My Year 9 class are now 4 weeks from the end of our second year together. The students are aged 12-13 and have had approximately 2 hours Spanish per week, minus all the school holidays of course. In those two years we have read 6 class novels and they've each read 10-20 other graded readers during their free voluntary reading time at the beginning of class. Since around 4 months into year 8 (their first year of Spanish), we have started almost every class with 5-10 minutes of silent reading. We don't have a textbook.

In the two years, we've never 'done' or 'practised' a verb table. We have looked at one, after a student asked about the endings. We've maybe done two worksheets total across the two years that had a focus on accuracy. They have had plenty of pop-up grammar explanations about the differences between "comió" and "ha comido" for example. We don't do lists of vocabulary or regular high-stakes testing. 

We have never done anything about the conditional tense; I've never (explicitly) taught them 'debería, sería' etc... but they are using it in their writing. Below are some of their most recent entries in their "Diario de Lectura". These entries are mostly done in class, with no dictionary or computer. Just free writing.

Many of the wonderful listeners of The #MotivatedClassroom podcast have been getting in touch to ask for examples of what students writing output looks like given that I focus primarily on lots of compelling, comprehensible inputs with little or no formal grammar tests or tasks, worksheets or vocab lists, particularly in first two years.

Below are some examples of my Spanish Year 9 students 'timed write' from April this year. This is a mixed ability class (no high/low sets or streaming) of students who were mid way through their second year of Spanish with me. They are 13-14 yrs old and in total have had 1.75 years of Spanish. Each week they have four 45 minute lessons of Spanish. After one week of doing a TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) co-created story with them, at the end of the fourth class class I asked them to write as much as they could remember of the story in 5 mins. They had no prior warning, no studying beforehand, no memorization tasks, no drills or worksheets. They had just been immersed and involved in the story creation for a week with me. The story is typically 'asked' in short 5-10 minute blocks, then students will interact with it by drawing scenes and retelling them to their partner, answering questions from the teacher, miming scenes and discussing, reading back on it with images etc. Then the plot continues and they are intently listening to see what happens next whilst also providing ideas for the details in the story, as well as some of the more extroverted students are helping me by acting it out.

After exactly 5 minutes of writing their 'timed write', they stop. There is no correction of mistakes or individual feedback on this writing. Accuracy is not the goal. The goal is fluency, competence, proficiency and confidence. So, they just count the words to see how much they were able to write from memory of their own co-created story. They are often shocked and pleasantly surprised by how much they can write with no preparation. As the teacher, I read through them all very quickly, looking for common, collective errors and use these to inform my teaching for the upcoming classes. If many students have not mastered one of my key structures, then clearly they need more repetitions of it in the next class, more personalised questions about their lives, more inputs.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your comments! Download the weekly episodes of The Motivated Classroom podcast to listen to more research based teaching discussions about raising motivation in the language classroom.

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After 22 episodes and over 670 minutes of content, The Motivated Classroom podcast is taking a short, but much needed, two week break! For those who have fallen a few episodes behind, this winter break gives you a chance to catch up on all those episodes that have been bookmarked in your podcasts app for the last few weeks of this crazy semester! Episode 23 with Adriana Ramirez, will be released on Friday 8 January 2021.. So not too much longer to wait!

As my first venture into the podcasting world, it has been a steep learning curve in creating, recording, editing and promoting the content… but all things considered, I’ve loved it! Unbelievably, the podcast has now hit a whopping 21,000 downloads since it began five months ago at the end of July. Mind. Blown. Never in my wildest educational dreams did I think it would have been listened to so many times so quickly. Of course, there is no way people would find and listen to The Motivated Classroom podcast without the help of all of you wonderful listeners. I am hugely grateful to all of you for liking, sharing, telling friends and spreading the word. I want to say a special thank you to the 15 people who have become patrons of the podcast on my patreon.com page. I am indebted to your kindness and really appreciate your generosity! I’ve enjoyed some lovely coffee and crisps thanks to all of you! ​

Episode One, “Motivation: What is it and how do we do it?”, remains the most popular episode of the series, recently passing 2000 listens on its own but I think my favourite episodes have been those where I had the chance to interview some of my heroes. I want to take a moment to share my deep gratitude with those educational icons and legends that joined me as guests on the podcast this series: Soukeina Tharoo, Joe Dale, Beth Skelton, Chloe Lapierre and Adriana Ramirez (episode forthcoming); Thank you for sharing your passion and in-depth knowledge with the listeners. I loved chatting to you all and I learn so much from you each and every of you, every time we talk. Go raibh mile maith agaibh!

