During the Agen Workshop this summer, I heard and learnt a lot about teaching with an ‘untargeted comprehensible input’ approach and have been trying it out during the first two weeks of school. When we teach with stories using TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) we usually have very specific structures in our head that are ‘targeted’ as the key learning goals for that story. For example, a beginner Spanish story might have había = there was, fue = he/she went and olvidó = he/she forgot, as the three structures we want to repeat many times so they are acquired naturally by the learners listening and partaking in the story.

Teaching in an ‘untargeted’ way essentially means we start up an activity or conversation with the learners and whatever language they need to communicate becomes the focus of the lesson… or at least that is the way I go about it! One such method is having the students invent and create a ‘character’ or ‘personality’ for your stories using an approach called ‘the invisibles’ or ‘one word images’. Based on what I observed Margarita Pérez doing during the Agen Workshop, I had the students sit in a circle with no desks and then give me any ‘invisible object’ that was in our class in front of us… they used English if they didn’t know the Spanish word and I translated. After they had all given their idea I had them pick which one they liked best and then we started to give that object (we had 'invisibles' such as a piece of glass, a marker and a basketball) personality traits and a history. 

I genuinely had no idea how this would go but I had 100% engagement from everyone as we built these characters as a team and students received constant repetitions of various structures at a level comprehensible to them. In one class, they really wanted to say “she used to play but not anymore” so we went with it and I briefly explained the differed between jugaba = used to play and jugó = played. This is all based around Krashen’s ‘natural approach’ and making the input so compelling that students get lost in the acquisition without thinking about it.
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In reality even if it is ‘untargeted’ we immediately start to ‘target’ various structures once the students have identified them as a phrase they need to communicate. The important thing is to limit these to just a few key structures and then repeat and circle them (ask many varied questions while using the structure) as much as possible so students are getting the required repetitions for acquisition. I tried this out in a number of classes and I feel like it went very well although it is still very early days… so let’s see how much language was actually acquired when we go back to class tomorrow after field trips! 

Classroom management is a recurring theme for most teachers. In the ‘comprehensible input’ classroom it takes on even greater significance as you are looking for intent listening, total engagement and 100% understanding from your learners. You plan compelling, interesting stories and activities, and this breathes life and even more energy into your teenage students. It can sometimes result in a fear of things getting out of control or too noisy which can in turn impact their acquisition. The ‘Class Constitution’ is a way to get immediate buy-in from your students on Day 1. By co-creating it together as a team you are building strong and meaningful relationships through mutual respect from the very first time you meet them.

​The three core tenets of quality classroom management are: Clear expectations, Consistent routines and Strong relationships. The ‘Class Constitution’ hits all of these. It usually takes a full double period (for me that is 80 minutes) to do it properly. Dedicating a full class to this may seem like a lot but it is the best time investment you will spend all year and will save you hours and hours in the long run whilst also keeping you as that happy, enthusiastic and motivated teacher you want to be all year. 

Step-by-step guide to your ‘Class Constitution’:
As students arrive on the first day, greet them at the door with care and respect, looking them in the eye. As they take their seats I tell them they are all no longer in school but in the ‘Embajada de Españoland’ (Embassy of Españoland). I bring them to the door and show them my 'border' (black tape on the ground and something we use a lot later on when talking about migration) and ask them to explain what they know about ‘borders’ and ‘embassies’ to me. For my total beginner students I tell them that normally in Españoland we only speak Spanish but just for today we will be doing everything in English. Yes, I know this is valuable time when they could be getting more input but in my experience, showing the students that this is important enough for a full double lesson sets us up for the year and allows me to have much more time giving them Comprehensible Input throughout the year as they are totally bought-into the process. With all other year groups/levels we do it in Spanish but I allow responses and group talk in English that I will translate for them.

Step 1: What is a ‘safe’ learning environment?
In small groups of three or four, students firstly have some quiet thinking time and then they chat about what a 'safe classroom' means to them. On large sheets of paper, they start jotting down ideas. You can do this in whatever way works for you but I usually have one big A3 piece of paper on each table, for every group, and it is divided into three sections. Each group writes their ideas in one section of their paper with the heading “safe”.
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Step 2: Teacher led discussion
After 5 minutes (or less if you wish), I ask each group for some ideas or key words they wrote down. I jot these on the board, making sure to recognize any great words or concepts that come out. Obviously though, you, as the teacher, are a skilled practitioner and professional, so you keep probing for answers until they come up with what you really want to hear. Students will quickly realise that while silly or immature words are listened to but not accepted, the teacher gets very enthusiastic and excited about concepts like ‘respect, listening, we love mistakes’ etc.

