Page 42 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

Chapter 3. Perspective of the teachers - practicality Abstract
A new teaching method will only be implemented in the classroom if it is not only of benefit to students but is also practical for teachers. In this contribution we propose an adaptive approach to teaching speaking skills in modern foreign languages, which we call the SpeakTeach method. To make it practical in the classroom, we based it on the Bridging Model for curriculum reform which assumes regular teaching made up of lesson segments. By using design principles shaped around the same lesson segments, teachers can recombine the segments and take advantage of the flexibility of the design principles to adapt the method to their own teaching. Based on questionnaires and visual representations of lesson series, we examined how 13 teachers applied the SpeakTeach method in their classes, what factors they considered and whether they retained the essence of the teaching method. In addition, a teaching impact instrument was used to establish whether the teachers did indeed find the method to be practical. The results show that teachers succeeded in applying SpeakTeach in practice and found the adaptive method to be significantly more desirable than their regular teaching practice. The flexibility of the SpeakTeach method could be an ingredient for curriculum reforms in general.
3.1 Introduction
The success of teaching depends in part on how far it is tailored to individual learning needs (Corno, 2008). Tailoring teaching to students’ needs requires teachers to understand the baseline position from which individual students are starting and then to adapt their instruction, activities and feedback to what the students need in order to achieved the desired goals (Sadler, 1998; Van de Pol, Volman & Beishuizen, 2011). The importance of an adaptive approach is recognised in the teaching of modern foreign languages in regular Dutch secondary schools. A frequently heard problem in practice, however, is that teachers find it difficult to provide adaptive feedback, especially when it comes to an ephemeral skill like speaking. Giving adaptive feedback on speaking is found to be particularly difficult (Corda, Koenraad & Visser, 2012). Research has shown that feedback significantly improves speaking skills in language learning (Gass & Mackey, 2012; Lyster, Saito & Sato, 2013), but descriptive studies have found that the amount of feedback given on speaking activities in class is limited and unevenly distributed (Gass & Mackey, 2012). In addition, it has been found that the
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