When I started my Doctorate in Education back in January 2015, I guess some of my main reasons for undertaking such a monumental project were; to improve my practice, to learn more, to challenge myself, to engage with research and potentially to open some doors and potential career prospects. What I didn’t know or expect at the time, was that by the time I would be finishing it in late 2020, a major objective would be to somehow share and disseminate both my own research findings and those from other major studies that were impacting my classroom practice. I wrote some articles, presented at conferences and led workshops but it wasn't until a good friend said “you should start a podcast about all this stuff” that I felt like other teachers were genuinely beginning to benefit from the research I had done and read about. Now, after five months and twenty-two episodes, it is clear that so many teachers around the world are really connecting to the motivational research and it makes my day to read the messages and emails from people saying they tried some of the activities in class and the students loved it.

So, thank you, merci, gracias, danke, obrigado, dank je and go raibh maith agaibh 🙏! I’d love to hear what episodes you liked the most so drop a comment here, post on The Motivated Classroom facebook page, comment on the instagram post or tweet me with your thoughts! I look forward to recording and sharing more episodes of The Motivated Classroom with you all in 2021!

Like many of you I have been going through a period of introspection and reflection on practices in my Spanish classroom and how I ensure I am always striving to have equity, social justice and respect at the heart of my teaching.
During this period I've been trying to focus on reading and listening to other voices. Using 'Spanish' names in the classroom has come up in a lot and I'd love to hear your thoughts and advice on my reflections.

Up until now I've always provided a list of Spanish names and nicknames to students at the start of the year. They are free to choose one if they wish but do not have to. I must admit that I have strongly encouraged them to go ahead and choose one though. In hindsight and upon reflection I feel this was wrong. The last thing I want is for a student to leave their own unique identity or culture at the door.

I've provided this list and allowed students to choose a Spanish name for themselves in the past as a lot of my doctorate research is on motivation and engagement. The three pillars of building intrinsically motivated, self-determined learners are:

• Competence
• Relatedness/Belonging
• Autonomy

The goal for students choosing their own unique Spanish name or nickname for our 'Españoland' class was always to build a sense of belonging and community to our class, whilst also providing them with the autonomy to choose whichever name they preferred, or what they felt they identified most with. After doing this for the past seven years, I'm quite convinced that this strategy does build a very special bond to our class. Students smile and beam when I greet them with this name, like we have our little secret society in our class. At parent meetings, they'll proudly tell parents.. "No Mum, I'm 'Juan' in Españoland". If we watch something where 'their' chosen name comes up, they get very proud and say things like "él también se llama Juan!". If I use their real name in class, they'll say "Señor, soy Juan aquí, no John". They feel like they are part of the Españoland family, like they have a special bond and belonging. It really helps to build relatedness and relationships. It's motivating. 

In addition, I've had students use this opportunity to choose a new name as away to explore their sexual identity. I have two girls this year, age 12-13, who both chose Spanish male names. I double checked with them that this is what they wanted and each girl, individually, told me 'yes, I've always wanted a boys name' or 'I feel much more like a boy so I want a boys name'. For me, this was great. They were openly using boys names with their classmates in what felt like a way to express to their peers 'I think I identify with being a boy' or at least were eager to explore this openly. All of these things lead me to believe that allowing students to choose their own Spanish name for our class is something positive... 

