Using ACTFL Levels to Improve Motivation

I am pretty certain that I am not the only teacher that has had the following conversation play out with a student in regards to completing an assignment.

"Madame, how much will this affect my grade?" I reply that it counts as an assessment which is half of their grade. 
"But how many points is this worth on my final grade?" I remind them that I am not a math teacher and cannot calculate that on the spot.
"Well, I'm just trying to decide if I need to do it." And my mouth usually just drops open with a look of do-you-seriously-think-this-is-optional? 

I grew up with the mentality that all assignments must be turned in. There was no other option. Yet, some of my students seem to calculate carefully just how much work they need to complete to pass the class. They select the assignments that they want to do and choose to take a zero on the ones that they don't want to do.

As a teacher, I have a reason and a goal for every assignment that I give them. If they do not complete something, then they will not meet that goal. So, how do we encourage them to do well when in their minds the question is whether they need to do it in the first place? Before I can worry about making them life-long learners, I have to give them reason first to do the work in my class.

One of the excuses that I get for incomplete assignments is that the student doesn't understand it or is afraid that they will get it wrong. Sure, we all know a quote or two about how important it is to try and that mistakes are how we learn, but with all of the current pressures in education with testing and curriculum jammed full it is no wonder that students are afraid of mistakes. Teachers don't have time to reteach, and the students' nerves are shot from not just teacher tests but now state tests that will affect their future, the teacher's career, and the school's status. Some of them may not think about the latter two issues, but the teacher that is working them does and her own worries will affect how she treats the struggling students, whether she means to or not. I digress...

My classes are a mix of students with different ability levels and different motivations. Not all of my students will make it to Novice High at the same time. Not all of them will be strong in Interpretive Listening and weak in Speaking. Some of them will be there just to get the credit for graduation. A few of them will change their future course in life to continue using French in some way. Using the ACTFL standards, I need to start focusing on meeting students at the level that they are at and keep in mind what their motivation is.

I am grading an IPA that I gave my students after our unit on clothes and shopping. Two papers ago, the student completed the Writing portion exactly as I was expecting with complete sentences and minimal errors. One paper ago, the student did not even attempt complete sentences but was able to cover the same information in a bullet format. While it was not what I asked for, it was understandable and correct. 

Both of these students completed the task. Both of them had minor errors but otherwise communicated their message well. The difference is their level of communication on the ACTFL standards for Presentational Writing. Their motivation in the class is also at different levels. The first student is the highly motivated type that will probably continue to use French in some capacity later on, while the second student just needs the credit.

Normally, the second student would be marked down for not being at the same level as the other students. But I started thinking if he did the best that he could for his level and his message was comprehensible and I give him a low grade for not performing at the level of the first student, then how well is he going to do next time if he even does the work at all? As long as he gets the grade that he needs to pass, he will have no other motivation to do any better. 

This leads me to ask, if he were graded at the level he is able to perform and his grades improve, then would his motivation improve because he is being acknowledged for what he can do? The fact is that he completed the work, it was comprehensible, and he did not just add in random French words to try to make it look better, as some of them seem to do. My feedback for him at this point would be to make writing basic sentences as his next goal. I would need to provide him with tools to work on that so that hopefully by the next IPA he will be able to do more than he did with this one. 

I can then change the original conversation and instead of being so focused on how an assignment will affect their grade, ask the student how the assignment will better help them meet the goals for the next level in the ACTFL standards.