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Dominic Salles's avatar

“If you aren’t assessing, you aren’t teaching”. I really liked that.

I don’t have the same misgivings about Rosenshine’s 80% success rate. I think it applies to the individual, not the class. If you try Duolingo for 5 minutes, you’ll count a score of ways this can be achieved.

And you’ll also see that it assesses you all the time and responds accordingly.

Incidentally, after 25 hours it taught me over 900 words, which was enough to get a grade 5 on a reading paper. That’s the equivalent of a year 7 getting there by January of year 7 (earlier if there is homework).

This is a metaphor for how poorly we construct curricula in mainstream schools.

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David Didau's avatar

Rosenshine is definitely talking about the individual. I acknowledge the point here: https://daviddidau.substack.com/p/how-can-we-teach-so-that-all-students?r=18455. However, this is how it’s often interpreted. My own experience of Duolingo is far less positive. it annoyed the hell out of me and all the gains were hollow.

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Dominic Salles's avatar

I too hate Duolingo - and it is not preparing me to be fluent in speech. It is exceptionally good at building reading and possibly listening.

But fluency is not the goal of any MFL curriculum either. I’m curious to see how many hours grades 7, and then grade 9 take - in the reading papers. My guess is April of year 9.

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David Didau's avatar

I think the fact fluency is not the goal of MFL is everything wrong with it.

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Dominic Salles's avatar

Ha ha, I thought I was contrarian. By fluency I simply mean the ability to speak and not worry about it, right or wrong. Communication above accuracy, and way above writing.

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