​Step 3: What is a 'fun' learning environment?
The above two steps are now copied in the same way but changing the focus to ‘fun’. I usually have each group move to a different table so they can see the words and answers that other groups wrote down. They can add some words if they wish. In the discussion part for this question you will see the enormous impact of the tone you set and the way you looked in their eyes and smiled when they gave you a great word in the first discussion. You will start getting really great stuff here right from the outset. Again, use your skills to facilitate a discussion until those key concepts start to surface.
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Step 4: What does it mean to be 'linguist'?
The final section of their paper is about being a linguist. I introduced this last September and it worked wonders as a classroom management piece throughout the year. They follow the same procedure as before but you may need to explain what a ‘linguist’ is. I tell them that by being citizens of Españoland they are all now part of a very elite and special group, they are no longer mere students or learners but linguists. Just watch their faces light up as you call them ‘linguists’. When we get to the group discussion part, I explain that we as linguists, are different, we do not act like everyone else. What do we do that is different? After some probing, they will come out with things like “we respect other cultures, we listen to other languages, we read and inquire into cultural differences, we love speaking languages, we love listening to others talk in a different language” etc. This simple element of naming them for the whole year as linguists has a profound impact on behaviour, attitude and confidence. 

​Step 5: Pulling it all together
Once we have all our key ideas on the board under our three headings, I ask them what they notice. Someone will point out the word ‘respect’ has magically appeared in all three areas so this must be the centre and core of our constitution. We then circle and highlight other ‘big ideas’ or key concepts together. Finally, I ask them if it would be ok if I could represent them and pool all of this together into our very own constitution. I also ask them, “if we have an embassy based on these ideas do you think it will be a good year in Españoland?”, they inevitably will answer yes. I also explicitly point out and say that they did not walk in here and get handed a list of ‘my’ rules of the class. Instead, they wrote their own constitution, they came up with the key values and concepts of being a citizen of Españoland themselves.

Step 6: The next class
I start the next class by showing them their constitution… it is no surprise that all my classes have a constitution that is almost identical. I ask them if I have represented their ideas adequately and if they are happy that this be our ‘guiding document and principles’ for life in Españoland. There is also great cross-curricular learning here with Humanities; I often have the younger students speak to their humanities teacher about our constitution and allow them to show off that they know what it is and why it is important to countries and citizens to have one.

​Throughout the year:
The constitution remains on our ‘embassy’ wall for the year. If there are any lapses in behavior or standards that we all expect from each other, I simply bring the student(s) in question to the constitution and point to the requisite section and smile. This usually does the trick but sometimes I might have to remind the entire class of our underlying constitutional values that they themselves designed and wrote. These lapses in standards are actually incredibly rare. In general, co-creating the shared ideals together results in a respectful classroom where everyone feels safe, where we have fun, where we act like the linguists we are and where we thrive upon our favourite mistakes as unique learning opportunities. I always remind students that “as linguists, we are special, we are unique, we listen intently to understand and therefore learn”. Simply changing the discourse and calling them linguists possesses some magical power to keep everyone engaged, enthused and eager to represent themselves as the linguist they are.

Planning to motivate not to laminate:
As my regular blog followers will already know, the thesis for my Doctor of Education studies is focused on strategies that motivate both the teacher and student in the language classroom. Specifically, I am looking at Ryan and Deci’s (2000) Self-Determination Theory relating to intrinsic motivation. It posits that when activities meet the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence, this results in intrinsic motivation; where we engage in something out of pure joy and interest rather than external forces acting upon us. This forms the backbone of all my classroom planning as, in my opinion, motivated students who like the class and want to be there, who want to listen and learn, make for great language learners. The ‘Class Constitution’ meets all of the three psychological needs of Self-Determination Theory:

• Autonomy: Students are co-creating this constitution themselves with the teacher; they have control, choice and ownership over what to suggest and what is ultimately included.
• Relatedness: Through building the ‘Class Constitution’ together in groups and then with me as the teacher, they are fostering strong bonds and relationships both to each other, to the teacher and to 'Españoland' itself.
• Competence: When the teacher acknowledges the students' ideas and then accepts their concepts as important enough to go into the constitution, the students feel ‘able’ for what is being asked, they feel competent.

If you are a language teacher based in Europe you must get yourself to Agen, France next summer for the next instalment of this incredible week of meeting, laughing and sharing with like-minded passionate teachers. I am sure most of you have been to ‘professional development’ workshops before that left you far from… well, ‘developed’. This workshop is different. You walk away feeling professionally enriched, enthused, motivated, supported and connected.

When I first heard about the Agen TPRS workshop, I was excited to have the opportunity to meet and learn from amazing teachers from around the world but I was a little apprehensive that it was for an entire week in the middle of my long awaited summer holidays. I arranged to attend the conference from Monday to Friday morning, planning to leave at lunchtime. However, after just a few days I could see why people love this week so much. The workshops, the presentations, the activities but even more so, the social aspect… picnicking in one of Agen’s beautiful parks as the sun was going down, chatting about pedagogy and motivation with other like-minded souls. I was sold. I was all in. I quickly cancelled Biarritz and booked the Friday night in Agen too so I could attend every session right up to the final one on Saturday morning.

