I visited a workshop led by Rüdiger Iwan the day before yesterday. What I took away from that workshop was a re-examination of several key issues in school education: the role of homework, the nature of correction of pupil’s work and the link between the concept of portfolio and apprenticeship.
Homework
I think that homework can successfully [...]

Of course a spelling test or a grammar exercise is relatively easy to correct. The problem comes when the piece of writing is longer. It could be a piece of creative writing, a summary, expressing an opinion, a script, a portfolio submission or a test for example. The problem isn’t about correcting the mistakes although [...]

Basically this is an excellent idea. The European Union’s aim seems to be that everyone who participates can have a language passport showing their level of proficiency in the basic skills areas. This can be backed up by a biography showing how they arrived at these skill levels and by a portfolio (possibly multimedia) to [...]