Page 72 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

Chapter 4. Perspective of the students - adaptivity Abstract
To become autonomous language learners, students must learn to self-regulate their learning. This chapter first explains what is needed to support this self-regulation learning process for speaking skills. From this explanation follow design principles for the teaching approach on the basis of which a concrete self-evaluation procedure for students is proposed. Subsequently, a quasi-experimental study investigated to what extent changes occurred in the students’ self- regulation of their own speaking skills and to what extent the students perceived the self- evaluation procedure as motivating and the received feedback and support as adaptive to their needs. From the results can be concluded that during the self-evaluation procedure students’ perception of their learning needs did indeed change. Shifts in diagnoses of their own speaking performances and foci of plans for improvement were found. It seemed that students expanded the focus of their diagnoses and plans. It was also found that the perceived need for teachers’ assistance decreased and the preference for independence increased. Furthermore, the study showed that students perceived the self-evaluation procedure as motivating. Students in the experimental group found activities to be as tailored to their needs as the control group but students in the experimental group found feedback in lessons in speaking skills in general less tailored to their needs than the control group. However, the students in the experimental group found activities adaptive when they were asked, not about lessons in speaking skills in general, but about a specific cycle of a self-evaluation procedure.
4.1 Introduction
An important goal in foreign language education is to guide students to become autonomous learners (Holec, 1981; Lee, 1998; Little, Dam & Legenhausen, 2017). It is important that students learn to self-regulate their own foreign language skills, “[...] so that they can continue their language development and take increasing responsibility for their learning“(Lee, 1998: 288). This means that students must learn to independently evaluate their current speaking performance, compare this to a desired situation, set goals and draw up a plan to reduce the gap, learn to execute this plan and follow it up with an evaluation, after which the cycle can be repeated (Little et al., 2017). This self-regulated learning process should be supported adaptively, meaning that students receive the help they need (no more and no less) and that
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