​The workshop focuses on teaching strategies related to Dr. Stephen Krashen’s ‘Comprehensible Input’ (CI) theory and the method of ‘Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling’ (TPRS). The fundamental principle of CI teaching is to give students vast amount of ‘input’ (through listening intently and reading) at a level that is close to 100% understandable so they acquire language naturally rather than having to ‘learn’ it through drilling and practising. The results that CI teachers are achieving in a short amount of time are astounding… but the more important part, for me at least, is that CI students adore their language class; they find it fun, entertaining and are highly motivated to speak the language outside class and to continue learning it into the future.

This isn’t just anecdotal either… the research around TPRS and CI points to increased retention and numbers of students taking the language. As part of the Doctorate in Education that I am completing with the University of Bath, my research study with 12 high school students (full text here) found that TPRS was highly motivating to them and led them towards feeling intrinsically motivated – learning Spanish out of pure joy and interest rather than because of extrinsic rewards. Surely this has got to be our core goal as teachers. For our students to not only acquire language rapidly and achieve their potential, but to love our subject so much that they can’t wait to use their learning outside class and are eager to keep learning more about it long into the future.
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Susan Gross kicked us off with a witty, engaging, keynote address about the history of CI and TPRS on Monday afternoon after an ‘official welcome’ to Agen at the Mairie. For those who have not been to the Agen Workshop before, the mornings are ‘language labs’ where you can be part of a real language class for the week or simply drop in and observe some exceptional teachers, hand picked from around the globe, working their magic. The afternoons are dedicated to workshops and presentations focusing on various strategies that aim to increase our use of CI in the classroom by sharing our practice with one another.

During the week, I had the pleasure of attending a Japanese class with Pablo Ramón, French with Sabrina Janczak, Spanish with Margarita Pérez Garcia, Mandarin with Diane Neubauer and Breton with Daniel Kline Longsdon Dubois. In my current school we have an open door policy where we encourage anyone to come along and observe but the reality of a busy school week often means that we don’t observe or have observers anywhere near as often as we would like. The week in Agen gave me that opportunity to just go, watch and take notes from truly expert teachers, masters of their craft, for 2.5 hours per day and then to chat with them over lunch, picking their brains for more tips and tricks I could steal for the benefit of my students. Each of them has inspired me to try new things in September and I now have concrete goals and examples to aspire to. A major take-away for me, from these observations, was that despite entirely different styles, with some teachers being very extrovert and animated, and others very calm and collected, TPRS was equally as successful in both these situations. TPRS can sometimes feel like you have to be quite a ‘big’ personality to do it well, but this is simply not the case. You must stay true to who you are as a person, as a personality and as a teacher but if you employ the skills and principles of CI and TPRS, both the achievement and the engagement in your class will take a dramatic upward turn.

In the afternoons, you have three choices to choose between. Although they are broken up into Track 1 (new to CI), Track 2 (developing with CI) and Track 3 (experienced with CI), in reality you end up jumping between the Tracks a little depending on your particular interests and what the presenters have planned. As I was presenting twice during the week I could not get to everyone but the ones I did see were all carefully planned, presented with enthusiasm and gave me a host of ideas to implement when I get back to school.

Scott Benedict showed us some clever ways to successfully carry out speaking assessments and then later in the week gave a plenary on classroom management with a CI focus. Laurie Clarcq gave us very practical, hands-on activities and skills aimed at increasing the amount of CI in our classrooms while Diane Neubauer demonstrated the power of ‘listen and draw’ both for comprehension checking and for maximizing input in the class and also led a plenary session on current research and issues in second language acquisition. On Wednesday, Robert Harrell explained how to use ‘Breakout’ (think Escape Rooms in the classroom with a box) to encourage ‘reading for meaning’ at the same time that Adriana Ramirez presented on her ingenious use of personalized photos in the class to encourage and develop oral fluency. I could only attend one so Adriana kindly gave me a mini 1 to 1 presentation on her ‘picture talk’ as I had heard such great things about it from others. At the end of the week, Adriana also went through what a whole week of TPRS and CI looks like for her. 

​The inimitable Jason Fritze explained how to take Total Physical Response (TPR) to a whole new level, backward planning it into our lessons to enable students to read more and then developed this further in his plenary on Saturday morning. Alice Ayel talked us through her use of ‘Story Listening’ and the results it has achieved, and then delivered an example for the whole group so we could see it in action. The final session on Thursday afternoon for me was Sabrina Janczak’s ‘Star of the Day’, where a student is the ‘star’ who is interviewed in front of the whole class allowing for lots of rich input and encouraging a real sense of community among the students. The last session on Friday was a big discussion on the use of the ‘Mafia’ game, facilitated by Diane Neubauer, with a focus on how it allows us to maximize the amount of CI we can get into a lesson while students are intently listening so they can follow along in the game.

