Page 80 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

Chapter 4. Perspective of the students - adaptivity
to attain new goals. In contrast, normative standards which contain scales or scores serve to rank a performance in comparison to others (Cauley & McMillan, 2010; Clark, 2012; Yin, Shavelson, Ayala. Ruiz-Prima, Brandon, Furtak & Young, 2008) and might direct attention away from the reflection on which aspects can be reinforced or improved towards the question of how good the performance was (Cauley & McMillan, 2010). By using normative standards, performance differences become the most important concern and this may have negative effects on motivation and achievement (Yin et al., 2008; Butler, 1987; 1988).
Output: plan for improvement and improved speaking performance
Students’ assessments and self-assessments can be used by teachers to adapt their instruction, activities for improvement and feedback (Black & William, 1998; 2009; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). If the goal is to promote self-regulation of speaking skills, then students should ideally also take the step themselves of taking action to close the gap between their current and desired speaking performance (Cauley & McMillan, 2010; Sadler, 1989). Students must set goals and make plans for improvement themselves on the basis of their own assessment of the different aspects of their speaking performance, (Cauley & McMillan, 2010). Providing opportunities to practise these activities is necessary for learners to gain experience (Sadler, 1989). Self-assessments can encourage student decision-making about what to do and when to do it (Cauley & McMillan, 2010). In addition, support may be needed to stimulate learners to make appropriate plans and to execute these plans.
Firstly, learners can be supported by providing suggestions for activities for improvement, giving choices and asking questions about what they think they need to improve (Cauley & McMillan, 2010). Suggestions for activities for improvement can be deduced from research about developing second language speaking. De Jong, Steinel, Florijn, Schoonen & Hulstijn (2012), for instance, showed that linguistic knowledge about lexical items, chunks, morphosyntax, pronunciation and processing speed are to a large extent important for communicative success. Instruction and activities that encourage the acquisition of this knowledge should be available to the students and be an option for their plans. Processing speed and fluency could be stimulated by practising speaking and automatization (DeKeyser, 1997; Segalowitz & Hulstijn, 2005). Research into task repetition, in which learners do the same or a similar speaking task a few more times, immediately or at a later time, showed positive effects such as more accurate and idiomatic speech and greater
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