Page 146 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind
P. 146

Chapter 6. General conclusions and discussion
objectives of the teaching approach: 1) add a self-evaluation by the student to a speaking activity; then on the basis of this self-evaluation, provide 2) activities for improvement and differentation; and 3) adaptive feedback. After that the students do the same or a similar speaking activity again with self-evaluation. This can be repeated in an iterative learning process. The adaptive approach developed with the three design principles was called the SpeakTeach method.
The study reported on the practicality of the developed adaptive teaching approach. The research questions of this study focused on how the three design principles of the adaptive teaching approach were implemented by the participating teachers, what considerations they took into account, and to what extent they perceived the adaptive teaching approach as practical and resolving their problems with regard to teaching speaking skills.
The results showed that in almost all lesson series in which the teachers applied the new teaching approach, the essence of the teaching approach was retained. All three design principles were implemented by the teachers in their teaching practice and adaptive considerations played a role, in line with the purpose of the teaching approach. Teachers used the three design principles to produce many different variants of the SpeakTeach lessons in order to tailor the teaching approach to their students and to suit their own teaching style and practices. Thus, the flexibility of the building blocks and design principles was indeed utilized.
Moreover, teachers perceived the approach as practical, more desirable than their regular teaching practice and not more difficult to implement than their regular teaching practice. Class size, organization, keeping order and keeping students actively engaged were practical disadvantages mentioned for their regular teaching practice, but not mentioned for the new approach. Insight into the learning process and being able to tailor to students’ needs were mentioned as advantages.
Main findings chapter 4
In chapter 4 the self-evaluation procedure of the developed teaching approach (the SpeakTeach method in chapter 3) was approached from the perspective of the students. It addressed the question of whether self-evaluation can be an adaptive resource for students at secondary schools to learn to improve their speaking skills in foreign languages and to improve their self-regulation of their learning. In a quasi-experimental study, we investigated
144
142


























































































   144   145   146   147   148