It is clear why the Agen Workshop is so motivating, as it meets all three of the basic psychological needs required for intrinsic motivation as outlined in Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci 2000):

• Autonomy: You get to choose which sessions you want to attend in the afternoons and which teachers to observe in the mornings; it is also very inclusive so you feel like your ideas and contributions have merit and are accepted by the group.
• Relatedness: There is an immediate sense of community and togetherness at the workshop as we are all working towards a common goal of boosting motivation and allowing students to acquire language naturally through CI. In many cases, we are ‘lone wolves’ in our respective schools, maybe the only CI teacher in the department, but at this workshop everyone is so passionate about CI and has seen its results. It brings everyone together immediately. The social events (especially the 2.5 hour lunches!) and also foster a genuine feeling of belonging as we chat together about pedagogy and teaching over the incredible French cuisine.
• Competence: Even if you are new to CI, by attending the workshop you start to feel like you can really implement some of the principles in your classroom. The more sessions you attend and more times you practice the techniques, the more comfortable and competent you feel about being a CI practitioner.

Before you book anything else next summer, book onto the Agen workshop. Think ‘working holiday’ in Southwest France with lots of like-minded people, passionate about improving their practice and more importantly, improving their student’s outcomes. Put it in the Agen-da now! You can thank me later. 

Wasn’t it Einstein who defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”? On Friday my twitter feed lit up with news that the UK government had “announced the creation of a national language centre and nine schools that will lead language hubs in a drive to improve the teaching of Spanish, French and German”… sounds great doesn’t it? And they are throwing £4.8 million at the initiative over the next four years, with the aim of “raising standards of teaching in languages”… all very positive so far, right? In addition, it seemed this was an evidence based proposal coming from “recommendations made in the Teaching Schools Council’s Modern Foreign Language Pedagogy Review led by headteacher and linguist Ian Bauckham.” I was genuinely feeling very optimistic and excited about this… until I clicked the link that is.

Let me be clear, I am not from the UK, I have never taught in the UK and I do not live in the UK. So why am I bothering to write this blog? Well, I work in an international school with many British teachers, parents and students. I have a large group of teacher friends who are British and my girlfriend is also British. I am also completing a Doctor of Education programme at the University of Bath in the UK and there is a strong likelihood I will teach in the UK at some stage in the future so their language education policies are important to me. From numerous conversations with Britons of all ages, it seems languages are taught, for the most part, in a very similar to way to how I was taught and how many teachers continue to teach.

In the Modern Foreign Language Pedagogy Review that underpinned this big announcement, there is a distinct focus on continuing down the road of old school grammar and vocabulary teaching. Yet there is also references to students becoming demotivated and disinterested. Let’s just put this straight out there and say it clearly: these two concepts are closely linked. In my 11 years of teaching, I have chatted to hundreds of students and parents, and they say the same thing my classmates and I said 20 years ago when you ask them about their language class… it’s boring! It is just fill in the blanks, vocabulary lists, worksheets, grammar tables and stilted, forced “talk to your partner” conversations about ‘Pierre from Paris who likes baguettes’. Yes, there are some students who like learning this way but the vast majority are bored stiff and only keep going with the language as they perceive it as useful or their parents tell them it will be useful one day. The sad thing is that it does not have to be this way.

I was one of these textbook, grammar table and vocabulary list teachers too but then I discovered teaching with “Comprehensible Input” (CI). It is a well established theory of language acquisition, coined by Dr Stephen Krashen. Dr Krashen’s work does not feature in the appendix of the Modern Foreign Language Pedagogy Review, and the word “comprehensible” is not present anywhere in the 27 page document. Yes, like everything in the world, it has its critics but those critics are certainly not my students, or the students of the thousands of CI teachers (and growing rapidly) around the world. This is not just some passing ‘fad’ or ‘method’. More and more teachers are converting to CI teaching as they see the incredible achievement and fluency it fosters but more importantly, their students now love their classes and their teachers love teaching them.

I can already see some language teachers who are unfamiliar with this shaking their heads and saying “that would never work”… but it does. While the research around TPRS is still limited, it is growing. Karen Lichtman’s overview of all the current TPRS research shows that students achieve very highly when compared to traditional methods. In fact, 87 of 88 of my students mentioned "stories" as one of three things that helped them learn most in their end of year feedback surveys last year.

​More importantly though, for me at least, is that both students and teachers find it to be highly motivating. My own doctoral research with the University of Bath focusses on this ‘motivational pull’ of teaching and learning languages with TPRS and the data is overwhelming: Students love learning with TPRS. As Stephen Kaufman of LingQ pointed out so aptly in his tweet “Unfortunately too few language teachers recognize that the role of the teacher is not to teach the language, but to motivate the learner to learn the language.” We all need to remember this. If you focus on the motivation, the students will do the learning and acquiring themselves. TPRS gives you a tool that will motivate your learners and they will come to class in eager anticipation. As one student said in my research study about learning through stories:

TPRS is just one piece of the CI jigsaw. There are loads of other ways to get the vast amounts of comprehensible input, that students need, in to the class like Movietalk, one word images, picture talk, star of the week etc but the aforementioned principles stay the same.. and you’ve got to admit, it makes sense, right? We are all language learners, we have learnt and are fluent in at least one language already so we know we can do it. But how did we ‘acquire’ that language as we certainly didn’t learn it? Well, we listened and were read to for about two whole years before we ever felt ready to start to say some of those words. We certainly didn’t start off learning about adverbs, conjunctions and the irregular verbs in the passé compose before we could even speak and read the language. Or if our parents did start us off learning that way, I’m not sure how much love or motivation I’d have for the language (or for them!) today!
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Yes, it is great that the UK Government recognize the importance of language learning and I applaud their consultation approach. However, I also implore the Minister for Education and the authors of the Modern Foreign Language Pedagogy Review to do their research. Go and read about CI and TPRS. Talk to teachers and students who are using it. Be ready for some enthusiastic and motivated responses. If we keep teaching languages in the same boring way we will have the same problems with uptake and retention for years to come. The frustrating thing is that we have the one subject that we can literally teach, talk and read about anything we want as long as it is the target language. We have the scope to be the most loved and interesting subject in the school. Any language teacher can do this by embracing ‘Comprehensible Input’ teaching approaches and working to make the input we give, “compelling” to our students’ ears and eyes. 

So that I’m not accused of sitting on the fence… for me, motivation is the holy grail in education. It is the key to not only our students’ success but also to our own satisfaction as teachers. In this presentation at a recent all-staff meeting at The International School of Lausanne, I started by asking teachers to share ‘things that frustrate them’ about their students. Asking a question like this right at the end of a semester, with many tired faces in the audience, certainly didn’t take long to generate a rich variety of responses; not handing in work on time, arriving late and unprepared, not participating in class, constant low level chatter, using phones in class… I am sure most of us can relate to many of these issues that are common place in schools the world over.  Next, I asked for the opposite; times when you felt you really loved your job, when everything was going well in the classroom. Thankfully, this also did not take long to produce a variance of answers; students all contributing, insightful questions, assignments that ‘wowed’ the teacher, students really enjoying their learning. I would argue that the bridge that fills the gap between these two phenomena is “motivation”.

When our students are motivated, they participate, they arrive on time, they hand in quality work, they ask great questions and produce thought-provoking, insightful, knowledgeable answers, they smile, they laugh, they want to improve, they want to learn.

What does this do to us as teachers? Quite simply, it makes us feel great. We feel good at our jobs, we feel like our kids are progressing, we feel like we chose the right career, we feel like we are making a difference, we feel motivated.

But how do we achieve motivated learners in our classes? Are there any ‘quick fixes’ for motivation we can apply straight away? Thank you to @MathsTweetcher for this question and the inspiration behind this blog.

The good news is that yes, there are things we can all do, with very little time and effort, to increase motivation right away amongst our learners. According to Ryan and Deci’s (2000) Self-Determination Theory (SDT), intrinsic motivation (which involves engaging in tasks out of pure joy and interest) is increased when we meet the basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence. SDT, which originated in psychology, has already been extensively researched and tested across a variety of domains including medicine, coaching and education, and is widely considered and accepted as a robust method to augment motivation. Autonomy is related to choice, self-direction, and student ownership of learning; relatedness refers to a sense of belonging, support, inclusion and relationships while competence is concerned with students’ perceptions about their capacity to achieve success.

This 2006 study, for example, looked at the motivational pull of videogames and found that playing videogames clearly met the 3 needs of SDT and henceforth, why so many people are so motivated to keep playing them. Players have complete autonomy in where and what they do in any given game; there is a strong sense of relatedness as gamers have an immediate connection to a community where they can share their passion; and gamers feel a great element of competence while playing as they pass from one level to the next.

As part of my Doctorate in Education at the University of Bath, I also put SDT to the test in my own context, engaging in this qualitative research study with a group of Year 10 students (aged 15-16) about their experiences of learning languages through storytelling. Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) is a method of language teaching that, I found, consistently generated lots of positive responses on feedback forms and seemed to really engage the kids. In the study, according to the students themselves, TPRS visibly met the SDT needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence and this in turn meant it was a highly motivating approach to language learning. They reported believing they could “steer the learning” and “effect what would happen next” which led them to feel “more involved and more in control” of their learning (Autonomy). In addition, they felt the stories “helped them to understand everything better” and “really improved their speaking” (Competence). Finally, they reported that stories were “very extroverted” meaning “everybody will feel included” and “everybody gets to participate”, which made them “less scary” as “you don’t get judged” because “everyone was doing it as a group” (Relatedness).