We’ve now had our first week of post-quarantine classes, back in our real classrooms, with real, live people around… yes, they exist and are not just avatars or thumbnails. Does it feel different? Yes, absolutely it feels different but it has to. The world is different. Life is different. Schools have to adjust. The Swiss federal government decided that the country was ready for students up to the age of about 15 to go back to schools from May 11th but with restrictions: only half the class could be present each day in order to allow for more spacing inside the buildings. So we have students coming in every second day. This is the part that feels the strangest as we are all essentially back at work but the school itself feels very empty as we only have half the students in on any given day. From May 25th we will be back to full classes again with the exception of the older students, who will remain with online learning until June 8th.

It has been challenging to try to provide meaningful learning experiences for children when you have half of them on a screen on your whiteboard and the other half in front of you. I certainly felt more tired and less happy with my teaching this week but I had to remind myself that this is so new for all of us. We never trained or dreamt of having to do something like this. Now is not the time for high expectations on our own shoulders. We are all adjusting; we are all fumbling through this. I had to remind myself that the focus now, more than ever, needs to be on happiness, inclusion and relationships. Many of the students themselves were also quite nervous and shy to get involved in class as they suddenly felt a lot more in the spotlight with only a smattering of their friends around for support. It is now that they need our support more than ever.

Luckily, I work at a school with fantastic leadership who had left no stone unturned in the preparations for us being back on campus: classrooms are spaced out, there are floor markings around the teachers desk, hand sanitisers in every classroom, one way traffic for the cafeteria, staggered end times for younger students, masks are available for those who want them, as well as some excellent and funny instructional videos for students before they came back… using teddy bears to show what social distancing looks like. The students have been great and understand the need to change their social behaviours but… and it is a big but, they are children. As soon as they are out of class, they are of course getting within a metre of each other. This is unavoidable. Official guidance from the Swiss government is that children do not need to socially distance the way adults do but that wherever possible we should use best practice and judgement to avoid them being in groups. So that is what we are doing.

My overwhelming feeling is appreciation and gratitude to be able to work at such a great school, that had us so well prepared for all this and to be back in my classroom, seeing my colleagues and my students faces again. My friends and fiancée are great of course, but I’ve really missed having people around who laugh at all my terrible jokes. Let’s be honest, none of us became teachers so that we could sit behind a computer all day on our own. Teaching is a people-centred vocation and I, for one, am delighted to see that all those wonderful people are the same as ever. There is no difference there.

The hardest part for me in all this is that so many of the fun things have been stripped out of our jobs: the spirit weeks, the year group events, the graduations, the theatre productions, the sports competitions, the field trips… That is the hard part. But if it’s like this for us, then imagine what it’s like for our students. We now have a duty to make our classes more engaging, more fun and more centred around our students’ own lives and personalities. They are coming to school and going to our classes… that is it. No socializing, no sports, no events. Now is the time to be brave, try out new approaches and do whatever we can to get our students smiling again. Ask them what they want to do, what they want to learn and how they feel their learning should be assessed. Start there. Can we reinvent our unit to satisfy the three basis needs of relatedness, autonomy and competence which are required for motivation to flourish?

Going back to school is different. And it will be different for some time. But the people are the same, great people who were there before all this. Put the ‘people’ at the centre of your planning. Lower the expectations on yourself, on your students and think about the people. If not now, when?

The large and ever expanding evidence base behind Self-Determination Theory tells us intrinsic motivation is fostered by meeting the three basic psychological needs:  Autonomy, competence and relatedness. 
​
This is true for students as well as for ourselves as teachers. Essentially as humans, we want to feel like we have some choice we want to feel like we can do it and we want to feel connected. Hit those three needs and you are developing intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation leads to engaging in a task voluntarily out of pure enjoyment, interest and excitement. This differs from extrinsic motivation where we might complete a task out of fear, or in order to benefit from a reward of some kind.

