Motivating yourself and your learners 🎯

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Dear Reader,

Can I just say: rejoice, it's the weekend!

The leaves are leaving (the trees), the pumpkin spice is non-negotiably coming and we have all survived over a month of the school year. Let's take a moment to pat ourselves on the back.¹

*The leaves are definitely starting to leave on my commute*

As for me? I'm trying to take in the last few rays of sunshine while trying not to dispair that I've had the heating on for a month already and I'm wearing far more thick jumpers than I would like.

I've also spent the last few weeks studying, planning and refining my shiny new programme exclusively for English teachers in Italy. I want a programme that's going to actually make your job easier, that's going to make your English stronger, and that's going to de-stress you. Oh, and I want it to be sprinkled with a bit of fun✨, because a teacher's life is hard enough already. In short: I want to support you as you make a leap.

*One of my visual representations of you making that leap*

But while I've been pouring all my heart and blood/sweat/tears² into this, and hopefully I'll be able to tell you more about it soon, it has also been that time of the year when I'm typically buried under a pile of marking. In September, Master's students submit their dissertations and I have to mark them.

Which is a lot of work, and lemme tell you it's not gotten better with AI, but it does do one thing for me: it exposes me to new ideas and re-exposes me to ideas that I was well aware of but somehow never made it into this newsletter. So then I slap my forehead, think "how on earth did you never write a newsletter on this? Teachers need to know!" and I get to writing with the fury of a thousand titans.

This week, I'm addressing a topic that I know is a problem for the vast majority of teachers: why are my students demotivated? And how do I motivate them? There's plenty of theories of motivation, some of which you may even remember with horror from your concorso preparation, so before you shut this email down with the fury of a thousand titans: I've already marked a few dissertations on the topic, so I'm certainly not about to write one here.

What I will do instead is tell you about a pretty convincing model of motivation that's specific to language learning: the acronym is L2MSS - can you guess what it stands for? I'll also give you some activities you can implement to foster motivation. Spoiler: you can use this not just for your learners, but for yourself, too!

What's motivation after all?

If you've ever tried to drag your sorry bottom to the gym on a rainy Friday, or tried to muster all your courage to finish. marking. that. monstruous. pile. of. tests on a Sunday afternoon, you must have experienced the impact of motivation.

One of the best ways I have of explaining motivation is that it's like a pull: it's that force that pushes us to take action and persist in that action.

An experiment

Now, let's pause for a moment and do a little experiment: close your eyes and picture in your mind's eye two of your students. The first is motivated to learn English; the second, not so much. What are their characteristics? What are their hopes and dreams for the future, if any? How do they behave in the classroom?

Bonus task: if you yourself feel like an English learner on some level (I still do!), how would you describe yourself in terms of motivation?

Keep these images in mind as you carry on reading 👇

The L2MSS

While many (and I do mean many) have tried to investigate and define motivation and demotivation specifically when it comes to learning a language, I find that one of the most convincing attempts comes from Zoltán Dörnyei, a researcher who sadly passed away not too long ago but whose contributions to our field still reverberate to this day³.

He believed that learning a foreign language doesn't just mean learning yet another subject but involves the whole human being. So, he proposed a model called the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS), in which he divided our motivation as language learners into three components:

1. The ideal L2 self

This is the person we would like to be as a future speaker of the language - hence the L2 (second language) bit. For example, we might imagine being a confident English teacher who never switches to Italian (unless she wants/needs to) and has no problem interacting with bar staff at a busy pub in England⁴.

Here, the motivation comes from trying to reduce the distance from our current self and our ideal self: so for example, if we have a highly demotivated learner, but they have an ideal of their future self as someone who can finally play videogames in English with others, what strategies might they need to put in place to reach that ideal self?

2. The ought-to L2 self

Dörnyei defines this as "the attributes that one believes one ought to possess to meet (others') expectations and to avoid possible negative outcomes". So if we consider ourselves as English teachers but also learners, what do our students expect of us in terms of our English competence? What about the expectations of their parents, our Headteacher, our colleagues, English examiners when we take an official test or a concorso? These are all external forces and they can have an impact on our learners too, particularly when it comes to parents' expectations and avoiding the consequences of failing exams.

3. The L2 learning experience

This last component concerns the immediate learning environment and experience, including the impact of the teacher, the curriculum, the peer group, the experience of success. In your current experience as an English teacher but also learner, what is your learning environment? If you're studying English with, say, Duolingo, what about this environment is stimulating or motivating? If you're studying in a group course, what about this environment is supporting your motivation?

Musical interlude

Before we move onto the practical bit, take a break and listen to this highly motivational 24 seconds worth of song that will get stuck in your head for months on end but will hopefully motivate you to "do it anyway":

If this becomes your new earworm, don't say I didn't warn you.

Back to our learners

Now, think back to the two learners you pictured earlier: the motivated one and the demotivated one. What are their Ideal L2 selves, their ought-to selves and their L2 learning environments? But most importantly: what differences can you see between the two students at opposite ends of the spectrum?

What we can do

Of course, you might be wondering: OK Chiara, that's all well and good, but what am I supposed to do now that I know this? To which I'll say: thank you for asking the practical question!

Dörnyei would tell you that out of the 3 components of the L2MSS, there are 2 in particular you can work on: the ideal L2 self and the L2 learning environment. The logic behind this is that of course, you can't do much about the external pressures learners have about what they should/ought to be. Which is why, of course, I will start from the ought-to L2 self.

