How to check for understanding effectively in MFL lessons

In this blog post, I want to share three great questions you can ask your students to check for understanding.

I don’t know about you, but I used to think I could check for understanding by asking “any questions?” or (and I hate to admit this, but no one is perfect!) I would even just explain a task and then wait for the students to crack on with it, without even checking they knew what to do!

Once I became more experienced and really started learning about the value of checking for understanding, I developed the habit of asking the following types of questions, and found that it really does have such a deep impact on students’ learning and understanding.

So, instead of simply asking if everyone has understood your explanation, try one of these and let me know how you get on!

1. What have you understood?

Invite students to re-explain what you have taught in their own words and allow more than 1 student to re-explain it – they may see it from a different perspective that will help others in the class. Invite discussion from other students - “do you agree with this explanation?” and “is this how you understood it, too?” - to enable deeper reflection on a grammar point, for example.

2. Can you summarise XYZ?

Ask students to summarise an explanation (of a complex task or grammar/vocab point, or even a text you have been looking at) as a way of checking for understanding. Give the class some thinking time before you ask someone, and ask more than one student for their summary.

3. Is there a different way to say the same thing?

Encourage your students to reword an explanation or an answer, either in their native language or in the language they are learning. You can also invite them to rephrase an answer in the foreign language by saying “can you say it again, but better?” As with the previous two questions, make sure you ask more than one student!

If you would like some more ideas for how to check for understanding using effective questioning, I talked about it in more depth in Season 6 Episode 5 of the Kate Languages Podcast.