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Unit 6: Observing and assessing

eye

On most courses, the observation and assessment of teaching lies at the heart.
If that is not true for your course right now but you have designs on training more widely on courses leading to recognised qualifications, the art (not science) of observing, assessing and supporting teaching behaviour is the most important skill you can acquire.
It's also the hardest.

2

Two purposes, two audiences

There are two fundamental forms of assessment and they are distinguished by their purposes and their audience.

1

Type 1: support and enhancement

This is characterised by what happens in a lot of good teaching institutions.
Someone, probably a trainer like you or an academic manager who is also a teacher trainer, arranges in-house observations for all teachers on a regular basis.
There is not supposed to be any assessment component to these observations and the observer's sole function is to act as an impartial viewer seeing what is going on in the classrooms and, sometimes, maintaining standards.
A secondary function for less experienced members of staff is also a training exercise to suggest ways to improve and develop techniques and procedures.
In some organisations, where the majority or a sizeable proportion of the teaching team is inexperienced, these sorts of observations may become solely training exercises and then they tend towards Type 2 observations.
In Unit 3, some consideration is given to the differences between in-house programmes for experienced teachers and those designed for less experienced or newly qualified teachers.
In terms of the audience for any feedback, what may also happen is that the reports on these observations may find their way into the management's in tray and be appended to a staff record.  Then it's assessment, not support.
In all cases there may well be a set of criteria or a definition of the areas of teaching behaviour that form the structure of any comments, reports or feedback sessions but that is not always the case and the agenda may vary according to what the teacher being observed is interested in investigating.
There is much more later in this unit on what structure(s) reports may take.

2

Type 2: assessment and evaluation

On formal teacher training courses which lead to recognised qualifications, observation is almost always assessment first and support second.
Observations like these are carried out by trainers who have themselves been trained in observation and the teaching is assessed for all participants against a standard, unvarying set of criteria.
Ideally, the observer-assessor does not deviate from the criteria and secretly invent new ones but that has been known.
The support element of observation and feedback on such courses is often confined to advice and training concerning how better to meet the criteria in future.
Even on courses which contain teaching practice of some kind but are not externally certificated, a similar process of criterion referencing is often in place.  In these cases, however, it is possible to reverse the ordering and put support before assessment although there will almost always be a large element of the latter.
On recognised courses, the criteria against which assessment is made are available to both the assessor-observer and the candidate-participant but on other courses this may not be the case and the criteria against which one is being assessed are not transparent.  Such unfairness is thankfully rare.
The audience for the assessment records is threefold: the course participant, the institution and the training team and any externally accrediting body.

These differences are not digital in an either-this-or-that way because the forms of training that are possible live on a cline from solely assessment to solely support and help.  Like this:

cline

It does not take a great deal of imagination to see how easy it is for support to slide imperceptibly into assessment and for assessment to contain a large element of support but the distinction is still a valid starting point.
Your simple first task is to decide what sort of observations you will carry out next (i.e., where are you on the cline).  That's somewhere to start and gets some of the wood out of the way of the trees in what is a complex and challenging area.

criteria

Criteria for observation

Whatever your role and the mix of support and assessment at which you are aiming, you need to be more than a casual observer, you need to be an active, if unmoving and silent, participant.
This means you need a set of criteria of some kind which divides teaching behaviour into appropriate categories and allows you to make notes and structure the observation itself and the feedback you give, both written and spoken.
There are probably as many sets of criteria as there are people observing teaching and you may need to develop your own.
A good starting place is the lists of criteria developed by external accrediting bodies in the field of teacher training and education.  To see what they demand, try these links (new tabs for all):

