I’m starting to become passionate about benchmarks. They provide strong direction - telling you what your students should be able to do when they are ready to move on, but at the same time they are very “hands off” as far as forcing the teacher or school into working a certain way.

The “Can do” statements we’re slowly working to subscribe to [www.language.ca and www.alte.org ] as a school, are very complete and descriptive. However they totally leave the “getting there” to the teacher and the student.

Benchmarks are, in my humble opinion, a great way to go if you are working toward student centered, portfolio developed learning.

What do you think?

In my case, as with many teachers, one of the main challenges to approaching EFL/ESL learning with portfolios and other student-centered approaches is dealing with the structure of the curriculum and the requirements of the institution, both of which are difficult to change.