 Hello everyone, I am Natasha Coles, a language educator, cultural mediator and a game enthusiast. I currently work as an assistant professor at Goy University. And today's presentation is a small section of an extended study of contextualization of foreign language textbooks in non-native contexts. Now, you will already know that there are several policy documents that recommend contextualization. And with OERG, we also know that it is important to localize open content for our specific learners. My study focuses on India, which has a decentralized education system that favors designing contextualized learning experiences for learners across various parts of this diverse country. To meet the needs of these learners, there are a multitude of textbooks published in the country by various central and state boards of education in addition to private publishers. We have a robust national education policy and a national curriculum favor. The National Council of Education Research and Training, NCRT for short, is an autonomous body set up by the Government of India and they are tasked with the responsibility of designing the national curriculum framework for major subjects in schools. They publish textbooks which are considered as benchmarks for the rest of the country. Other states can contextualize their own textbooks and add a regional or local flavor to it, depending upon the requirements of the students they serve. This brings me to Goa, a state on the west coast of India and specifically to French language education. Foreign languages are incorporated in the schooling system in non-native, multilingual and multicultural countries like India. While NCRT doesn't publish French textbooks, there are a multitude of publishers. Autonomous bodies like the State Council of Education Research and Training, or SCRT, both of education, private publishers that publish textbooks call the French language. But majority of publishers retain all copyright. And the present COVID-19 pandemic has made the education community acutely aware of the lack of content that is free to reuse and adapt, content that is contextualized with the Indian learners and content that is available in various formats to bridge the digital divide by the country. Efforts are made at the national level to support teachers and students through various initiatives. One such initiative is the creation of Disha. By NCRT, for content here, it is licensed under a Creative Commons license. You will find various resources like lesson plans, e-copies of textbooks, interactive exercises and other multimedia resources. The portal also accepts contributions from various stakeholders and in this regard, teachers from schools are invited to contribute resources. Under SCRT Goa, there are over 60 groups of teachers working, you know, creating content for K-12 subjects. Specifically, teaching related to the French language in Goa is that there are extremely few French language teachers in comparison to a subject like English. The teaching cohort comprises of teachers with the past years of teaching experience. This is crucial because they would know the ground realities, the interests of the students. But creation of resources for Disha also necessitates the user of a range of tech tools which teachers may not generally have used in a traditional class setting prior to the pandemic. So the Board of Studies members requested assistance from teachers of the university, private institutions, current and former staff students. By getting involved various stakeholders in various voices would help deliberate on the content created. Five teams were constituted one for each creative. In schools affiliated to Goa Board of Secretary, High Secretary Education, the French language is offered from the 8th grade to the 12th grade. Now each team had a subject coordinator and were further divided into curators and creators. Curators are in charge of creating the lesson plan and creators help create resources. Teams have had extensive discussions while ideation, feedback, review of the lesson plans and other resources. Once resources were created, they were sent up to the state coordinator who further reviewed it and then sent it to be uploaded on the podium. Now considering the digital divide in the country, teams needed to ensure that open resources were designed and created in such a manner that students with and without access to devices and internet could benefit from the resources. So if a video was created, we also created a printable document containing the transcript and visuals for those who may not have access to a smartphone. The teacher or school would print out the resource and provide it to the student. Also considering that each cohort of students in various schools across the state of Goa may be different. The lesson plans were designed around a range of activities. The teacher can pick whichever activity she needs and further contextualize it to the needs of the student. As the teachers have been teaching remotely since the pandemic began, classes take place online. But as you can imagine, the internet speeds are not always constant or are the best in every look and cranny of the state. And students may not be able to attend synchronous classes. Hence, they can when they have access to internet at any time or access to internet in the school at other points in the day, access to resources on Dixia. An app version is also available for Dixia. It is important to factor in that French is a foreign language in Goa. Being non-native to the region also comes with its challenges. While living in communities of expats living in Goa or tourists from vanquished countries, students who learn the language in public schools don't always have access to communities of practice outside the classroom. We also need to consider why students are studying the language. Apart from learning how to correctly conjugate ethra in our work, we know the works to be and to have. It is essential that students learn to be global citizens and have an intercultural outlook which is important in a multicultural country like India. In the future, some students may wish to study in a Francophone country or work with a Francophone country. We know that there are growing ties between India and French-speaking countries. The modes of education in the country observe that the generalist textbooks that are available in the market are not sufficiently contextualized for the Indian students. And hence for several decades now, several state boards have published their own textbook. Goa Board of Education published its first French-language textbook some 30 years ago. And this textbook has been continuously revised in keeping with the requirements over the years. As part of Dixia, the French-language teams needed to create content for the latest edition of the French-language textbook series titled Le Nouveau Pasacan. Contextualization doesn't just mean adapting content for the local context by replacing proper nouns like, you know, the names of streets in France with names in India. Contextualization goes beyond mere adaptation where the needs of the community are factored into it and their content is designed accordingly. It is important that students learn a foreign language to also develop a global perspective as well as a local one. And this global vision would help strengthen intercultural competencies as students compare and contrast social practices, cultural objects between the other country and the Francophone world. Acquisition of a foreign language should not only be on grammar mechanics but needs to go beyond. The content needs to be relevant to the students. They need to visualise and see how they can use language and contact in their daily lives and not only when or if they visit a Francophone country. Settings in the French textbooks are designed keeping this in mind. The textbooks have various kinds of text. In some texts we see two characters, one a Goan Indian student and she meets a new neighbour who is a foreign national. They converse throughout the textbook and compare and contrast their lived experiences. In addition, there are also texts on celebrating various religious and cultural festivals in India and France, festivals that bring people together. There are lessons on environmental conservation, inspiring Indian women and even stories like taking care of older members of the family and that of friendship with people with disabilities. Working remotely in the pandemic to create resources is certainly a challenge. What help is having constant and frequent communication between the team members synchronously and asynchronously through a range of tools like WhatsApp group discussions, Gmail, Gmail. Communication between various stakeholders, SCRT CoA and heads of various institutions in India is crucial to ensure that teachers could record time to creating this resource in addition to other responsibilities at their institutions. Coming to the barriers, one is access to illustrations having CC license, illustrations that are typical of this region and that fit with the content. Now teachers have done their best with whatever is available. Some illustrated images use photographs that they have taken and use tools that enable remixing and creation of content. There is also lack of authentic resources like songs and newspaper articles that are free to adapt and reuse. The team members acknowledged that if they had a highest skill level with regards to using tech tools their content would be of a higher visual quality. But the pandemic meant that it was a challenge to have access to high end equipment that is available in various centres in the state and all resources that were created were using equipment that was available in our homes. We have created over 100 resources so far and some are still in the process of review. We look forward to taking our learnings from this project and developing more contextualized content for TV, radio and possibly even a movie. At this point I would also like to appeal to content creators, especially Franco Falls at this conference to come join us on this journey.