CELTA and Delta combined This is a combined document which just has the list of planning and teaching criteria taken from the documentation provided to candidates and centres by Cambridge Assessment English.  There are no helpful explanations of what it all means in this document but it's a useful check list to edit and amend.  More detail can be accessed from the next two links.
CELTA teaching criteria This is the guide in the CELTA section on this site to meeting the teaching performance criteria on the most widely taken initial training programme.  If you are not training for CELTA but are seeking to train and support the very inexperienced, this is a good place to start.  You will probably need to edit and amend the list to suit your setting and your aims.
Delta teaching criteria The Cambridge Delta course is designed for experienced teachers and has a well developed and clear set of criteria used by both trainers and external assessors.  If you are working with more advanced and experienced teachers, this is a helpful starting point, even if the aim is not an externally accredited qualification.  This link takes you to the index to guides which examine the criteria and what they mean section by section.
A summer school observation form This link takes you to a downloadable document used by an experienced teacher trainer faced with observing, assessing and supporting quite inexperienced teachers operating with teenagers, mostly, on a summer-school programme in the UK.  It is a helpful categorisation of the areas to consider and give feedback on.  The observer makes notes on the form, types them up on a clean copy and then it is used for feedback and as a record to take away.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take either or both of the first and last documents in that list and amend them to focus on what you want to achieve when you are observing and how you are happy giving feedback.
In particular, you may like to delete whole sections and remove references to course regulations and so on.  You will certainly be justified in removing reference to anguished and incomprehensible terms such as appropriate(ly).

plan

Planning

It may not be within your brief to support, assess or give feedback on planning at all.  You may also feel that asking people on an in-house support programme to produce lengthy and detailed plans is not going to help them engage with and be motivated by the programme itself.  Those are judgements only you can make but there are provisos:

  1. Some insight into the teacher's thought processes in terms of what was planned is a useful way of helping people identify and articulate the aims they set out to achieve and the objectives they had in mind.  You may feel that these data will become clear as the lesson progresses and the feeling may be justified.  It is, however, not always the case.  If something goes well, is it down to good planning, good management or both?  If something goes badly, is it the result of poor planning, poor management or both?
    It is not always a simple and obvious matter.
  2. Many teachers hardly plan at all and it is helpful occasionally to force their hands so that they recall what it is that they are trying to do and are reminded that a good teacher can teach well with or without a good plan but a poor or inexperienced teacher can't.  In both cases, poor or no planning usually results in poor and incoherent lessons.
  3. Planning sessions on any teacher training courses are ideal opportunities for a bit of collaborative work and mutual support and feedback from peers.  If you have taken the trouble to design planning sessions into your course, it seems perverse not to ask people to apply the skills they have won.

If you are training on a course leading to an accredited qualification, there will usually be a set of criteria to apply to planning documents and there may be a pro-forma lesson plan for people to complete.
There is plenty of guidance, advice and exemplification in the sections on the site concerned with preparing for CELTA and Delta (links on the left).  There is also a pair of short guides to lesson planning for inexperienced teachers which you can open in a new tab from here.
On an in-house or less formal course, a simpler form is often appropriate and if you would like an example, one is available from this link.

If you do decide to include the quality of planning in your observation programme and feedback routines, and have asked for a more detailed lesson plan to assess, here's a short checklist:

Input into the planning process can take a variety of forms but essentially it can be:

  1. Part of a plenary input session in which the purposes and form of planning are made clear before people collaborate on designing lessons or parts of lessons.
  2. A small-group or one-to-one seminar / tutorial in which individuals talk through the plan and explain its rationale and structure.  (See Unit 5 for some consideration of tutorial structures.)

Planning is the stage at which teachers can (or should) match the procedures and techniques they are using to the underlying principles and hypotheses from which they work.
A useful question to ask all teachers at this stage is:
    Which major theories of learning and language and which interesting hypotheses have informed this plan?
If the answer is:
    Err, um, err
or a blank look, you may need do some training.

apple

Teaching

Some teachers simply do not like to be observed but others welcome it and some are more or less grudgingly supportive of the idea because they know it's helpful.
It is worth reminding the first and last groups that you as a trainer are being observed by other teachers all the time (well, at least when you are at work) and most people in most professions are continually under observation from the people with whom they interact (managers, customers, clients, the general public, colleagues etc.).

