143 ¦ Motivation, assessment and storytelling with Will Marks of The Language Lab Podcast

[Music] I'm Liam Printer and this is the Motivated Classroom. Hello and welcome to the Motivated Classroom podcast. A very special episode for you today. This was a podcast collaboration that I did with Will Marx from the Language Lab podcast. He invited me onto his fantastic podcast and show to talk all about Motivation, self-determination theory, comprehensive input, storytelling, co-creation, research, and we even got into chatting about assessment. So, enjoy this conversation with Will Marx from the Language Lab podcast. I'll pass over to him to do the introduction and I'm delighted that he shares the Irish for today, which is Connoisse Tato, meaning how are you. So it's so nice that he starts with that. Enjoy the conversation and I hope you get something out of this that you can apply in your own classroom and hopefully gets you thinking about Motivation, Acquisition, Assessing, Testing, All of these things that are part of our daily lives as language teachers. Enjoy and thank you very much to Will Marx for having me on his show. Hello and welcome to the Language Lab podcast. I'm your host Will Marx and today's episode is a thoughtful and practical conversation with Dr. Liam Printer, French and Spanish teacher, Instructional Coach, International School Practitioner, and the host of the Motivated Classroom podcast. In this episode we explore what Motivation really looks like in the language classroom and why storytelling narrative and co-creation play such a powerful role in helping students engage, understand and develop confidence over time. Drawing on his doctoral research and years of classroom experience, Liam unpacks autonomy, competence and relatedness, and what those ideas actually look like once the door closes and the lesson begins. We also talk low-prep routines, assessment, international context, and why what happens in the classroom matters far more than any framework on paper. So, grab yourself a coffee and let's jump straight in. Okay, so Liam, it's lovely to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me. I should also say Conner's Adortu, which I've been learning from your podcast. I love listening to that. That's a good start. Well done. My accent is probably terrible, but I've been trying. So you've had such an interesting career. You're a French and Spanish teacher, a researcher, an instructional coach. You've taught across international schools. You've completed a doctorate on motivation and storytelling and of course you're the host of the Motivated Classroom, which has become pretty much essential listening for anyone interested in how languages are actually taught or learned. But for anyone who doesn't know you, do you want to maybe quickly introduce yourself? Yeah, thanks a lot. I think you've covered most bases there, but yeah, I'm teaching French and Spanish. Well, I'm a French and Spanish teacher, but I teach Spanish and English at the International School of Lozano in Switzerland. And I've been here for about 10 or 11 years now. And you're right. Yeah, I started doing instructional coaching last year, working one-on-one with other teachers to improve their practice. And that's been amazing. I've really enjoyed that. I started my career in Ireland, working in a state school in Ireland, a few of them, and moved over here kind of just after the financial crisis because the Irish government decided it was a great idea to cut teacher salaries by 30%. So a lot of us at that time decided, well, I'm going to look elsewhere. So that's what I did. And I ended up here. I thought I'd be here a couple of years and here I am 11 years later. And as you mentioned, I really enjoy the research side of things. I did my doctorate in the University of Bath with the focus on the motivational impact of teaching language through stories and in particular co-created stories and narratives. And that's kind of what's really driven me to start the podcast, to share that research and to try and get it out there to more people. And I've been just completely blown away with how the podcast has exploded and people all over the world listening and getting a chance to speak at conferences all over the world now because of it is quite crazy and weird but amazing as well. So yeah, it's been quite funny how it's all worked out. But I'm delighted with how it's reached so many people and thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've been following you on LinkedIn and I've been listening to your podcast for a little while and I have to say if anyone who hasn't listened to Liam's podcast, it's just really nice to listen to. It's rare to get something that's teaching you something and actually you just want to listen to because it's just comfortable. It's really lovely to listen to. So just quickly, what first push, I mean, you kind of have covered it there a little bit but what first push you towards researching storytelling is more than just fun as more of an activity into more of a learning tool. What kind of was behind that? Yeah, so the first school I worked at here in Switzerland was Lesan American School up in the mountains. A really small tiny little school was incredible. They have like a ski and winter program. So it was amazing. That was kind of a big reason that drew me there. But there was a group of teachers in the language department. A lot of them come in from the US and they were using this approach called TPRS, which is teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling and they were really into it and I'd never heard about it, didn't hear a thing about it during my teacher training and I went and watched some of them use it and I was quite blown away with just the ability of the students, how much engagement there was, how much fun they were having. And so we were lucky enough that we got trained in that approach by a variety of different trainers actually who came to our school over the period of two or three years and I got trained in using these what approaches are now called as well as comprehensible input approaches using lots of the target language but really lots of interesting input and making the class about the students and creating stories together. And as I was going through this, I was just kind of I knew it was working and I knew that his were really into it and they were loving it but I wasn't really sure why or what was the why are they enjoying this so much and why is this tapping into their psyche and into their motivations and their engagement. What is it about this that's working so well? And so I started reading about it more and more and found that there was other researchers mainly doing masters and kind of doctorates not so much published research