the "dune" I'm running up

So, being the Michigander that I am, I have spent many hours running up and down the dunes at Lake MI beaches during the short summers. Running down is awesome, like flying. You take huge steps as gravity pulls you down the dune, and your ears pop from changing altitude so fast. That part is such a nice reward for the struggle you make to go UP the dune; every step you take you also slide back a bit. It's extremely hard work. In fact, a lot of high schools that live by the shore have their sports teams train by running up and down them, and they're almost always formidable competitors.
This is how I feel about my third-year French classes. I see them only three times a week, and after having had French only 3 days a week last year as well, they have a horribly shaky base that I'm trying to build on. Plus, third-year tends to be a level of French that's just drudgery for students; many of them are only in class b/c most colleges require 3 years of world language for admission. In response to this, I love to try to make this level as useful and communicative as possible. I want to spend as much time as possible in class doing speaking activities, and I schedule a lot of formal speaking assessements during off-hours. However, what I've noticed a lot this semester (more than in the past, but not by much...) is that they are having a hard time simply understanding why they've learned what they've learned. That doesn't seem to make much sense, but I guess a clearer way to explain it would be that they remember having learned it, but they don't really know what it's for. I don't want to give them a lot more homework than they already have, but I think I may be able to re-do the way I do homework so that I can bring in as many old concepts and as much old vocab as possible: quality rather than quantity, one of my favorite epithets. I was part of the textbook selection committee, and in general I love how the series works - it's full of ancilaries, and it has a lot of little alterations I can make easily for multiple intelligences. The prob with the book I see is that each new level goes off the assumption that the previous level worked through the whole book. When we spoke to the textbook reps, they assured us that the "looping" the series does would make up for previous levels not finishing the book. Even with this, the 3 day a week thing just kills any hope for them doing well and having a functional understanding of the language. Yeah, the powers that be swear up and down that when former AHS students go to college, they've done just as well as other kids who've had the language every day for several years. My source for that info might be coming to a false conclusion, since any kid who's going to keep in touch with his/her former teacher probably had a good experience in that class. From what I've seen in my somewhat limited - but growing! - experience is that there's a handful of kids that "get it" despite the odds, but there's a frighteningly large number of kids who don't have a clue why they're there, and just by complete luck they've been able to squeak by with enough knowledge to go on to the next level. This could also be a reflection of us having to take students into the next level even if they earned under a C (Really, I don't think I've met one kid who's earned lower than a C who actually knows what's going on in class. But there they are. Hmmm. We're not really setting them up for success this way.)
As I just read over what I wrote, I realized that I'm not being super rational. My feelings right now are just tainted by one particular class that's pretty fresh in my mind. I like them a lot, but they're not very motivated. About half the class does their homework, and a lot of them say to me, when I'm checking homework, that they didn't do it b/c they didn't understand. Well, they still don't get hw credit, b/c they have several days to get a hold of me before it's due, and they know I check my email at home, and I EXPECT them to contact me with questions (My freshmen are so into this! I think it makes them feel more adulty. It's ironic that my juniors are less responsible in this way. Well, no, it's not ironic. It's just not a novelty for the frosh and not for the juniors.)
I think a good solution would be to split the second year book in half. This is the first year I've used the 3rd year book, and since we've just bought them, the likelihood of us being able to change is pretty slim. It'd be too expensive. Really, though, the holes that have grown from their being in their second year of 3 day a week French make the third year book pretty far over their heads. I don't foresee the variable sched changing ever, and I abhor the thought that some of my kids will leave my classes saying that they took 3 years of French and they can't say a thing. I think this is my new Holy Grail: trying to make this work so that I'm not constantly frustrated after each class.