shoes

Etiquette

In many cultures the conventional etiquette is for guests to leave their shoes at the door.
As an observer, you are a guest in someone else's domain and should behave with due courtesy.  This does not mean taking off your shoes but does mean:

maze

Tasks for observers

There are guides on this site both for Academic Managers who are charged with observing teachers and for participants on teacher-training courses who are observing as part of their professional development.  The following is extracted from those guides.
This is particularly relevant if you are not preparing people for formal external assessment but are operating in a support role in-house with teachers at any level of experience.
In the latter case, you have the opportunity to meet with the teacher(s) and collectively decide on appropriate tasks to undertake.
Here's a brief run-down of some of the most important ideas.

chart

Using charts

There are lots of ways to use charts when observing teaching.  Charts allow a quick way to record data, can be very informative and can later be used to compare the different ways different teachers deal with things like apportioning time, gaining and maintaining attention and groupings.  Charts are, however, rarely useful if you are attempting to assess effectiveness and for that undertaking, you need a form and a useful and applicable set of criteria to work from.  There is a bit more below under using forms.

For example:
If you want to measure the amount of teacher vs. learner talk and map it against your estimation of energy levels in the classroom, you could use something like this:
Start with a blank chart and three coloured pens to play with while the lesson progresses.  You can also use a set of blank circles and make pie charts if that's easier.  Clearly, you can vary the parameters to suit what the teacher or you want(s) to be the focus.

chart

Then, in feedback, you and the teacher can compare what you both perceived to be happening with what you recorded and spot and discuss the differences.

A reasonably simple alternative type of chart is something like this which is intended to focus on error correction and instruction checking but could be used for all sorts of other purposes such as concept checking, nomination of learners and so on.  You place a bar on the line where you believe it should go and then, later, discuss the findings with the teacher.

task

For time apportioning, an effective chart type is the pie chart which may look something like this:

pie
Again, a comparison with the teacher's planned timing can be informative especially if you find wide variations.

Interaction patterns are also candidates for graphical representation.  For example:
interaction

This sort of chart quickly shows how equitably attention is shared and who are the most forthcoming learners etc.  It will soon become messy if you try it for the whole lesson so is best reserved for plenary sections of the lesson or for short snatches only.

form filling

Using forms

Charts and so on are mostly for information.  Their use is a data-gathering process not assessment of any kind.
At other times, you will be in some kind of assessment mode.

A generalised, institution-wide form is often what is used and the categories will probably be drawn from an externally overseen teacher training programme.  There are examples linked from the table above of the sorts of categories and criteria you can select from if your choices are not constrained by an examining body.
Whatever you use should be open and transparent.  There should be no hint that the form the teacher sees is different from what you actually use.
If you are concerned to target the observations more narrowly, you can invent forms which are more focused.
Here are some examples.  The focus will reflect your and your course's current concerns:

Factors affecting learning

Category  Positive Negative
The environment    
The teacher's roles    
The task types    
Grouping    
Feedback form    
You can vary the headings on the left to address the areas which most concern you.

Lesson shape

In the columns

Time Student activity Teacher role Activity type and aim
Minutes 0 - 10      
Minutes 11 - 20      
Minutes 21 - 30      
Minutes 31 - 40      
Minutes 41 - 50      
Minutes 51 - 60      

If you are confident in using the categories, you could add a column on the right to note the level (1 – 6) of cognitive challenge taken from the descriptors in Unit 4 of this course.

Instructional language

Activity Framed? Clear? Concise? Checked? Demonstrated? Repeated?
             
             
             
             
             
             

Framed in this case means whether the end of a phase and the beginning of the next was signalled and how this was done.  This is sometimes referred to as transition routines.  The other columns should have some information about how things were done, not simply whether.

Questioning

Question type: Question concerned ... Learner response was ... Aim was ...
Closed      
Open      
Display      
Communicative      
Procedural      

To remind you:

Exploiting learner output

Learner output: Concerned Relevance Teacher response ... Effect ...
Planned        
Spontaneous        

In this table, distinguish between learner output that was in some sense planned (i.e., in response to the teacher's questioning and focused on the lesson's target(s)) and that which was unplanned and emerged as the lesson went on.  Make a note about what the output concerned, how the teacher responded and what effect the response had.

