Post‐Evaluation Practice

Abstract

Learning is not maximally efficient from an instructional sequence in foreign language teaching without intentional practice following tests that evaluate student achievement of an instructional objective. This posttest practice must be provided to accomplish two important goals of instruction. First, post-evaluation practice must be provided at ever-increasing intervals in order to maximize student retention, so that lengthy rest periods (e.g., the summer recess) will have little effect on memory. Second, provision must be made for non-alerted practice, i.e., students are not made aware at the beginning of practice of the content focus. This latter practice is necessary for the achievement of automatic language usage. Arguments are made for postevaluation practice, a distribution schedule is exemplified, and various types of practice are suggested and illustrated.The lack of post-evaluation practice may be more responsible than any other phase of the instructional sequence for the high attrition rate between the first and second year (or semester) of language study, not to mention between the first and fourth year. For years teachers have looked at enrollment figures in Language 2 that were half what they were in Language I and sought ways of maintaining the level of enrollment from one year to the next. The purpose of this paper is to present the need for post-evaluation practice and to give suggestions for providing such practice as a partial solution to this problem. Seven Steps of Foreign Language InstructionA significant proportion of the planning of instruction is provided by textbook authors and, less frequently, by state or local supervisory staff through instructional guides and other aids. The steps of foreign language instruction fall into seven distinct, yet interrelated categories.(1) Selection of Content Choice of content items (e.g., the forms of the definite article, the present tense of regular verbs, the pronunciation of :sounds) and the sequence in which they are presented is usually determined by ( 2 ) Ana1ysi.i of Content In recent years considerable emphasis has beer. placed on the need for teachers to have an understanding of applied linguistics, a discipline intended to alert teachers to specific instructional problems resulting from a contrastive analysis between English and the target language. Most supervisors argue that the greater the teacher's knowledge about each content item, the greater his chances of success are in guiding the learning of his students.(3) Selection of Objectives With the exception of the minimal guidance provided by publishers' texts, the selection of objectives is left almost entirely to the classroom teacher. He is the one to decide exactly what he will guide his students to be able to do with and to know about each content item. (4) Pre-AssessmentIt is usually left to the teacher to do any formal or informal pre-assessment of students to ascertain if they are already capable of performing the objectives that he has for them, and, if not, how much of ...