THE four keys
To cultivate a speech competence requires multiple occasions of performance that build incrementally on previous achievements. Focus on one, or an integrated set of, practices that can be identified and elaborated through the course of the semester. Students will then recognize and become habituated to developing this skill.
Thoroughly analyze and discuss the constituent elements of the competency as a framework for learning. This accomplishes two things: It gives students who have difficulty mastering the ability concrete footholds for measuring improvement, and it shows students who take the competence for granted how to understand and expand their abilities. Evaluation instruments become not just a grading tool but a learning tool.
Provide systematic reflective feedback opportunities from multiple sources:
(a) teacher comments, modeling, and evaluations
(b) student self-evaluation (personal reflection, video)
(c) other students (oral/written feedback, debate, modeling)
The learning pay-off comes when students actually see their own performance from the perspective of an other point of view, and so develop the habit of constructing their discourse from that other position.
Help students see the value of what they are learning and their degree of progress. Preview/review at beginning and end of semester to make salient the distance travelled. Once students have begun to have confidence in their capability, provide external models and benchmarks of excellence, so that students a.) connect what they are learning with valuable accomplishment out in the ‘real world’, b.) have an inspiring model to emulate, and c.) and see the range between their rudimentary progress and their eventual mastery. Help students see that communication competence is a life-time learning for which students are being given the rudimentary building blocks.
“I wish someone had told me this.”
-- John Arthos