Think of something you really like doing… now ask yourself does it meet those three needs? ​

Here are my top four tips to keep the motivation up in the online classroom for students and teachers:

1. Let them see you: If you are using video software for your classes, this is great. Smile, be silly, talk about what you are doing in this lockdown period, show them your favourite hat, or your new hairstyle. Whatever. Just be yourself and chat to them. This builds connections and maintains the relationships. If you are not allowed to use video software, then make a few short youtube videos like these ones. They don’t have to be public if you don’t want that but the kids miss you. They want to see your face. And unbelievably, they find the most mundane things about our lives super interesting. Remember, they think we don’t exist outside the school walls so showing them your favourite plant in your apartment can blow their minds!
2. Get them moving: They are sitting all day… alllll day. Just as we are. So do activities that get them out of their seats. As language teachers this is a chance to give more comprehensible input: “Find me something small and green in your house, you have 1 minute” or “stand up, add these numbers and sit when you have the answer”. Or ‘Simon says’. Anything that gets them moving, keeps them engaged, keeps them listening to your input and builds relationships. Even better if you do the activity too. They’ll be smiling and giggling at you trying too. This also builds their competence as they are listening, understanding and following along. The competence is developed even further if you make a big deal out of the cool item they found, or awesome t-shirt they've on.
3. Lower the expectations: Online teaching and learning is simply not the same as the real classroom. Lower your learning objectives. Actively take things out of your units & curriculum. This is the time to be creative and do cool new things. Don’t worry about ‘being behind’... Behind who?? Or behind what?? We are all in this together. Now is not the time to over-burden with loads of exercises. Focus on motivation, not examination. Plan your lesson with detailed steps. Then when you are done, take one step out. Put it in the next lesson. This helps their competence as they feel like they are making it to the end each day. What about those learners who want extension activities? No worries. Have some youtube links ready or some extra reading or even better, some creative project to work on. 
4. Open up the choices: Autonomy is not about going off on your own tangent every time. It is about choice, self-direction and having some say in where things are going. Ask the students to vote on the tasks for the next class, give them 3 or 4 options of ways to show their learning. Let them be creative and make videos about topics you are doing. Give them the creative license and autonomy and you will be amazed and what they give you back. Especially those quiet students who say nothing in the video chat sessions.

I’m tweeting out a little 2 minute video every day (like the one above) with hints and tips that I have learned from online teaching. I am on that steep learning curve too but it’s great to share and get the conversation going. You can follow the updates here. Would love to know your thoughts!

Please leave your comments below! 
​#TogetherWeAreStronger #MotivationNotExamination

Until recently, a lot of second language acquisition research has focussed on negative emotions and de-motivation. However, thanks to the work of researchers like Jean-Marc Dewaele and his colleagues, among many others, we are now learning a lot more about the importance of positive emotions and how to foster them. We can now say with some certainty that students crave unpredictability and novelty. When these are entrenched in classroom activities, students’ attention is ignited as emotions are further heightened. This research offers some further answers as to why students in language classrooms are so motivated by learning through storytelling. Almost every good story keeps us listening as we don't know what is going to happen next, this unpredictability keeps our positive emotions firing as we intently listen to find out what happens next. 

The ‘unpredictable’ and ‘surprising’ elements are cited in the research as particularly important in encouraging emotional investment in the classroom and are also reported as highly motivating and crucial aspects of TPRS storytelling. Much of the current research advises teachers to plan activities that result in emotional arousal, as this will encourage deeper learner investment, which fits very closely with the nature of a co-created TPRS story. The strong emotional connection that TPRS ignites in learners was highlighted by many learners in both of my own research studies as a core reason why they find it so captivating and motivating.

These research findings can also be taken past stories though and right into our other lesson plans when we are not doing TPRS. If you keep students guessing about what activity is coming next, they will be more positively engaged. This goes for al subjects too, not just the language classroom. 

But how do we keep it unpredictable all the time?