at the time which was about this storytelling approach and I started my doctorate in 2015 in Bath and I'd been teaching this way for about a year and after a couple of modules in Bath then I started my thesis and I had doctor Sam Carr as my supervisor and he basically said to me when I started talking to him about these stories he was like wow that sounds like it would work really well to look at from the lens of self-determination theory looking at autonomy competence and relatedness as the three drivers of motivation and suddenly when he said that and I started reading about self-determination theory I was like oh my gosh this is why it works so well it's driving these psychological needs for motivation so that's essentially what opened that door to me deciding to actually research this properly one was there wasn't that much published research out there there was some but there wasn't much and secondly was because I was just really interested to find out what is the kind of science and the research gonna tell me about why this is working so well so that's probably what brought me to it since I've been listening to a podcast I've kind of started not moving over 100% because it's something I'm kind of still playing with and I'm trying to look at how I would do that in my classroom and I want to get it right but bringing the kids more into where the lessons going and allowing them to have a little bit more of a directive force and it's amazing because for me I'm sure this is the same thing for you but it's had a real effect on behavior management as well because I've got some quite difficult classes and you giving them just a little bit of a all right so where does this go next just brings them in they just engage it's amazing yeah I completely agree with you that's that autonomy piece and actually when we really look at the strategies and the activities and the techniques that we use in a language class or in any class much of it is void of autonomy much of it is just we expect the students to just show up super motivated and we wonder why they act out when we're doing something with them that's not inherently interesting but like that's a lovely thing to hope for it's just not living in reality like 14 and 15-year-olds are not gonna just show up ultra motivated to a language lesson a lot of them will be doing it because their mom and dad told them to or they feel like they have to if they do even like the language they just want to probably be able to communicate and speak so us kind of think in and getting upset when they're not super motivated is fine and if that's the way you want to go through your career okay that's totally fine or you could try and change the aspects of your lesson increase the autonomy just a little bit and you will start to see those results when we share a little bit of that paradigmic with them when we co-create things when we invite their curiosity when we build a narrative together in the target language suddenly they really want to pay attention and there's a great phrase by Grant Boulanger who I had in the podcast he's one of the first people whoever trained me in this way of teaching with lots of input and lots of story and he has his great line which is like the less you force them to speak the more they want to speak and like I really like that because when you give them interesting stories and inputs and make it kind of about them they want to engage rather than you going okay read line two read line six do this for me now that's them been forced to do something they don't want to do so it just flips it and it makes it so much more interesting 100% and like I said I've been testing out and it's amazing how day on day as well if they've had a little bit of that in the first lesson that intrinsic motivation comes back every single lesson and it's an activity where they just got to change a few details to make it about them but the next lesson they wanted to do more of that and they wanted to do more of that and it just brings it back we're question about your thesis was there anything in your research about motivation and about the storytelling that just genuinely made you go what like surprised you I guess yeah I think there was like there's a couple of things I could say about that the first one is that I was surprised or like pleasantly surprised or interested to see how interconnected the three needs for motivation are that when you raise one the other two kind of start to come up quite quickly on their own so often researchers talk about autonomy being that catalyst for the other needs but Dr Richard Ryan and Quint Olga Baldwin have just released a study quite recently where they argue for competence being the one that's more of the catalyst but actually I feel like there's just such an interconnection between them like just for an example like with those core created stories you're creating a story and a narrative so you ask the students okay we've got a character okay what's his name what do we call him and let's say they say oh let's call him John Joel okay yeah it's John Joel that's our person his name is John Joel and then you ask them so this is name Michael or John Joel his name is John Joel right and whereabouts is he going and then they give you the name of the place so he's going to have a coffee in Starbucks now if you just think about that basic interaction the autonomy is going up because they feel like they're driving the learning and giving you something but their competence is also raised because they're now understanding what's going on and they feel like they're proud of it and they're giving answers that you're accepting so they feel like oh wow I'm doing something right and if you're accepting their answer and you're asking them about co-creating well then that raises their sense of belonging and connection so automatically you've raised all the of the psychological needs. So that was, I think, one really interesting finding just at the interconnectedness of the needs. And if you concentrate on one of them, you're actually probably going to raise the other needs as well. So that was one. And I guess the other finding that I thought was really interesting that was quite surprising was when I started looking into this study and we began, and I was working with one other teacher and her class over a whole year. It was a longitudinal study. We did lots of different data points, did motivational questionnaires, analyzed them, then did follow-up interviews, reflection journals, laws of different things going on, obviously classroom observations and analysis of the film. But what was really interesting was it just so happened with our timetables that we kind of had to choose this class. It was a year 12 IB diploma French class, but the teacher at the