Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to season 11 of Talking ELT.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Well, where do we start?
[00:00:12] Speaker A: In this season we're exploring the topic of motivation and social learning in the English language classroom.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: They're motivated to use English but not to study English. We think of motivation often as, I think being very deep and profound and inside of us. I think it can suddenly emerge.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: In this four part series we expl everything from the psychology of motivation.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: There's this idea that everything needs to happen quicker. It's not just the shorter attention span, it's the kind of the need to see measurable results quickly, how teachers can.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Foster it in meaningful ways.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: What you want to do is separate their language, their use of it, shifting the emphasis away from was it enough? Was it correct? Did you hit the pass mark? But yeah, you successfully conveyed something to.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Unpacking the role of social interaction in language learning and practical ways to integrate technology while preserving the human connection.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: We hear 20 of your voice.
It's like having a big echo in the classroom and it's really distracting and awful and the students can't hear it.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Fiona Morshlin and Nick Thorner, co authors of the recently published position paper the Human Connection, Motivation and Social Learning, and Ed Dudley from Oxford University Press, join us to break down the topic and get some tips to turn your classroom into a motivating social learning community. In this evening increasingly digital world.
Let's jump in.
So thank you, all of you for coming. I think this is going to be a really interesting discussion. I think this is a topic that everybody wants to know about. How do I motivate my students, but particularly in this world now, this evolving world of digital, how that changes the way our students think and motivated.
And I think this is such a hot topic, it's going to be a great discussion. So first of all, I'd like you to introduce yourselves a little. So all three of you here have got different contributions to make and I think our listeners would really like to know a little bit about you, who you are, where you're coming from.
So if I could start with you, Nick, could you tell us what you're doing a little bit about your journey here and perhaps why you got interested in this subject?
[00:02:41] Speaker C: Okay. Well, I mean, I've been in ELT for longer than I can remember really for about 30 years now, on and off. But I think it was one of those things I started just wanting to sort of travel and learn languages myself because I was absolutely dreadful at foreign languages at school.
So that sort of maybe desire to sort of prove to myself that I could.
I could do it. So, yeah, via Italy, I sort of. Well, I worked with OUP first, in fact, selling educational materials and did a lot of teaching out there.
And then I've since then come back. I did quite a bit of work in marketing and then just missed the classroom, missed the teaching, and decided really that my. That was my place and that was where I could be creative and engage with people and haven't looked back, really, in the last. Yeah, I'd say 20 years, really. It's just been teaching.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: And writing, of course, as well, and doing the two, you know, I find wonderful because one informs the other. You know, I don't think you can really write. I'm sure Fiona would agree with me with this. Without actually teaching yourself.
And then motivation, I mean, who wouldn't be interested, really? I think what motivates me as well, it sort of labels you to think about your own motivations as teachers and. But also it's the, you know, it's the hardest nut to crack, isn't it? If you can get your learners motivated, then it takes. Well, you won't have to do much at all, really.
And I think no matter how good a teacher, if your kids aren't motivated, you're not going to make much progress. So I think that's what drew me to the topic.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: You know, it's the sort of Holy Grail, if you like, of. Of English language teaching, how to get those students motivated.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Thanks, Nick and Fiona.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Blank.
No, well, what's drawn me to motivation.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Is basically. Well, I mean, I've been teaching now for, I don't know, a little bit more than Nick. Let's just say about 37, 38 years.
And way back in the midst of time, I became a director of studies and used to give myself the difficult classes, and that included remedial adolescents.
This is in the Canary Islands. And as a teenager myself, I'd been really, really demotivated at school. I absolutely loathed school.
And so when I had to teach these very seriously demotivated students, I just started to think, well, why was I so demotivated? What was it about the teaching that I was getting that that demotivated me and then do the opposite? So then that made me start to think, okay, this seems to be working.
My students are now doing well and enjoying it. So I need to get some sort of theoretical knowledge to underpin this and that. I don't know, that just kind of opened all sorts of doors.
And now I'm still teaching, but here I'M teaching here in Oxford, so obviously I have access to lots of research stuff and people like Nick and I just love it. I mean, I think also I've just become passionate about it and.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, okay, thank you.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Motivating myself, Motivating my students.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's such an important link there, isn't there? And Ed.
[00:06:02] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm Ed. I work for Oxford University Press as a teacher trainer.