What to do about the ought-to L2 self

I wouldn't 100% agree with the idea that you can't do much about these external factors because I think you can help learners reframe their thinking. The first thing I would do is help learners identify these external pressures: naming them can be a very powerful strategy to help learners distinguish what they want and what others want for them. They may never have stopped to think about this and that clarity might start feeding their own ideal L2 selves in the right direction.

One related but somehow opposite problem is when, rather sadly, learners feel that others don't expect anything from them: for instance, it's all too common to see learners whose parents aren't that interested in their progress and don't expect them to accomplish much. It's not easy, but they should know that you expect something from them: they may seem unbothered by this at first, but if you keep at it, they will understand that hey, if the teacher keeps expecting something from me, it must be because I can do something and she hasn't given up on me.

What to do about the ideal L2 self

Going back to what Dörnyei would say you can impact quite a lot: how do you work with enhancing the ideal future images that learners have of themselves as English speakers?

According to research, in order for it to function well as a motivator, the ideal L2 self needs to have 6 characteristics:

the learner needs to have a vision of themselves as future English speaker: let's say your learner - we'll call him Eduardo - wants to be a chef and earn a good living. They will likely travel and work abroad to hone their craft, which will require learning pretty good English.
this vision needs to be achievable: for example, going from an A2 level to a C2 level in the space of 6 months = not achievable
the learner needs to be aware of the negative consequences of not achieving the vision: if Eduardo doesn't learn English well enough to communicate on the job, might he be stuck doing the same thing at the same level in the same restaurant for years on end?
the vision is elaborate and vivid: can Eduardo paint a clear picture of what his life will look like if he learns English well enough to achieve his goal?
the vision is accompanied by relevant and effective strategies: in other words, Eduardo should know what to do in practice to learn English for his purposes
the vision is regularly activated: Eduardo thinks about this often enough that it keeps him motivated

Now, the good part is: you can turn activities to foster the ideal L2 self into the subject of your lessons! That way, students learn some English while simultaneously enhancing their motivation.

The even better part is: a project created activities for each of the six steps above, so you don't have to create anything new ⬇️

How can the L2-self motivate students? Jessica Cheman and Sam Zurbrugg

Just as an example, one activity I particularly liked was the first one, which is aimed at - you guessed it - helping learners create that ideal L2 image for themselves, thus tackling point 1.

It's a lesson plan involving reading, visualising and writing. First, students read stories about others' ideal L2 selves: I would suggest creating these - you can use AI to help - so that they are tailored, achievable and credible for your students and their age. Next, students do a guided visualisation exercise where they have to come up with their own vision. Finally, students write what they visualised for themselves, explaining where they are in their vision, how old they are, what they're doing and how English fits into the scenario.

What to do about the L2 learning environment

Did you think I'd forgotten? Of course not! But to be fair, how to improve the L2 learning environment includes creating rapport with students, engaging them, assessing them fairly... and all the myriad things that I tend to drone on about every week in this newsletter and whenever you give me the opportunity via courses and webinars, so in the spirit of not turning today's letter into a dissertation, I shall direct you to all previous, and probably future, communications to learn more about this side.

Bonus: If you want a starting point to understand engagement, and how it correlates with boredom and anxiety in the classroom, I'd encourage you to have a quick look at an old newsletter where I covered exactly this, with one important finding:

⬆ Teacher unpredictability ⬆ Enjoyment ⬇ Boredom

Meaning: learners enjoy themselves and are less bored with teachers who do not stick to the same routines in their class and vary in the way they teach.

And with that, dear teacher, I shall conclude today's newsletter! Can you picture your own Ideal L2 self? What do you see in your mind's eye? Very important for me to know as I'd like to help you get there.

But in the interim, as usual, please enjoy a lovely Sunday with your loved ones and don't forget to add any words you liked from today's newsletter to our community Padlet.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ I shall never tire of saying this: you're doing a good enough job. In my experience, we get so caught up juggling a thousand things that we end up feeling as if we're failing a little bit at all of them. So, here's your (and my) reminder: you're doing a good enough job. Pat yourself on the back. Extra cat-themed reminder from the brilliant Sophie Lucido Johnson:

² A useful idiom, particularly because it's a trinomial, but also, Google informs me, an American jazz rock group? The things you learn every day...

³ I was lucky enough to attend a lecture of his a few years ago at Nottingham, where he worked, and was delighted to learn that he was also a lovely guy. Isn't it nice when you meet a renowned person (he has a whole Wikipedia page!) and they're also genuinely lovely?

⁴ It's a good thing that a) I don't frequent pubs as much as I used to in my youth and b) interactions with bar staff are fairly short to begin with, because whenever you think you've mastered English, trying to place an order at the bar in a loud pub (because the vast majority of pubs take orders at the bar both for food and for drinks) will humble you.

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: who's in the mood for a book whose length is 100% justified by its quality and by the amount of ground it has to cover? My latest read is Jane Fonda's My life so far. In this autobiography, you'll get a bit of everything - from a childhood in the shadow of a VIP dad, to the anti-Vietnam war activism, life in France, workout videos, stellar acting career and affairs of the heart: you can call Jane Fonda many things, but dull is not one of them, and this book does it all justice.

Speaking of which, and of my quest to read at least one book per month:

✨Cool things I heard this week

My students asked me something this week that I had just learned in one of your courses. That was so cool that I could give them the answer they wanted!

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