear that

33
the project is not a complete representation of the lessons I planned for my 6 ème and
4ème classes. More accurately, it represents only about twelve double lessons taught
in three different classes over the space of two months. In those lessons not
concerned with the project I planned and implemented other, and different tasks
and activities in order to provide learners with the variety of learning opportunities
they need.
Frequency, variety, and engaging 'in-depth' with vocabulary, therefore, have
an impact on the amount of intake that the learners achieve, even though some
doubts still remain. Thus, it is only logical to include learners in the preparation and
what might be called ‘de-briefing’ of the lesson, the evaluation of the success of a
lesson. These tasks and activities could be tackled by the whole class, or by a
smaller group of students within a class. In the latter alternative, certain students
will, amongst other things, increase their use of the lexical set that was determined
as an objective of the lesson. The concept of having 'élèves engagés', as they are
called in French, will be described in more detail in the following chapter, together
with the practical advantages for teachers of being able to cooperate with
committed students.

2.1.2. Committed students: learning by teaching others

The committed students in this school, or ‘élèves engagés’, carry a certain

responsibility for the success of the lessons that they help to implement and for the
progress that their classmates make in the different subjects. Therefore, it is ideal to
let them take over the role and responsibility of vocabulary experts. They can
develop word families and make lists out of the words the class has encountered in
the context of the art project. They could also group together lexical sets from
encountered words in graphic organisers, and represent the connections between
the words visually.
In his article that analyses the development of the art curriculum in the UK,

34
John Steers argues for ‘education (and within it art education) [...] to become a
more meaningful and high quality experience for teachers and learners.’ He
recommends striving to implement the ‘principles of difference, plurality and
independence of mind.’ (2003: 29) Among the ‘prerequisites’ he sees for these
principles, he mentions the following:

More opportunities need to be created for learners to

understand art as something that actually matters in their lives
and has relevance to their present and future actions.
More choice, autonomy and empowerment needs to be offered
through the development of a more critical, inquiring, reflexive
and creative mindset, assisting self-generated and self-aware
learning.
The range of choice and type of study available across all forms
of art needs to be broadened without any implied hierarchy.
(Steers 2003: 29)

His argument, then, is in favour of diversity both in terms of subject matter being
addressed in art classes, but also in terms of methodology. He underlines the
advantages of self-generated learning, which is one of the ideas behind designating
committed students. Their mission is to create learning opportunities for their peers.
This is directly connected to the hierarchy which Steers mentions in the last
sentence quoted above. There is undoubtedly a hierarchy in school systems that
defines and governs the relationship and the cooperation between students and
teachers, the latter situated above the former. Therefore, knowledge and learning
are traditionally passed down from teacher to student. However, if students can
teach each other, the hierarchy is circumvented. This is another advantage to the
concept of committed students.
In this school students have to choose two or three subjects where they are
‘engagés’, or committed. These should be subjects they are more proficient in than
their classmates, as the others are supposed to profit from their superior knowledge
or proficiency. This peer teaching can take the form of presentations on a specific
topic or language area at the beginning or during a lesson, the writing or

35
assembling of exercises, or even committed students taking over the role of teacher
or group leader in a part of the lesson. This can succeed particularly well in group
work phases or when organising learning stations (from the German
‘Stationenlernen’).
There is more than one advantage to this mode of cooperation between
students and teachers. It should be made clear, however, that one of these is not
that it reduces the work that the teacher has to do in terms of volume or complexity.
It only alters the role the teacher plays in the classroom, since the work atmosphere
is more collaborative than hierarchical in this case. He or she needs to meet the
committed students before the lesson in order to ensure the quality of the work they
produce as well as observing and, if need be, supporting their contributions to the
lesson. The advantages for the committed learner are that they can spend more
time with topics they are enthusiastic about and thereby increase their competence
in specific areas.
What is more, through the process of teaching their peers about the areas
they are knowledgeable in the committed students learn even more: learning by
teaching others. Since this concept is already firmly established in the LEM I
decided to make use of it in the context of this thesis. However, it should be pointed
out that the advantages of peer teaching, if used appropriately, apply to any school
context, not only this particular school.
If this pedagogical tool is useful inside a class, it is of no less use if applied to
two classes at different levels in their language learning development. One of the
aims of this thesis, therefore, is to prove that if higher level students work with
students who are only in their second year of learning English, both groups will
benefit from the experience. In order to bring both groups into contact with each
other they would have to meet inside a classroom, which is not always practicable
due to timetable constraints. This difficulty becomes even more important if more
than two classes are involved.
There are indications, however, that the organisational effort is worthwhile. In
the case of the classes chosen for this project, the language level of the 4 ème

36
students is sufficiently developed to give them the necessary head start. Simply by
using the English that they already have, they can draw the 6 ème students out of
their comfort zone. In other words, the 4 ème students are competent at a level that is
still situated in the ZPD of the 6 ème students. The latter can benefit from the older
students, not unlike a strong cyclist who takes a slower one in tow in his slipstream.
Vygotsky’s ZPD is not the only of his ideas that this project is based on.
There are also other tenets of his social constructivist concept that inform both my
own teacher persona in general, and this thesis in particular. The most important
components are summarised by Alan Pritchard:

• Children learn through being active.

• Learning is a socially mediated activity.
• Emphasis is placed on the role of the teacher or ‘more
knowledgeable other’ as a ‘scaffolder’.
• The teacher is a facilitator who provides the challenges that the
child needs for achieving more.
• Development is fostered by collaboration (in the Zone of
Proximal Development), and not strictly age-related.
(2009: 117)

Pritchard’s description of Vygotsky’s theory of learning also delineates the general

framework in which I decided to place the art exhibition project. Both the fact that
learner collaboration plays an important role in its implementation, and my
participation as a scaffolder, or facilitator, are unmistakeable characteristics that
allow an unequivocal identification of the project as being essentially Vygotskian in
nature.
The term Vygotskian defines one aspect of the activities that the students had
to work on in the course of the project. The concept of ‘tasks’ in English language
teaching goes even further, and serves to provide an even more accurate
description of the type of activities the students completed. David Nunan provides a
list of ‘five characteristics of a task’ in his analysis of task-based language learning
(TBL):

37
 • meaning is primary
• learners are not given other people’s meaning to
regurgitate
• there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world
activities
• task completion has some priority
• the assessment of the task is in terms of outcome.
(Nunan, 2004: 3)

The tasks that the students were working on in the course of the exhibition project
closely match Nunan’s descriptors. Meaning constructed by the students
themselves was the central objective of the project, and they were encouraged to
base their work on examples of real audioguides that are already in use in
important museums. Obviously, the completion of the tasks was of the utmost
priority, because otherwise the exhibition itself could not have taken place. The
success of this art exhibition was also the primary means by which I was planning
on assessing the students’ work. The characteristics of tasks listed by Nunan
clearly show that this project is founded on TBL principles, because the various
activities have to be defined as tasks.
Naturally, the different tasks were not only isolated from each other, but
interconnected. They all shared the same subject matter and built up on each other.
For this reason one can even identify them as a sequence of tasks, a concept
described by Dave Willis and Jane Willis. (2007: 21-24) According to them, task
sequences allow for a repetition of ‘meanings and the language that is used to
express them’, which has substantial benefits on the language learning process.
(Willis and Willis, 2007: 23)
Teaching task-based sequences such as this one does not mean, however,
that the issue of grammar is completely ignored. On the contrary, a student-centred
TBL sequence is compatible with ‘a focus on form’, as Scott Thornbury reassures
his readers, because it ‘may simply mean correcting a mistake’ in a student’s text.
(1999: 24)
Therefore, in order to make use of art as a medium of learning, one could

38
imitate the traditional modes of displaying art in museums and exhibitions, by
creating or recreating an exhibition in a publicly available space inside a school. In
this context, guided tours, audio guides, leaflets or explanatory plaques
immediately come to mind. It is clear that all of these options are eminently feasible
in a school context, given the necessary time and material. These various means of
interaction between institution and visitor have their respective characteristics, and
some might be deemed more advantageous than others, depending on the aims of
the exhibition.
It is clear that the learning environment of the school where I implemented
the project is specific to this school. There are important differences in terms of the
system and the organisation that make certain methodological decisions easier
than in other schools. This is why I developed the project in the way it is described
here. Nevertheless, conditions in the Lycée Ermesinde are not that far removed
from those in other schools in Luxembourg, or even other European countries.
Therefore, one of the aims of the project is to demonstrate that it is adaptable
enough to be implemented elsewhere. Consequently, the following selection of final
product are alternatives that can be chosen depending on the context and the
classes one is working with.

2.1.3. The public face of the exhibition

The initial decision to organise an exhibition with a class entails that other
details need to be determined. Such an exhibition can take many different forms,
depending on what products the students are going to be working on. As this
decision making process is fundamental to the planning phase I intend to give a
short overview of the different options. It will illustrate how and why I eventually
opted for the form that the exhibition took in the end.
Explanatory plaque:
The difference between leaflets and explanatory plaques is not merely one of

39
location and material. A plaque fixed next to an exhibit is generally intended to offer
specific information about the exhibit and its creator. It is addressed to the viewers
who choose to approach it in the aim of finding out more about the item that has
caught their eye.
Leaflet / Flyer:
A leaflet is usually handed out or sold at the entrance and provides more
general information about the exhibition, not necessarily about all individual
exhibits. From a purely practical point of view, a permanent explanatory text, in a
fixed position next to the exhibit only needs to be printed once, whereas leaflets
need to be reproduced for every new visitor as many times as they are needed.
Guided tour:
Guided tours obviously require the physical presence of a tour guide. They
have the advantage that the audience can interact with the guide, and
spontaneously ask questions, in some cases redirect the focus of the presentation
or ask to adapt the level of detail to the audience’s expertise. These are important
factors, yet providing guides is almost exclusively practicable in museums funded
by admission fees or state subsidies. When planning an amateur exhibition with
students in a school this is impossible. Of course, students themselves could play
the role of museum guide, yet, as already mentioned above, this is not always
manageable due to the everyday lesson workload that students have.
Having the students themselves guiding the tours also has the disadvantage
that they might deliver the prepared presentations differently than they had been
planned. They might forget important parts, or there might be hesitations that hinder
communication with their listeners. In a worst case scenario, it might render the
presentation too difficult to allow the 6ème students to understand it. This is not at all
the aim of the task, however. On the contrary, the exhibition should be a positive
experience for both 6ème and 4ème students. This is also significant for their overall
motivation to learn, and their language development, as Tricia Hedge points out:

Perhaps the most vital element in learning to listen effectively in

a second or foreign language is confidence, and confidence

40
 comes with practice and achieving success from an early stage.
The role of the teacher is to provide as much positive practice
as possible […]. (2000: 255)

After all, the 4ème students would also be frustrated if their audience did not enjoy
their exhibition only because of a language barrier, or someone's low presentation
skills.
Audioguide:
Audioguides, on the other hand, are free from the students' time constraints,
as they need no presence in the exhibition. They only need to be recorded once
and can be played as and when needed. A further advantage is that by preparing
their scripts in detail and perfecting the recording in the studio unforeseen
difficulties of communication can be avoided. What is more, as opposed to the
monologue delivered by a real-life guide, multiple voices and points of view can be
juxtaposed. They might support, contrast, or even contradict each other, thereby
enhancing the visitors’ experience of what he sees. Reynolds’ example of an
audioguide included as many as

three ways of seeing, each informed by a different type of

expertise. These ways of seeing can be viewed as what
designer and museum specialist James Bradburne describes as
‘user-languages’ [...]. According to Bradburne, employing
different user languages is more effective than mono-vocal
labels [...] (2010: 156)

In other words, she recommends using more than one voice, or speaker. The
intention is to give the audience the impression that they are taking part in a
conversation about the exhibit, rather than being instructed about it by a teacher-
like voice. The emotional reaction to the audioguide would be much more positive,
as a consequence.
Reynolds observes that her ‘model is adaptable to other contexts in art and
design education.’ (2010: 151) Although I do not teach art education, I am
convinced that Reynolds' observation applies just as well to ELT. For, as mentioned

41
above in the context of CLIL, language learning also takes place in indirect learning
situations.
The conclusion to Reynolds’ project was that using any special kind of
technology was unnecessary, and even counterproductive. She underlines the
advantages of ‘simpler resources that were fully functional. These were accessed
on better-established devices likely to be familiar to students. Functionality was
prioritized above technological innovation.’ (2010: 152) If this was true for higher
education students in Britain two years ago, it is certainly true for secondary school
students living in a comparatively wealthy country today. The spread of handheld
mobile devices has continued, as a survey conducted in the classes described in
this thesis reveals.

