Inaddition, at primary schools, teachers think that assessment may destroy thefun in the classroom. However, from the primary school, formative assessmentshould be a progression in learning and should play a key role to establish thequality and enduring MFL knowledge. Pedagogically, it is necessary to evaluateand assess the students’ learning and abilities in MFL, as well as at primaryschool in order to determine a liaison and transition with the secondaryschool.MFLdepartment teachers should pay close attention to students’ learning thatresults from MFL classrooms and in the positive case, school extra-curricularMFL activities. The process of assessing serves to understand the learning andguarantee students’ improvement.
Teachers should identify and create assessmentopportunities as a part of their teaching cycle. Formativeassessment can be long-cycle from four weeks to one year; medium cycle withinand between teaching units; short cycle- within a lesson, day by day. It helpsto make a regular check on progress and to adjust to the lesson as thesituation dictates.
1.1.MFL teaching language strategies:Teachingand learning strategies are various, and an effective language learner uses acombination of strategies. However, under-achieving students’ problem inlanguage learning is the lack of strategies. Strategies are an essential toolin helping students become independent learners.
During my placement work, I havenoticed a range of problems, many of the students did not know how to use thedictionary, or they were in the panic when they faced with reading text andhurried up to take a dictionary without thinking and analyzing the text. Someof them lacked the basic social skill to work in a group, or in pairs.Consequently, students need to be taught skills and strategies to make apositive impact on their performance. The MFL teacher and students needeffective time to practice these skills, instead of rushing from a topic to another.Teachingand learning strategies are related to motivation, there are some studies aboutthe motivation, however, there is no magic solution. Unfortunately, I have seenthe least willing students when they encounter a problem they abandon the taskand say ‘I can’t do it- I hate French, Iam no good at French’.
In my opinion, it is a combination of low self-esteem and a complete lack of understanding of the learning process. The MFL teachershould focus on encouraging students to become familiar with learningstrategies in MFL. The teacher should convince less willing students that thedifficulties and the lack of motivation they have experienced due to lack oflearning strategies, rather than lack of their ability. In order to do so, theteacher designs learning objectives, which indicate a variety of essential waysin learning MFL. Learning objectives communicate to the class what they aregoing to do, providing a link between the current lesson and prior knowledge,as well as, they serve to differentiate for different ability levels so as toinvolve all the students in the MFL classroom activities.
