Page 54 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

Chapter 3. Perspective of the teachers - practicality
The new teaching approach proposed here is not a single, fixed and prescribed method but at its core allows for all kinds of variations with the three design principles giving rise to variants with little to a great deal of alignment of speaking skills in the individual lesson or series of lessons, with little to a great deal of differentiation, that may be teacher-led or student-led to varying degrees, and with little to a great deal of adaptive feedback (see Figures 6 and 7).
3.3 Research aim and research questions
The theoretical framework outlined above proposes an adaptive teaching method for speaking skills in modern foreign languages which is based both on theory and knowledge from modern foreign language teaching and on Janssen’s Bridging Model (Janssen et al., 2013; Janssen et al., 2014a) in an attempt to meet the conditions of practicality (Janssen et al., 2013). The aim of the research was to investigate how far teachers are actually able to apply the method in their teaching. Three research questions were formulated:
A. How are the three design principles of the adaptive teaching method implemented by teachers in their teaching and is the essence of the adaptive teaching method retained?
B. What are the reasons for the choices teachers make about how to embody the three design principles into their teaching practice? Are these choices made with adaptive considerations in line with the curriculum reform?
C. To what extent is the curriculum reform perceived to be practical by teachers and are the problems expressed with regard to teaching speaking skills resolved in their opinion?
3.4 Method
3.4.1 Participants
Experimental group
Thirteen modern foreign language teachers (three German teachers, five English teachers, three French teachers and two Spanish teachers) who were teaching in regular secondary schools participated in this research. They used the SpeakTeach teaching method in two year- 2 vwo classes, two year-3 vwo classes, one year-4 vwo class, three year-5 vwo classes, two year-6 vwo classes, one year-2 havo class, three year-3 havo classes, one year-4 havo class,
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