Page 102 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

Chapter 4. Perspective of the students - adaptivity
self-regulation in speaking skills in order to derive design principles for the teaching practice. We then proposed a concrete self-evaluation procedure for speaking skills based on these design principles which we implemented in a number of secondary schools. We investigated the extent to which changes occurred in students’ perceptions of learning needs as they tried to improve their speaking skills after four iterations of the self-evaluation procedure and to what extent the students perceived the self-evaluation procedure as motivating and the feedback and activities for improvement as adaptive to their needs. Below, we discuss our results and possible explanations for each research question in more detail.
Research question A To what extent did the students’ perception of their learning needs change during the self-evaluation procedure?
An important goal of the self-evaluation procedure was to support secondary school students to become more and more independent in fulfilling all the different parts of the self-regulation process. The results showed that the perceived need for teachers’ assistance decreased and the preference for independence increased in the fourth cycle compared to the initial round. This suggests an improvement in self-regulation.
Regarding the diagnoses and plans for improvement, some perceptions remained the same, but shifts in diagnoses and focus of plans were also found. In both cycles, the secondary school students generally evaluated many aspects of their speaking performance as positive. The number of ‘don't knows’ did not change much but areas for improvement decreased in the fourth cycle. That might indicate that the students were more satisfied with their speaking performances in the later cycles because they had improved their speaking skills.
We found from the diagnoses that students were particularly positive about getting the message across. Nevertheless, most plans for improvement still aimed at improving how they got their message across in both cycles (although there was a decline in focus on the message in the fourth cycle). After all, getting the message across is the most important goal of communication and therefore students’ focus will be on that goal. Moreover, a closer look showed that most of the plans for getting the message across were very useful pre-plan activities (Goh, 2017; Goh & Burns, 2012; Skehan, 1998).
In both cycles most ‘don't knows’ were found for grammar and pronunciation. The results did not show a significant decline in ‘don’t’ knows’. However, shifts were found for grammar in diagnoses and plans for improvement: learners were more positive and least
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