time was really reluctant to use that class. She was like, if there's any other class we could use it with, that would be great because this is the most demotivated, disengaged, like almost antagonistic class I've ever had, like they really hate French. And like I can't seem to get true to them no matter what I do. I've got 10 different levels in there. I've got kids who've been studying French for five years, kids are in their first five weeks. I've got all sorts of learning difficulties. I've got everything going on, but we kind of had to use that class. We just didn't have an option. And of course, what we saw was that they became actually really very motivated and into it once we started to introduce this idea of co-creation and building narratives together. And both that teacher and I and the students, I think in the data you can see just how kind of surprised we are at the trajectory of how much you changed. Like I thought we might see that they get a little bit of autonomy and motivation, but yeah, it just kind of goes back to what it was, but really it dramatically changed the entire class. So that was really quite interesting, you know, were they an options class? Yeah, yeah, it was an options class. That's amazing, isn't it? I've got a similar thing. A lovely, they're really lovely year 11 class, but their motivation is really low and they chose it and I had this conversation with them the other day where one of them said like, it's not your fault. Love the lessons in some ways, but I just, I just don't really care about the subject. And so I've been trying to inject a little bit more of this and they've got that kind of linguistic basis to be able to, but as a question, how do you start this? Because the thing that I found obviously is especially year sevens, they've just come into it. Maybe they've learned Korean, maybe they've learned Spanish, maybe they've learned whatever other subject that they may have learned, but I'm teaching them French. How do we bring that from day one? Because obviously there's quite a lot of, even that example you gave, where it's like, okay, where is he going? That's quite complex language by the end of it. Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things you're talking about there. I think the first is like your student who's talking about, it's not your fault, I enjoy your lessons, but you know, I'm just not into French freedom, not into the subject. The first thing to say is there's not much you can do about that. Like the societal view of French or whatever language you're doing is what it is. And you know, you can only do so much. However, the research around motivation and enjoyment shows that what happens inside the language classroom walls has the biggest impact on their view of the language. So they may not like French as a subject because of previous experiences, because of the red pain, because of how many things they got wrong, because of no matter how hard they tried, they still got the adjective agreements wrong. You know, like that might be the reason that they're going, oh, it could be a societal view, but actually the research around what happens inside the classroom wall or what they call the learning experience has the biggest impact. Now, I've had this from the opposite way, where I've had kids who are in my class and you're eight, you're nine, you're 10 and they love it, they're really into it, they're really good, and then they drop it. And it's like hard breaking, you know, I'm just like, what, like you love this subject, you're really into it, you see the value, but you drop it and they go, well, I just, I do like it, Mr. Printer, it's really fun, but I want to be a doctor and like it's in the same options block as physics. So I kind of have to choose physics and don't get me wrong, I love it, and I'll take it up again in the future. Now for me, that's fine. Like you're doing something you love, but the thing that I could never allow, and it just didn't sit easy with me was students dropping the language, because they disliked it, because they hated it, because they were like, this is too hard. And to me, a lot of that falls on our shoulders, yes, we can argue till the cows come home about the impact of the exam and the curriculum, of course we can, and that is there, it's the elephant at the room, we can't get away from it. However, there are many ways to get to success in the exam without short learning and laws of gap fill activities that the vast majority of kids do not find motivation from like some do people like you and I did, we liked it, because we were into languages, but most kids don't like they just want to communicate, they want to hear fun stories, they want to just learn that way. So starting in your seven and how do I maintain that motivation is best I can. Well, the first thing is is that intrinsic motivation takes time. It's not going to happen overnight, just because you do one or two lessons of really cool fun, and co-creation, that might work for a little bit, but it has to be sustained, you have to show over time that you continuously value their autonomy, their competence, their relatedness, and gradually over time, you will see that motivation. The other thing that is a real thing that we can't get away from is when kids are age 13, 14, 15, they go through this thing called puberty and puberty drives them all over the place. So no matter how hard we try, there's going to be moments in your nine and your 10 when they just feel like they're not into it, and that is really not on you that is just to do with their age and their development. So we try our best to maintain that motivation as best we can. We do our best within the classroom walls to get away from this focus on accuracy and precision and to focus more on communication and motivation. And that's when you'll start to see things change. Now it depends on your curriculum, your department and everything. But if I walk into a school and I work under the variety of schools around the world at the moment and they might show me their assessments and the way they do things. And one of the first questions I'll ask is like, well, why are they doing so many tests? So, oh, we need to know where they are. Like, we need to know what level they're at. Like, it also motivates them. So, okay, that's fine. Are they all really highly motivated then? Are they all like loving the lessons? No. Okay, so let's rewind. Can we get rid of any of these tests? Can any of these go? Okay, yeah, I suppose we could get rid of this one. We don't really need it. We don't really need that one. Like tests are fine. And they'll motivate people like me and you who are already highly motivated to learn the language. But for the everyday student who's not that into it, they do the