Page 49 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

it can also have a motivational effect, encouraging students to take ownership of their own learning process (Blanche, 1988). It is not easy for students to evaluate themselves (Poehner, 2012). We support this process in four ways. Firstly, by having the students record their speaking performance and listen back to it. Speaking, in particular, demands many cognitive processes within a brief period of time (Levelt, 1989). Analysing a recording of their own speaking performance gives students time to reflect on their own speaking skills and how to improve them (Sadler, 1998). Secondly, we provide the students with aspects on which they can evaluate their speech recording and make suggestions for improvement activities. Thirdly, the students not only produce an evaluation with a plan for improvement, they can also indicate whether they need help from the teacher in carrying out their improvement activities. Finally, students repeat the self-evaluation several times and the teachers give feedback which is not only focused on the speaking performance, but also on improving their self-evaluations and plans for improvement. Depending on the curriculum, time and target group, self- evaluation can be used as often as seems desirable, with guided or free speaking activities, when the teacher decides or when the student decides, during class or as homework, at the same time for everyone in the class or when an individual is ready.
Design principle 2: provide activities for improvement and differentiation
After the students have produced their self-evaluations and plans for improvement, the teacher can use these to offer activities for improvement in follow-up lessons or as homework. These could include: reading texts, listening fragments, model dialogues and film clips as input; exercises for fluency, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and sentence structure; chunks to learn by heart; and compensating strategies. Material can be used for this that is already in the curriculum but now it is being used in response to the improvement plan, making clear to the students the alignment (see e.g. Biggs, 1996) between the speaking goals to be attained, the speaking activities, the support exercises and input. The order of the speaking task (with self-evaluation) and the existing input and exercises are then reversed, so that existing input and exercises become improvement activities and are used as tailor-made help. This offers opportunities for differentiation. Based on the improvement plans, the teacher may, for example, group students by improvement activity, by what they asked for help with or by their preferred form of working. The steering in the lessons can also be varied:
46
47
3