2.1.4. Technology and learning

A large majority of 96 per cent of students in the 4ème and of 97 per cent in the
6ème classes own mobile phones that allow them to listen to audio files. A large
proportion of these devices are able to access the internet via a wireless network,
thereby facilitating direct downloads of audio files from online sources. The
opportunity of being able to make use of the material that the students already own
themselves is too fortunate to ignore. The decision to use students’ own mobile
phones or mp3 players allows for considerable savings in listening material, yet it
also entails some minor constraints. The exhibition would have to take place in the
entrance hall of the school, since this is the only place where students are allowed
the use of their own mobile phones. More importantly, though, it becomes more
difficult to verify whether the learners actually listen to exhibition-related files, or to
their own music collection.
One possible solution to this problem is developing a test, or a questionnaire
that could be handed out to the visitors as a feedback form. One responsibility as a
teacher, one that is taken less seriously by the students than by their parents, is to
ensure that students use the time they spend in school productively. Therefore, this

42
questionnaire would be in line with the overall aim of a project of this kind: to
generate a maximum of learning with a minimum investment of time and effort, both
on behalf of students and teachers.
There are more than one level of complexity that the questionnaires could
have. For example, it could be filled in on paper when handed out to every visiting
student. Conceivably, it could also be filled in online, on a homepage or via email, if
the technological means are available in the school. Whichever the medium, the
feedback forms can contain writing tasks that encourage the students to engage
closely with some exhibits. These might take the form of questions about the
content of the audioguides, alongside questions about the visitors' appreciation of
the whole exhibition, as well as its individual parts.
Teachers who are inspired by the experience gathered by museums, as
described by Reynolds, are supported by Tom Davies and Pete Worrall’s article
‘Thinking out of the box’. In this article about the influence of information
communication technology (ICT) on art teacher education they assert that ‘Digital
technology has the potential to counter reductionism and empower and stimulate
learning.’ (2003: 90) By ‘reductionism’ they mean budgetary constraints that
economic developments exert on the number of art lessons that students have, the
number of art teachers a school can employ or, generally speaking, the amount of
money spent on art education per student.
Davies and Worrall provide a taxonomy of the different ways in which digital
media could be used in classrooms. These different ways are grouped ‘under five
strands. While each is significant in its own right, well-planned and sequenced
project work may range across each strand, reinforcing and supporting
experimental learning experiences.’ Since not all of them are relevant in this
context, only the following two of the five strands are to be mentioned here. The first
strand is concerned with ‘Communication systems, collaborative electronic
exchanges (internet / mobile phones etc.)’ The second one focuses on ‘Virtual
exhibitions – school / community groups, curated and presented through
multimedia integrating digital images, sound, video and text.’ (2003: 91) This project

43
is obviously situated in the last category. While integrating digital images, sound
and text are part of the project, video is not. One reason for this lies in the fact that
recording a video of satisfactory quality is always more demanding in terms of
skills, time and resources than producing good audio recording.
Together, Reynolds’ findings and Davies and Worrall's recommendations
about the potential of making use of digital media in the classroom are a strong
case in favour of making this project rely on ICT. The significant term here is, of
course, ‘potential’. It is always possible to make less than efficient use of the
potential the digital media have to offer. In a worst case scenario it might even lead
to valuable time and learning opportunities wasted. In the chapters more concerned
with the practical aspects of this project I intend to delineate how I intended to
counter any misuse or abuse of the digital media that played a role in the
implementation.
It is obvious that, in the ten years since Davies and Worrall wrote this article,
the potential ICT has to offer learners and teachers has increased dramatically. Not
least the proliferation of smartphones with an impressive range of downloadable
apps, often free of charge, have opened up new avenues to access and use art
resources. While the cost of such a device is still relatively high in Europe, typically
50 Euro per month, most Luxembourgish students already carry them around.
Nevertheless, this does not automatically signify that the traditional depositories of
art – museums and art galleries – suffer from dwindling numbers of visitors. On the
contrary, museums are more popular today than ever. In Germany, for instance, the
total number of museum visits has increased from about 36.5 million in 1993 to just
over 46 million in 2011. (Graf, 2011: 69) One of the reasons for this development is
the fact that museums have become more attractive, especially for younger
audiences. This growing interest is a further motivating factor for the development
of this project.
Secondary school students use smartphones more and more, even to do
their schoolwork. For instance, most classes have groups on Facebook where they
exchange information that is relevant to their courses. On the other hand, they also

44
abuse of these groups for bullying or to denigrate their teachers. This example
epitomises the potential, but also the risks for teenage learners inherent in the use
of the internet. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to exploit this potential for a museum
project in school, and to demonstrate to the students what other positive uses their
smartphones have.

2.2. Assessing learning outcome

The idea behind this project is not to take over the role of the art teacher and
teach art history in another language. Even if this is one definition of CLIL, the main
focus is to find meaningful tasks and activities to enrich English lessons. The aim is
to provide students with occasions for the intake of new language and a context in
which they are able to use it. One way of determining how much students have
taken in during the course of a sequence are written tests.
Kerry Freedman writes about current issues concerning testing in the context
of art education in the USA.

Teachers are expected to teach to tests intended to assess

students’ memory of sometimes arbitrary and trivial art
historical information and the limited applications of elements
and principles in design. In contrast to the flux and
contradictions of actual knowledge and production in the arts,
centralized curriculum standards and testing are based on what
is hoped to be a consensus about the criteria and indicators of
academic, including aesthetic, quality. (2003: 9)

If a project like this one should be assessed in a test, it should not only focus on art
historical facts, but also include questions that force students to put their personal
reactions to what they see into words. Yet, it might also be useful to provide the
visiting students with an extrinsic motivation to focus attentively on the information
they are given about the exhibits. A possible written test, then, might consist of a

45
combination of content and opinion questions.
One of the foci of the exhibition project is vocabulary, which is why it would be
interesting to find out how much students have taken in during their museum visit.
Learners in the Lycée Ermesinde are more aware of learning processes, they are
more autonomous and they know more about the effectiveness of certain strategies
for studying than their peers in other Luxembourgish schools. Of course it is difficult
to determine exactly how much more these skills are developed. The fact remains
that most students in the classes taking part in this project could see the
advantages of learning vocabulary in this way. Naturally, at the age of twelve to
fifteen, even though they agree with the theoretical need to increase their
vocabulary, most students are still subject to the automatic instinct to keep their
workload at a minimum. This is also true for the committed students, who
theoretically should provide contributions to the lessons, typically in the form of
learning material. Because of this form of passive resistance inside a class it would
be interesting to give the higher level students the task of preparing vocabulary lists
and tests for the lower level classes.

2.3. Art and critical thinking

Initially, the idea that fuelled this project was to engage secondary school
students with classical and modern masterpieces in such a way that the visual
experience would engender writing and speaking activities. In simple and purely
technical terms: visual input generating a linguistic output of some form. However, it
soon became apparent that this basic idea has much more potential. The idea of
the museum was the logical next step, which required an answer to the question of
what form the exhibition should assume.
As soon as one starts reflecting on what a museum can and should do, the
issue becomes much more complicated than selecting a few paintings by the old

46
masters. Freedman argues, that art has the potential to span the gap between
school and students’ lives outside the classroom:

the job of art educators has now truly become critical to

students’ everyday lives. As part of their education, students are
being encouraged to develop a critical awareness of the visual
culture they encounter every day. (2003: 11)

Viv Golding agrees that a museum can achieve much more than a mere white
screen on which reproductions of pieces of art are projected. She envisages a
museum as a ‘Clearing’, as she calls it. In this new definition of a museum,
‘representation and understanding of a common humanity, without erasing or
ignoring differences, can be progressed’. (2005: 51) Golding asserts that the
museum can fulfil this role if we redefine its relationship to the audience:

The Clearing is a creative territory [...]. In the context of the

museum it celebrates the idea of a discursive forum, which is
opposed to the notion of the traditional museum as ‘temple’.
(2005: 53)

One might object that these intellectual demands on an exhibition organised and
produced by students are exaggerated. Nevertheless, students are capable of more
than one is at times prepared to believe.
Golding claims that a ‘‘hands on – minds on’ nature of the museum
experience ensures that everyone is able to contribute regardless of their academic
standard.’ (2005: 63) Students need to be secure in the knowledge that their
opinions about the exhibits are valued. For Golding, the museum is not only a place
for dialogue and thought. It is also a place for learning:

[...] the Clearing is a special place of active learning [...], full of

possibilities for constructing new understanding [...]. [It] is
crucially related to the notion of a frontier location between the
museum and the audience, since the positive learning
experiences initiated in it must extend beyond the time and
space of the museum visit. (Golding, 2005: 53-54)

47
 Evidently, the idea that active learning takes place in a museum can easily be
translated into the school environment. She envisages the museum as a more open
space, where the audience is not caught in the role of the passive recipient.
Atkinson and Dash argue that art practices can teach students more than
knowledge of art history, or insights into the techniques needed to produce art: ‘art
practices have an important role to play in developing pupils’ social and critical
understanding.’ (2005: xi) Social and critical thinking skills are core goals of
secondary education, which justifies the role of art as a subject taught at secondary
level. In their text, Atkinson and Dash describe the significance of 'art practices'.
This does not mean that students need to make exhibits themselves. Setting up a
museum space, configuring a meeting ground with art for other students is also a
practical form of art, to the extent that the students create a new context for the
exhibits, and thereby redefine them for their fellow students.
Where Atkinson and Dash deal with the effects of art on the students' social
and critical understanding, Richard Hickman focuses on the roles art can play in the
context of ‘citizenship education’ in the UK. This is a very specific subject within the
English National Curriculum intending to develop ‘social and moral responsibility,
community involvement and political literacy.’ (2003: 85) For Hickman the subject
‘art and design’ can play a ‘significant role in educating for citizenship’ if teachers
promote ‘an education that is both in art and design and through art and design.
[original emphasis]’ (2003: 88) Both types of education are included in this project.
At its conclusion 4ème students as well as 6ème students will know more about the
exhibits and the context in which they were created. They will also have learnt more
about their social context, and in how far the messages included in the exhibits
apply to their lives.
Of course Hickman's article is concerned with the productive aspects of art
education. Nevertheless, he also examines the value of ‘focusing on artwork that is
concerned with social commentary.’ (Hickman 2003: 85) Interestingly though, he
warns against making ‘rather simplistic connections’ in this respect. ‘Art and design
lessons have the potential to perpetuate and challenge racial and cultural

48
stereotyping. [...] there can also be a more insidious form of mis-education if
students are ill-prepared or ill-informed about the art and artefacts of cultures other
than their own.’ (2003: 87)
In the context of this exhibition, critical thinking means that students are
encouraged to question society as a whole, as well as their own role in society.
Hickman calls this

‘education for transgression.’ There is a certain tension here

which is all for the good – resisting the status quo, challenging
orthodoxies and rule-breaking are essential attributes of
meaningful art and design activities and, one would hope, of a
healthy society. (2003: 89)

It follows that, even if they do not produce anything new, the students will still learn
from the experience. Understanding why and how an artist has created a work of
art is a worthwhile achievement in its own right. Consequently, explaining the
motives and the process to others must carry the same value. However, it is of vital
importance to question how this explanation is going to be carried out. Lesley
Burgess and Nicholas Addison warn against ‘dumbing down’ the subject matter, as
they call it:

There is a very real danger that if teachers attempt to ‘dumb

down’ the complex theoretical issues and methodologies of
critical practice for use by students, the resulting inquiry will be
a disjointed and distorted caricature of academic procedures.
(2004: 27)

I endeavoured to avoid this pitfall by theorising only very little about the exhibits,
and focusing more on the students’ own personal views and interpretations. This
will be described in more detail in the next chapter, which deals with the art
exhibition itself.