opposite. They're going to be motivated eventually. So, I try my best to get rid of any summative assessment I can. And I put the big focus on using that time that used to be taught for exams and tests. Now is used for stories and story listening and just raising their competence and bit by bit, you're going to reach way more kids that way. But it is, of course, based on you, your context, your school, your department, and you as one teacher can try your best. But if your department says you got to test them every Friday, that's very hard to raise motivation if they've got to test every Friday. Yeah, no, 100%. I find it very funny as well. I mean, not funny kind of heartbreaking. But at the moment, there's this really big push on AFL, which is really important. And I love AFL. And I love a mini whiteboard. And I love all of the quick checks. So I find it very funny that we're doing that. And then, yeah, we still have these really key data points. And it's like, no, but you got to tell me where they're up to you at this specific time. And that requires a summative assessment where they're assessments in their books. And I'm like, but I've been assessing them. I know the kids have got them in class. Like, do you think I'm going to see you're coming at it from a slightly different perspective because we're not teaching internationally. And there are different rules and different structures, which is really cool. Do you think there needs to be a significant policy shift on that? I do. Yes, I really do. I think that this idea that we can just keep doing what we're doing and hope that suddenly, everything's going to change is complete fallacy. Like, just look back at the last 30 or 40 years of language teaching in Ireland and the UK. Has it resulted in highly motivated, engaged, fluent speakers? Absolutely not. The total opposite, 99% of people I meet and you as well, I'm sure, who say that they did French in school go, Oh, I hated it. I was terrible at it. Like, why is that the case? Why is it that we have a subject where 99% of people say I was terrible at it. I couldn't do it. I hated it. There's something there that we should all be looking at going. This completely needs to change. What happened is that we have schools and we have systems and we have exams and we have assessments and we have accountability. I get all of it. It's fine. I understand. But what we've tried to do is force language acquisition into those little boxes. Let's separate up language acquisition as if it was history or geography or science into lovely little units and based on factual recall. That's fine if you want to try and do that. But it's just not what the science of second language acquisition says. It's just not how language is acquired. So we can pretend this and we can continue to get the same results where we get those really high level learners, people like me and you who are really into the languages and we love doing really well on the test and everyone else doing badly or dropping us. And we just continue to push that or we can say, do you know what? Every single human being on the planet is capable of acquiring language. We've all done it. So why don't we start to think about the way we acquired our first language and bring some of those principles into the second language classroom. I'm not saying we never look at accuracy or precision or grammar. That can all come. But after a few years of input and lots of story and narrative. So if it were me, if I was the Minister of Education or in charge of languages in the UK or Ireland, I would say something like in the first two years of secondary school, there are no summative assessments or if there are, there's only one or two and they're based on a rubric for communication, proficiency and understanding. That's it. So how fluent are they? How proficient are they? And can they understand stuff? That's it. And then after the third year, we can start to enter into, let's now start to look at some of the mechanics of the language, the grammar and the accuracy because what we do is the total opposite way around. We start with grammar and accuracy and just hope fluency and proficiency will arrive somehow magically. And it's just not the way language is acquired. That's the really hard thing to look at, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. And talking about 30 years ago, there's some very interesting systems that came in approximately 30 years ago that may or may not have helped us. I mean, looking slightly less time, obviously, language is not being compulsory. But I don't mind. I think it's a shame. I think personally, and this is just my view, I think if you're going to make something compulsory, you need to make everything compulsory. If you're going to make something not compulsory, you need to make everything not compulsory. You can't have a system where maths and science in English, well, they're compulsory because they're really important because that implies that everything else is not important. And you know, try getting them to explain that without language, which by the way is my favourite way of when a kid says anything, why do we have to learn French in game? Ask me that question without using language. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you know, we had the implementation of offset as well. All of these things just have they helped. And I would tend to agree with you that perhaps we need to have a long, hard look at how we're teaching languages and what our policies are. So having listened to your podcast, you're a big advocate for low-prep, quick routines that make a big difference. Could you unpack that for us? What is low-prep in your mind? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, low prep is something that I don't need to photocop your print in advance. It's something that I don't need to cut up and laminate. It's something that I don't need to have all these little, you know, things I've pre-prepared and I can essentially walk in. I've not slept all night. My baby's been keeping me up the whole night and I can just do this straight away with almost nothing in the room. So that, for me, is really, really low prep. And for me, that typically is a whiteboard and marker. As long as I've got that, then I can teach the lesson. And that is where we should be able to go with, but low prep things are obviously great because it gives you time to focus on other things, right? So, yes, I am a huge advocate of coral response, of classroom routines, of classroom jobs. All of these things that build community, they build a sense of belonging, they build a sense of connectedness, they build a sense of autonomy, a sense of competence in the classroom. And for me, my classroom runs really well because of all of these little