Before that, worked as a teacher for many, many years in Hungarian schools and then as a teacher trainer. And, you know, my. My experience is quite similar to yours, Fiona, in that initially really not enjoying school and then becoming a really motivated language learner myself after school, finding myself in the classroom and trying to have an impact on the poorly motivated students that I could see, and then working as a teacher, teacher trainer, having endless questions from teachers, which is like, what can I do with my students? How can I get them motivated? How can I get them interested?
And finding that it's a question that never goes away. And so I think all of us have spent parts of, you know, every day for the last, who knows how many decades thinking about this question to a greater or lesser extent.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, and I think so. So one of the reasons we're here is you have written a position paper, Nick and Fiona, for Oxford University Press, on this link between motivation and social learning, and particularly looking at how motivation is affected by this changing world we're in. The fact that there is a lot more learning happening online in digital contexts. And how is that affecting the motivation of learning?
So, as you say, it's a perennial problem since, since our own school days, we've engaged with the problem of what motivates us, what motivates our students.
But how does the world now change that? Or does it change it?
So I'd like to start off by really focusing or getting a deeper understanding of what we mean by motivation, what motivation is.
Does anybody want to kick off on what we mean by motivation?
[00:07:59] Speaker C: I guess it's, I should just say why we do anything, isn't it?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Why we start it, why we keep with it.
[00:08:05] Speaker C: That's right, yeah. And I think it can be the smallest thing, can't it?
I think one interesting thing is, is sort of we think of motivation often, as I think, being very deep and profound and inside of us.
But I think it can sort of work at all levels. And I think we sort of make this big distinction between sort of engagement and motivation. But I think often you only have to start by enjoying perhaps the company of people to Then feel motivated to. To want to make friends and to join them. And I think rather than thinking of motivation as something that comes deep from within us, some people aren't motivated. I think it can suddenly emerge quite often.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: So it's about change, isn't it? It's about changing what you have or what you know or what you do in some way.
Designers, like you just said, could come from saying, oh, I want to make more of friends like this, or I want to be able to do what he can do, or.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think that's true. It's the really reassuring thing about motivation, isn't it, that, you know, we think of it all these kids are unmotivated, they're lazy. But it can emerge.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: It really can. Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: If you hit the right button.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: But also to maintain the learning. It's like when you sign up for the gym and then you say you've got the initial motivation, but then you've also got to have the motivation to.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Such a good point, isn't it?
[00:09:26] Speaker B: To keep going.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: With it.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Yeah. Especially through. Because, you know.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: It's not like, say, piano learning, where you can finish a piece. Right.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: I've done that.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: With language learning, you often get to a point, don't you think, oh, I haven't made progress for ages. The plateau.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: The old plateau. Exactly.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: It's hard to sustain it, you're right.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Because it's more difficult to see your achievements.
[00:09:48] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, totally.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Right, yeah. And so. So we've talked a bit about.
I think it's a nice analogy, the becoming fit. You know, people have that motivation deep down, but whether they actually engage with the activities to do that is kind of a secondary question. And then whether they sustain that, so you can grab someone's interest, but whether they sustain that is. Is another aspect of. Of motivation and engagement. Yeah, yeah.
So what about the aspect of it, of a digital world that we live in?
How is that having an impact on our motivation?
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Motivation to do what? That's the thing. I mean, I think.
I don't know, I think students.
It. On the one hand, it really is motivating them, because when I was struggling with my Italian as a young person, I. Or French, I hated learning it in school here because, you know, Italy and France, they were miles away and I was never going to get a chance to actually go and consummate my sort of language learning experience and sort of prove that I could do it. So I was very much thinking, what's the point of doing this? This in this session this morning. I might as well just wait till I'm there and do it.
And now, of course, with online worlds, kids are constantly in L1, sort of L2, rather environments online. They're constantly code switched, constantly involved with English. And so on the one hand you get this amazing opportunity to motivate themselves to create content, to use English day in, day out. But the flip side of that, of course, is that in the classroom, that isn't the space where they've got these opportunities.
So I always think it's motivated. They're motivated to use English but not to study English in the classroom.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: I think they also maybe.
I'm not sure why we're both saying they.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: We.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, there's this idea that everything needs to happen quicker as well. Now they're sort of. I want to learn it much faster.
[00:11:55] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: It's not just the shorter attention span, it's the kind of, the need to see measurable results quickly. I think that's where some patience. Yeah, I think some of these quick results. Yeah, yeah. And there's the dopamine thing as well.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, definitely.