49
50
 3. The Art Exhibition Project

3.1. Class description: 4ème and 6ème

The lower level classes which took part in the activities described here were
two 6ème classique classes in the Lycée Ermesinde Mersch. One class consisted of
twenty-four students, and the other of twenty-three. The students in these classes
were at lower intermediate level, although there was quite a large spread between
the linguistic competences of the individual students. Overall, the level of these
classes was approximately at A2 to B1, as described by the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). All the classes who took part in
the exhibition project worked on the overarching topic of ‘patrimoine’, or heritage, in
their various subjects during that school year. This fit in very well with the theme
that was eventually chosen for the exhibition, as many of the exhibits were not
painted by contemporary artists.
The class that was principally involved in the activities related to this thesis
was a 4ème classique in the same school. As students start learning English in the
Lycée Ermesinde at 7ème level, this was their fourth year of learning English as a
school subject. The class was composed of 7 girls and 7 boys, aged from 15 to 17.
Even though the learners in this class were liable to display the usual classroom
behaviour of students of their age, in a positive as well as a negative sense, the
boys were remarkable in their readiness to contribute intelligently to the lessons.
The girls, on the other hand, tended to remain quiet, even though their less
numerous contributions were usually at least as good, when asked directly.
Discounting their contributions to the lessons, the girls were actually able to
produce better work than the boys, in general, because they were more motivated
and worked harder. Overall, the level of this class can be approximated between B1
and B2, in the CEFR.

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 Both classes needed opportunities to use English in a context that was more
motivating and closer to real life than their everyday lessons. Closer to real life must
remain a relative expression in this context, because they were not real life
activities. Neither preparing the exhibition for its audience, nor visiting it and
listening to the audioguides led the students beyond the school building. The
project was conducted almost entirely during their school lessons. Nevertheless,
while it is true that the project essentially consisted of classroom activities, it drew
on previous experience gathered in museums or art galleries, in some cases while
using audioguides. Its purpose was to recreate an environment that resembled a
gallery and that broke the daily classroom rhythm, all in the aim of offering
opportunities of listening to and speaking English that are at least one step closer to
authentic contexts and real life situations.

3.2. Preparing the project in the 6ème classes

I intended to gradually introduce the 6ème students to the habit of describing

pictures. Therefore, I decided to start this process with Dixit (Jean-Louis Riboura,
Libellud, 2008), a card game in which picture description is the main feature. In the
original every player has 5 cards depicting a variety of fantastical fairy tale scenes.
The players can not see each other's cards. In turn they have to tell a very short
story that matches one of their cards. The story can consist of a word, a sound or a
sentence. The players who listened then have to select one of their cards that is the
best match for the story they have just heard. Then the cards are placed next to
each other and turned over, and the players have to vote for the card that was the
original, in their opinion. The aim is to tell a story that is abstract enough so that not
everyone votes for the right card, but it should also be concrete enough to prevent
everyone from voting for the wrong one, because this earns the storyteller the most
points.

52
 The rules are complex enough for the game to be challenging, and the cards
are inspiring enough to allow students to tell interesting stories. They are also well-
suited to provide ideas for a follow-up activity where students have to write a longer
story about a scenes on one of the cards. The only difficulty consists in adapting the
rules, so that even a larger group of twenty-three students can play the game, even
if this was not intended by the original rules.

3.2.1. Lesson 1: Getting started, 8th May

I decided to play the game Dixit with the stronger 6ème class first, to analyse
the potential of this activity. I prepared this lesson with two 'élèves engagés' in an
'étude' (a schoolwork and study lesson during the lunchbreak) before playing the
game in class. The students had to rewrite the rules of the game in English, which
they only achieved with limited clarity and success, which is why I had to provide a
clearer second version myself.
As expected, the class responded with enthusiasm to the announcement that
we were going to play a game, when I announced it at the beginning of the lesson.
However, they were less enthusiastic when they realised that the rules were going
to be explained in English by the 'élèves engagés'. At this point it transpired that
neither the 'élèves engagés', nor the lesson as a whole was prepared well enough.
For example, despite their preparation, the two students started straight off by
explaining the rules, without mentioning what the game was all about, or what the
overall aim was.
After having analysed the lesson I saw a need to alter certain methodological
parameters before repeating the activity with the other 6 ème. In the first 6ème we had
played the game in a plenary. Consequently, the learners were rather agitated,
firstly because the rules were slightly more intricate than they had expected. More
importantly, however, every individual student did not have enough to do, as only a
small proportion of students could tell a story, while all the others had to listen and

53
wait for their turn. Furthermore, the lesson was not varied enough, since,
essentially, there were only two phases. In the first part of the lesson the rules were
explained and the game was prepared. The second part of the lesson was filled
with only five rounds, that is five stories being told. Nevertheless, I was convinced
that playing this game in class is a useful activity, where learners can use the
language: provided the lesson is planned in a way that uses the time invested in an
effective way.

3.2.2. Lesson 2: An improved version of the game, 23rd May

This is why I resolved to plan the lesson in the second 6 ème class differently.
Instead of playing the game as a large group in a plenary, I divided the learners up
into five groups of four or five members each, with one committed student in every
group. I prepared a handout for the stories and the score. In addition to this the
lesson had more phases than the prototype. First we prepared the game in a
plenary, explained the rules, and discussed what stories one could tell about an
example card. The next phase was the game itself, where every group played
fifteen or sixteen round, so that every group member told at least three to four
stories. I asked the groups to write down the story that was told in every round, so
that they used more skills. They had to tell stories or listen to them, as well as write
them down and read them again during the voting stage of every round, in order to
decide which card to vote for.
This has the advantage that student talking time is multiplied, because five
stories are being told at the same time by different learners. Moreover, it helped me
to check whether they told their stories in English. I also asked them to return the
handout to me at the end of the lesson in order to evaluate the level of English they
used in their stories. At the end of the game every group determined who the
winner was by adding up the points. They also decided who told the best stories. In
the final stage of the lesson students had to choose a card from the ones they

54
currently had on their desk, and write a story about it. All in all, this lesson was
much more successful than the previous one. The students were more engaged
with the topic at hand, there was a greater variety of activities in the lesson, and the
students were more productive. They were now ready for the next stage of the
project.

3.2.3. Lesson 3: Picture description, 22nd May

The aim of this lesson was to engage 6 ème students with works of art,
paintings of different styles and periods, or photographs. The variety of artists
treated in this lesson included, for example, Picasso's Guernica, a photograph of a
Haitian girl in a refugee camp, crossing a garbage heap in her Sunday dress,
paintings by Monet, Manet, Banksy and Hockney. The aim of this task was to
record and discuss the students' reactions, as well as developing their description
and analysis skills.
After a general introductory discussion about art and galleries, the first stage
of the lesson consisted in gathering their first impressions. In pairs, the students
were asked to engage with a work of art, printed out in colour on an A4 sheet. Their
instructions at this stage were to take a good look at what they could see what was
in the picture or painting: a crowd scene in a café, for example, or a portrait of an
individual. I asked them to think about it, and share their thoughts with their
neighbour, in English. Naturally, the level of difficulty for this initial task was still very
basic. While planning this lesson I took care to consider the fact that I was working
with 6ème students for most of whom art was still a relatively unfamiliar and, above
all, uninteresting subject. This is also why I expected relatively basic answers from
one part of the group, even though I anticipated more elaborate and detailed
reactions from the engagé students.
I let three pairs present their picture to the class. My expectations were not
disappointed. The sentences the students used in their presentations ranged from
'There is a woman / man. She / he looks happy / sad.' to longer and more complex

55
sentences. I used the presentations to make the students aware of the grammar
areas needed in tasks such as these, for example 'there is / there are'. We also
made a list of useful lexical items.
As in every lesson, we wrote it on the right hand side of the blackboard, and
students were expected to copy it into their vocabulary notebooks, or folders. They
were expressions that the students themselves needed during the presentations in
order to communicate the contents to the class. These included lexical chunks like
the following: 'on the left, in the background, in the top right corner'. Naturally, the
students who were presenting asked me to provide those they needed for their
painting, but I made a point of eliciting more, in order to write down a coherent and
systematic list. I dedicated lesson time to this in view of their visit of the exhibition of
the 4ème class, where they were going to be exposed to this vocabulary. In this way I
intended to give the lower level classes a head start: the less energy they needed
to invest to understand the text of the audioguides, the more they could focus on
the content and the message. Usually, this alone is difficult enough for 6 ème
students.
In the second stage of the lesson, then, I increased the degree of difficulty. I
set them essentially the same task, only this time in writing. I also redistributed the
material, so that every student had a painting of photograph, one they had not seen
or discussed in this lesson. The instructions were to observe, describe and analyse
what they saw. I wrote the following instructions on the blackboard:

Picture description:
• What can you see? Who? Where? What? When? How is it painted?
• What is your reaction to this? Atmosphere, emotions...
• What is your opinion, interpretation?
Compare it to something else, for example.