​Building self-determined, motivated learners does indeed take time but by applying SDT’s 3 needs to our lesson plans immediately, this can give us some ‘quick fixes’ to motivation as Jason asked about. Take a look at your upcoming lesson plans and ask yourself if you think the activities meet the needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Simply thinking about these needs as we plan can lead to more motivated behaviours:

Autonomy: Can I adapt the activity to allow students more choice or self-direction? You can still set the task but by allowing them different ways to show their learning and fulfil the objectives, you are heightening their level of autonomy and creativity, and you are on your way to a more motivated class.
Relatedness: Can I re-plan this so students have a greater sense of belonging and togetherness? Perhaps students can attempt a task in pairs rather than individually? Can students or (you as the teacher) share a personal anecdote connected to the lesson? Maybe there is an opportunity for you as their teacher to ‘get among them’ and do the task with them? All this improves relationships and leads towards more ‘relatedness’ in the class.
Competence: Is the activity going to help students feel like they can ‘do’ it? Is there a way to modify the activity so students can show off what they’ve just learned to each other? Another very simple way to augment students’ feelings of competence is just to recognize, highlight and share something good you see in the class, something that demonstrates understanding of the concepts. By explicitly highlighting successes and learning, students feel like they ‘are getting it’, they feel more competent.
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Yes, building self-determined, highly motivated learners, can be a challenge but by making small adjustments to our lesson planning using SDT and creating an ‘ARC’ (Autonomy, Relatedness, Competence) in our classes we can at least help students to enjoy and engage in the lesson more, even if the content or subject matter is not of particular interest to them. If we want engaged, smiling, inquiring students who are achieving their potential and learning, its time we concentrated more on ‘motivating’ and less on ‘laminating’.  

​Please share your comments and whether you have any activities you feel already have students on an upwards ‘ARC’ towards motivation. 

This was the general gist of a recent sit down I had with a school administrator when my grade distribution for the first semester looked very different from most other teachers. In my current school we use the International Baccalaureate (IB) grading levels, going from 7 as the highest grade to 1 at the lowest end. The administration noticed that my 'graph', as well as a few other teachers, looked quite different from 'the norm'. The vast majority of my 75-80 students were achieving a 6 or 7 with only a small number in the middle with a 3, 4 or 5 and no-one underneath that. To be fair to my school, the administration was not 'giving out' to me but rather they wanted to check in and understand why this was the case and find out whether my students were being adequately challenged. 

I had never really looked or thought about my 'graphical distribution' of grades before. If the students achieve what is set out against the IB grading criteria, they then merit the high grades right?... but his question about 'are they all being adequately challenged' did make me stop and think. I went back and looked through some of the assessments I had set (presentations, story retells, writing out a story, reading comprehensions etc) and for each level I really do think these are challenging assignments. The "problem" (if that's what we can call it) is that the students are almost all really highly motivated, are engaged for 95-100% of the class time, only speak and listen to Spanish during every minute of every class and are all in a comprehensible input environment where we always seek 100% comprehension from each and every student before moving on.

I don't think it is 'me' in particular, but rather the comprehensible input methods I teach, which they have grown to love and cherish: storytelling, acting out parts of the book, movietalks, special person interviews etc. Is it so bad or so wrong that they are acquiring so much language so quickly that they are almost all acing every assessment they get? Is it not our goal to try and have highly motivated students as we know that will lead to achievement of their potential? Is it really my job to now go and set harder tests and evaluations so they don't all do so well, thus putting a lower number on some kids heads and demotivating them after all we have done to get this far together? I really hope not.

However, it does beg the question about maintaining sufficient challenge for each and every student. Of course, like in any class in the world, some students are faster processors than others, some need more repetitions of the structures and some don't. But I firmly believe in the Comprehensible Input mantra of 100% comprehension from all. Does this mean some students are bored? They never look bored. They never say they are bored in any feedback surveys. Quite the contrary in fact. So what is the problem if we are all learning, and learning so fast? What is the problem if they are all acquiring so much language that they ace all the assessments?

​There is a cultural aspect to this too let's not forget. An 80% test score in an American school can mean a very different achievement level to an 80% score in a French or British school. The research is quite clear though, putting numbers on students heads, particularly low ones, demotivates much more than it motivates to improve. So why do we keep doing it? Why not just do away with grades altogether and just have comment only feedback for the first few years of secondary school (say up to age 15 or something). Is that really so radical? 

As other language teachers around the world, I really would love to hear your comments on this. How do you maintain motivation whilst still having sufficient challenge for the high achievers? Do your comprehensible input methods also result in a 'skewed grade distribution' and if so... does that not just mean that what we are doing is actually working?

And most importantly, should we not be celebrating the 'skewed' graph rather than trying to reset it?

'Movietalk' is a popular method for language teachers to increase the amount of 'comprehensible input' in their classrooms through interesting little videos with lots of repetitions of new structures or vocabulary. Martina Bex gives a great overview of the method here. I too like to use it as a way to allow my students to hear multiple repetitions of language structures I want them to acquire, or ones I feel like they have not yet mastered. 

My only issue with Movietalk was that until recently I felt like it was hard to 'circle' (asking the class and having them repeat the target structures) without it coming across as tedious or boring. For example, one of my favourite videos to use in December is this Justino 2015 advertisement for the 'Lotería de Navidad' in Spain. If I wanted students to acquire 'estaba trabajando', lets say, then I would pause the video a lot and keep asking questions about where and how he was working but half the time I felt like the students were looking at me like "Yes, we know he works in a factory, we have said this like 20 times and​ we have just seen it in the video... why do you keep asking us?"

