My Year 9 class are now 4 weeks from the end of our second year together. The students are aged 12-13 and have had approximately 2 hours Spanish per week, minus all the school holidays of course. In those two years we have read 6 class novels and they've each read 10-20 other graded readers during their free voluntary reading time at the beginning of class. Since around 4 months into year 8 (their first year of Spanish), we have started almost every class with 5-10 minutes of silent reading. We don't have a textbook

In the two years, we've never 'done' or 'practised' a verb table. We have looked at one, after a student asked about the endings. We've maybe done two worksheets total across the two years that had a focus on accuracy. They have had plenty of pop-up grammar explanations about the differences between "comió" and "ha comido" for example. We don't do lists of vocabulary or regular high-stakes testing. 

We have never done anything about the conditional tense; I've never (explicitly) taught them 'debería, sería' etc... but they are using it in their writing. Below are some of their most recent entries in their "Diario de Lectura". These entries are mostly done in class, with no dictionary or computer. Just free writing.

Diario de Lectura entries are done regularly based on phrases they connect with from books we are reading. I never correct any mistakes in their 'diario de lectura'. I do correct 2-3 critical errors when they are doing a formative writing piece before a summative assessment, but this is separate. In the diario de lectura, they know they can write without fear of being wrong. They know it is a conversation in writing between me and them.

And the clincher... hand on heart, these students allspeak more fluently and arguably with more accuracy than they write. I'll share recordings of our final round table discussions at the end of the school year.

Flooding students with compelling, interesting, and most importantly, comprehensible inputs that centre on narratives and stories from our lives, our identities, our passions, our fears and our cultures... works. It allows children to acquire language naturally; to learn about each other, about me and about the world.

Reading... lots of reading, works. The books allow us to regularly discuss big themes, important topics and social justice issues... and, it results in so much fantastic, impressive and fluent output.. both in writing and in speaking. Remember Grant Boulanger's mantra "The less you force them to speak, the more they want to speak".
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In Year 3 next year we will start to look more closely at grammatical accuracy, at writing and speaking for different audiences, in different tones. But not before. Remember, they need to build the system first; before they can start to look more deeply at the components of that system.

Trust the process, trust the research, trust your students. Acquisition doesn't happen overnight but keep giving the rich, comprehensible inputs and it will happen. Leer es poder!

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Know that feeling anyone?

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

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

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

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

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.