They had a time limit of 30 minutes and were allowed to use a dictionary, which
more than half of the class usually does. As expected, the majority was able to
finish in time, with results
One student, who had to face Guernica by Pablo Picasso, wrote:

56
 I can see some animals and people who are in a room and
suffer. […] The whole scene looks like a war. […] The picture
was painted in black-and-white. The emotions at the picture
were really bad. Everyone cryed, fighting for his life. I can see
the pain on their faces or the sorrow when someone died.
It makes me sad when I look at this painting. It was an horrible
war scene and anyone took consideration at the other. KH

In terms of task achievement this student followed the instructions closely. She
started off by reiterating the first question from the blackboard in her first sentence,
and described what was in painting on a subject matter level. The last sentences of
her text relate to the second and third point in the instructions, albeit not at a great
length, probably due to time constraints. Here she tries to interpret what she sees,
voices her emotional reaction to it and provides her opinion.
I asked an engagé student in 4ème to read the descriptions and to write down
her observations about them. Since they could not be present in the 6 ème lesson I
intended to delegate the task of drawing conclusions about the 6 ème students
linguistic and analytical abilities to the older students. The aim was, once again, to
involve the 4ème students in one step of the project. This was intended to enhance
the role they played in the development of the exhibition, and to give them a sense
of achievement. The impression of exerting control over the project went hand in
hand with a sense of ownership, which entailed that at least some of the 4 ème
students felt responsible for the success of 'their' exhibition.
In retrospect, I can identify this as an important factor for the motivation of the
4ème students to work hard on this exhibition. The following extract is taken from her
analysis of the 6ème students' texts:

We have to keep it visual and we have to speak in a simple

english. [sic] In their textes they mostly wrote short sentences
and their vocabulary is good, but we shouldn't use too
complicated words in the audio-guides. A vocabulary list would
be great for them to understand everything. Sometimes they
didn't wrote the right words to describe things, they used

57
 unappropriate words. [...] Some of them described the pictures
very well and even expressed themselves about the painting. In
general they did a lot of grammar mistakes. AB

All in all, I tend to agree with this summary. The language used by the 6 ème students
was situated well within the range one can expect at their level. It mainly featured
short sentences, a limited vocabulary, as well as mistakes that did not, however,
cause too much of a strain on the reader. It has to be admitted that some of the 6ème
students' descriptions were rather uninspired, even if almost all the students met
the requirements of the task. Nevertheless, there were others, as already
mentioned, who produced very good responses.
This lesson was significant in the larger context of the project, because it
allowed me to gauge the 6ème students' interests in art and linguistic capabilities of
describing and discussing it to a higher degree than by means of a questionnaire.
Another important aim that was reached was to encourage them to engage with art
and to practise using the lexical chunks, or the words and expressions, associated
with art and paintings.

3.3. The art exhibition

3.3.1. Lesson 1: First steps, 16th March

In the first lesson in which the 4ème class worked on this project I started off by
introducing it to the students. I explained what the goal was, the exhibition and the
audioguides. I also informed them on why we were doing this in class, that they
would learn from it, all the while teaching the 6 ème students, who would thus also
benefit from their work. I added that their opinions would play a significant role in
the implementation of the project. There were several occasions where their

58
decision was called for on possible alternative ways of realising the project. I
planned to involve them in the decision making process to a higher degree because
it would entail that they would become more invested in it, and, by consequence,
more motivated to contribute to its success.
We started off the first main part of the lesson by discussing what art actually
is, how it could possibly be defined. We examined what role and what significance it
has in society, today as well as historically. I encouraged the students to draw on
their knowledge gained in other subjects, in their optional courses in school or
outside of school. It turned out that most learners took part in the discussion with
surprising earnestness and maturity. This realisation supported my conviction that
art is a suitable subject to focus on at 4ème level. Amongst other uses, it lends itself
as a prompt for conversations, tasks or debates concerned with aesthetics, society
or politics. Examples from these topic areas inevitably turned up in our initial, and
rather fundamental, discussion.
Introducing art as a subject in English class was facilitated by the fact that the
'Art and Society' teacher of this 4ème had completed a very interesting project with
the class. They had already taken part in a field trip to the Louvre, where they had
worked with some examples of neoclassical and romantic paintings. More precisely,
every student had researched information about a specific painting, which they then
had to present to their classmates. This meant that they had already covered some
theoretical and practical questions related to discussing, analysing and presenting
art. Even though the class had done this in a different language, I counted it as a
bonus for the audioguide project.
For this particular lesson I had selected 35 famous paintings by artists such
as Gainsborough, Monet, Goya, Turner or Da Vinci as well as about ten
photographs of various examples of recent street art. I divided up the class into 7
pairs and distributed the copies among them. I then instructed them to assess the
works of art in order to determine which of them were to be put on a shortlist, from
which we would later choose those shown in their exhibition.
The result was, perhaps predictably enough, that a large majority of the class

59
was in favour of including many examples of street art. They argued that this
contemporary form of art was certainly the most interesting to them, just as it most
probably was the most interesting one for their audience. Other painters chosen
were Jacques Louis David and J. M. W. Turner, or Surrealist painters like Magritte.
Obviously, the copies I handed out to them could not approach in any way a
comprehensive overview of art history. They were merely intended as a starting
point for the process of determining which styles and artists we were going to
include. Therefore I expected them to provide suggestions about which other
examples of art or artists we could include.

3.3.2. Lesson 2: Developing the concept, 25th March

In the second lesson, a week's time after the first, we began by recapitulating
what we had agreed on in the previous lesson. I then announced what was next on
the to-do-list, namely agreeing on a concept for the exhibition. This was to be the
scaffolding in which the students were going to work during the preparation phase.
Other aims for this lesson were completing a preliminary list of works of art and
developing the organisation of the exhibition itself.
This lesson proved that the class was very motivated to work on this project.
This impression was confirmed by my tutor, who took part in this lesson. One of the
reasons for this certainly lay in the fact that it gave them the opportunity to teach a
lower level class to some degree.
Again the initial part of the lesson took the form of a discussion, this time
about the concept and the organisation of the exhibition, in other words, the general
direction in which the planning was going to progress. The conclusion we arrived at
was that instead of a random jumble of works of art though the centuries the
majority of the class was in favour of choosing an overall theme.
In the following stage of the lesson I had decided to let the class work in pairs
again. This time, however, I intended to differentiate the learning material, therefore

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I had prepared different types of tasks for every pair. As a teacher, using
differentiated learning as part of one's repertoire has the advantage that the needs
of students in mixed-ability groups can be met. Jeremy Harmer describes these as
'groups where different individuals are at different levels and have different abilities.'
(2007: 176-177) However, apart from being at different language learning levels,
individuals in a group also have different preferences for processing of language, as
Terry Mahony points out: the visual, the auditory and the kinaesthetic. (2007: 43-45)
Teachers need to be aware of these important sets of variable factors when
designing lessons and sequences. With this in mind, I had planned for one group of
students to work out a concept, another to start a vocabulary list. I provided a third
part of the class with a colour copy of a painting or graffiti we had chosen in the
previous lesson.
There was an interesting moment where two students (GD and JE) discussed
in English how and why Surrealism could fit in with the overall concept of ‘social
criticism’. Overhearing students busily discussing the task at hand in the target
language during groupwork is always rewarding for teachers. It meant I had given
them a task that had caught their attention, and they were trying to perform well.
GD, who turned out to be very knowledgeable about Surrealism, concluded the
lesson with a presentation of a number of works of art of that style that might fit the
title of the exhibition.

3.3.3. Lesson 3: Describing and interpreting pictures, 30th March

In this lesson we first discussed in a plenary the concept for the future
exhibition that two students had prepared in the previous lesson. These plenary
discussions were important in the early stages of the project, to maintain the
students' involvement in the planning process, and thereby encouraging their
motivation. We discussed the role of art in society in general, but also the important
part that art can play in raising awareness about topical issues in society, for
example.

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 Society and art, but also arts education, are very closely intertwined, as Anne
Bamford asserts. In her opinion, the ‘social, political and historical context’ of art
and arts education

is germane to an understanding of arts education. [...] the arts

exists as constructions of the collective beliefs of society and
the principles upon which that context is formulated directly
impact on the nature of art. (Bamford, 2006: 29)

It is clear that art lives and breathes its context, and it can not live without it. The
class also agreed that it can be a powerful weapon, if used appropriately, because it
has very effective subversive qualities.
Artists have a very positive image in most societies, at least those who
attempt to improve the society, or the context in which they work, rather than
shutting themselves off from it by living in an ivory tower. Most people are more
ready to pity artists who are imprisoned by repressive governments because of
their art, as opposed to violent protesters who throw stones at policemen. After all,
the artists’ protest is peaceful and creative, as well as being pleasing to the eye or
ear, in many cases.
However, art that is critical of society is not only considered as problematic
and reprehensible by undemocratic governments in far-away countries. Even
nations that we know as 'Western' democracies are capable of repressive action on
occasion. William Cleveland points this out in the introduction to his book entitled
Art and Upheaval.

Many of those in the audience that day were surprised to learn

that none of these scenes had been made up. Their surprise
turned to shock when they learned that one of the more extreme
scenarios from my list was home-grown. As I recounted the
story of the 1973 burning of the Watts Writers Workshop by a
man working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I could
sense a subtle shift among my listeners. They had assumed that
my talk about ‘artists on the world’s frontlines’ was going to be

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 about other places, dangerous places, far removed from their
own experience. (2008: 1-2)

All of these crucial aspects of the role of art in society were examined in the
discussion with the 4ème class. This discussion was the initial step in refining the
overall concept for the exhibition. At its final point the class assembled a preliminary
list of exhibits divided into four different categories and fourteen works of art that
they were going to write audioguides about.
In the second part of the lesson I asked them to choose a painting that they
did not know very much, or nothing about and to engage with it. They were asked to
adhere to the following instructions

• Describe your work of art in detail: everything you can see.

• Describe your reaction, what you associate with what you observe.
• Comment, analyse, criticise and interpret.
• Write down the words and expressions you had to look up.

These instructions are based on Michael Buchanan’s ‘knowing, decoding and

exploring’ model, described by Michele Tallack, even if I altered this model slightly,
to fit into the lessen sequence plan:

His model provides stages through which students pass [...]. It

starts with ‘knowing’ - the giving of information derived from
known facts, followed by ‘decoding’ - description elicited from
students based on close observation, description and analysis.
This, he argues, will lead on to ‘exploring’ - interpretation,
involving the ‘use of deduction and the formulation and testing
of hypotheses.’ (Tallack, 2004: 111)

I changed the model provided by Buchanan somewhat, because I wanted the

students to describe and analyse the paintings without having done any research
previously that would influence their interpretation.
At this stage some students were confused about the purpose of the task.
For different reasons, either because they had not understood or listened to the

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instructions well enough, they did not see the point in writing two texts about the
same painting, as they put it. I had to repeat that their spontaneous reactions to
unknown paintings were valuable too, especially for those who would write the
audioguide about the exhibit. I explained to the whole class that everyone of them
would eventually, after researching detailed information, have to write a guide for an
audience that would probably see the work of art for the first time, without this
background knowledge. The difficulty would then be to put themselves into the
audience's position. Their classmates' written observations would help them in this.
After I had convinced them, they attempted to complete the task readily enough.
It was extremely interesting to read these first impressions. Some students
showed that they are very keen observers, others produced surprising insights and
interpretations of what they saw, without even knowing much about the artist or the
style of the painting. Almost all of them engaged with their work of art and thought
intelligently and critically about what they saw. It was a first encounter with the
paintings, unburdened by any knowledge, or traditional academic opinions about
them. Therefore, it is safe to say that this is a useful exercise in a project or a
lesson sequence such as this.

3.3.4. Lesson 4: How to write an audioguide, 16th May

In this lesson a colleague kindly agreed to visit our classroom and talk to the
class about her experience of having worked for ten years as Head Writer at
Antenna International. This is a London-based company that has produced
audioguides in English, but also in many other languages, for museums and
cultural attractions around the world. Her presentation proved to be highly
informative and deeply motivating for the students, who benefited enormously from
it. She gave a short overview of the different people who are involved in the making
of an audioguide, such as the writer, the voice actors and the producer, amongst
others.

