Page 13 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

The first difficulty concerns the multitude of choices regarding feedback on speaking skills. Much research on feedback in the field of language acquisition has focused on the effectiveness of specific feedback types or strategies (Lyster, Saito & Sato, 2013). However, the conclusions drawn from such research are not simply transferable to the classroom context, because this kind of research usually focuses on a certain facet of feedback whereas teachers have to make complex choices with regard to all facets of feedback. Oral skills involve many aspects (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, message). As a result, learners may produce a great divergence in quality of output and, therefore, the foci of feedback may be diverse. Moreover, teachers not only have to make decisions about the focus of feedback, they have to quickly make many decisions about the kind of feedback to provide: what aspect of feedback, how to formulate the feedback, when to provide the feedback, and who should provide the feedback (see Figure 1, p.20).
Second, in order to choose an adequate kind of feedback which the learner actually understands and which fosters learning, teachers need to have insight into the individual learning process of each student. Socio-cultural theory (Lantolf, Thorne & Poehner, 2015; Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994; Poehner & Lantolf, 2005) states that no single specific feedback strategy is universally effective. Feedback is effective if it is in line with the student's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1987). Therefore, the choice of focus, type or strategy of feedback depends on the individual learner's development and aims to guide the learner towards self-repair. In this respect, Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) proposed a “Regulatory Scale” of feedback with 12 levels from implicit at one end to explicit feedback at the other end in order to be able to provide not only gradual but above all contingent support. They recommend starting with the most implicit form and going to more explicit feedback if the learner appears to need it in order to improve. The instructional goal is to facilitate the transition from regulation by others to self-regulation (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994). However, providing such adaptive feedback requires not only insight into the learners’ speaking performance itself, but also into their understanding and noticing of their own speaking performance, their ability to improve their speaking skills (regulation skills) and affective factors which may influence the learning process (see Figure 1).
Third, this insight into all these aspects and levels of the learning process of each individual learner must be gained in the complex context of a classroom setting. In a one-to- one tutoring setting this is already difficult, let alone in regular classrooms of 25-30 students
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