Dealing with error

Error type Error was ... Corrected? Peer correction? Self-correction? Teacher correction? Outcome?
Referential            
Syntactical            
Phonological            
Stylistic            
Interpretive            

You can of course adjust any of these little forms to make them appropriate for any stage in the training process so your observations and feedback are linked explicitly to the input people are getting.
Hunt down the guide to error for an explanation of the categories if they are obscure to you.

cellist

Best practice for whom?

There is no profession-wide definition of best practice.  There is, in fact, no academic consensus concerning how people learn languages and how best they should be taught them.
We can, naturally, and usually do, explain theories of learning and hypotheses about activities which lead to learning and make some effort to assess the likelihood that they are on the right track but we do not, yet, have definitive answers.
You may have quite strong views concerning what is effective and what is not and similar prejudices concerning best practice in the classroom.  If you do, a little more humility is called for.

scrapyard

The hurricane in a scrapyard

It has often been noted that is possible that a hurricane blowing through a scrapyard will assemble a working airliner from parts picked up a flung randomly around in its path.  That is, however, an unlikely outcome because there are nearly infinitely more ways that the parts can be assembled which do not form an airliner than the one that does.
In other words, there are more ways to be wrong than right in principle.

Novice (and not so novice) teachers continually seek out novel and interesting ways to do things the wrong way simply because there are more ways of doing something wrong than right.  However, there is more than one way to be effective, even if what is done runs counter to our own prejudices or preferred understanding of good practice.
Teacher trainers are not tasked with telling people what the right way is to do something but to open up possibilities and give people options.  There should be no presumption of a monopoly of knowledge concerning how things should rather than can be done.  There is very little solid evidence to support quite a lot of received wisdom in the field and we should acknowledge that.  This includes, for example, the efficacy of drilling, delayed correction, inductive learning and much else.
We need, accordingly, to leave most of our preconceptions at the classroom door and try to judge whether what is happening is achieving its ends.
Whether the ends are worth achieving is another matter to do with planning (see above).

We can address matters of practice at different levels and in different ways and that is what we will do here.