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 The main part of her talk, however, was a tutorial in how to make a good
audioguide. With the use of examples she showed the students the options they
were facing at the beginning of the writing process. One student wrote in her report:
'First of all, we have to define the story and the tone of the exhibition. Should it be
funny, with jokes, or should we keep it more serious? Should it be objectiv [sic] or
subjectiv?' These were the decisions they had to make as a class before embarking
on the writing process.
My colleague also gave them a list of clear aims they should try to follow
when designing the exhibition and the individual guides. After her presentation, and
some questions that the students still had, I asked them to write a report about it
based on the notes they had taken during the lesson. The same student
remembered it in this way:

What often is good in audio-guides, (when you listen to

someone) is to put emotion in it. Then you need a story which
will create a connection between the different paintings. We
have to tell a story! Our exhibition and audio-guides also have to
contain a structure and it has to be clear.

My colleague evidently managed to bring the message home that story and
structure are all-important, because most students included this information in their
reports. It was also noticeable in the exhibition that they put this good piece of
advice into practice. The last part of this student's report is concerned with some
more technical aspects:

A very important thing for the visitor is that there is an

introduction. We have to give them instructions at the beginning.
There are also some things we have to be careful at for the
audio-guide itself: it has to be clearly spoken, it shouldn't be too
long (max. 2 min. / painting), we have to keep it visual. Music is
also very nice to put into the audio-guides.

The class agreed that the visitors would receive the necessary instructions verbally,
rather than in the form of an introductory recorded audioguide track. They argued

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that this would make the beginning of the visit more personal and welcoming if one
of them greeted the 6ème students personally. Most of the class also remembered
the prompt to 'keep it visual' when they wrote their texts. My colleague stressed
how important it is to not merely explain a painting, but also to show the visitor what
is meant by pointing out where the relevant information can be seen in the painting.
Many of the 4ème students managed to do this in their audioguides.
The final part of the lesson was taken up with putting together a
questionnaire that was intended for the 6 ème classes. I asked the 4ème students to
produce it in the aim of finding out how much the younger students knew and cared
about art. I could easily have written the questionnaire myself, however I intended
to have the 4ème write and evaluate it themselves. In this way they were forced to
already deal with the capacities and interests of their audience before they were in
the exhibition. I expected a positive influence on the writing process of the
audioguides from this task.

3.3.5. Lesson 5: Writing a script, 4th June

After both 6ème classes had completed the questionnaires the 4 ème evaluated
them in class. The 6 ème students had been asked to answer questions about their
perspective on art in general: 'What is your definition of art?', 'Why do people make
art?', or 'What does art mean to you?'. Other questions concerned their personal
preferences: 'What's your favourite style of art? Favourite painting? Favourite artist?
What do you like about her or him?', and 'What would you like to learn about art?'.
The third part of the questionnaire focused on the younger students' experience
with exhibitions and audioguides. The last part consisted of questions about
smartphones and the students' habits in using them. I was not entirely satisfied with
some of the questions, but decided to only change some of them, as they had been
provided by the 4ème students. Overall, the 6ème students' answers were interesting.
The analysis of the questionnaires by the 4 ème students showed that many of their

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prospective audience owned a smartphone that was able to play audio files. It also
revealed that the younger students were mainly interested in street art. These
findings were discussed in class and had an influence on the overall design of the
exhibition.
The 4ème class was now ready to start the writing process. The first step for
them was to research information about the painting. To save classroom time I had
asked them to prepare this for the following lesson. Every student received a colour
copy of the painting, as well as the first reactions written by their classmates in a
previous lesson.

Audioguide:
Research information about the artist, the style, and the subject
matter. Find out when it was painted, and where.
Write a first version of a text for an audioguide, keep it visual, try
not to include too many facts.

I added more detailed instructions and explanations in reply to questions that were
raised by the class. I gave them to understand that in order to be able to
understand why a painting was created they needed to research the context. They
would need to gather information about the artists' philosophies, any messages
included in the paintings, and interpretations of the works of art. I also asked them
to look up the artists' significance at the time the exhibit was created, as well as
their significance today: does this painting still have a message for us today?
Furthermore, I reminded them of the 6 ème students' indications in the questionnaire
about what they were interested in, or wanted to know about paintings.

3.3.6. Lesson 6: Finishing the scripts, 11th June

I planned this lesson as an opportunity for the class to put the final touches to
their scripts. At the beginning they took the opportunity to ask more detailed
questions about vocabulary and certain expressions. At that moment I had decided

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not to focus primarily on pronunciation, because the first priority was to structure
the scripts well and to smooth out obscure or difficult passages that are inevitable in
written work at this level of language learning.
After this they were ready to present their texts to the whole class for the first
time. I asked them to read them out loud, with the help of whoever they had chosen
as second voice actor, if they needed one. The reactions to each other's texts were
very positive and supportive, overall. Most writers received feedback on how to
improve their texts, whether they should change or omit something from their
scripts.

3.3.7. Lessons 7-9: Recording the audioguides, 13th June

The recording process turned out to be a very interesting experience, for the
students as well as for me. Mr Mysore, who taught the 4 ème in mathematics, was
already familiar with the recording equipment available in our school. As a
musician, he had already used it to record songs. With his invaluable support the
students were able to find out at first hand that recording an audioguide involves
more than simply reading a text off a page. Most students needed much more time
than they, or I myself, had anticipated. The possibilities of using editing tools after
recording are nearly limitless, as contemporary pop music shows. We had decided,
however, to edit as little as possible after recording for a pedagogical reason. Had
they come into the studio safe in the knowledge that any inadequacies of their
spoken text were going to be removed or touched up, some would most probably
have made less of an effort, however motivated they might have been.
My colleague and I quickly noticed a characteristic that all the 4 ème voice
actors had in common. Almost all of them tended to read their texts much too
quickly. Not only would the 6ème students have failed to understand them, their pace
was too quick even for an audience with English as a first language. Most were
able to slow down their speed on being told, but some found it very difficult. One

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reason was certainly that they already knew their scripts very well, another might
have been that they wanted to put the experience of being in the recording studio
behind them as quickly as possible.
In preparation for the exhibition one of the élèves engagés designed a flyer
with the exhibits that awaited the audience, and a short explanatory text.

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 3.3.8. Lesson 10: Setting up the exhibition, 25th June

The class used this very last lesson before the exhibition for their final
preparations. They put up the exhibits, arranged into the four groups, or parts that
constituted the exhibition. They also made cards indicating the title and the artist's
name. The photographs of the graffiti pieces were put up on the blackboard, which
was then decorated with chalk drawings. Then the room was ready for the
demonstration of the homepage in its intended setting. At the time of writing it is still
accessible online, to be found at:
http://lemi.lu/expo/home.html
The student who had designed the homepage outside of the English lessons,
in his free time, showed it to the rest of the class. His classmates were impressed,
both by his hard work and the very presentable result. This is an excellent example
of one way in which the world wide web can be made use of in a school context.
Andy Ash argues, somewhat drastically, that this is an absolute necessity in art
education: ‘art teachers need to bite the bullet of ICT [information and
communications technology] or prepare for their subject to die.’ (2004: 100) The
conclusion he draws is certainly also applicable to other subjects. Creating the
homepage for the art exhibition also showed the 4 ème students that it is not too
difficult to exert an active influence on and in the web, rather than merely being a
passive consumer of content uploaded by other people: they had now become
‘uploaders’ themselves.
Before integrating the audio files on the homepage, another student had
enhanced the bare spoken monologues and dialogues with music. He had carefully
selected it to highlight the mood of the painting and the text. As a result, most of the
audioguides have even more of an impact on the listener, even if, admittedly, the
volume is not ideally balanced in those instances where the voice actors spoke
relatively softly.

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 3.4. The audioguides

The audioguides were of good quality, generally speaking. They were even
better, in fact, than my colleague, Ms Jacoby, and I had hoped for. Some students,
however, managed to produce excellent texts. They wrote in a simple, yet
interesting way, kept it visual, and managed to catch and hold their audience's
interest. Others were less captivating, some not very well-structured, or read in a
too monotonous voice. Three students chose to lend their voice to one of the
protagonists of their painting and have them address the audience directly. These
were the audioguides about 'The Death of Marat', where Marat's ghost speaks and
'Le Radeau de la Méduse', where the speaker is one of the shipwrecked. A third
guide with this feature was written about David's portrait of Napoleon: Bonaparte
franchissant le Grand-Saint-Bernard. We chose the fourth version of the five that
David painted, the Vienna version, painted in 1803.
In this painting one of the soldiers who are pulling an artillery piece up the
slope sees the painting and, as a veteran, remembers the crossing of the Alps
differently than David painted it.

[Napoleon] wasn't riding on a great horse with such an elegant

golden hat and brand new uniform and shiny boots. But instead
on a silly little donkey with an old grey coat
It was freezing cold, there was mud then snow and rocks
and wind when he crossed the Alps, together with men like me,
to fight the Austrians in Italy.
This painting by Jacques-Louis David, in the neoclassical
style, is pure propaganda, because David was a supporter of
Napoleon Bonaparte. He didn't respect the reality at all. The
only purpose was to manipulate the people by showing
Napoleon as a hero and rescuer of France. […]

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Jacques Louis David: Bonaparte franchissant le Grand-Saint-Bernard. 1803

This rather subversive commentary on a heroic portrait earns the painting its place
in the exhibition about 'Social Criticism', since he argues, quite correctly, that the

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painting was intended and used for propaganda purposes. This extract also shows
that this student played with the speaker's role. The speaker does not stay in
character, as one would say about a character in a play. Instead he is transformed
into a museum guide in the second half of the text, where he comments on the
'neoclassical style' of the painting. In the last sentence of the audioguide the
veteran soldier disappears completely, when the speaker adds his own opinion and
asks the audience a direct question: 'In my opinion, this painting is a bit
exaggerated, even for propaganda, don't you think?' This final twist is also a feature
that it has in common with the others who chose a character from the painting as a
speaker.
Other students chose the arguably less imaginative, but not less effective,
way of creating a dialogue between two people who are looking at the same
painting as the museum visitors. The former alternative makes the painting come
alive for the observer, which makes it more appealing, more interesting. The second
possibility for the writer is to take the point of view of the audience, who is standing
outside of the painting. One student wrote a particularly good script for her
audioguide about the graffiti on a beachwear advertisement. She used this type of
outside perspective, as one could call it. It was the one that my colleague also
declared to be the best one. It is certainly worth a closer analysis.
At the top of the page she provided some few facts about the exhibit. As
previously, I reproduce the original text, in the student's words and including
typographical errors and grammatical mistakes.

Background information:

This work of art was made by an unknown Street artist. [sic] He

pasted a toolbar of Photoshop on some ordinary billboards of
H&M in Hamburg, Germany. By the post of the blogger: "I'm not
Alex Bogusky" on Tumblr, the picture became famous and
passed around the world.

Then she adds her 'Background story: Two girls are walking on the streets of
Hamburg. Then they see the poster. How do they react? What do they think about

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it?' She invented a conversation, and wrote it like a playwright would, with stage
instructions as well as indicating what can be heard in the background:

Sounds: No music. The noises of an urban city in the

background.

Dialogue:

Person 1 (calling): - Hey, come here and take a look at this

pretty bikini. It would look great on me. Wouldn't it?'
Person 2: - Yeah, it's perfect for you and just look at the price.
It's so cheap!

