When I changed to a more proficiency-focused approach to language teaching, I concentrated on four key elements and noticed a significant shift in my students' engagement and competence, especially in my beginner classes.
=Keeping the language narrow and deep to ensure students were hearing and understanding frequent repetitions of the targeted structures.
=Using high-frequency vocabulary (e.g., the Super 7 verbs).
=Personalizing the language content to keep students front and center.
=Ensuring the language was comprehended in real-time by regularly checking in and getting feedback from students, such as using the fist-to-5 method, asking for gesture responses, and 'teaching to the eyes' to ascertain if meaning was understood.
So we would:
1. Create language together
2. Review the language in novel ways
3. Read the language we created
4. And finally, after much input, we would write using the language we have been using. Rinse and repeat!
By focusing on the four key elements—narrow and deep, high-frequency, personalized, and comprehended—assessing student progress is kept central in the cycle.