Well, realistically we can't. But we can have a wide bank of compelling, comprehensible input activities that we call upon at (seemingly) random times. This keep the students' ears perked up and listening to our input. They don't know what might be next so they need to follow along so as not to suddenly be like "eh what do we have to do?". The mini-whiteboard is one of my go-to favourites to quickly mix things up in the class. The key is for you to keep the flooding of comprehensible input going while the students do something a little active. There are so many ways to achieve it:

1. Listen and draw; then compare and comment
2. Write 5 words linked to X theme, then pass them round and add more. Teacher takes longest list and uses it for more comprehensible input
3. Listen to a song and write particular things you hear (foods, emotions, adjectives etc)
4. Bingo: Write 3 words related to X theme; then teacher talks about the theme while students listen. If I say any word on their board they are out.
5. Groups of 2: write all the words you can remember from X song; then they stand and each group shares 1 word going round the room. When your board is empty or you can't think of any more your team is out. Teacher repeats and comments using comprehensible input.
6. Give one get one: list of words related to X, go round room give a word, get a word. No looking at other boards though. You have to try to communicate clearly first. This is where they are giving comprehensible input to each other as it is just 1 word and the sentence "do you have X word"

And the list goes on and on. Whenever I see students eyes or heads begin to drop a little, or that familiar glazing over look we all try to avoid, I quickly say "whiteboards", and "everyone up" and then do an activity with them where they will have to move around. Some teachers call these "brain breaks" and do stretches or movement games. All of these help to motivate as long as we keep them unpredictable and there is comprehensible input from you as the teacher. Have you spotted that keeping the comprehensible input going is key to all this??

But aren't we always told that our students need classroom routines?

Yes they do but there's a catch: I still have loads of routines in my class but they are almost all to do with behaviour and managing the class. They are not necessarily routines to do with learning (although they can be linked). For example, a common routine is that the students enter class to Spanish music with subtitles being projected. Another routine is they need that week's password to enter class each day and they must tell me 1 word they learnt that lesson before being allowed to leave. I have a student 'control' the doorway and check everyone has said the password. I control the exit word. So yes, there are routines but even these behavioural routines allow for autonomy and unpredictability: they never know what song will be playing when they come in, the password changes every week etc. So it is a great thing to keep routines going for behaviour but when it comes to learning activities, try to mix it up frequently, throw curve balls and do a wide variety of activities to keep them with you. And of course, keep the comprehensible input going by telling them stories about your life (embellish as you see fit!), your pets, your hobbies, your failures and mistakes, your goals and dreams. As long as they are never fully sure what is coming next, you have them. And when you have them, they're listening intently and acquiring more language.

As a teacher, how do you measure ‘success’ in your classroom? Progress? Engagement? Learning? Unfortunately, the standard way to judge or quantify how successful you, your methods or your students are, is through ‘achievement outcomes’ or, more simply, ‘results’. Obviously, it is important that our students are learning, but I fear that the reason we have increasing numbers of students in the UK dropping languages is because we have slipped into a Machiavellian way of looking at language acquisition (and many other subjects) - as long as they are getting the results, then the methods don’t matter. The ‘ends justify the means’ per se.

Drill. Practise. Worksheet. Repeat.

The results will come and everyone is happy, right? The results often do come, at least for those willing to do the tedious practice and conjugation drills, but not everyone is happy. Perhaps the parents are happy when they see the ‘A’ on the results transcript, perhaps even the teacher is happy seeing those wonderful phrases we practised so many times reappear on the exam script, but no, not everyone is happy. The vast majority of students do not like rote learning, drills and practice. The research tells us students are ditching languages because, quite simply, they find it boring. In my own research, 11 years of collecting feedback forms at various stages in the year from students of all ages, backgrounds and contexts, I’m still at under 1% of responses listing grammar worksheets or practice drills as activities they felt helped their learning. They can serve a purpose when used very sparingly. However, in reality, far too many of us fall back on grammar exercises as our ‘go to – keep them quietly working’ activity when our students creativity and passion is dying a slow and painful death by powerpoint boredom.

