Improving Foreign Language Speaking through Formative Assessment

Want a quick way to get your students happily conversing more in the target language? 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:

• Imbed the 3-minute formative assessment into every lesson with ease
• Engage students in peer formative assessment successfully
• Teach students to give each other formative feedback
• Help struggling students make significant gains
• Create and coach small groups for differentiated speaking practice
• Assist students in incorporating current grammar lesson into meaningful conversations
• Analyze your own use of language in the classroom to avoid vague feedback that can stifle student conversations
• Grade oral improvement positively

The authors provide formative assessments for 17 language functions with step-by-step lesson plans, aligned to ACTFL guidelines. Each plan includes a wealth of conversation and extension activities. 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.

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle has been awarded the Ruth E. Wasley Distinguished Teacher Award by the New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers. He was part of a foreign language program recognized as one of the fifty most innovative in the United States. He has taught at the college level and at the sixth grade through Advance Placement; also, Dr. Tuttle has taught English as a second language at many colleges. He has been active in many professional organizations such as the American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers, and Foreign Language Association of Central New York. Harry has published in ACTFL's Foreign Language Annals, Hispania, Spanish Today, TESOL Quarterly, International Society for Technology in Education, SIGTC Connections, New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers Journal, and TechLearning. In addition to writing several articles for various publications., Dr. Tuttle has written five books including Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students and The World in Your Classroom: Global Education in Language Learning. Alan Robert Tuttle has taught at the high school level (Grade 9 through Advanced Placement) and at Cedarville University and Indiana University. He is pursuing his Master of Arts in Teaching at Indiana University. Alan has been an AP reader. He has traveled to Spain three times.