H&M Billboard / Daniel Soares. Hamburg, 2012

The beginning, the first impression, of an audioguide is extremely important, of

course, as it needs to get the audience's attention. This student chose a setting in
everyday life, two people walking down a busy street. It fits her subject, on one

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hand, as billboards are common features in public places. Yet it is also well adapted
to her audience, on the other hand, because scenes like these occur very
frequently in the 6ème students' everyday lives. She also kept Ms Jacoby's advice in
mind to always refer to the visual elements of the exhibit, to point them out to the
onlooker. This is what she meant when she told the class to 'keep it visual': to take
the audience by the hand, metaphorically speaking, and lead their eyes around the
painting, or the photograph.
It certainly helps if, like in this example, the audioguide focuses first on the
most obvious elements of the exhibit. The two girls who are walking 'on the streets
of Hamburg' see the billboard first, then the woman who is wearing a bikini, which is
being advertised. She mentions only then is the graffiti artist's small addendum to
the advertisement on the left:

Person 1: - But wait! What's this box on the left?!

Person 2: - It looks like a Photoshop toolbar!
Person 1 (worrying): - It has to be a mistake!
Person 2: - Maybe! But it could also be on purpose.
Person 1: - Why would someone do that?
Person 2: - To make the people think about, what's real on this
billboard!
Person 1 (confused): - I don't understand what you mean.
Person 2: - Well, just take a closer look at this poster. Look at
the model in the middle. What do you think when
you see her?

The conversation works so well as an audioguide, because it seems very realistic,

close to real life, but it also takes up the questions that the museum visitors are
asking themselves while standing in front of the exhibit: 'What's this box?', 'It has to
be a mistake!', or ' Why would someone do that?'. Step by step these questions are
answered. Step by step Person 1 leads Person 2 into her interpretation of the
exhibit. By asking the right questions, she manages to get her friend to think more
about it, and she elicits the right answers. Since the audience is listening to this,
they are cast in the role of Person 2, whereas the writer's, the 4 ème student's, role is
that of Person 1: she explains, illustrates and convinces her audience.

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 The dialogue continues, with Person 1 still leading the way and defining the
interpretation:

Person 1 (unsure): - Ehm, she's beautiful?!

Person 2: - Exactly! Her skin is perfectly tanned. She's not too
fat and not too thin. She has a well-trained body. Her
makeup is immaculate and her hair is perfectly
arranged. All in all, she is a stunning woman. Is this
realistic though?
Person 1: - No! But-
Person 2 (interrupting): - And look at the background. The
model is sitting in perfectly clear, turquoise water
and the sky is completely blue, without even the
smallest cloud.

Here, after having established some facts about the central element in the picture,
Person 2 points out the less obvious, the background. She encourages her friend to
scrutinise it in detail and draws conclusions about it.
After the discussion and analysis of the surface of the advertisement,
metaphorically speaking, follows an all-encompassing socially critical examination
of its cultural significance.

Person 1: - Yes this can't possibly be completely real, but that's

normal. Every advertisement is reworked. It has to
look pretty, so that the people will buy it.
Person 2: - Precisely! And this poster wants to remind the
people to pay attention, to think about what's real
and what's just a illusion!
Person 1: - But what's so bad about it? It's just a Bikini!
Person 2: - The Bikini isn't the bad thing! The alarming thing is
that people let themselves be manipulated that
easily. Because when they see this beautiful, perfect
model in this Bikini, they think they would also look
that beautiful in this Bikini and they want to buy it.
That's marketing! Manipulating people's minds and
we don't even notice it! Especially the fashion and
beauty industry manipulate us.

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 Person 1: - Ohh maybe you could be right!
Person 2: - Of course I'm right. I'm happy that there are some
artists who remind us of this sometimes.

The script closes with the writer conveying her personal opinion to the listener in
the last sentence. Overall, the audioguide perfectly fits the theme of social criticism
that the class had developed for the exhibition.
The third and last audioguide I will analyse here was written for William
Turner's famous The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up,
painted in 1838.

J. M. W. Turner The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up.

This guide is also designed as a dialogue between two people discussing the

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painting. Here, however, as opposed to the previous example, the student granted
both characters the right to interpret the scene. This means that both voices carry
the same weight when it comes to ascribing meaning to what the audience is
seeing on the canvas, even though the two interpretations are diametrically
opposed. The only difference between the speakers is that Person 1 remembers it
better than Person 2 does:

Person 1: I know this! It was painted by William Turner, an

English romantic artist.
Person 2: Oh yeah. I remember. We saw it in class, right?
Person 1: Mm- hm. An epic scene in a spectacular sunset!
Person 2: Wasn't there a story about the ship or something like
that?
Person 1: Just let your imagination take you back in 1805 and
feel the warmth of the setting sun... and I will tell you
the story.

The writer's decision to choose two students as characters has an obvious

advantage. It allowed her to include the less interesting information about the
painting that would sound artificial in any everyday conversation. In a dialogue
between two students who come across something they have seen in class, on the
other hand, it appears natural to include what they remember their teacher telling
them. This twist is necessary, because it is obvious that all the information that the
audience should receive needs to be included in the audioguide. Most audioguides
usually only convey the most important facts, only a bare minimum, because
listeners are unable to process an overload of facts. This is why the students had to
find a solution for the difficult problem of how to include a mention of the paintings'
style in their scripts without being too artificial.
After this short introductory exchange, Person 1 then proceeds to tell her
classmate the historical background to the scene. The first part of the recording
ends with Person 1's personal opinion:

Person 1: The big white sailing ship you see on the left is the

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 glorious "Fighting Temeraire", a war ship that played
an important role in the victory of Nelson in the battle
of Trafalgar.
It is towed by a black steam boat of the early
nineteenth century on her way to be broken up...
Person 2 (finishing the sentence of the first person): … because
her time has finally come to an end.
Person 1: Exactly! I like this painting because of the calm and
almost sad but still nostalgic atmosphere.

Person 1's interpretation follows the orthodox consensus that the dominant emotion
in the painting is nostalgia. The old ship symbolises the past, she 'is already a
ghostly shape, fading away', as the National Gallery guide puts it. The much more
prosaic, and more real, 'solid form of the squat little steam tug that pulls her along
to her fate', on the other hand, stands for the present and the future.
(nationalgallery.org.uk / The Fighting Temeraire)
In the second part, Person 2 offers her view of the same painting. The writer
obviously wants to show and teach the 6ème students that same subject matter can
be interpreted in very different ways by different people. Person 2 quite literally
sees the scene in a different light:

Person 2: You have a very melancholic vision of the painting,

you know, talking about the setting sun and the old
ship which will be destroyed.
Person 1: Mm-hm.
Person 2: But if you look at it again, you will discover a
completely different point of view. Imagine the sun
isn't setting but rising. It's a new age. We are now in
the early nineteenth century and we can clearly see
progress in the painting. The black steam boat is a
symbol for the industrial revolution. It's strong and
fast.

As the shift of perspective occurs at this point, from Person 1 to Person 2's
interpretation, the music that they chose reflects this shift. From slow and muted, its
pace and tone gradually increase and lighten up after 1:10, when Person 2 is

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voicing her thoughts about the optimism that she sees in the painting, starting from
the sunrise symbolising the 'new age'.

Person 1: You're right. I think both interpretations are great.

Yours is more optimistic, though.
Person 2: In any case, it's one of William Turner's best works of
art.

One cannot but notice that there is very much agreement between the two
speakers. The risk inherent in shutting out divergence of opinion or even conflict
between two voices is that is less interesting for many people. Using disagreement,
often couched in humour, as a way to convey information about an exhibit can and
does work. There are examples of very amusing audioguides, where the characters
are squabbling, and even making fun of the topic at hand. This is a great way to
raise interest and convey information about an exhibit, especially for younger
visitors.
There is, however, a serious historical inaccuracy in the text, that escaped
the writer's attention before it was recorded. The ship was broken up in the same
year Turner painted the scene, in 1838, not in 1805, as the student claims in her
audioguide. 1805, after all, was the year of Trafalgar, where the Téméraire fought
her most important battle.
A further inaccuracy lies in the interpretation of Person 2. It is of less
consequence, however, as it is counterbalanced by a geographical inaccuracy that
Turner, presumably knowingly, included in his painting. If the scene were set at
sunrise, the position of the moon, to the left of the Temeraire's main topgallant
mast, would be much too far north. It follows that Turner painted a sunset, which is
why, logically, Person 2's interpretation is impossible. However, as the National
Gallery's description reads, in the painting 'The 'Temeraire' is shown travelling east,
away from the sunset, even though Rotherhithe is west of Sheerness, […].'
(nationalgallery.org.uk / The Fighting Temeraire)
It is clear that being overly pedantic in a case such as this would be rather
counterproductive. Turner himself, after all, was quite free in the use of his artistic

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licence. For this reason, I let the students proceed in recording their audioguide,
despite its drawbacks and inconsistencies of interpretation. The interesting
structure the writer chose to give it, and the very enthusiastic way in which she
developed her creative idea were justification enough for me not to interfere
excessively in the writing process.
It is undeniable that none of the audioguides produced by the 4ème are
immaculate. Obviously there are still some mistakes in the second example. There
are still some quite basic grammar mistakes left, such as 'a illusion', comma
mistakes or inaccurate expressions. One could also argue that the final sentence is
a touch too didactic on the part of Person 2. It is also true that the voice actors
committed a certain number of pronunciation mistakes when acting out the scripts
in the studio. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the writers are 4 ème
students who accomplished this in their fourth year of learning English. In this
perspective, their achievement is remarkable.
The question remains whether it would have been useful to have the 4 ème
students write more drafts, give feedback on each one and practise the spoken
texts in even more detail. There is a delicate balance to be kept between being too
lenient and being too perfectionist. In this particular case it meant that I had to
decide between leaving the students to their own devices in the writing of their
scripts and focusing heavily on multiple drafts. Finally, I considered two written
drafts to be sufficient for the often necessary improvements to structure and style.
When the script was finished I asked students to present them to the class. This
was a good occasion where I was able to detect cases of incorrect pronunciation. In
addition to this, the students themselves also proofread each other's texts. If any
major mistakes had remained, they would have been rectified during the recording
session. Any mistakes or errors that remained I judged to be minor enough to not
detract from the value of the final product.