The problem with focusing on achievement and results is that even when we appear to be ‘successful’, we still have far too many students (and parents) talking about hating French or ‘not being able to speak any Spanish’ even though they studied it for five years. Our subject is ‘language acquisition’ but what most students actually get is a linguistics class on the mechanics of language and grammar, sprinkled with some role-play and practice drills in case someone in the future should ask them any of the very precise questions in our textbooks. I remember going to Germany when I was 15 and had been learning German for three years… and to my shock and horror, even though I knew my lines, I had practised and drilled those role plays, the pesky Germans did not know theirs! Not one person asked me how to get to the post office or to list off all the items in my bedroom.

There seems to be a growing debate between language teachers and researchers about whether we should focus on ‘fluency’ versus ‘accuracy’ or on ‘meaning’ versus ‘form’. Personally, I am in the ‘meaning and fluency’ camp, with a strong belief that ‘accuracy and form’ come later. I am not saying we just ignore errors or never mention the G word (grammar), rather that we don’t make these the number one priority. The focus needs to move away from 'achievement outcomes' and towards 'engagement incomes'. Personally, and I have plenty of first-hand evidence to go along with the research on this, I think we need to ask ourselves the question:
 
Why teach with a focus on accuracy, form, grammar drills and practice when you get pretty much the same 'results', but with a huge increase in motivation, with a Comprehensible Input (CI) based approach?
 
I used to be a 'traditional' grammar, drill and practice language teacher for years. A pretty good one too. I was getting great 'results'. Most students liked my classes and were learning a lot. The 'academic' kids were excelling but others were simply not that interested no matter how hard I tried. I resigned myself to admitting "they just don't really like languages". Wrong. They just didn't find studying the mechanics of language as interesting as I did, like most other teenagers.
 
The switch to ‘Comprehensible Input’ teaching means I now reach all students. Even those who are not that 'into' languages, they still like Spanish and even after the timetable has forced them to drop it to pursue their love of Physics or Economics, they still come to me and speak Spanish, they still say they loved the class. This is what has changed. Grammar and drilling does 'work' for many kids, in terms of it helps them do very well on exams. But CI based classrooms grow a genuine love and interest for the language and the class and... here is the key, they also do really well on the exams.

My research focuses on the motivational side of language teaching and learning, and I do wonder why we continue to argue over which methods 'work' the best when we can't see the wood for the trees. We know that both 'methods' can deliver results but only one method is perceived as highly motivating and fun by almost ALL the students and not just some. The one that 'works' the best is not the one with fewer grammatical errors or longer error free iterations or even the one with greater fluency or accuracy. It is the one that keeps students coming back for more, the one that makes students want to go and look up a Spanish song at night, the one that makes them want to try that Spanish phrase with their Colombian piano teacher. When we focus on that part... the motivation part, the accuracy will follow, as you have peaked a desire in that student to go and find out for themselves why it is -o and not -a at the end of that word (if they really want to know!). If both methods get us the same results but one motivates much more than the other, one creates more smiles and laughs from both the teacher and the students, why are we even arguing about this?
 
I'm not making this up either… the limited research around the motivational pull of CI and TPRS storytelling teaching is very strong. The huge volumes of data we have relating to retention and engagement in traditional grammar, drills and practice classroom is also very strong, but strong in the other direction. Students are not motivated by it. Students end up dropping the language and becoming those adults who say "I did German for five years but I was so bad at it, I can't remember a word".
 
Those “I’m so bad at languages” comments that we hear from other adults when we mention our job, those comments are on us. It is not the students’ fault that they are not as enthused by nerdy grammar explanations that most of us, as language teachers and linguists, love. We have control over how we teach in our own classrooms, we can stop the rot and change the way languages are taught in schools.
 
First step: throw out the stack of grammar worksheets, forget all the drills and practice and just talk to the students. Tell them about yourself, your weekend, your fears and passions, tell them stories and ask them questions, real questions about their dreams and desires, do it all in a comprehensible manner focusing on the meaning and not the grammar, and you are on your way to a new vision of ‘real success’. One where you spend less time laminating, and more time motivating.
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‘Success’ is measured not by how many points a student scores on a test, or by how many grammatical errors there are. ‘Success’ is measured in smiles. This is real success.