routines. And yes, of course, as the kids get older and progress through the school, they know the routines a lot more and I would do less of them. But when I do coral responses with my Year 8, so in my school, they start Spanish and German, the additional languages in Year 8. And they start French like all the time because I'm in a French speaking part of Switzerland, so they do French right from the beginning. So when they start with me, I'm teaching in Spanish to a group of 12-year-olds, 11-year-olds. And pretty much I'm using the target language 95-98% of the time, but I'm making sure that it's really understandable through these routines. So lots of TPR, like total physical response, lots of acting things out and mining things and lots of little classroom jobs. And for me, these keep things going really, really well. I'm a big advocate of brain breaks and body breaks. And I loved the way Helen Collinette has kind of separated those. Like, as lots of people were talking about brain breaks where, you know, you've got an 80-minute, 90-minute class, and you're asking your students to do something where they don't have to cognitively engage for a few minutes, and that helps them, it's almost like taking a break. That's fine, but I always looked at it as like, is there a way I can do those breaks? But still incorporate some recycling of target language, so my brain breaks are all in the target language. It might be really simple stuff, like kind of like Simon Says, or it could be like, write down this word as quickly as you can, or can you think of these three numbers? Like, something that's not the lesson, and it's information they already know, so their brain is having quite a nice break, but it's still recycling the target language all the time. And then we might do a body break, which is different, which is they've been sat down for 40 minutes, they somehow need to get up and move. And so it might be like, again, everyone stand up and, you know, do these actions, or now do these actions angrily, now do them ecstatically, now do them romantically, you know? My ear aids, like, that kind of stuff, they find hilarious. And it builds community because they're all doing it together. They're not on the spot, they're all doing it, and like, that social norm is starting to raise. And just their level of understanding goes so high up, because I'm just constantly using the target language with them. So for me, low-prep activities use a whiteboard and a marker, like a mini whiteboard and a marker, and just me are really, really important, because I get the reality of being a teacher, I've been there, I've had nights when I didn't sleep the whole night, my two daughters were having me up the whole night, and I've got to go in and teach six lessons in a row, and I've nothing prepped. So like, I need to have some of these activities in my quiver that I can take out and use at that time. Absolutely, and actually, I'll be honest, I'm about, I think, 14 episodes in. So, I get a long way to go. Oh, oh, so many of these brilliant, though, because I looked at it, I was like, "Yes." Because what happens is, I go through phases of listening to my audio books, on the table, and then I get the free credits, but I run out of free credits, and then I need to buy another six books, so I need to leave it for a few months to accrue them, and I listen to podcasts, and I'm like, "Yes, I've got about 130 episodes left." I keep listening to this, and then I'll be able to buy my books. But yeah, so I've been listening to it, and he mentioned a few different activities to kind of do nice quick lesson beginners, lessons artists. One of them that I've been using a lot, because it's a fantastic retrieval task, and you can play with the length, or how many words, but it's the backwards bingo. Yeah. They love it. Realistically, if I said to a class, just look back to your books, find me a few pieces of vocab that you've learned, that are different, or they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, rubbish." If I say, "All right, okay, so you're going to stand up, and if I can find your word, you have to sit down, you don't win." They go, "Oh, okay, right, I'm going to find words." And they're like, "Yeah." Because they've taken it from titles, or they've like, I mean, I did have one student who was hilariously decided to put her name on every single square, but other than that, well, like, that one I use bingo is such a lovely, quick, easy starter, and because if you think about what's happening, right, you know, that older dodge of you learn what you attend to, and you learn what you think about, so learning happens when we're thinking about something. And if you say to a group of kids, you say, "Right, many whiteboards out, right down." Three words, only three, from all of our lessons so far this year. Like, it's got to be a vocab word, it can't be a word like, it, or has, it's got to be a piece of vocabulary, or from the previous story, or from the previous book, or whatever. And they go, and they do it the first time. And of course, they'll all write down the first three most obvious ones, and you'll just get them all out immediately. And then you just say, "Okay, now let's try it again." But of course, you've got to try and think of some difficult words if you want to beat me. Now, watch their faces. You literally see them recycling the vocabulary behind their eyes, and it's amazing, because that's them thinking and processing the language, which is what happens to babies when they're learning and inquiring their first language, that silent period of a couple of years, they're processing and thinking and going over and recycling everything they've heard until they're ready to say it. And that moment in a second language classroom is we can force them to engage with that thinking and the processing. And that's just increasing the vocabulary all the time. And it's fantastic as well. So I've been doing it with chunks of language. And I say, like, if I say a single word that's in that chunk. Ah, yeah, nice. That's out. So, like, ilia, if you say il, then obviously they have to go. - Here we go. - Jabit. And you say, "Juh." And you just six of them go, "Oh, come here." - Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. - But it's great, because now I'm getting kids thinking, "Oh, well, I use the third person." - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm like, "Yes, because now they're manipulating who's speaking." And even on a tiny little thing like that, it's so valuable. Okay, so let's talk about international wheel briefly. Obviously, because that's an area that I'm very interested in. What stood out for you most when you were kind of comparing UK start classrooms with international school settings? What's the