Teachers are always providing feedback to students in order to guide students to the next level of proficiency when learning. This is NOT a new concept. My own personal challenge is to find ways to keep students informed about their progress while keeping them motivated about learning the language. Reading, writing and math seems to lend itself better to a linear progression; however when it comes to listening and speaking skills the path becomes a little more blurred for me. I really began thinking about this when I was involved in 2 different chats on twitter. The topic of one was how to motivate students to participate in the TL (target language), while the second was how we assess for learning. When reflecting after these chats, I wondered how I could provide my students with feedback about speaking and listening in French in order to help them to the “next level”. I am really going to have to dissect this in order to get a true picture of what I am looking for when I think of indicators for success. There are always self assessments and rubrics out there to “mark” students, but if I truly want them to continually improve I need to show them what I expect them to do. Sometimes that becomes unclear since we are not only learning the language but using the language to learn. This is important for me to know as a teacher because it is the struggling student that needs the scaffolding the most. In order to do that I need to be very aware of what the student is capable of doing and exactly where I need to take that student next. I would love to hear your opinion on this as well as any books or research you might have to suggest on the topic.
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