[00:12:13] Speaker D: Just listening to you both. There's a, a really interesting example of how looking at something online can have an impact on your motivation to do it. And I think it's linked to the change that you mentioned, Fiona, and also to have some, some kind of success criterion, being able to see what will happen if I do this.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker D: And the example is doing housework, specifically tidying up your room.
And apparently I haven't got any kind of evidence for this myself, but apparently if someone's really struggling to tidy their room, if you watch a five minute video on YouTube of somebody cleaning their house or tidying their room, it fills you with motivation to give it a go.
And perhaps it's because you can see an instant result rather than trying to imagine some future desired success state where everything's tidy. You watch this person tidy their space in a few minutes, thanks to technology, and then you become motivated to get up and make a start on it yourself. And perhaps with language teaching and language learning, there are similar kind of mini tastes of success criteria that we can see. We can imagine ourselves being able to speak as well or to be able to manage a conversation as confidently as someone might be doing that online. And that can be the spur that gets us going.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's great. Or performing or singing through English, using English confidently. There's so many great examples aren't online.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: I mean, we had a recent podcast series about Generation Alpha and some of the characteristics of this generation.
And people talk about the lack of attention span and shorter attention spans, but one of the features that was interesting was that need for a quick payoff. Exactly as you're saying. So of course everybody has that, but it just seems accelerated, which in many ways makes them much more focused.
What am I going to get out of this?
Perhaps less, you know, our generation's willingness to wait for that deferred payoff that might come up much later. They're looking what's going to affect me, going to help me now.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: And of course with sort of online tools like translation software. And in many ways they don't have to wait.
[00:14:26] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: You know, they can get by by using, you know, a translation tool. And you think, well, why should they go through all those years of training in writing, you know, academic writing, we're talking about earlier how difficult it is to get students to engage with that when actually they, you know, they can use chatgpt for a lot of it. So it's getting to put in that effort. When I think, what do we, what.
[00:14:50] Speaker D: Do we say to students who say, but teacher, I can, I don't need to learn this language, I can just use my phone.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I. That's right.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: What do we say?
[00:15:00] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:15:02] Speaker D: Has it ever happened to you guys?
[00:15:04] Speaker C: All the time. I thought, well, not necessarily to my face because I think they know that they shouldn't say it.
It's a taboo.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Certain things, yes, certain things I've had like in our classrooms we do a lot of presentation skills, soft skills, this type thing. And so there's a lot of students will think I want to say this and so I'll get ChatGPT or similar to write it for me and then I will memorize the script.
But once they've done that once and not really given a very good presentation and if you record them, they, they're capable of seeing why it wasn't a good presentation because basically, you know, they're looking like this the whole time. And then it's like, it's like so many things. By seeing that they didn't achieve using the system that they have chosen, they're then keener to find a sort of a less tech dependent way of doing it. And so maybe they have used ChatGPT and then my job, which has been my job for the last few weeks in particular, is to show them how to take that ChatGPT thing if they're absolutely insistent on using it and distill it down to mini notes in their own handwriting that they can interpret easily and.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: And explain it in their own language. So my answer to the question about why can't we just use ChatGPT as well? Okay, but it's a tool.
[00:16:37] Speaker C: It's really useful. But not.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: But the tool's not going to do the thing for you. You have to use it.
[00:16:42] Speaker D: I think that's the key word. You're still dependent on this thing helping you out and working, and you must be less confident as a result of that, knowing that you're not truly independent because you haven't done the learning yourself. Of course you can use the tools to help you do the learning, but there's a difference ultimately between being independent and therefore confident and being dependent on this tool to help you out.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: And of course, and you can also, you know, just tell students to imagine they're in an exam room and that should be enough to focus that.
Or even socially, you can't tell people when you're out in a cafe having a juice or whatever. Just one moment, I think translate that.
So I think the teacher's job is partly to sort of, you know, create that, use vision, I suppose, to motivate them to imagine situations where they won't be able to rely on those tools. Hi, I'm Nick Thorner. If you want to discover more about the relationship between motivation and social interaction within English language learning, go ahead and download our position paper that Fiona and I helped to co author alongside other fantastic contributors. It's called the Human Connection. Motivation and Social Learning in an Increasingly Digital World, the English language classroom is more important than ever in providing a social learning environment that boosts communication and motivation. In this paper, we investigate the threats to student motivation within the classroom, ranging from foreign language anxiety to a lack of connection and much more. Download the paper via the link in the description and enjoy the read. Thank you.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: I also think, and this is just coming from my own students and I had this conversation with a group last week.