biggest kind of differenties, similarities? What stands out? - Yeah, it's a good point to clarify. I've never worked or taught in the UK, but I did work in teaching Ireland beforehand. So I guess I taught for three or four years in Ireland. And when I came to the international school sector, I suppose the first thing to know what is kids are, kids are kids like everywhere. And you get the same issues. Like, you're going to get the kids who are late for class, the kids who do their homework, the kids who don't, the kids who are really into it, the kids who are love and learn, and the kids who don't like it. Like, that exists everywhere. So that was the first thing. I think, yes, I would probably say, there was a slightly more positive natural disposition towards the benefit of additional languages, because many of them already speak one or two or three languages. And they've traveled around the world a lot. So we might not get that as much in the anglophone context. It might be a bit more difficult to convince them as to why is it beneficial to normal multiple languages? Whereas I think quite a few kids in the international school sector kind of got that it's quite useful to have languages. Like, it's good for mobility, it's good for progress, it's good for your brain. I think that that part was quite good. However, on the flip side, working in state schools in Ireland, you know, a lot of the kids are doing their homework and getting on with things because Mum and Dad tell them to, whereas when I moved to the first school I worked in is quite an exclusive boarding school, actually. And there's very little parental support. There's quite a lot of neglect, probably. And a lot of kids are in these schools and maybe don't get much contact with their parents at all. So people in my head will go, "Ash, you have it easier working in a really nice, posh school over there." Yes, to a certain extent. But there's no support from home. So if I see something isn't happening, it's very difficult to get any support because they're living somewhere different. And because they're quite well off, they feel like they don't need to do any work, some of them. So you have the same issues everywhere, is what I'm trying to get at, just for different reasons. You know, those kids who aren't doing their work in an international school might be because they think, "Well, I don't need to work, you know, I'm from a wealthy family." Whereas at home it might be, "I don't need to do any work because I'm not really into it." So it was just different things, but I really enjoy the international sector because I really like the fact that there are kids from so many different backgrounds and different places and different levels of privilege that can really share things and that I have the ability to try and, you know, impact the mindset, the values, the morals, the ethics of some of these kids who will go off and working quite high positions because of their families. And then, of course, you get the other side of the coin, as well, like people often say, "Oh, but you've got much smaller classes there." And again, that depends. Like, I love 24/25 kids in my class here. And in Ireland, that was about the size I had. Maybe I had some that were bigger, 28/29/30 when I had younger kids. But in my older classes in A levels in the UK, for example, the classes are quite small and they'd be quite small here, as well. So there's a lot of similarities. But I think the biggest difference was that probably a lot of international kids already see the value of languages. But they probably, to an even greater extent, think that maths and science is even more important, which I know we get at home. But I think an international kid because a lot of them come from families maybe where their parents work in business and finance and that type of thing. They may think like, "Oh, language, yeah, I get the importance for traveling, but the real stuff is maths and science." So I still have to try and convince them of that benefit of language here, as well. It's very interesting, as well, that you've seen that flip side of that old opinion. People say, "If your parents pay for your school, they must care." And actually, you know, I went to a very expensive private school and I'm not saying my parents don't care, so they're lovely people and they would be very upset if I implied that. But I did know people at the school who kind of went, "Right, well, you're the school's problem now." I'm paying. Yeah, exactly. Have a place to stay and I don't have to hurt. And that's kind of heartbreaking just as much as it is in a school home and you say, "Child A has been disrupting my lesson and stopping things and making my life a nightmare." And they go, "Oh, so nothing too serious, then I can buy." And you're like, "Oh, great." So we've got real parental engagement there. But it is interesting to see that kind of other side of it. So if you had like a magic wand that you could just wave and one thing from language education would just go, it'd be gone, it'd be done, we could get rid of it. Straight out, what would it be? Testing. Testing. Like, without a doubt, just stop testing kids. It's not the way that we acquire language, nor acquire their first language by being tested constantly. And by somebody telling them all the time that what they were saying was wrong and to constantly look for perfect precision, that would be the immediately get rid of testing. But get rid of this testing for precision and grammatical accuracy is probably more appropriate. Like, you can still evaluate where people are and now we're going to go to the next one. assess their level and help them to move forward. But this idea of testing and saying you're in A, you're a B, you're a C. And therefore, like this is what you're getting, it is just not motivating for the vast majority of kids, or at least it's not motivating in the long run. It might have a very short term impact, but it's not going to be motivating in the long run, and in fact, it'll be demodivating. And also, you're just not listening to the huge amounts of research and science around how we actually acquire language, like trying to say, we're going to learn all the stuff about the house and the kitchen and all the items in the kitchen, and then we're going to move on and start talking about sports, and then we'll learn all the sports, and then we'll move on and we'll start talking about foods. Imagine doing that with first languages, like could you ever imagine with children, they try and talk to you about something else, go no, no, no, we're just talking about the kitchen, we're just talking about no, no, no, no, no, no, go back in there, we're going to learn fork, spoon, knife over and over again until you know them off by heart, and