Improving Foreign Language Speaking Through Formative Assessment
By Harry Grover Tuttle and Alan Robert Tuttle
Want a quick way to get your students conversing more in the target language? Want an easy way to help your students improve in their speaking on a daily basis? This practical book shows you how to use formative assessments to gain immediate and lasting improvement in your students’ fluency.
You’ll learn how to:
- Help students climb the ACTFL proficiencies
- Guide students as they develop in over sixteen language functions such as socializing and persuading
- Embed the three-minute speaking formative assessment into every lesson with ease
- Engage students successfully in peer formative assessment
- Teach students to give each other formative feedback
- Provide struggling students with over ten improvement strategies for each language function.
- Engage students in over 170 speaking activities.
- Use Web 2.0 tools to foster speaking
- Move from summative assessment to daily or weekly formative evaluation of speaking
Each speaking assessment include instructions, the assessment form, extension activities, speaking topics, and at least ten strategies for improvement. There are ready-to-use checklists including the “I Can” log that helps students plot their own progress.
Research has confirmed that when teachers use formative assessment, students can learn in six to seven months what would normally take a school year to learn. You’ll find yourself using this book every day because of the gains your students will achieve in foreign language fluency.
These speaking assessment energize the class as the students have the opportunity to use a language function for a full minute. The students use language instead of practicing it.
Please share with your Modern Language teacher, Improving Foreign Language Speaking Through Formative Assessment
Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle 
How valuable is Peer Review?
Published December 15, 2008 Change , Comment , Composition , Edublogger , Education , ELA , English , Feedback , peer , Peer Review , Review , Revision , write , Writing Leave a CommentTags: Change, Comments, Composition, edublooger, Education, English, Essay, Feedback, Improve, peer, Peer Review, Revision, write, Writing
When my students hand in their final English essay, they also hand in their peer reviewed draft. I’ve noticed that usually they do not incorporate the changes that peers suggest.
I gave them a survey on peer review to help me better understand their use of peer’s comments. They admitted that they use very little of peer review.
Some of their reasons:
The reviewer isn’t as smart as I am.
I don’t care what they “feel” about my paper. What is good/bad according to the rubric?
They don’t understand the rubric.
It does not help me when a reviewer finds a mistake if he cannot tell me how to fix it.
They don’t understand my thinking/how I wrote the paper.
The reviewer found some spelling mistakes but missed the big things like my first body paragraph having two topics.
They don’t try/ they do not take it seriously.
How well do your students peer review each other? How valuable is the peer review to the author?
For any one who is interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book,
Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.