Page 137 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind
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performance (procedure 1, score 0), but there were exercises (chunks, idiom) to prepare the speaking activities which were the same for all students (procedure 2, score 1). Koos was satisfied with the flexibility and time-saving routines in his regular teaching practice in speaking skills but dissatisfied with the materials and the need to search for suitable material (not related to the innovation). Koos intended to improve the type of speaking activities (other goal), to offer more challenging speaking activities (other goal) and to design alignment in speaking activities and appropriate improvement activities (procedure 1). In addition to teacher feedback, Koos also wanted to try out peer feedback, to give more feedback on speaking performances and to apply different feedback strategies attuned to learners’ needs (procedure 3).
Koos performed a SpeakTeach lesson series in year 5 havo, in which the self-evaluation was done several times with plans for improvement and improvement activities leading to the final speaking activity (procedure 1 from score 0 to 2). This created an aligned set of learning activities and an iterative process of improvement. Compared to his regular teaching approach, Koos had added more speaking activities and improvement activities to achieve the speaking goal (where there had only been one speaking activity at first) so that there was a structure and more alignment. Another change from his regular teaching practice was that he allowed the students to work in a fully student-led way (procedure 2 from score 1 to 3). Koos did not give any feedback due to organizational and technical reasons (procedure 3). He was not very satisfied with his own implementation of the procedure designed to reach the intended goals, because he believed that he should have paid even more attention to the structure of the speaking activities (procedure 1) and that he had done too little about giving feedback and trying out peer feedback (procedure 3). However, Koos was satisfied that he had made the speaking activities more challenging (own goal) and with what he had learned from feedback strategies (procedure 3) and the organization of steering (procedure 2): “Students’ steering was good, although students can abuse the freedom.”
The teacher seemed to find SpeakTeach desirable but its implementation more difficult. Koos was more satisfied with the freedom of choice (procedure 2), feedback (procedure 3) and improvement activities in SpeakTeach lessons than in his regular teaching. As strong points of SpeakTeach Koos reported that “the method encourages the students to think more about what they are doing and how. They are more involved and that can have a motivating effect.” Koos thought it was a disadvantage to have to use the technique for the recordings and
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