inexperienced
Novice or very inexperienced teachers need clear guidance rather than being told somewhat vaguely what they could (=should?) have done but that should not be at the expense of making assertions concerning the efficacy of one approach over another.
Setting out advice and feedback in the form of imperatives – do this, do not do that – reinforces the air of omniscience.
There are times when it is fully appropriate to tell novice teachers not to do something (e.g., give instructions vaguely and after the task has been distributed) but there are other times when advice needs to be far less dogmatically expressed.
Teachers at this level of experience know (or should know) that they have much to learn and do not find advice particularly threatening, especially at pre-service level, simply because they know and you know that they are not supposed to know how to do things.
If inexperienced teachers are persuaded that doing something in one way, which may not be appropriate for their aims and setting, is invariably wrong, they may lose the opportunity to deploy a procedure in other settings where it is appropriate.
For these sorts of teacher:
  • you need to be something of a generalist because neither you nor they know now what they are best at and where they need advice.
  • you need to look at their classroom tactics and gently suggest alternatives to any they are using which you think should either be done better another way or are inappropriate to the setting.
  • you need particularly to look for things like thoroughness in practice and presentation because typically teachers like this burn through materials too quickly and don't properly exploit what they have.
  • you need to limit your ambitions.  Most teachers at is level can take on board and act on a maximum of three ideas and bits of advice per observation.  Do not give them long lists because that will de-focus, confuse and depress them.
  • you need, in feedback, to be absolutely clear and not hedge with too many comments on what could have been done.  If you mean
        A better way to do this is ...
    or
        This is what you should have done:
    then say so.
  • teachers like this will often welcome positive, constructive feedback and are confused by the presentation of too many alternatives.
  • you need to consider carefully what they are capable of doing.  You are, no doubt, able to carry out complex and sophisticated classroom procedures using multiple media inputs but, before you suggest they do so, ask yourself whether they have the experience and aplomb to carry it off successfully.
moderate
These are usually teachers with some experience post-initial training who are still learning but can do most things in the classroom efficiently and automatically.  They don't need, for example, to think about how to elicit, how to drill and how to set up activities.  They may need focus and some advice concerning what they need to learn before they go on to further training at diploma level or above.
  • before any observation, discuss with them where they feel their weaknesses are in the classroom and then set up an observation that focuses on what they need to improve.  Most teachers in this category can identify a range of issues.  If they can't, nudge them.
  • focus on the data you have gathered and discuss them together, seeking a way forward to improvement.
  • set up more than one observation if time permits, focused on the same area to note any changes in behaviour.  This way, your observations become part of a development programme.
experienced
Experienced teachers will often be working towards a recognised advanced qualification such as Delta or the Trinity Dip. TESOL.  They may even be going on to master's degree level so need handling with a bit of care.
Many are serene and comfortable in what they do and may resent assessment or advice from you.
Teacher training at this level may involve some deconstruction of the teacher's current behaviours before reconstruction can begin and that is a threatening prospect and process for many.  This is especially the case with people who have become accustomed to using force of personality rather than technique to manage interactions in the classroom.
People vary and some will be very open to feedback on their performance (especially if it is not all negative).
In many cases, it is appropriate to focus your observation on something the teacher wants to find out and needs an observer, who is not otherwise employed in the classroom, to be a data gatherer.
  1. look for excellence.  Many teachers in this category have become specialists at some forms of classroom behaviour.  It may be anything from crisp instruction giving to the use of poetry.  Whatever it is, try to identify it.
  2. be alert for negative habits that the teacher may be unaware of.  After a few years of doing something that seems to 'work' (however that nebulous concept is defined), some classroom habits can become ingrained.  Look for these and mention them, interspersed with positive comments in your feedback.  Secretly, the teacher may well be grateful that you have pointed out that they consistently overpraise, talk facing the board or use OK, um as a filler.
  3. feedback will be much more even in this case.  The teacher will know where the high and low points of the lesson were so you are in listening mode.  You want the teacher to reflect.
  4. if your observation was part of an in-house development programme, this may be an opportunity to ask whether the teacher may be prepared to lead a short workshop for the whole teaching team on something they clearly do well.  Even if the idea is rejected, the teacher will be covertly pleased that you asked.
tailor

Tailor-made feedback and sound advice

The rationale for all observations is to give sound, constructive and timely advice.  Obviously, some observations will amount to an assessment of a teacher’s competence while others are at the support end of the cline.
The teacher, of course, needs to know where on the cline this observations sits.

gong

Sound advice

Sound in this context should be taken to mean usable.  There is little point in suggesting a procedure, approach or technique which is beyond the teacher’s ability to implement.
For example, while we may believe that a higher-level class might benefit from some explicit understanding of the differences between deontic and epistemic modality, telling a teacher on a CELTA-level course (or even one, alas, who finished such a course months ago) to provide that sort of teaching is not going to produce any instant improvement.  However, suggesting to the same teacher that a lesson is better planned by considering concepts of obligation and likelihood separately (which amounts to much the same thing) would be helpful and, much more importantly, doable.
The same consideration applies to techniques, of course.  What you need to look for are, say, three things that this teacher can do now to make the experience for the learners more interesting and more productive.  Three ideas to take away from an observation is the maximum most teachers can handle.

If possible, these three ideas should be in separate areas.  A short and non-exhaustive list would be one idea in three of these areas:

Other categories and areas will be appropriate, of course, providing they are priorities and not peripheral to the teacher’s behaviour.

talk

Feedback on teaching

On most courses this will be both oral and written because:

  1. Oral feedback gives people the opportunity to ask questions, seek clarification, argue, justify and respond but is also ephemeral and often quickly forgotten.
  2. Written feedback provides the opportunity to read, re-read and highlight essentials.  It also makes the process more serious and more formal as well as valuing it (because writing is time consuming and needs to be done with some care).  It is also one-sided and uncommunicative

Get the best of both.