then we'll move on to talk about something else. The way language is acquired is through this wide net, the wide net hypothesis, the doctor of an eco-mason talks about where you throw out all of this interesting input, and people acquire what they acquire, and they get what they get. Now, of course, the key structures, like you mentioned Ilia, Say, Il A, all of these, like Il A, all of these type of things that are key to communication, will they get recycled over and over again as long as you tell enough stories, and as long as you have enough narrative going on. So this idea of like breaking language up into neat little boxes of vocabulary, and then thinking that it's all going to magically turn into fluent speak, is just, it's just not the way it works and it's so frustrating to see that this is still the way we think that we should be teaching and assessing language. So yeah, I would get rid of testing for grammatical accuracy and precision, particularly in those first two years of acquisition, just get rid of them completely. Like in the school I'm in, very bravely, the management decided to listen to the science, to listen to teachers like me and other teachers who read a lot of the research, and for our year sevens they just completely got rid of grades, because they were like it's just having a detrimental impact and the only thing we're allowed to do is give them feedback. Like we're not allowed to give them a number, we can still have the number written down in our computer, but we're not allowed to tell them what it is, we just tell them like their feedback, and it has had a huge impact, because no longer they just ultra focused on the number, they're focused on the progress and where they're going and what's happening. It took a year or two for everyone to get round to it, particularly the parents, but actually now everyone sees the benefits and like yeah they're just much more into school and they're not so worried and stressed about the number, and that was a really brave thing, but the school listened to the science, they listened to the research and they got rid of all the numbers. I absolutely love that, we did a similar thing in my department, we had to break things into plus standard and minus, you know, like we had red amber green, I hate red amber green, so all of them has changed the colors, right, so they're completely arbitrary, so the kids have no idea, they're like I'm a blue, what does blue mean, but I mean we have to give them that and they have to know that, but they don't really know what that means, which is kind of good, because I want to keep them guessing, I don't want them to think I'm rubbish at this, it doesn't help. Okay, then if you could see one more thing in language education in the next five years, what would you be really excited to see, what's that one thing that you go, if I can see that, then I'm happy. Well, what is genuinely really exciting already is just in the last five years, how many more teachers and schools and administrations and districts are seeing the value of bringing more narrative and story into the language acquisition classroom, like that's actually really exciting to see, like I did the keynote at the Association for Language Learning, Language World in Sheffield in 2023, and I was talking about comprehensive input and teaching through story and narrative, and I did a little lesson in Irish, and it felt like a lot of people in the room that was the first time that they had kind of thought about this or heard about it, but then the very next year, a couple of teachers for the all-south west branch, they presented on it, and then another I know heard that at another conference, other teachers were now starting to present on this value of narrative, so that's really exciting, that's really lovely and great to see that there are teachers and schools that are engaging and seeing. The research shows us that this is a highly motivating, highly effective, really engaging and enjoyable way to teach language, and they're starting to move bit by bit towards doing more of it, so for me, if I could see more narrative, story, co-creation, teaching, I suppose, like the way we acquired our first language, making that kind of the focus for the first couple of years, loads of interesting input, and just trusting that over time, they will get there, they will acquire the language just because they're not saying it now, doesn't mean it's not in there somewhere, just give it time, I think that would be an amazing thing to see happen over the next four or five years, and again, just for all those people who are listening and going, "What about grammar? What about the accuracy? We can't just let them get things wrong all the time, I hear you, I'm with you, I also am preparing students for high stakes exams, I get it, but we don't need to make that the starting point, we don't need to make that the focus for the first few years, let them be immersed in the language in a really fun, enjoyable way that's really easy to understand and follow, and then let's gradually start to show them some of the intricacies of the grammatical precision, and I think that's something to be excited about. I couldn't agree with you more, and it's so true isn't it, when you pick up a new language, I learned Spanish on the job, and my biggest Spanish teacher, my best Spanish teacher, in every way was my partner who is Spanish, and I go and stay with her and her family in Spain, and I would try my Spanish out, and I would make mistakes, and sometimes they'd have to go, "Okay, what's he talking about?" But that was okay, because we worked through that, and I feel like, exactly as you're saying, this idea that we're focusing on that precision and getting everything accurate the first time. No, that's not he learned in language, you learn more from making mistakes than you do from getting it right. But we're like, think about it with like little kids, right? When you're around a two or a three or a four-year-old or five-year-old or six-year-old, and they say things then they make mistakes, you're actually quite excited about that, you're happy, because you're like, you're trying. You're trying new stuff, you're trying to do the past tense, you're trying to say these things that you couldn't say yesterday, so it makes you quite excited. You're kind of like, when my daughter was staring to say things with errors and mistakes, but she was communicating a message, I was like, "Oh, wow, she's trying the past tense, she's trying this, she's trying that." But weirdly, in a year seven or eight class, we're like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's that's wrong, it's gotta be right the first time," which is, you know, I have a doctorate, I have a master's, I went to English