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Ángel Sanz Moreno. Faculty of Education, University of Salamanca.
I’m going to give you six proposals and two recipes.
First proposal: we must learn from educational systems which are successful. Korea and Poland: two strategies.
The Korean strategy is to pull from above, and the Polish method is to push from below.
Second idea: when we talk about resources, we must always look at the binome which cannot separate resources from expectations.
Third idea: assessment is good. Assessment if the great teaching laboratory.
Fourth idea: having a theoretical framework about what we understand reading to be helps a great deal to assess, to unify criteria and effort, and therefore, also helps to teach better.
Fifth: when we are talking about assessing reading skills, we mustn’t forget to assess interest in reading,
even though it’s difficult – from internal assessment to diagnostic testing.
Six: we should adopt a position of optimist realism. All assessments should reflect the strengths -
and belief in the strengths, and the weaknesses. We need to maintain the former and deal with the latter decisively and with ambition: high expectations.
The recipe is the most debated part, but as there isn’t enough time to discuss it in depth, I will just say it.
In primary education, two formulae. The first, to devote 75% of language teaching time to teaching and assessing,
to read and to write and of course to speak and to listen.
And 25% to reflecting on language, but this grammatical reflection should be based on what is being read and what is being written.
Second: choosing textbooks which help to build up knowledge through reading.
Let’s move on to the formula for secondary school. Three ideas.
The first: exactly the same as what I said for primary education.
Second idea. strengthening in all syllabus areas a teaching approach based on learning to think
calmly, which avoids the false reductionist dilemma of either teaching content or teaching skills.
And the third, to finish: in the didactic unit cycle, a commitment to introduce two texts.
One in the motivation, whatever the didactic unit; always starting with a motivation because it's what connects it to real life. What could be better than a real life text?
Secondly: including in the assessment evidence of how what has been learnt is applied. This needs careful managing!