Exploratory Journeys: The Versatility of Language Portfolios

Language portfolios invite students to extend their learning beyond the classroom through a variety of multimedia adventures.

What do students actually take away from their time in a language classroom, and how do they grow as people in the process? This year’s BACCA fellowship gave me the opportunity to explore avenues for passing this question along to the students themselves by inviting them to identify meaningful content and document their own growth. The primary tool for drawing students into this journey was the assignment of a “language portfolio” to be developed over the course of the semester. For this portfolio, they would select whatever most interested them from the course content and/or a variety of “extras” that enabled them to explore additional aspects of Israeli culture or the language itself, then process those experiences by creating a multimedia summary through which they could record and share their key take-aways. Feedback, training, and support from the BACCA organizers and fellows helped me move this vision from a general concept to a practical reality, while keeping the student experience front and center.

Here's what the language portfolio project looked like by 2024, with some variation for different levels of the Hebrew program:

• General parameters of length, content options, and project goal suggestions were offered to the students, and each one articulated their own individual goals at the beginning of the semester: Which format would they use (document, slideshow, Canva, etc.)? How many pages/slides did they plan to create? Most importantly, what did they hope this portfolio would record and/or help them accomplish in their language learning journey?
• Checkpoints were set throughout the semester, accompanied in-class portfolio workshop time and peer feedback in both written and oral form, to help students stay current with their projects and continue gathering and processing relevant content along the way. Each student kept a “portfolio record” in which they compiled their project goals and motivations, the most relevant feedback from each checkpoint, and their responses to checkpoint reflection questions. At the end of the semester, this record was submitted together with the final form of the portfolio project.
• Choices for portfolio content varied widely, according to individual student interests, but common threads included the intersection of language and culture, multimedia engagement, and personal reflection. Specific options for beyond-the-textbook exploration were provided on Canvas, including relevant podcast episodes, accessible news articles and other level-appropriate excerpts from Hebrew media, mini-lessons in Biblical Hebrew, etc., and students were invited to select the content that most appealed to them. Some students focused primarily on the regular course material, curating study resources and highlighting key features of the language. Visually oriented students created color-coded charts, aurally inclined students incorporated audio recordings, tech-savvy students developed interactive web pages. In addition to the regular textbook content, some students devoted more portfolio space to course elements such as their in-class presentations on some aspect of Israeli culture; supplementary course readings from level-appropriate Hebrew newspapers, short books, and other sources; or class-adjacent activities such as Hebrew conversation tables and special events. Still others chose to extend their learning beyond the classroom by exploring linguistic and cultural content from relevant online videos, songs, podcast episodes about Hebrew slang, conversations and text exchanges with Israeli friends and family, etc., then recorded and reflected on those learning experiences in their portfolios. Most portfolios contained some combination of all of the above (textbook review, other classroom or class-adjacent sources, and independent explorations), and each final portfolio was beautifully unique—and uniquely meaningful—to the student.

The fellowship and support of this past year’s BACCA cohort, especially leader-extraordinaire Nan Mullenneaux, made such a difference in the development of this language portfolio project. The thoughtful questions raised in this space, the opportunity to discuss with other instructors who share a passion for helping students grow in their engagement with the world around them, and the specific feedback on proposed project guidelines all helped me to refine my project vision. Thanks to that input, the 2024 form of the portfolio project struck a balance between providing enough parameters to give students a sense of direction and keep them on track, while also equipping and inviting them to be maximally creative in their selection and presentation of the content they explored for their portfolios.

These are some highlights from the questions and reflection prompts that inspired my processing of the portfolio project during our BACCA meeting times, and which I hope will also be helpful for readers as you consider your own course projects:

• What is the imagined student experience for this project? Desired learning outcome(s)? What kind of student response would you like to see/elicit through this project?
• In the ideal experience of this project, what is being transformed in (not just acquired by) the students?
• Make it human-centered!
• How can this project be designed to be realistically manageable for both yourself and the students? Acknowledge the full context of your work and theirs.
• Meaning and purpose matter: Is this more than just another “assignment”? How?
• Invite students to identify and articulate their own “why” for this project.
• Complete this sentence: “I would like more of … [engagement, curiosity] … and less of … [distraction, isolation, “for-the-grade”ness]” (my answers in brackets).
• When you think of this project, what are the key words that come to mind? For me, those words were “unique, individual, exploratory,” and especially “connections,” i.e., giving space for students to connect personally with the material they chose to explore for their portfolio, as well as to draw connections between that learning and other components of their life and studies.

In the end, I hope that this portfolio project has served my personal aims of (1) helping students grow the intellectual habits of identifying goals and reflecting on their progress, and (2) inviting them to exercise their curiosity and experience joy in learning new things and exploring new ways of thinking about the world. The high quality and delightful creativity of their portfolios from this year indicates that they have done exactly that!

IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Sarah Baker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sarah Baker.