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. 

For the past few years I've been researching various PhD and Doctorate programs in Education and finally I took the plunge and applied for the one that really stood out to me last November: The Doctor of Education in the University of Bath. To be honest I really didn't think I had much chance of being offered a place so only told a couple of friends. One being the Head of our Maths Department, Jason Murphy. He seemed keen too and we kind of pushed each other to actually follow through on all the chat and apply. In fact it was Jason who applied first and when I got that text from him that simply said "application sent" I knew I had to do it too. 

The 6 week turn around deadline came and went just before we left for winter break so we both silently thought "oh well, at least we tried". But then, just a few days before the program is supposed to start I received an email from the University of Bath admissions team apologizing for the delay as a key person had been off for a month on leave. The email was an "unconditional offer" and they sincerely hoped I could get everything organized to join next week. I was absolutely ecstatic. This was something like a life long goal I'd set myself about 10 years ago and now it was going to begin. (Yes, I am aware there is the little matter of 4 years of study plus a Doctoral thesis still to come!!). So the last few days have been hectic filling of forms, registrations and emailing colleagues to ensure everything would be in place to cover my absence.

The best part though - Jason was also offered a place so we will start together... in 3 days time!! Luckily we both work in a school that supports us fully where getting the release time and class cover was never an issue. We have a really vibrant professional learning program headed up by Dr. Paul Magnuson and a new Educational Research department this year you can read more about here that is always there to help us and support us with improving our practice. 

This is the common response I heard whenever I mentioned my desire to do a PhD to people who are doing a Doctorate or have done one already. Expect my business partner actually - the newly crowned Dr. Sean Foy of The Learning Curve Institute. He said what he always says "Do it man". Why do a Doctorate? Quite simple because I know I still have so much to learn. I want to be a better teacher. For me, engaging in professional learning and always trying to improve my practice keeps the job as exciting and makes me love it even more. Trying out a new approach, collaborating with colleagues about teaching ideas and discovering what the evidence and research says are all things that keep the job fresh and alive. I love teaching and I love learning and there are always things I know I can do better. I want to be better at my job. I want my students to be genuinely happy and love coming to my classes. I'm still a long way off achieving these elusive goals but hopefully the Doctorate will allow me to research some areas that will bring me closer to achieving them in the future.

Every year the Irish Teaching Council organize 'FEILTE' - the Festival of Education In Learning and Teaching Excellence where a mix of showcases and workshops spanning projects from across the education sector, demonstrate the innovation happening in teaching and learning at the moment.

This year the event took place on October 4th and I was lucky enough to be selected to present on my use of on-going feedback and specifically "How student feedback changed my classroom". The official title was "The Irish Abroad: A look at the action research projects undertaken by Irish teachers in a Swiss International School". My colleague, Dublin born Ronan Lynch, joined me and he started our workshop with an overall presentation on the professional learning programme here in our school. I then went on to explain how I use feedback in my class to increase motivation and student ownership of their learning by modeling various methods of feedback collection I use in my class.

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.