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.
​
‘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. 

'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. 

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. 

Well actually, 'Less' is more in all teaching across all areas of education if this thought-provoking blog about the Finnish education system is anything to go by. That blog post, which inspired me to finally get back on my own blog writing (apologies for the delay!), possesses a bizarre amount of links to my own professional life. Just this week I presented a Skype seminar to a group of Finnish language teachers in the Lappeenranta district on TPRS and active learning strategies. Then, when I opened our weekly school bulletin today, our principal had given us a link to the aforementioned blog on the education system in Finland that spoke exactly to a theme I was thinking of blogging about... and, ​if that wasn't enough, I also have a big poster in my classroom that says "L.E.S.S. is More" - a kind of classroom mantra I took from Grant Boulanger last year that stands for:

• Listen to understand
• Enjoy the present moment
• Show me that you get it
• Show me when you don't

So with all that in mind, I think the Gods (whoever they are!) were telling me to write a blog again.

Why is this year's class not getting it? Why am I going so much slower than last year?
These were two questions swimming around my head for the past few weeks relating to my new Year 8 class (total beginners of Spanish, aged 11-12). Yes, maybe I had been comparing them to last year's class of high flyers... Yes, perhaps they were slightly more 'high maintenance' than last year's class... but really the difference was more down to me, my teaching and my desire, like many other teachers, to always do more! I was trying to go too fast. I was attempting to do more when I should've been doing L.E.S.S!

A key mantra for Comprehensible Input (CI) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) teachers, like myself, is slow down and repeat it again. I realised I had forgotten this. I was putting too many new vocabulary into my stories, I was over complicating them, I wasn't repeating the core structures enough and I was doing the unthinkable for us TPRS teachers... I was concentrating on their minor grammar errors rather than their communication, I was thinking "I need to do some verb tables" rather than I need to 'turn the tables' or remove the tables completely and just get them enjoying a story at their level that they understand, not a bit, but 100%. Really all I needed to do was slow down. Less is more. 

We should be concentrating on ensuring the students are completely confident with those basic structures of the language before we go on and flood them with new vocabulary. If they can't say 'I have, it is, there are, he went' yet with total fluency and automation, why are we hellbent on pushing more and more lists of low frequency words like 'flowerpot' or 'wardrobe' on them? If you find yourself thinking the way I was, remember to just slow down and repeat again. Students at this level need complete mastery of those basic structures in the language to communicate, they need repetitions over and over again so it is automatic, they need a fun, engaging, compelling, simple, story to keep them excited. They can learn the word for lampshade or picture frame or disillusionment from the internet.

Being new to a school generally means that there is going to be some kind of performance appraisal and observations within the first few months and this school, I'm glad to say, is no different. It can, of course, be an intimidating experience both for the teacher being observed and, at times, the observer. What I like about the initial performance appraisal at my current school, ISL, is that it is all led by the teacher themselves. Every member of faculty had to complete quite a long self evaluation appraisal form on various aspects of our professional lives. From this we were asked to pick some focus points that we would like to work on and this would be used in our observations. Next was a meeting with the allocated member of the leadership team to discuss these professional goals, refine them further and let the observer know what you would like them to look for in your professional practice. ​Once specific goals had been set out, the observer did a series of unannounced drop-ins with a variety of my classes to see my teaching in action in short stints with various age groups. Finally there was an announced full class observation. ​

Now, as far as I am aware I am the only "TPRS" teacher in my school and I've actually already led a short language department meeting on its benefits after attending Grant Boulanger's workshop in Leysin American School in 2015. However, I am pretty certain most of my colleagues are indeed "CI" teachers as I know they deliver interactive, energetic lessons with lots of comprehensible input (I've already observed some of them in action!). Nonetheless, I was a little more than apprehensive about my first official observation in a new school taking place in my now deskless classroom with a crazy story about 'Kim-Jung Il' receiving a package from his scary auntie who was looking for someone to open it on planet Mars!!

In the end I thought "what the heck, this TPRS stuff was good enough for them to hire me so it better be good enough now that I am actually here!" - as part of my hiring process I had to teach a lesson and, 'surprise, surprise', I did a TPRS mini story (which they obviously must have liked!)! As the lesson and story developed I could see that the observation was going well as the observer himself was laughing away, repeating the story, copying the gestures and clearly learning a little Spanish. 