They're not, you know, they're young people, they're not daft. They know that by using chat GPT they're not using their brain enough and they actually want to do stuff for themselves.
You know, they're aware of the fact.
I mean, obviously there will be a percentage that doesn't particularly care, but the majority that I see from my students, they, up to a point, they're happy to use AI, but beyond that, they want to keep thinking. They're also very aware of critical thinking skills, perhaps more than we were when we were young, you know, that need to continue to think and analyze and use their own brains for things rather than just, you know, absorb it from.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: From an app or from software. Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: I don't suppose any would say, oh, this is my long term goal, to just use AI always.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: It's a sort of. We tend to be motivated in the moment to achieve things, I suppose, in the short term that give us the best sort of results.
It's short termism, isn't it, rather than that long term. And I think we can take shortcuts so easily now to help us get through the next half hour.
If it's late and you want to get to bed, just quickly do that.
But I suppose long term there is still that desire somewhere. But I suppose it's the short term steps that eventually lead to the long term. So we've got to keep reminding students that, you know, you're shooting yourself in the foot by taking a shortcut.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: When we talk about motivation, we also talk about the opposite of that, demotivation. The things that prevent or disengage our students.
Can you give us a little bit of kind of insight into the.
The aspects of language learning, language teaching that are likely to demotivate our students?
Foreign.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Anxiety of sort of losing face in front of your mates, isn't it? It's a. I know I used a music analogy before because I happen to enjoy music, but it's a bit like being a grade two violinist and being asked to perform in front of your friends.
It's awfully embarrassing unless you're really confident and really good at it.
So it's funny, I mean, we talk about demotivation, but I think it's actually fear. It's. It's that avoidance motivation that's kicking in. They are really motivated, but they're motivated to avoid losing, losing face in front of their, their friends. And I think that's the big challenge. You know, they'll do anything to get out of that situation, particularly with teenagers.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: And linked to that is the type of feedback that they're getting from teachers as well.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Anything where they're being compared, or should we say an excess or rigid sort of grading system that shows them what they're not achieving rather than what they are achieving.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Because if you're constantly being shown what you're not managing to achieve, then you get to the stage where you think, well, why bother? Because I'm trying and I'm never getting that.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. You see the writing covered in red pen.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Feedback.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think a lot of them think, well, I know that's wrong. Don't keep telling me, you know, I was under pressure.
[00:21:47] Speaker D: Yeah. The first thing I thought of, actually was that performance aspect that you both spoke about. You know, you gave the musical example, Nick. And also this idea of what the other people in the class are going to say, not just the teacher, which just reinforces that when we're talking about motivation, the fact that a learning classroom is a social moment as well, it's hugely kind of problematic. And I worked with teenagers for many years, and school is a social test more than anything. And here's a really interesting example. As a novice teacher, I thought the question, what's your favorite pop group? Was a great question to ask without realizing, oh, there are repercussions of saying a kind of pop group in front of a room full of peers, which lead to a teacher thinking, oh, this student didn't understand the question.
Lots of very good reasons not to answer that question. If your motivation is not just to learn language, but to survive the school day without being, you know, victimized or ostracized for an uncool choice of answer there.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: What did you do at the weekend? You know, it sounds innocent.
[00:22:48] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: But again, it's got lots of kind of social meaning.
[00:22:52] Speaker D: I used to. I used to give students the option of describing their weekend or describing their dog's weekend or their neighbor's weekend precisely.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: For that reason, you know, very good.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Any kind of sharing thing where you don't want to share if you don't particularly feel integrated with the group.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Any given teen class.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: You know, particularly if they're like 25 in the room. How many do they actually get on with and feel comfortable with? Or even smaller groups than that, you know, like 10. I can have groups of 10 where there's little. It's not exactly cliques, but it's just safety groups, in a sense.
[00:23:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: And what they really want to share and all kinds of things.
[00:23:35] Speaker C: I think another big thing is about, you know, why demotivation happens, is. I think we were talking about it before the. The sort of lack of progress that students sort of notice. Well, not so praised, but personal endorsements and sort of validation.
So in a classroom, you know, you can go through a whole lesson without the teacher praising perhaps you or something you've achieved.