​Know that feeling anyone?

So now, what I try to do is make the video I am using much more interactive and more like a 'Movieaction' than a 'Movietalk'. I still do all the same steps as a normal Movietalk with lots of pauses and checks for understanding but I will also have a student become the character in the video and get him or her up in front of the class asking questions about what we have just seen in the video. This seems to hold their attention much better and it doesn't seem as 'repetitive' if I am asking this person about all the things we have just seen.

Remember, the key is to try to keep what we do 'compelling' wherever possible so I also use this character to bring in other characters from our recent story. I start with something like "pero clase, Justino tiene un secreto" and then it will turn out that Justino (our character in the video) "estaba trabajando" with 'Lady Gaga' or whoever else from our recent story. Not only does this little twist to the video seem to have them hanging on every word waiting for what happens next it also gives you the chance to do some 'formative assessment' and see if those structures you did 2 months ago are still there. Can they remember the old story? Can they use those structures we worked on 2 months ago? If they struggle then we go back over it all again. It really is amazing to see how linking to previous stories re-energizes the whole class again. 

The final piece to the 'Moveaction' jigsaw is like so many of the other comprehensible input teaching approaches... slow down, take your time and get them out of their seats. I will have students use their whiteboards to write down new vocabulary from the video, then get up and swap them around or they will write 3 key parts of the video (using the target structures) with their partner, or draw a key scene from the video. The important part is putting the 'action' in 'Movieaction', having them get up, swap phrases, tell each other etc.

When you do these and you walk around and see just how many students have chosen to write or draw your new 'secret detail' with links back to your old story, it is remarkable. These random, silly, stupid, arbitrary little links and details are in fact, the keys to success and the ones they remember and want to talk about no matter how funny or interesting the actual video is. 

​I know, I know… as a ‘comprehensible input’ (CI) teacher, I shouldn’t ever really be teaching ‘verbs’ but bear with me. Like most other self-proclaimed CI teachers, I spend most of time focusing on giving students lots of understandable input through stories, personalized questioning, ‘special person’ interviews among lots of other strategies. However, after a few weeks doing this I often get a couple of questions and requests from students about the other forms of the verbs that we haven’t done yet. After hearing various verbs and language structures in context and using them in stories, a certain number of students will always want to see the whole verb written down so they can make connections and patterns to other structures they want to use. Once a few of these requests come in, I usually pick one entire verb that we have been using in the stories and ‘teach’ it through this activity.

​Here’s how it would work. Let’s say we have been doing a story about food and restaurants using the verb ‘pedir’ to order. First, I will break students into teams and see if any team can write all versions of the verb ‘pedir’ in the past. They’ll usually get the ones from the story immediately and I might have to show them the other forms. Once we have all 6 subjects of the verb in the past tense they have 20 minutes to go and write a mini restaurant sketch using all 6 parts of the verb. This is where I love the atmosphere the stories create because they always come up with weird, wacky and wild sketches. It is a really great way for them to see that ‘pediste’ (you ordered) for example and ‘pidió’ (he/she ordered) are different and used for different people. I’ve found that many Anglophone students struggle with this as in English it is just ‘ordered’ for everyone. 

The sketches really get them thinking in groups about how to include all parts of the verb and how to make it interesting. They then act it out in front of the class showing off the drama skills they have picked up in our stories.

If you want to make it even more fun, you can give a time limit of say 2 minutes for the acting of the sketch. Then have them all come back up and act it out again but each version they do, you cut the time limit in half. By the end they only have 15 seconds and will end up only saying the absolute key phrases in the sketch but which will undoubtedly contain ‘pedir’ in the past tense.
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Zero worksheets, zero filling in the blanks, zero ‘rote learning’, zero confusion about which parts of verb apply to who through so many repetitions of a tough verb to learn, so many smiles, so much fun and so much acquisition.

During the summer, when reading ‘Creating cultures of thinking’ by Ron Ritchart, I came across ‘Individual Feedback Sessions’. In the book the teacher claimed that these sessions really helped him to foster long-term, meaningful relationships with his students that had a hugely positive impact on their achievement outcomes and also meant he never had Year 13 (equivalent to Grade 12 or the students in their final year of High School) work to mark at the weekends. Obviously, I want my students to achieve their potential and I also know that the research is pretty robust about the importance of building strong bonds and relationships in the classroom… but ‘no marking at the weekend?’, now that really made me sit up and listen.
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In their final two years at our school, our Year 12 and 13’s are preparing for the International Baccalaureate final exams as part of the IB Diploma Programme. For Spanish B (language acquisition) this means they have approximately 12-15 different ‘text types’ that they must be familiar with as any can come up in the exam. In total, between the written assignment, and the written exam paper, their ability to write effectively in Spanish counts for 45-50% of their final mark. Whether I agree with that weighting or not, these are the confines, within which I teach. We would all love to just teach for the love of learning and not have final exams to worry about or prepare students for but that is simply not the reality for the vast majority of High School teachers. We have a responsibility to the students to prepare them for these final examinations whether we like it or not. Nonetheless, I am a strong believer in never allowing the ‘exam’ to dictate our classroom. I trust that if we get them motivated and loving the language, then achieving their own unique potential will come naturally and it will not feel like all we do is practice for examinations… but this is another blog post in itself!

