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After five years, 150 episodes and conversations with over 50 experts, the book is finally here. The Motivated Language Classroom: Practical Insights for the Languages Teacher brings together everything we have learned on the podcast. It covers what motivates our students, how languages are acquired, and what it looks like when we put all of it into practice in our classrooms.
Over the next six episodes, I take you inside the book, one part at a time. It’s a kind of abridged audiobook, with excerpts, snippets and my commentary along the way. This week we start at the beginning. I read from the introduction and share the forewords written by two people whose work has shaped my teaching more than anyone else’s: Dr. Bill VanPatten and Dr. Richard Ryan. Listen now to find out why this book exists and who it is for!
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Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
Students are doing some independent writing, or a short turn and talk and you are circulating, listening in, observing and making mental notes that you will feedback to the whole class... but, we inevitably end up forgetting a lot of what we have observed. We provide 'whole class feedback' but it may only be based on 1-2 students and what you can hold in your mind from what you observed as you walked around.
Sound familiar? This is where active observation comes in. This episode builds on what we discussed last week about reducing the transience effect, except this time we focus on us as teachers and ensuring we have reliable data for our feedback to the class. Listen to this episode to find out more now!
Keep in touch and share!
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
Research into the transience effect suggests that learners can struggle when spoken information disappears before they have had time to process and connect it. A student shares an interesting idea, uses a brilliant phrase or makes an important connection - but seconds later the conversation or story has moved on and that contribution has been forgotten.
In this episode, we explore how we can use the teacher's whiteboard as the classroom’s shared memory: capturing key words beside drawings during Story-Listening, spotlighting effective learner language and preserving students’ ideas so that others can see, revisit and build upon them. We also examine how making learner contributions visible can support autonomy, competence and relatedness by showing students that their voices genuinely influence the lesson.
And.. how does this all relate to the fact that students need an abundance of compelling, comprehensible input in order to acquire language naturally and implicitly? Listen to this episode to find out now!
Keep in touch and share!
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
Q&A episode featuring questions sent in directly by listeners: In this on we explore the use of AI and AI made resources in the language classroom, when and how do we start teaching spelling to children, and finally, how can we combat the inevitable forgetting that happens when we acquire language in classrooms. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think:
Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you.
Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Keep in touch and share!
Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom.
I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom.
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook.
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
In this special, extended episode, I am joined by Janet Schneider and Michelle Scott to talk about how they transformed dwindling numbers in their language courses to now, where they have waiting lists and not enough classrooms due to all the student demand for languages. A truly inspirational episode to show us what can be achieved when we are brave enough to change something that often demotivates and destroys competence: the test. Janet and Michelle take us through a step-by-step process about how their large school in Australia changed assessment practices, particularly around speaking, and how this led to a huge increase in student interest, success and motivation for language learning. When the exam changes, everything changes. You don't want to miss this one!
Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you.
Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Keep in touch and share!
Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom.
I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom.
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook.
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
In those first few weeks of the school year, it is easy to just provide the classroom routine once and then assume the students have it nailed. As it begins to slip, we gloss over it and let things slide so that we can get on with our content... but, this often ends up eating into way more class time as you try to fight against that poorly embedded routine as the year progresses. This episode is all about keeping the focus on those "little things", particularly at the start, so that you gain that time back and much more, later in the year. A highly practical episode, with of course some mentions of the evidence and research in this area too.
Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you.
Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Keep in touch and share!
Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom.
I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom.
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook.
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
When we think about autonomy as a driving force of intrinsic motivation, we often conflate it simply with 'providing choice'. According to Self-Determination Theory, however, autonomy is also about self-direction, ownership and value; this psychological need is also satisfied when we understand the rationale and purpose behind an activity... especially ones we may not find in inherently interesting.
This episode explores what providing rationale looks like in the classroom and how important it is to continually do this, right through the year, but even more so in the first few weeks.
Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Keep in touch and share!
Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom.
I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom.
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook.
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
A very special podcast collaboration with Will Marks of The Language Lab Podcast where we discuss motivation, storytelling and assessment in the acquisition-driven classroom.
Thank you to Will for inviting me on his excellent podcast. I highly recommend listening to his other content!
Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Keep in touch and share!
Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom.
I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom.
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook.
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
The first few lessons give us an opportunity to build the foundations for a classroom where students feel connected, capable and have a sense of ownership over their language learning journey.
In this episode, we look at how we can apply the principles of Self-Determination Theory to those crucial first two weeks of the school year. What can we do to develop relatedness? How can we create a sense of belonging? How can we give students meaningful choices and help them feel competent from the very beginning?
This episode explores how we can intentionally create the conditions for motivation to take root and grow right from the start.
Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Keep in touch and share!
Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom.
I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom.
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook.
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
Motivation is repeatedly found in the research to be a key factor in long term success in education. In 2020, I started this podcast with the episode "Motivation: What is it and how does it work?". So, what do the world's leading researchers and voices on motivation and language learning now tell us, about how it works in our classroom over 6 years later?
In this episode, I share what I learned at the International Self-Determination Theory Conference in Geneva in July 2026, where 750 researchers and practitioners from 50 countries came together to explore the science of motivation. Across the different presentations, studies and discussions, one core message kept coming through.
Listen to this episode in full to learn about the latest motivation research and what it tells us about our students, our classrooms and the way we teach languages.
Keep in touch and share!
Enjoying the free content? Support the podcast here:
👉 www.buymeacoffee.com/liamprinter
👉 www.patreon.com/themotivatedclassroom
Don’t forget to subscribe & share with a fellow languages teacher!
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