Tip of the Month

Teaching Tip

The beginning of a new school year is the right time to introduce the idea of the European Language Portfolio to your students in upper primary or secondary schools. Being aware of their progress in language learning and maintaining a record of their achievements may be a great booster for students’ motivation and involvement.

Explain the concept of the European Language Portfolio to your students, briefly and in the language that they understand (mother tongue). The self-assessment part is particularly important for teenage students who are developing their metacognitive skills, their ability to think about their own thoughts. First provide students with a checklist of what they can do, appropriate for their level of language competence. You can find a good example of it along with all the Portfolio components in the Teacher’s Book for “Sky”, a four-level course for primary schools written by Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn.

Here is an example:

Pearson Longman coursebooks provide a lot of project and portfolio work suitable to be put in the Language Dossier