Homework in Foreign Language Teaching: what kind of homework are language teachers assigning, and why?

In preparing for an inset on homework in my school, I began looking for advice on best practices for homework in the foreign language classroom. This sort of literature is pretty hard to find. I also realised I don't really know all that much about the homework my colleagues in the Foreign Languages department of my school are assigning, so I decided to ask them. Here is the survey I sent. The results will help us as a department to share tips, reflect on our own practice, and align our homework with the philosophy of the school.

Organize your teaching: computer tips for teachers looking to keep track of their resources

The problem: a teacher deals with a daunting multitude of documents and resources, especially if they're teaching students in the secondary school and upper school, and almost regardless of which subject they teach. What do I mean by resources? 

Ideally, being a teacher makes you smarter, to include with technology (no matter what you teach) -- but there are no guarantees.

There's this extraordinary blogger in England named Marc Scott who teaches computing and technology in schools. My brother, also a teacher (of math), referred me in 2013 to an article he wrote that persuaded me once and for all of a few things:

• Using a computer is like driving a car: the technology of the interface allows you near total ignorance of how things work. 
• I adore driving, and am still afraid to open the hood. Even now, if you want to teach me car part terms beyond "bumper", "steering wheel" and "rearview mirror", I would probably put my fingers in my ears and sing the Star Spangled Banner. I was like this with other things too, for most of my life.
• It reminded me of when I used to see people who could figure things out that I couldn't (like the kid during a school video project who could set up a VCR to record sound correctly even when the cables made it less than obvious). Here's the worst thing about me: I would peevishly make them help me, and tell myself meanwhile that I was better than them for not needing to know such things. Is this what it's like to be very, very wealthy?
• Being a good troubleshooter is the result of all kinds of intellectual successes working together: being patient, thinking logically, the dull-flush of trial and error, refusing to personify the problem, cultivating intuition. 

Of note here is that I used to be the sort of person who liked to get frustrated. Imagine what that is like, to prefer to get upset when it is more strenuous to do so than to relax. To perform one's frustration, via tantrums, even in adulthood, concomitant swearing and all. Imagine too the intellectual stuntedness of someone who has taught himself that growing angry, that throwing remote controls when you hit the wrong button and can't exit the menu without accidentally changing settings, is the normal way to deal with a problem; that the indignity of having to sort something out is far more grievous and pressing than the indignity of being a whining idiot.

From impulsive and in many ways stubbornly anti-learning, to a teacher. That's me.