schooling for whatever 20 years, I am a native speaker, I came from a very educated family, I read hundreds of books, and I still make mistakes. Now age 41, like I make mistakes when I say things when I write, I do make errors, so if I make mistakes after 41 years, after all of that schooling, yet a year seven, after three weeks, we expect them to be doing it with perfect accuracy, like, "What is going on there?" You know, like, "What's about about?" Yeah, you really put it like it's so clear, it's so stuck and obvious, but we need to get senior leadership to see this. Yeah, yeah, hopefully they will, hopefully they will, yeah. One very quick last question. What's next from Doctor Printer? That's a lovely question, thank you very much. Yeah, so a couple of things I'd love to share since I'm here, so the first one is two projects that are side-by-side, I suppose. One is I am continuing to go down the route of being a bit more of a children's author, like I wrote a little book called "Captain Super Sleep" for little kids age zero to kind of three, four, five, about a little girl who the more she sleeps, the more power she gets, and she turns into a superhero because she sleeps so much. And of course, this was because my daughters were so young, and I was trying to convince them of the power of sleep. So that little book is going to have hopefully some more follow-on characters, "Captain Super Eat", "Captain Super Share", like they're on the way too, I hope. And then that's the one side that's kind of like a side-fun project, and Fanny was listening, and you feel like looking that up, just look up "Captain Super Sleep" and you can buy the book online. And then the second thing is probably relatively soon after this comes out, my first book should be coming out quite soon, with Ashet Learning, which is called "Motivation Matters", "Practical Solutions for the Languages Teacher", and essentially it's a book that brings together five years of interviews on the podcast, on the "Motivator Class from Podcast". Essentially, I've kind of analyzed and coded 30 of the best interviews I've done, and put it into a guide for teachers, like the best things that they said, all their really critical points that they made, and put it all together into a book, and researching that book and writing that book was just the most incredible professional development for me, like going back over those interviews and listening to them and actually making notes on all of them and taking out the key points. When I'm writing it, I'm like genuinely quite excited, I'm like wow, the stuff that these people said was so powerful, like so good, I can't believe she said it like that, or the way she put that is so clear. So that's quite exciting, that book would be out hopefully mids to around the summer of 2026, I hope. So that's definitely what's next for me, and that's really exciting to get that book out, and hopefully get loads and lots of people talking about it, maybe studying it in little, you know, reading groups and schools, I don't know, like that would be really exciting, so we'll see what happens. I love that, I absolutely love it, and I do know exactly what you mean, because I've done something very similar with going through my podcast already and like taking a bit of it out and relisting to episodes and going wow, that's such good advice. Exactly, there's brilliant, so much fun. Well listen, I love that so much, I will put the links in the episode description for anything you send me, just whack them across and I'll put them in there, but it's been such a wonderful pleasure to have you on, and we must do it again at some point, so thank you so much, coming on the show, so fascinating. Thank you so much, as we'd say in Irish Guru Meela Mahogat, thank you very much, I really appreciate it, and yeah, thanks for what you're doing, for language learning in the UK and pushing this different way of doing things, sharing things, and the more people we get listened to these podcasts and talk and about it and reflect and under practice, hopefully the more kids we're going to reach and we'll have more and more motivating classes for everybody, so thank you so much. That was Dr. Liam Printer. What really stands out from this conversation is the reminder that motivation isn't something students either have or don't have, it's something we actively shape through experience, through trust, through meaningful impact, and through classrooms that invite students into their learning rather than asking them to perform it. When language learning is rooted in narrative, co-creation and understanding, engagement stops being forced and starts becoming sustainable. For links from today's episode, transcripts, and more, head to www.languagelabpodcast.co.uk. great. You keep the lights on, you keep me in the studio, you keep the content coming. So, if you feel like supporting the podcast, go right ahead, get on to Patreon, look for the motivated classroom, or you can just go to my Buy Me a Coffee page. If you feel like, you know what, Liam, I give you a coffee or I buy you a pint if I bumped into you just to say thanks for all this content. That would be wonderful. As always, all this content is free, no advertising, no product placement, none of that stuff on this podcast is just straight to the content. And for me, that's always been important. But the way we keep going is through the community and the support. So, if you feel like it and you've got the financial means to do so, that would be lovely to drop me a coffee. If not, just keep sharing, not a problem. Just listen for free, share it with your colleagues, share it with your friends. A few people have been reaching out asking me about my online courses. Are they running next year? Since the book is coming out, absolutely just go to LiamPrinter.com, look up workshop. My three-part workshop on teaching with compelling, comprehensive input will be starting again in September. And then I've also got my two-part workshop on developing a love for reading in the classroom, as well as the one after. In the new year, which is about teaching with co-created stories. So, they're all available to book now, filling up fast. So just check that out, LiamPrinter.com workshop. And our phrase for today, thanks to Will, was Connisa Tothu. Thanks very much, Gurmila Aga, while this is Sloanavalia. The Motivated Classroom Podcast is an original production by Liam Printer. Full podcast notes, which links to resources are available on my website, LiamPrinter.com. For more, find and follow the Motivated Classroom Podcast on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Graphics and music are provided by Paul Mahan. Intro clips are thanks to the wonderful multi-lingual staff at the International School of Lozanne.