And of course, getting the answer right isn't really enough. You want them to praise something you've done that's creative or something that you're proud of or to say that you know, you're making such good progress. And when in a class of, you know, 20 or so 30 students, do you get a chance for each student to come away feeling yes, I have made progress. And even in the marking it's often we don't have time as teachers, it's too cursory.
Which does bring us back to the online world. Because if you are someone who posts is posting content, you can get wow. 56 like well that's probably. I'm nothing very ambitious. 560 likes.
Think of my own experience.
56 for me.
But I think that's it. You know, it's very hard for students to get it if they were using it in context. Imagine they were in the L2 environment. Every time they go into a shop and they come away with the thing they wanted to get, they've got that wow, I did it, that was amazing.
Or they listen to a program and they think, you know, I followed that, I understood all that. I don't know, news report was on. I think that's, that's really good. But in a classroom, how do you give that constant sense of progress and success? Is the dopamine hits you were talking.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: About and if what you just said of having created something as well, something to be proud of.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Rather than just, well, we were just talking about chat, GPT and AI. You know the difference between the motivation, the intrinsic motivation of having created a short four line poem or something.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: As opposed to having managed to get chat, GPT write a presentation for you. It's not really paragraph exactly. You know, but it's just that, you know, you can do this even though it's little, you can do it.
[00:25:45] Speaker C: And I think language is sort of owned by other people, isn't it? It's not something that it feels like it is to students.
But did you get it right? Do you have enough to enter the community?
In actual fact, what you want to do is celebrate their language and their use of it.
So sort of shifting the emphasis away from was it enough? Was it correct? Did you hit the pass mark? But yeah, you successfully conveyed something, you know, that I think is part of the issue that we need to address.
Giving them ownership.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's where the interaction thing comes in, doesn't it? Because you know, language is co constructed concept or whatever. But it's also that if I say something to you, you're my teacher, I say something to you and you just go.
It's really demotivating. So again teachers and non verbal cues are really important but also that instead of always saying, yes, good, do whatever your student says or well done actually responding to it properly.
[00:26:50] Speaker C: I like that. It's much better than yeah, isn't it?
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. And then what did you do? Or whatever it is. It's so much more motivating because you've shown that you can communicate even at a low level or high level, depending. But you know, if it's a low level, particularly if the teacher's always just nodding and going, yes, well done. Oh, yeah, Next.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: Yeah, because in real communication you don't want people to tell you're right.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Patronizing.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Well, I've had that. I mean, learning.
I learned Catalan just from being in Catalonia. And it was so demotivating when you'd managed to sit there trying to think of a sentence and said it. And instead of carrying on the conversation, the person that you're talking to just corrects the gender of what you just said.
You know, it's not el color, it's la color, you know. Okay, Yeah.
[00:27:45] Speaker D: I just want to add something that I think is if I was a teacher listening to this conversation, I would perhaps be a bit confused about what I can and can't do to affect the motivation of my students.
And in your paper, actually, yeah, I noticed you mentioned the research of Zoltan Durne and Kota Chiserd and they had a study where they asked teachers just to focus on the things they can influence when it comes to motivation. There are things that are beyond our control.
And when teachers were asked to think about, okay, what actually makes a difference, the number one thing was setting an example with their own behavior.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Definitely.
[00:28:21] Speaker D: And I think that what you've described, the positive and negative examples of how teachers respond and interact with with their students by really responding and noticing and asking follow up questions and turning up to the class with a sense of purpose and interest, that can have a really huge effect.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. Especially when it comes to creating that sense of trust. Just beforehand we were talking about that losing face thing and how it's awful to have the fear of others judging you if you don't judge. As a teacher, that sets the tone.
And the students will also sort of, you know, mirror your behavior, your sort of generosity, your openness and willingness to take risks as well. I think as a teacher we often have to sort of put ourselves on the line and share things which, you know, maybe we would think I shouldn't really share that with students. You know, what's your favorite taste in music? You know, what that sort of thing you know, just so that they know that you're setting a tone where you can be open and trusting. And I, I think that's, that's key. Modeling a kind of supportive, open community.
And if you're as a teacher judging students and saying you're wrong or you know, why are you late and being angry, that is going to create that sense of threat and judgment off the bat.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: But again, I can hear the teacher listening to us saying, but my job is to correct them.
If I don't correct them, I'm not doing my job.
So how do you weave that part of their role with what you're saying here?