​So why am I sharing this? Because TPRS works!! For everyone! All ages, genders, personalities and levels. As you can see from the Assistant Principal's comments below (that he has given me permission to post), it is clear that after coming by my class a few times, Mr. Anderson is also sold on the benefits of TPRS. If you are worried what your school or colleagues might think, or if you are simply toying with trying that first story but keep find reasons not do it, then stop. Just go for it. You will laugh, the students will laugh and they will learn. A lot. They will learn so much in one class and will be dying to come back to your class the next day. Now if that sounds like a good day at work then ask yourself again "what am I waiting for?".

Doing a book or novel in class is something my classes seem to enjoy a lot but it can be a challenge keeping it interesting and figuring out ways to evaluate their learning. I came across Carrie Toth's excellent website somewheretoshare.com last month and she has some wonderful ideas to do with novels.

I decided to use a version of her "Yellow Brick Road" one to recap and revise over the key points in the book once we had finished. The idea is you have 1-2 key 'triggers' of chunks of words from each chapter and these are used to jog the students memory to aid their discussion. The only difference I had was that I actually got the students to make the yellow 'bricks' and they chose the statements themselves.

I gave each pair of students a chapter (or some important chapters had 3 people working on it) and they had to find a key phrase that would jog our memories as to what happened at that point in the book. The only rule was it could be no more than 5 words. This part seemed to work really well, each student could be seen actively re-reading the chapter to try and pick the most appropriate word chunk for their poster.

Once everyone was finished a few students laid out all the yellow 'bricks' for our road out in the corridor. They did this in order as I felt like otherwise the chunks of words may not make sense to them. Students spoke in groups at each step using the prompt on the floor to help them. After about 60-90 seconds I would stop the music and they'd move on to the next card. To change things up sometimes I'd ask them to move 2 or 3 steps forward. I also mixed up the groups and pairs after about 4 steps so they weren't always talking to the same person.

I think the students really liked it and it worked really well as a student centred review activity. They were receiving lots of comprehensible input from their classmates and it certainly helped them to review and revise for the end of book evaluation. High five and thumbs up to the yellow brink road... I'll be using it again!


I'd love to know your comments and how you evaluate and review books/novels you have done in class! Leave me your comments below or follow me @liamprinter on twitter!

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

TPRS stands for 'Teaching Proficiency Through Storytelling' and basically it uses stories with lots of repetitions of key structures to teach fluency rather than detailed vocabulary lists. It is based on the theory of 'comprehensible input' which fundamentally outlines that to learn a language you need 'input' (words written and spoken) on repeated occasion in an understandable format. I was first introduced to it last year in our language department here at Leysin American School. I'm not going to lie, when I first watched the 'over the top' teaching of TPRS Godfather Blaine Ray, I was a bit skeptical but the other teachers in my department loved it so I gave it a shot. 

At first it was nothing short of a disaster. I felt exhausted and flustered throughout the lesson and I think my students simply thought I'd taken the wrong pills that morning. But I persisted with the help of other teachers in the department and we then received two separate training sessions on the approach, one from Blaine Ray himself and another from Beth Skelton. I was hooked. After just 35 minutes of mandarin I was able to read and understand a full page of text and say various key sentences like "I need", "Have you got", "Where is" etc and I could understand more than 95% of someone speaking only in mandarin. After just 35 minutes! It really blew me away. 

If this is the first time you've heard of it you should take a look at Blaine's videos, follow Beth Skelton on twitter and check out Martina Bex's site too. I've never used any other method that worked so well at embedding difficult grammar. I've just spent the last two weeks doing a story with my Spanish 1 class about a guy who was lazy, and used to only sunbathe and watch TV, but then he went to the house of the Aunt of Jennifer Lopez and suddenly became a fitness freak. He went to the Olympics in Puerto Rico and won every gold medal before wanting to participate in a Taco eating contest with... well with Jennifer Lopez's auntie... of course! This was all done in the past tense using a mix of 'preterito indefinido' and 'imperfecto' and the students can all tell me that story now using those structures and speaking about their own life with the same structures.

Here is a picture of a previous story we did 3 weeks ago written as homework by a student. No google translator, no outside help. Simply a method that repeats the key structures with memorable silly details. Trust me, it works. 

Please leave me your comments on get in touch on twitter here or tweet @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. 

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.