Until this year, my Year 12 or 13’s would usually write a different text types every 2 weeks. I would take them home and read them, and then provide them feedback using Geoff Petty’s ‘Medals and Missions’ format. Before they handed in their work, they were required to fill out a ‘proforma’ which is essentially a self-evaluation that includes my two specific goals from the previous task. I always felt this system worked really well, the students said it was very beneficial and I saw a real difference in their writing over time. The proforma with my two goals gave them concrete objectives to work on, the self-evaluation made them accountable for following guidelines and the ‘medals and missions’ clearly highlighted things they did well and areas for improvement. However, the ‘proforma’ was often forgotten or left until last and only done in a rush on the day it was due. In addition, sometimes they clearly hadn’t read my objectives from the previous piece until it was too late, which was, of course, frustrating for me as the teacher given that I felt like I was spending a lot of time marking their work and writing their objectives, medals and missions.
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In step ‘Individual Feedback Sessions’ (IFS) to the rescue. First and foremost, before you ask, yes they do take time and yes it would be a challenge to do in a very big class but after a month of using them, I’m convinced the time investment is worth it. Students still complete a ‘proforma’ but instead of handing this in with their written work, they bring it with them to their IFS along with a printed copy of their text type. The schedule for each student’s IFS is negotiated with the teacher in advance in order to find a time that works for everyone. No longer can there ever be any confusion about deadline dates and submission times for their work as it is always due during their IFS, which is at the same time on the same day every second week. As Spanish B texts are generally 400-600 words, my sessions with students are typically 10-15 minutes in length and take place during free periods if possible, or alternatively during break or after school. 

​The biggest change for me with this system is that I can already see a strong relationship and bond beginning to grow with individual students as you sit with them one-on-one and chat. In addition, it seems having to sit down beside the teacher and discuss their work increases their accountability too. They always have their text printed and proforma in hand as they know if they show up without it, then I have nothing to mark. I’ve also noted that my two specific objectives are being met more frequently, probably because they know I will be beside them reading their text and will immediately know if they haven’t done them.

There are some further, notable, spin-off advantages to this too. First of all, I never have any Year 12 or 13 work home with me in the evening any longer, it is all done there and then with the student beside me. In addition, the students themselves write their Medals and Missions while I sit next to them after we’ve discussed their work. Finally, and for me this is actually a huge benefit, they are getting 15 minutes of chatting in Spanish with the teacher one-on-one, which is also boosting their oral fluency and confidence. By the time those dreaded oral exams roll round they will be very comfortable and used to talking to me in Spanish.
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If you have very big classes, you could do them with pairs of students but if possible I thoroughly recommend the time investment as in the long-term, it will be this strong relationship with the student that makes the difference.   

A unique part of the conference is how it is divided into ‘strands’ based on the presenters and topics being put forward. As I was presenting my research on the motivational pull of teaching languages through storytelling, I was placed in the ‘role of language’ strand. Other strands included, ‘internationalising education’, ‘learning, teaching and pedagogy’, and ‘researching international education’ among others. This set-up allowed for rich and nuanced discussion with ‘like minded’, yet very different, people coming at the theme from various perspectives. Our ‘role of language’ strand included, for example, presentations from primary, secondary and third level, and encompassed issues ranging from ‘home language’ policy and support in schools, to innovative approaches to teaching, to how language can be used as a scapegoat for ability, to the intriguing Dutch bilingual education system. Truly fascinating, insightful and thought-provoking.

I learnt so much in just three days and I am thoroughly looking forward to sharing some of the ideas with our language department and administration at ISL but two things really stood out for me. Firstly, as language teachers we are lucky that we have one of the only subjects in the school where students can literally do inquiry based learning into anything as long as it is in the target language. We have endless freedom and autonomy and we need to tap into this and allow students to lead their learning through inquiry that compels and interests them, inquiry makes them want to speak about it rather than being forced to. ​

Secondly, borrowing from Terry Haywood whose addressed closed the conference, just as we update the systems on our phone so they can cope and work better, we must update the systems in our schools and language departments to meet the needs of the students, as it must be the students’ learning and interests that are always at the heart of our decisions. We are so lucky and fortunate to have multilingual students in our classes who speak a host of diverse languages at home, but are we really doing enough to nurture their home language and help them to maintain that local connection to their culture and language? The research tells us that a rich and deep understanding of the ‘home language’ aids cognitive and emotional development across the subjects but I fear our 'English-first' driven ‘international school world’ may be sadly transforming multilingual mastery into monolingual mediocrity. ​