Standardization of activities as a strategy to improve teaching practice in teaching

Abstract

Nowadays it has become very important to look for strategies to improve the instructional practice of schools to have a positive impact on the teaching-learning process. This is the main reason why the English Languages Department of Universidad Politécnica de Querétaro implemented a standardization strategy for the assessment activities (AA) used to provide the achievement of students’ competencies in English. These assessment activities are part of the assessment tools for English at the Languages Department of the university in its three basic levels of English. As part of this research, there were nine English teachers involved in it. The objective of this was to get students acquainted with standardized format of the assessment activities given to them and the use of meaningful contexts for students. Through all these, the project intended to make efficient the time teachers usually spent creating assessment activities. Another objective was to develop the same communicative skills on students enrolled in the same level of English. The methodology consisted on identifying English teachers with the best teaching practices, then collecting the best activities, checking them, choosing the best ones, establishing standards for the activities, creating an activity bank and finally implementing them. The standardization strategy was implemented in an eight month- period and the established goals were successfully achieved. The objective of standardizing assessment activities was fulfilled and teachers also spent less time making this type of activities.