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. 
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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

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. 

Learning about Spanish food, tapas, traditions and all of the other amazing culinary aspects of Spanish life is part of most standard Spanish courses around the world, so how can we, as teachers, bring it to life for the students?

​Well to begin with, we need a TPRS story of course! In our 'Foods and Culinary Traditions' unit I first started with a story about a man who wanted to eat 27 different tapas so he could become the 'Best Tapas eater in the World'. We circled the verb 'pedir' in various forms in the past as this can be a tough one, whilst also bringing in lots of new food and drink vocabulary.

​The last day of term was arguably the best though... we had a 'Pinchos Competition'. Pinchos or Pintxos (In Basque) are smaller portions than tapas, and traditionally can be eaten in 2-3 mouthfuls. After a presentation and discussion on the the pinchos tradition, students had to invent their own pinchos and enter them in our 'Españoland Annual Pinchos Extravaganza'! I supplied the bread and the sticks and the students had to bring 3-4 ingredients to make the pinchos. They had 20 minutes to complete them and they also had to write a little sign explaining the ingredients and why they chose them. They were encouraged to link it to their own culture somehow. 

Students sit all day and sitting for hours on end is exhausting. We as teachers are up and walking around continuously so we (at least most of the time) manage to stay awake while we teach. Yet we wonder why our students lose interest, stop concentrating, glaze over and zone out when we are half way through a riveting explanation of demonstrative pronouns. It's because they are sedentary, passive agents in the learning process when we keep them in their seats in a warm room listening to us ramble on. 

After studying the benefits of 'Active and Cooperative Learning' while completing my Teaching Qualifications, I've always tried to have an active classroom. To me at least, the benefits are clear - engagement is improved, students receive context with new language structures, they aren't falling asleep or glazing over with the "I hear your words but am not listening in the slightest" look and above all, in most cases, the students are smiling, laughing and having fun. In my view, if students are laughing and having fun then at least they will find it really challenging to hate your subject and your class. Even if they have zero interest in quadratic equations or ox-bow lakes, if they know they'll be moving around, laughing and having fun in your class then at least they will not resent the fact that they have to be there. Once this has been achieved you may even get them to like the subject a little and who knows they might even learn something once you've got that far!

My views on 'student movement is the key' were copper-fastened when I read Grant Wiggin's excellent blog post here. The veteran teacher shadowed students all week and his number 1 key takeaway was that "sitting is exhausting" and students need to get up and move in every class. Furthermore, last week we were lucky enough to have the wonderful Lisa Lee visit our school and give us her TEDx Talk on "Getting at the heart of teaching" where she also waxed lyrical about the vital importance of student movement in the classroom.

The next time you see that I'm glazing over look start to appear on your students faces just think of any way you can get them to 'GUAM' (Get Up And Move). It might be the simplest thing like "Ok guys stand up and go and sit with someone new. Now compare your work with what they have". A simple 5 second instruction that will take about 30 seconds of your class teaching time but could save you hours of repeating yourself later and wondering why they didn't get it when you explained it 'so perfectly' the first time!

Let me know your thoughts on Twitter @liamprinter

Over the last month or so our language department meetings have focused on trying to agree some common ground on what the ideal language classroom looks and sounds like. What is 'good' or 'effective' language teaching and learning? How do we achieve it? Whittling all those 'good things' we try to do down to a list of just 3 or 4 is actually a much tougher task than it seems.  An easy way to find out is of course to just ask the students! So here are my two key points from my 8 years of teaching, lots of conversations with other language teachers, a look at the relevant research and literature in the area and, of course, asking the students what they think. I'd love to know what you guys think so please leave your comments below:

1. 'Use' of the Target language is key:
Both by the students and the teacher. The teacher should speak almost entirely in the target language but at a level understandable to the students so they get that all important 'comprehensible input'. Students need to wrap their mouth around the new words and sounds they are hearing so should speak the language with their peers and teacher in every class. Pair work and group work is a great help here as are things like 'exit tickets'. As I often say to my students: Do you play an instrument? Do you play a sport? Will you improve your guitar or football playing by just watching someone else do it and studying how their feet or hands move? Maybe a little, yes. But how do you really improve? You need to actually play the guitar or kick the ball. It is the same with learning  language.

2. The classroom should be Active, Supportive and Cooperative:

• Active: Varied tasks that get students up and moving at least once during class to keep them awake and concentrated 
  
• Supportive: Everyone should feel comfortable making mistakes and asking questions in the target language 
• Cooperative: Students should frequently work together on varied tasks using the target language to communicate.

If, like me, you are a language teacher trying to find this elusive ‘ideal language-learning environment’ maybe all we need to do is follow the advice we routinely give our students: “If you are unsure, just ‘ASC’”.

Below is a paper I wrote entitled "Towards a model for the ideal language learning environment for secondary school adolescent pupils" for anyone who like to read a bit more on this topic. Please do leave your comments below or tweet me @liamprinter. 

Like many other Irish expats, I've always thought about going back to 'scoil' and doing an Irish (or 'Gaelic' Irish to those of you not from Ireland!) refresher course at some stage... but low and behold our prayers have been answered as Duolingo has released a new course in Irish now!

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Duolingo is an excellent language learning app in the style of a game. It's free and really easy to use. I have my classes use it all the time for 5 minutes at the beginning or end of class and award extra points to those who are top of the leaderboard at the end of the week. As language teachers we are always trying to find ways to get our students actively involved in the language outside the class. With Duolingo it seems I have really managed to achieve this as I can see that almost all my students are using the app on their own outside class in their free time.

Of course, in my opinion at least, it is no substitute for the real live classroom or for immersing yourself in the language by going to where it is spoken. However it is a really excellent complimentary tool if you are currently studying a language or as a way of refreshing language skills you learnt a few years ago, as I've been doing for German and now, for Irish!

My students have become really interested in it and they compete against each other to see who can get to the highest level. It has been a really great way for them to learn new vocabulary and to practice grammar we are doing in class. The great this is that you can easily login with facebook and you can also follow your mates and see their progress. 

If any of you have an account please feel free to look me up and follow me:
https://www.duolingo.com/liamprinter

And now it is 't-am' for some Duolingo 'as Gaeilge'! 

So I've just had my first day of classes today... and yes today is Saturday. Working at an International Boarding School certainly has its advantages but there are also some downsides every now and again. Having said that, it was just a short half day so the students can meet their teachers and find their way around the building so we are 100% ready for full lift off on Monday.

As I embark on a new year I've decided to try and log some teaching and research goals for the year:

1. Research how effective TPRS (Teaching proficiency through storytelling) is with higher level classes
2. Use more technology inside the classroom but based on the students' own recommendations
3. Observe more teachers classes in order to share (and steal!) new ideas once per week
4. Maintain a language learning diary with all students for the entire year
5. Use the 'language ambassador' idea every two weeks in every class

I'm confident all of these goals are very achievable and I'm hoping just writing them here will encourage me to keep on top of them even more. If there are any other language teachers out there with similar plans for the year I'd love to hear from you and we can maybe collaborate and share our progress.