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 3.5. The museum experience

The exhibition and the homepage with the audioguides were ready for their
audience. Two 6ème classes visited the exhibition separately on the same day,
during their English lesson. When they were in the classroom they were welcomed
by two of the 4ème students. They explained to them everything they needed to
know: how and why the exhibition came into being, what the title meant and how
the concept had an influence on the content, on the exhibits that they were about to
see. They then proceeded to the more technical details about where it was best to
start, and how to use the homepage. The 6 ème students were also issued with the
handouts we had prepared for them, the questionnaire and the glossary.
At this point, however, we already knew that we would encounter a difficulty.
Making the audioguide files available on a homepage that everyone can access via
the internet requires the visitors to have access to the internet on a level allowing
them to download the files – about 30 megabyte in total. When we had asked the
6ème in the first questionnaire about whether they owned smartphones with internet
access, a majority answered yes. Nevertheless, as it turned out, only about a
quarter of them also had a contract that allowed them unlimited access to the
internet. In addition to this, the reception was far from ideal inside the classroom.
It is necessary to dwell on these technical observations for some length,
regrettably, since in order to listen to audioguides, in whatever shape or form, the
visitors need technical equipment. We were prepared for this contingency and had
developed a Plan B, as well as a Plan C. I asked those students who were well-
equipped to start the museum visit with their smartphone, and to take along one of
the students who did not own one by sharing the headphones with them.
Meanwhile the two 4ème students who were present at the beginning of this lesson
attempted to set up their own wireless network, for those who did not have free
internet access. Unfortunately, they did not succeed due to the different makes of
mobile devices that the 6ème students were using.
This is why, finally, we resorted to plan C, which meant accessing the

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homepage via the classroom PC and playing the audioguides via the stereo
system. This had obvious disadvantages. Roughly half the class, about ten to
twelve students, had proceed around the exhibition as a group. They all had to look
at the exhibit referred to in the chapter of the audioguide that was being played.
Apart from this it also inconvenienced those students who had already begun their
tour, and were listening to a different track. Despite these drawbacks it was still
possible for the 6ème students to complete the museum visit successfully, which they
all did.
With this in mind, it there is also the possibility to opt for a Plan D when
repeating this project. All smartphones are delivered with cables allowing their
users to connect them to a PC or a charger, usually via a USB socket. One should
ask the visiting students to bring these to school a few days before the exhibition to
copy the audio files from a PC to their phone. An alternative would be to ask them
to download the files at home from the homepage. In this way the visitors would not
be forced to access the internet during the lesson, and one could be certain that
every student already has the files before the exhibition.
I had considered this option, or Plan D, but finally decided against it. Not
distributing the audio files before the exhibition allowed me to maintain the
suspense for the 6ème classes until the day itself. I regarded this as an important
advantage. Students who have the opportunity to listen to the audioguides
beforehand might be bored during the exhibition. In case they do not appreciate
what they listen to, for example simply because they are lacking the context
provided by the exhibition, they could also demotivate their fellow students by
spreading their unfavourable opinion around the class. It is clear that opting for any
of the different alternatives mentioned here depends largely on the priorities the
teacher has. In this case, the surprise effect was a priority, which is why I chose to
deny the 6ème students access to the audio files until the opening day of the
exhibition.
Mr Mysore was also present when the second 6ème class was visiting the
exhibition, together with the 4ème students themselves. He was very impressed by

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the overall result, especially by the quality of the audioguides, that he was able to
hear in their final form and in their intended surroundings for the first time. His
opinion was valuable to me, because he had the advantage of the informed outside
perspective. He had trained as a teacher in a different subject, and was only
involved in one part of the project, albeit an important one. As it turned out, he was
fascinated by the seriousness of the 6ème students, who appreciated the exhibition
like real connoisseurs. They seemed very interested and disciplined while they
were there.
Of course one should always use a caveat when making observations about
students’ reactions. One can never explain with absolute accuracy why they do or
say certain things, whether they mean what they say when they appreciate
something. Even in a school like ours the relationship between teachers and
students is not one of equals, although there is a palpable spirit of cooperation. It is
still on many levels a professional working relationship, with the teachers, as adults,
in the role of the figure of authority. This is as it should be, of course, since under
age students can and should not take full responsibility for themselves. Most, if not
all, students and teachers are aware of this situation. This is why many students
say things with the aim in mind to improve the teachers’ opinion of themselves. One
should not, and indeed can not, blame them for this. After all, it is a direct result of
the education system that students and teachers are parts of.
All these observations aside, the impression that the students made on the
teachers who observed them while they went around the exhibition has a not
inconsiderable value. Together with the questionnaires they completed after they
had listened to the audioguides they make up a sufficient basis for analysis.
My colleague and I observed that, as far as one can tell, all of the students
focused their attention on the exhibits and the audioguides almost all the time. For
us, as teachers, this was already impressive in itself. For the 4 ème students, who
were also there to witness their visitors walking around their exhibition, it was also
very gratifying, as some of them told me during and after the lesson. Recording
audioguides and listening to them together with one’s own classmates is one thing,

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but seeing other, younger students appreciate them feels much more rewarding.
It also transpired that the 4ème students and I had gauged the level of difficulty
correctly. The 6ème students were able to understand the texts that they were
listening to. The more difficult words, or those specific to an area discussed in an
audioguide were explained in the glossary, which they carried around with them as
a handout. This was a two-page list explaining words and expressions used in eight
of the texts. Most 6ème students certainly knew some items in the vocabulary list, for
example 'although', 'brave' or 'a cup'. However, because many of these 'easy' words
were particularly important in order to understand the central message or idea of
the audioguides in which they were used. The 4 ème students decided to include
them after all, because they wanted to rule out the possibility that their audience
misunderstood them simply because they did not have a sure enough grasp of the
vocabulary that was used. Other words on the list were certainly outside the most of
the 6ème students' grasp. Despite the fact that the 4ème students knew they had to
keep their texts simple, they still decided to include a small number of more difficult
words that were necessary in the particular contexts. The 6 ème students even
laughed at the appropriate moments, which means they got the jokes the 4 ème had
written for them. This is also an indicator of language, or listening proficiency.
(Terui, 2012: 173-174)
After their guided tour, I had asked the visitors to fill in the questionnaire. It
required them to answer a few general questions about the exhibition, but also to
select two exhibits that they liked in particular. The instructions in the questionnaire
asked them to listen to the recording again, to refresh their memory of what exactly
was said about the exhibit. The first question was: 'What do you like or dislike about
this work of art? Please explain what you mean.' Adding the second sentence, or
one like it, is necessary at the level the 6 ème students were at that time, as I have
found out. They have not yet made a habit of explaining their opinions at length, nor
have they been accustomed to supporting their claims and explaining their
arguments. Therefore, if one omits to clarify that this is expected of them, the
answers that many 6ème students give to opinion questions frequently consist of only

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one sentence.
The second question was: 'Write down three interesting facts about the
painting, or this style of painting, that you learnt today.' This question was asked
with the intention of encouraging the visitors to listen closely to the recordings.
Furthermore, it created a real need for most of them to listen to the recordings
again, because they could not take up enough details in the first listening to answer
this question. However, most of them already listened attentively the first time,
because the audioguides managed to raise their interest.

3.6. Looking back on the project: student feedback

In the concluding session about the art exhibition project I asked the 4 ème, in
the presence of my supervisor, for reactions to and feedback. We also read many of
the feedback questionnaires the 6ème filled in during their exhibition visit. I am well
aware of the fact that the opinions students express in the classroom should not
always be taken at face value. This is a reason why I will not recount in detail what
was said in this final lesson, nor will their reactions form the only basis for my
evaluation. Nevertheless, I was very happy to hear that the 4 ème students generally
had a favourable opinion.
The 4ème were also asked to provide suggestions as to how the
implementation of such an exhibition could be improved were I to do it again with a
different class. These ideas were as interesting to hear as they were valuable. One
of the first thoughts was that more time is necessary to prepare an exhibition, in the
sense that one should start even earlier, but not necessarily spend more time in
class with the preparation. A further suggestion was that a website is not strictly
necessary if the visitors are provided with the audio files in due time before the
exhibition opens. This was said by the student whose idea it was to create the
website, and who volunteered for the task. His experience was that a considerable

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amount time was necessary to get it online. In the eyes of the 4 ème students the
exhibits should be printed out in a format bigger than DIN A3, so that more people
could look at a particular exhibit at the same time.
When asked what they thought they had learnt from the experience the
answers all confirmed each other. The main skills the 4 ème had perfected, in their
opinion, were how to do a recording, and how to present a painting. They
acknowledged that, in consequence, they were now also able to present other
topics or objects in general better than before.

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 4. Conclusions and Outlook to the Future

After the detailed description and analysis of the many different individual
components of the work done in class, this chapter is intended to give a more
general overview of the goals achieved and an evaluation of the whole exhibition
project.
The first stage consists in looking back on the art exhibition project and
highlighting the different skills that the students in the three classes developed
during its various stages. A second step is to take a closer look at how far this
development has gone, especially concerning the project's long-term effects.
The role of the second sub-chapter of this conclusion is to determine in how
far this project might be applicable to classes of a different level of language
proficiency, or even other schools inside and outside the Luxembourgish school
system.
The third and last part will look ahead and find ways in which such a project
could be improved even further in a future realisation, in order to make it even more
motivating and effective for the learners.

4.1. Evidence of learning

Projects like the one described here take a considerable amount of time to
plan and time to implement. The time students and teachers spend in the
classroom is extremely valuable, as one should not forget. Unless they have
English speaking friends or family it is the only opportunity for them to use the
English they have learnt. Therefore, taking into consideration the great amount of
time needed and the necessity of its effective use, it is obvious that assessing the
learning outcome after the completion of a lesson sequence is part of a teacher's

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duty.
In this particular project, the overall aim was to develop a range of meaningful
classroom activities in view of training a wide variety of skills. This was achieved in
an exceedingly high degree by the 4ème students, since they were more active,
being the class who produced the exhibition. The most obvious skills that they
furthered while working on the audioguides were speaking and writing. There were
a number of plenary discussions about the general concept and the individual
exhibits during the preparation phase, all conducted in English. The class also
practised speaking during the recording sessions, where they learnt at first hand
that attention to detail, especially to pronunciation, was all important. Furthermore,
they were listening to the exchanges of opinion as well as to their own and to their
classmates' recordings. They developed their research skills when they looked up
information about their works of art, while at the same time practising reading. They
also had to re-read and revise their own texts, and those written by their peers.
Focusing over a length of time on a specific topic helped improve their observation
and analysis skills. Some of them were remarkably perspicacious in dealing with
the exhibits assigned to them. Finally, as this project was conducted in a
cooperative spirit, the students had to make use of, and develop their groupwork
skills.
The list is shorter, on the other hand, for the 6ème students. The skills they
were encouraged to use and to develop included first and foremost observation and
listening, but also analysis and writing. It was only to be expected that there would
be fewer skills that the 6ème worked on, because they were not the class that
produced the audioguides. They had the role of the audience, and, as such, the
recipient of the work invested in the art exhibition. Nevertheless, even if the 6 ème
students used their receptive skills, listening and reading, more than their
productive skills, writing and speaking, the fact remains that, these are part of a
competent English speaker's repertoire. Therefore, they must not be neglected in a
comprehensive teaching approach.
As a result, the 4ème students are now clearly more competent in describing

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visual material than before. This skill will benefit them in the coming years,
especially in the final exam, as described in chapter 1. Moreover, the students are
also able to apply the competences they have developed in this project to other
areas. Description, analysis and discussion skills are extremely useful in whichever
direction their future personal and professional development will take them, whether
at university, or in work-related contexts. Indeed, their final product exceeded the
high expectations I had for the students’ work. It is important to mention, though,
that when teachers have high expectations for students they should have even
higher expectations for themselves, as Todd Whitaker writes. (2004: 33-34) In this
way they are able to fulfil their responsibility as teachers.
For obvious reasons, the exact nature of the impact of such a project on the
overall language learning progress of the students is very difficult to determine.
Several variable factors complicate the evaluation of the intake of the lexis and the
general language skills that were related to the project. For example, in order to test
vocabulary acquisition and retention with absolute reliability, students would need to
do an identical activity or task on multiple occasions before, during and after the
project sequence.
This, however, would have exceeded by far the boundaries set for the
research and analysis of the art exhibition project. It would also have required
making vocabulary acquisition and test design its chief focus. The most significant
difficulty in designing such tests lies in ensuring that they are proof against errors in
measurement, such as students' form on the day of the tests, or the time of day at
which the tests are scheduled. Furthermore, an exact replication of such an activity
would certainly have engendered disengagement with the real focus, the exhibition
itself, in the 6ème students. The role of the interference from other classroom
activities must also be acknowledged, because the class did not work exclusively
on this project. For various reasons there were lessons with foci other than the
exhibition that I inserted in order to space out the work on the overall concept or the
audioguides.
Moreover, it should be clear that the principal aim and objective of this project