[00:29:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. It's kind of just, I, I would say it's, it's just about timing and I mean that's one of the things I like about those online tools where you can just keep a trace, get them to post things and then you can go back to it. As a teacher before I used sort of online stuff, I used to take notes all the time, which was a bit off putting for them because you, rather than listening and smiling and if you write down this frowning. That's right, yeah, yeah. But I, I think, you know, try and have a period where you're not correcting and then say, right, you did so well. It was a wonderful conversation. Now should we just go back and look at some of the, the things and then you can, you know, slip into the kind of correction mode if you like, towards the the end. But they do want feedback, of course.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Don'T they do, yeah. But there's so many different ways of giving feedback as well, rather than, I mean, certainly I wouldn't interrupt a student mid flow unless they're clearly needing help and they're looking at me going, tell me what sort of thing?
But with that kind of thing you were just saying about sitting, taking notes.
I do have to give feedback on a very large number of presentations and similar type work. But my first protocol, should we say, is to get them to feedback themselves.
How do you feel? What were your strengths and your weaknesses? And then I just fill in the gaps and a bit like this, you can, you can do that in a kind of conversational way, if that makes sense.
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Which then adds in more language usage rather than me doing all the talking and saying, well I thought this, we talk about it first.
So that's then giving them more language.
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Usage and I think that encourages that reflection and self monitoring, which is also a crucial skill.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Listening in language learning, you've got to be able to evaluate Your own progress, your own strengths and weaknesses. And then in things like, I mean, this is written work, not spoken. But if they're journaling, I use Post its.
I read the journal and I stick to the poster on the page rather than writing on the page, that kind of thing. So it becomes like a note.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
There's just more removable.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: You can exactly take it out. It's not, you know, if it's my journal.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: It's a bit like if it's my poem or my. Whatever.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: It's.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: It's my thing. It's like a letter to myself. And if I wrote you a letter. Yeah. I would be very demotivated if, instead of responding to it, sent it back to me covered in red pen.
Exactly.
Great to hear your news. You totally forgot to use the present perfect. You know, like.
So I use Post its for that, but I also respond to the content. And I think this kind of pings back to what we were saying before about genuine response. Respond to the content as well as to the.
To the language.
And don't get too hung up on stuff that we don't need to. I mean, as native speakers, you know, if we were to go back over the transcript of this conversation, so far, there's zero chance of us having made no grammar errors, you know, so.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Haven't made any grammars.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:33:13] Speaker D: It's interesting. Again, my mind goes back to what you said, Fiona, about motivation really being about change and a desire to change. And that applies so strongly with error correction.
How you are motivated or demotivated by that as a student links into how you feel about being corrected. And if your desire as a learner is to reach a certain standard, then you'll respond in one way. Perhaps you'll be demotivated to get a lot of red pen or some oral corrections. But if your motivation is to get better than you are today, then you could possibly welcome an error correction, especially if it's done in a sensitive and appropriate way as you've described. So really, I guess it's about the attitude that we model as teachers about learning and improving and how correction and mistakes are part of that process that can have a huge, I think, important impact on how a learner feels motivated or demotivated by, for example, being corrected.
[00:34:07] Speaker C: That's a really good point. I was wondering, actually, if it's worth even asking students at the beginning of periods of learning, are you in? Do you want to be.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: What's your target? Do you want to be perfect conversation with the students?
[00:34:19] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: How do you want to be, or the benefits of being corrected in certain ways, discussing what the options are, what might work, you know, why am I not interrupting you every second?
[00:34:32] Speaker A: I found that.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: I found conversation.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: I found it a bit of a game changer for me, was realizing that you have to be quite explicit with students about what the learning goals are, because some of them will come, a lot of them will come with an expectation that learning a language is. Is about learning the code, the decoding of the language. You've got to, you know, you've got to get it exactly right. And those other aspects, which are the fluency, the confidence, the ability to express what you're thinking, thinking, they may not be. They may not realize that that is actually one of their learning outcomes.
And so when you are not interrupting them, when you're trying to build their fluency, that's. That's deliberate.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: It's not.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: It's not you failing to teach them, it's something you are teaching them.
[00:35:19] Speaker C: It depends, yes, on your goals. I think a good point in this regard as well is while we're talking about online learning is the opportunities of feedback, oral feedback, where you can, I think, be a lot more. If there is anything negative, you can use the tone of your voice a lot more to disguise any sense. It's like receiving an ambiguous text which you can't quite interpret. But when someone is speaking, you know, because the smile, which you can hear, you can hear a smile, can't you? You know that they're actually, they've loved your homework and you don't feel threatened.
