Similar to the article in the New York Times magazine Sunday March 7, this article in The Atlantic offers another analytic survey of good teaching.
One thing mentioned was working backward from your goal. But what is the goal in a fl class? For my old dept chair, it was 16 verb tenses by the end of the second year. For me, it’s a willingness to grapple with Spanish. One lady I worked with thought 50 words for the year would be a good measure!
Until we decide what our goal is, we are vulnerable to the evaluator who wants to observe students comprehending instructions in the TL or the one who wants to see fill-in-the-blank verb charts completed or a quiet classroom.
Here’s the link to the article, provided by a flteach member.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a-great-teacher/7841/