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was to create a range of classroom activities suitable to develop the skills that
students need to achieve meaningful and accurate analyses of pictures. This was
implemented in three different classes on two different levels with the intention to
achieve different products. These were, amongst others the picture descriptions
written by the 4ème and 6ème students, as well as, of course, the audioguide as a final
product. These, especially the audioguide, speak for themselves. The success of
the exhibition should not be judged by the sheer number of skills involved; instead,
it should be measured in the absolutely convincing quality of the audioguides
themselves on one hand, but also in the 6 ème students' keen interest that they
displayed when they were visiting the exhibition.
The success of such tasks and activities is also defined by the aims staked
out in the planning stage before the lesson. In this perspective the activities were
very convincing. They generated new vocabulary, and students demonstrated that
they had taken in at least some of it by using it in the following lessons. Students
included the lexical sets they had learnt in the texts that they wrote, and produced
structured analyses of the photographs and paintings that they observed.
Therefore, it is to assert that the tasks and activities that constituted the art project
were successful.
The immediate, initial evaluation soon after the conclusion of the project was
also very satisfactory. However, in order to take the evaluation even further and
complement my first impressions I decided to add an occasion that would allow me
to sound out the 6ème students' capacities for long term retention of one area of the
skills and the vocabulary they had developed. This is why I planned for one of the
6ème classes a follow-up activity. It was not useful to carry it out in the time left
before the summer holidays in the same school year, which is why I welcomed the
three months that elapsed in the meantime, as they were sufficient for a long-term
evaluation among the now 5ème students.
This final stage in evaluating the project consisted in a task almost identical
to those the 6ème students worked on three months earlier. I asked the students of
the 5ème classique 3 to carry out another picture description and analysis. The

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similarity to the previous activities was deliberate, because the overlap allowed me
a direct comparison of the results. Also, I chose this class, because it is almost
unchanged compared to last year, with the only exception of one girl who
transferred into a 5ème technique. The overarching topic that the class was working
on during this school year was film and photography. For this reason the class had
watched Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator at the beginning of the school
year, and the classroom activities and lesson sequences they engaged in
subsequently all tied in with the theme set by this film.
In the follow-up activity for the exhibition project that is described here, every
student received a different still image taken from different scenes in the film and
were asked to write a description using the following clear guidelines:

Photo description:
Describe what you see, in detail.
What were the characters doing, saying, thinking at that
moment?
Describe the context: what happened before and after?
Use the present tenses to describe the still image, and the past
tenses to describe the plot of the film, and the character's
behaviour.

I reminded them of the vocabulary we had compiled on the blackboard in the lesson
in which the class first worked on this an activity, four months previously, but did not
provide them again. The results were very encouraging, overall. Certainly, some
students had forgotten some of the vocabulary, or did not follow the instructions
closely enough. Others, however, respected the guidelines in their texts, and used
the vocabulary that they had encountered in the previous school year.
The following example shows how stronger students wrote very well-
structured descriptions that focused on all the important details and located them in
the picture:

On this picture, you can see Charlie Chaplin as the role of the
barber in a small road in the ghetto for Jews. It's shortly after

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 the first world war. Located on the right hand side is his barber
shop and opposite to it is a lamp post. On the lamp post are
loudspeakers. Through these, Hynkel (Chaplin representing
Hitler) does announcements. In the background are some
people and another shop. Charlie Chaplin is wearing a smoking
with a hat and a stick, the typical clothes of Charlie Chaplin.
In this moment, he was wondering why someone had written
'JEW' on his window.

The writer starts her description with two sentences that locate the protagonist of
the film and the setting, Chaplin in the Jewish ghetto, after World War I. The next
four sentences are a meticulous description of his surroundings, while the last
sentence of the first paragraph lists what the main character is wearing. The last
sentence of this extract is the beginning of this student's explanation of the context
of this scene. In this sentence she switches into the past tense, as she was
requested to do in the instructions.
It is clear, then, that the structure of this text follows the guidelines that the
class practised in class with very closely. There are some sentences that do not
respect the rigid outline of describing visual detail first, then context and
interpretation. These are the mention of World War I in the second sentence, or the
information that the loudspeakers broadcast Hynkel's announcements. However,
this student deliberately rearranged the structure in order to fit in this information at
the most logical place in the text. By appending the information about the public
announcements to the mention of the loudspeakers in the picture description she
avoids having to mention the same item twice in her text. All in all, this long-term
evaluation of an important part of the exhibition project therefore confirms the
preliminary, decidedly positive conclusion about its overall success.
The particular set-up of the exhibition that took on board the 4 ème students'
suggestion of integrating graffiti into the overall concept for the exhibition also
allowed me to draw a conclusion concerning the other styles of art that were used.
Making street art an important part of the exhibition proved to be very motivating for
the 4ème, as well as for the 6ème students. For this reason it can be of use as the

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initial prompt of a lesson, or the basis for a task or discussion. However, it is not
extremely useful as material in an activity where a picture has to be analysed in
detail. Apart from a basic description, there is simply not enough to say about many
examples of street art, which is a disadvantage when engaging students in
language generating activities. The composition and techniques in street are
usually simple, especially compared to more classical paintings. Even if the
message is often surprising and challenging, it is usually designed to be taken in in
one glance. Therefore, I found it extremely rewarding to also include classical
paintings in the exhibition. They were carefully planned by the artists, who put a lot
of thought into selecting and arranging the subject matter. Consequently, there is a
lot more in them to describe and discuss. Moreover, the older paintings produced a
very interesting aesthetic contrast to the newer exhibits.

4.2. Recommendations for the implementation in other contexts

In this chapter I will explore the potential feasibility of this project in other
classes and schools. For any future application, it must be considered that the
Lycée Ermesinde Mersch is very different from other Luxembourgish schools in
some respects, while it is very similar in others, of course. Among the most
significant differences should be mentioned that it is an autonomous, all-day, public
school with a school system that is continuously being developed. This system is
based on student-centred learning and teaching and student autonomy. The school
encourages every student to find and define their very own strengths and develop
them as far as possible. It also relies on interdisciplinary learning, peer-teaching
and student-teacher cooperation. Marks are not used in evaluating the students'
work until they are in the 'cycle supérieur', the final three years of secondary school,
which also means that students get text-based school reports at the end of every
semester.

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 There are also other, less consequential differences. While students have to
write a letter of application, for example, the future students are chosen in the aim
of having a wide variety of personalities with different strengths and interests. The
aim is not to select the best students from those who apply, but to provide normal
students with better opportunities for learning, and the best possible care of them.
Therefore, the similarities of conditions in the LEM and the 'traditional' school
system are evident.
Of course, there is the inevitable, mostly jocular, rivalry between the teaching
staff that exists between all schools. But prejudices apart, whether jocular or not,
LEM students still have to take the final exam just like any other Luxembourgish
students. With only two classes of students having passed the final exam so far it is
too soon to tell whether the average results are substantially above the national
average at this school. However, students' results do certainly not fall below the
national average either. All in all, the outline of the project reflected the general
philosophy of the school and took advantage of the greater freedom that it grants
the individual teacher.
Still, my personal experience of teaching in the traditional school system for
three years also allows me to make a positive prognosis on the potential value of
the project in less experimental learning surroundings. All the important factors for a
successful implementation of such a project are on similar levels: students'
language levels, their reactions to tasks and activities, and their behaviour when
working on them, amongst others. It should be clear, therefore, that the differences
in the school systems represent no obstacle to an implementation of this project
elsewhere from an educational perspective. In the last chapter, then, I will discuss
the material and organisational aspects of the project.

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 4.3. Outlook to the future

These final pages are concerned with finding new ways to implement the art
exhibition project in an even better, improved re-incarnation. The following ideas
should guide and assist others, should they choose to follow the model of this
project in a future form in the Lycée Ermesinde, or in other schools.
The first conclusion to draw from the experience of organising the exhibition
is that it does not necessarily need much time spent in the classroom. Naturally,
there is a certain minimum of lessons that is required, but in order for the project to
be an achievable challenge, they should not be given too much time to complete
their work. If less time is spent in total, this means that the lessons have been used
efficiently.
A second recommendation is to invest more time in practising reading and
presenting the script. A special focus should be an authentic pronunciation of the
individual words. This is important if the audioguides are intended for other learners
at a lower lever, who might take in the wrong pronunciation of a new word if they
hear it in this context. Another important point to bring to the students' attention is
intonation. Especially when they read from the script, the delivery tends to be too
monotonous and unconvincing. An optional idea is to provide the audience with the
script of the audioguides. This can be of help if understanding the audioguides
without support proves too much of a challenge for them.
A further modification could be to transform the questionnaire that the visitors
had to fill in into a test. In schools where marks are used, lesson sequences such
as this are usually capped with graded tests. The experience of visiting such an
exhibition is motivating enough for most students to take their role as audience
seriously, and not sabotage the experience for the whole class by disruptive
behaviour. Nevertheless, a real test usually provides an additional extrinsic
motivation for students.
Whether in the form of a test, or in the form described here, the questionnaire

97
could comprehend a question where the visiting students are asked to produce a
sketch of one of the paintings that they saw in the exhibition. The aim of such an
activity is to encourage students to engage more closely, and on a more personal
level with the exhibits. It could also open up new routes to interdisciplinary teaching,
for example if one chooses to tie in English lessons with art education, and have
students train the skills they need to produce the sketches. In this way both
subjects would benefit from the project.
Another idea is giving the students even more autonomy in organising the
exhibition. Consequently, the role of the teacher would need to be 'reduced' even
more to one who, for most of the time, advises rather than controls the students.
This is entirely feasible, although it would most certainly entail some delays and
false starts in the implementation of the exhibition. Yet, on the other hand, it is
equally sure that students would also learn from the experience and develop their
organisation skills.
These examples do not only show how the exhibition project could be
modified to fit into other school contexts. They illustrate, moreover, that almost
every individual, interlocking part of the overall concept, every parameter that
defines the project is changeable. Other teachers are not forced to adhere to the
decisions that were taken in the planning of this particular version, but free to
modify them to suit the learner groups they are working with.
In schools that are not equipped with a fully functional recording studio, for
instance, the solution would be to simply downscale the level of complexity of the
project in this particular area by asking students to use their mobile phones to
record their texts. Since the spread of smartphones in this school is probably
comparable to that in other schools in developed countries, this should not be a
great difficulty, as all smartphones are able to record audio files of convincing
quality.
To me, finding so many new ideas and inspirations for a future development
of this project, does not indicate that it has been unsuccessful. On the contrary:
they are a good reason for optimism. It means that it has been cultivated on fertile

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ground, metaphorically speaking. Therefore, the conclusion must be that this
project can be implemented with just as much success as described here in any
school or any classroom at any level of language learning progress. At least for my
personal teaching practice, the lessons learnt from this exhibition project will be the
basis of many fruitful lessons that are yet to come.

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