Inner Nationality Quiz – Earthables

Today I want to write about a lesson idea I had in the context of using digital technologies for language learning. I don’t think this is necessarily what we were meant to do, but I see some potential and would value any comments or thoughts. So here goes…

A Facebook friend recently shared one of these silly personality quizzes with me and I and a few other friends completed it which resulted in an entertaining message feed. The quiz claimed that it would help you find your ‘inner nationality’ (Your Inner Nationality). This was the introductory sentence to it: Did you ever have the feeling that you were born in the wrong country? My immediate reaction was: Yes, of course! That’s why I don’t live there anymore, isn’t it! That was all the motivation I needed. There were ten questions in total, supported by images and the whole quiz only took a few minutes to complete.

There are several reasons why I think the quiz might be usable in a classroom situation. Firstly the language is quite simple and besides text is supported by images (in the questions as well as the results), i.e. as far as language is concerned the quiz should be suitable even for learners at lower levels. Secondly, it is short and only takes a few minutes to complete, i.e. it is easy to integrate into many teaching situations. Furthermore, some of the results when I ‘played’ it with my friends were surprising and this encouraged participants to make comments (How is it possible that of those people who are apparently Italians on the inside nobody chose ‘pizza’ in the food question? Out of the people who were already not living in their country of origin nobody’s inner nationality matched that of their new chosen country!). One negative feature of this particular version of the ‘inner nationality’ quiz is that ‘Question 4’ touches on a taboo topic. However, compared with other versions of the quiz, I thought it had the best visuals (some do not have any supporting images) and while students might feel uncomfortable discussing taboo topics with classmates and teacher, in this instance they do not have to share their personal choices regarding individual questions, i.e. their preferences remain anonymous (obviously I still would not use this activity with my under-16s!).

The above reasons already speak in favour of using the quiz in class. However, the main benefit I see for using this particular quiz is that it could introduce the topic of ‘national identity’. In the past I have often taught a lesson on ‘national stereotypes’. It seems an appropriate topic when suddenly three or four nationalities live under one roof (as is the case in my homestay teaching context)! We often claim that we do not treat each other according to stereotypes (national, gender, age etc.) but in reality, I think, many of us have pre-conceptions about people who we see as belonging to a certain group. For example, if I had a penny for every time someone said to me ‘Oh, you Germans are so efficient!’, I’d be a millionaire! Of course, I don’t take comments like this too seriously. In fact, I play with this little ‘label’ myself quite a lot. Besides, I also have my own ‘labels’ for other nationalities. But sometimes the labelling does annoy me or I catch myself using labels inappropriately. Therefore I think it is worth bringing the labels to the surface from time to time. I think the language classroom is the perfect setting for this. As Kohonen remarks in Experiential Learning in Foreign Language Education (Kohonen et al, 2014: 20): “A natural task for language learning is to connect people from various cultural backgrounds and to increase the tolerance for diversity and ambiguity.”

When I taught this lesson about stereotypes in the past, I would often introduce it with one of the postcards you get in town everywhere:

The quiz to me is a more interactive way of achieving a similar goal (funny stimulus) while also being less UK-centric. I could envisage setting it as ‘homework’ before a lesson, if a class group exists somewhere on social media (as I say I first came across the quiz on Facebook and ‘played’ on my mobile). The task would be for students to complete the quiz and leave at least one comment after completion. In fact, I asked some of my TE714 seminar buddies to join in for presentation purposes and here is some of the resulting message feed (I have tried to anonymise people, but let me know if I haven’t gone far enough!):

Benefits of doing this would be that it increases out-of-class exposure to the language and that students are asked to act autonomously (in the end their participation in the quiz is up to them). It would also encourage interaction between students (through the comment feed) as well as getting students to practice their writing skills (with the added benefit that it would provide the teacher with written data of learner language).

However, the fact that the quiz does not take very long to complete would also make it possible for students to do this in class, either with that being part of the lesson plan all along or as a fall-back for students who decide not to do the quiz as homework. As a follow-up students could then compare and discuss results with a partner leading subsequently to whole-class feedback. At this point language issues could be addressed, e.g. problems with vocabulary (e.g. ‘skipping straight to dessert’, ‘on rare occasions’, ‘maybe by accident’), grammar-related questions (the famous present perfect question – ‘have you ever…?’; question formations in general), or even concept questions (What are ‘mixed emotions’? What does it mean to love s.o./s.th. ‘heart and soul’?).

For the next step in the development of the topic, I thought it might be interesting to recreate the quiz in Socrative, an online polling tool. Like the original quiz this can be accessed by students via their personal devices http://www.socrative.com/. While Socrative is probably mainly used to create quizzes that have questions with either right or wrong answers, in this case the teacher and students can use the tool to see whether they can discover patterns. What question results point to what nationality? Why might that be so? Do students agree? Why/why not?

It is worth noting here that in Socrative it is likely that students won’t remain anonymous (although they are free to choose any name they want for themselves) and therefore it might be necessary to remove ‘Question 4’.

Socrative – Teacher Screen

Socrative – Student Screen

I realise that, throughout the process, I have been treating the ‘inner nationality’ quiz as if it were a serious instrument for assessing human nature. Of course, that is not the case! The quiz is really only a game and not very deep.  It is unlikely that patterns will point to some underlying truth or there might not even be much of a pattern in the first place. However, I like the idea of introducing Socrative because it encourages students to look at the topic from a different angle, while also teaching them about how Socrative works. At this point I would hope that students start questioning the categories of the quiz itself and why these should determine nationality, i.e. treat it less like a ‘proper’ task in its own right. They might realise that only a very select number of nationalities have made it into the quiz. Discussions could therefore now move on to questions like: Why is my nationality not represented? How does that make me feel? What are my feelings about my own national identity? What do I think makes national identity? How important is it to me? How important is it in my relationships with people from other countries? Etc.

Quiz Chart

This could then lead to a task where students create their own categories and maybe create a quiz on Socrative about their own nationality, this time with right and wrong answers, maybe along the lines of: How German are you? One or more students (from the same national background?) could work together to come up with questions about their nationality determining what is essential knowledge or behaviour to belong to this nationality (questions could be serious or fun – students decide the tone of the quiz). If this was set as a homework task, then students could present their quiz to their peers in a future lesson with students completing each other’s quizzes.

My hope for the activity as a whole would be that students enjoy it for being unusual and maybe even fun but that they also see, how it can move forward their language learning. Furthermore I think it could make them aware of how we/they relate to each other on various levels, nationality informing and shaping at least to some extent their own as well as other people’s identities. As a combination of different tasks it has all my favourite ingredients: it starts with ‘authentic’ material (ignoring the debate about the term for a moment, I go with the definition ‘not originally created for language learning purposes’), it’s game-like and interactive (the quiz itself – especially when first played within social media – and the Socrative extension), it can be out-of-class and, my personal favourite, it’s (or rather it could be) about ‘learner identitiy’.

Refercence:

Kohonen, V., Jaatinen, R., Kaikkonen, P., Lehtovaara, J. (2001) Experiential Learning in Foreign Language Education, Harlow, England: Longman.