We considered the three main categories of teacher above and we also looked at the cline from fully assessment-based observation to fully support-based observation.
How the feedback meeting is handled will depend a good deal on the where the teacher is and what the observation was intended to do.
Feedback on in-house programmes may be less formal and agenda driven but a record of sorts should nevertheless be kept for future reference.

Constructive advice

This term should not be confused with positive. Constructive advice can be advice to avoid something or advice to do something. What it is not, of course, is merely critical.
How advice is given needs careful handling if it is to be constructive.

lion

Oral feedback
  1. Formality
    This is a semi-formal occasion so make sure you sit facing the teacher wherever the meeting takes place.  See Unit 5 for more on one-to-one tutorials and other forms of meetings.
  2. Agenda
    We all have our own way of doing this but here’s a suggested way to proceed:
    1. Thank the teacher for coming and, if they are giving up part of their time (i.e., they are on a break or it’s after teaching hours), make very sure the teacher knows you know this and appreciate it.
    2. Ask for the teacher’s view of the good and less good areas of the lesson.  Nudge them into identifying the stages, if they can’t think of much and then lead them through the sections of the lesson.  Let them do the talking.  It’s not your turn yet.  Probe a little here to encourage self-appraisal (it’s a key teaching skill) with questions like
          Why do you say that?
          How much did it matter?
      and so on.
    3. Now it’s your turn.
      1. Start with the positives (there are always some) but avoid the use of ‘nice’, ‘lovely’ etc. because these are meaningless terms.  Prefer words like ‘helpful’, ‘engaging’, ‘motivating’ etc. because those are what you probably mean.
      2. Now focus on your three main points – the ones you want them to work on – explaining why they are important and what they should (not could) have done.  Make this very constructive and allow them any number of Yes, but … interruptions.
      3. Sum up the three issues and make sure the teacher can do the same – you are concept checking, in fact.
    4. Broaden things out.  Ask about the teacher’s progress in general on the course vis-à-vis teaching in particular.  Get them to say if anything is concerning them:
          Are you getting enough support?
          Are you generally happy with the course?
      etc.  Make it clear the views are valued.
    5. Draw the meeting to a close by shutting your laptop / putting away papers etc.  Make it clear that written feedback will follow (if you don’t have it right now).  Thank the trainee again for the tolerance and time.
writing

Written feedback

This should be properly presented, word processed and free from typos and other errors.  It is probably a document the teacher will retain for a considerable time.  They may even show it to future employers.
We all write differently so these are just general points to consider.

  1. Avoid note form and obscurity.  Don’t over hedge with
        I think you could have ….
        It seemed to me that …
    etc.
    but state things clearly, objectively and unambiguously.
  2. Avoid questions which can have no answer in a written text such as
        Have you considered …?
  3. State that the teacher is free to ask you any questions if anything you have written is unclear.
  4. Keep a copy for your records and, if required, for the institution's records.  The document given to the teacher, the one you keep and the one that goes to the institution's records should be identical.
  5. Make sure the teacher knows what happens to any records and who gets to see what.
task Task:
Here is a short exercise on what not to say and what not to write and your task is to decide how it could be improved.
Decide on your improvements responses and then click on the eye open to reveal some ideas (only).

Critical and unhelpful Improved, constructive and helpful
You need to keep a lid on the amount of phone usage that's going on in the lesson.
eye open
Consider how you set up pair and group work more carefully because some people didn’t know what they should be doing.
eye open
Make your feedback suit the task – the first activity needed more feedback in detail.
eye open
When you board a new language item, make sure you show the word class and stress.
eye open
At the end of the first pair-work task, you could have taken a little more feedback.
eye open

None of this is rocket science.  All that is needed is some care to make sure your comments are not obscure and are usable.

write

Feedback on written work

If you are giving feedback on written tasks, you are almost certainly working on a course leading to an externally awarded accredited qualification of some kind so the criteria you are using for assessment will be given to you and do not need to be invented.  That makes your life somewhat easier.
Similar considerations apply however in terms of making your feedback helpful and not just critical.
Here's a very similar task to the last one.

task Task:
Here are some unhelpful comments on people written work.  Decide how they could be improved and then click on the eye open to reveal some ideas (only).