And of course, an audio file, you're not covering it in pen as you were talking about. And I think the marginal comments as well, you can delete once you've. If you're marking sort of online and get rid of all the comments. Or you can then revise it as well if you want to correct it without the teacher having to sort of COVID it.
[00:36:09] Speaker D: I think that's something. That's a brilliant idea, I think. Can I ask, is it a time saver or does it. Is it. Does it take longer to do audio feedback?
[00:36:17] Speaker C: I think it is a time saver. I don't know if you would agree. I think some students don't like it. One thing I've found is that you really want students to look at your feedback in the lessons.
So every time we do a lesson, after a piece of homework, I'll say, right, everyone look at your feedback and then they'll reflect on it and it will begin a process of learning. If You've done audio correction. You suddenly hear 20 of your voice.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: It's like.
[00:36:46] Speaker C: It's like having a big echo in the classroom and it's really distracting and awful and the students can't hear it because, you know, someone's got their volume too loud. So you can do it if they've all got headphones, which they.
[00:36:55] Speaker D: Which surely these days they all have headphones, which they do normally.
[00:36:58] Speaker C: Yes, that's right.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: They'll even sit in class with one in all the time.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: So I'm still working with teenagers and yeah, they do. And I sometimes have to say, you know, are you a spy? You know, we got a little earpiece in here. Any particular reason?
And they don't even remember they've got it in.
[00:37:17] Speaker C: But yeah, but I love, I mean, I love audio feedback because you. I. If it's a short piece especially, I'll just read it word for word and then you can sort of laugh at any bits that are funny and say, oh, I love that. Without having to constantly put emojis in or comment or. And it's just nice they can see you're really reading it. I mean, I think some students suspect you haven't perhaps read things carefully sometimes, but you can actually show them that you're doing it. And of course, it doesn't take time at all to, To. To quickly sort of react to everything they've written. Oh, be careful. The full stop there. You know, you can add in comments without sort of having to type a note on it or put the marking code on. And then they would have to sort of say, oh, what's that code mean? What does P mean?
So, you know, I think it's wonderful.
[00:38:03] Speaker D: You could even, I guess, open up the essay or the assignment, record yourself doing that. That, as it were, like, share your screen, record yourself. There could be a transcription program running that would allow you to give spontaneous audio feedback which is being recorded. Meanwhile, the program is transcribing it so the student can get not only an audio playback of your feedback, but a written transcription of what you were saying as well.
That's just a click of one button these days. That, that could be something which I suppose a student who would prefer to read the teacher's comments would.
[00:38:38] Speaker A: Would.
[00:38:38] Speaker D: Would be able to get.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and I suspect that video would be better than audio, be more effective only because how many of us read our WhatsApp messages in a shorter time lapse than. Than the voice messages that we get? You know, putting off listening to audio messages because you Want to be in a particular place. Whatever. I think students and teenagers. I'm going back to teenagers. Sorry. Should be broadening the thing.
But for teens I think they're perhaps more likely to watch a little video just because it connects slightly more with their usual sort of motives of brown eyes.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:39:23] Speaker D: I thought you were going to talk about non verbal communication there as well.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Well, there's also. No. But yes. I was just thinking. Yes, the video. Well, yes. And of course they're getting the facial reactions and the head.
Exactly.
Where do we start?
No, just thinking. Some students I think would appreciate this a short video. But then for us to do. I'm not sure you have to get first. Yeah.
[00:39:49] Speaker C: There's all sorts of sort of safe kind of stuff these days, isn't there? But as well you've got. It's great in a school I think where you're in a work setting and everything from home. I would probably.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: I like the idea though of having them all have like a moment in the class where they can all listen though. I like that one.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: I'm just. I wouldn't trust my students to listen to an audio thing out of the classroom.
[00:40:12] Speaker C: No, that's true. And I think there are issues with accessing it, uploading, download, you know, having whatever it is, bandwidth space. I don't know, it's. You've got to have the resources in the classroom, the Internet, whatever it is to be able to.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: This is. It depends on context, isn't it as well.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: I think we have nicely explored different things which impact on the motivation of our students.
Some of the things we can do to engage them more.
And I think this is a nice wrap up of the first episode and we'll continue looking more at the social learning.
[00:40:49] Speaker D: I'm feeling very motivated to continue this concert.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: I've been trying to interrupt you for about the last.