Critical and unhelpful Improved, constructive and helpful
This is a comma splice or run-on sentence.
eye open
You could have given an example of this.
eye open
So what?
eye open
Not enough detail here.
eye open
This is not accurate.
eye open

On some courses, it is possible to have the luxury of oral feedback on written work, too, and it may be possible to put it into small-group tutorials.  That's useful if it can be afforded.

reading

Feedback on reading and research

Some of the feedback you give on written work will, naturally, also apply to the research and reading the participant undertook to construct the submitted text.
At other times, however, you may set some reading and research as a pre-seminar / tutorial task and get the members of the group to report back to the others concerning what they have read and researched and how they have understood any implications.
Unit 5 of this course covers the issues with tutorials and seminars in some depth so here we will confine ourselves to those which address course content.
Feedback to this kind of task is likely to be oral and come not only from you but also be encouraged from the participant's peers at the meeting.
After you have set up the seminar, made sure everyone knows what it's about and what the outcomes should be, a conventional way to proceed is:

  1. Ask each person in turn to give their presentation.  If time is limited, make that clear.
  2. At the end of each presentation, invite other members of the group to:
    • ask for any clarification they need
    • make any points they think are relevant
    • present any alternatives they can think of
  3. Now it's your turn.  While participants are giving their presentations, you should be listening for any gaps in their knowledge or any misunderstandings that seem to have been exposed.  What you need to do is alert people to the times when they may have read too little or not thought too hard about what they have read and also to draw in other members of the group.  Now you can ask some questions such as:
    1. You said at the beginning that Widdowson suggests that formal language knowledge is part and parcel of communicative skill.  Do you accept that he's correct?  Does this mean he is suggesting we teach language systems before any communicative activity?  What happens to a Test-Teach-Test structure if we do that?  Does this sit well with Task-based Learning approaches?
    2. You have discovered most of the main uses of the present perfect continuous but haven't mentioned iterative aspects.  Can you suggest how the form is used for those?  Can anyone else explain what is meant by iterative?
    3. You stated that English doesn't have a future tense.  Most learners think the will form serves that function.  Doesn't it?
    4. You suggested, rightly, I think, that how we read is mostly determined by our purposes for reading.  What role does the text type play?
    5. I think you have the main characteristics of theories of active grammar construction and imitation theory right.  What aspects of research have you found which offer an alternative view to how people process language?
      What do the others think?

and so on.
This is also an opportunity to use turn taking appropriately and the most useful form of getting someone else's comments and thoughts is to constrain the topic and select the person whom you want to respond (and there's more on this in Unit 5).

You are teaching here but using a Socratic method in part by trying to lead people to a fuller understanding of the topic through a question → response → objection → refined response → question → response → objection process.  For more on the Socratic method and an example, see that part of Unit 4.

mirror

Self-evaluation

This is actually not so much self-evaluation as self-training.
Before you begin to train in earnest, arrange a couple of dry runs to see how you can apply some of the methods above.
If people are unwilling to let you experiment with their teaching and their classes, record a language lesson of your own or get hold of a recording of someone you don't know.
It is slightly bemusing that many people have seen fit to post examples of their teaching on the web and they are readily accessible via platforms such as YouTube (but rarely models of masterly practice).  Some have been posted by professional organisations and, while not flawless, are at least professionally conducted.
It is a resource worth exploiting because you can watch the lesson, such as it is, and apply any number of assessment devices while you do so.
Then visualise how you would give feedback.  There's some advice on visualisation in Unit 4 of this course.

When you've done that a couple of times, you'll be better prepared to do it for real.
You will never get it all right from the beginning (or ever, for most people) because this is a skill that comes with practice.

Don't forget, too, to apply your own well-practised self-evaluation skills after a feedback session and ask yourself how it went, whether you felt that you managed to get the points across and whether, crucially, you feel that the trainees in question benefited.
You could, of course, always ask them that.