5 ways to reinspire your students after the summer holidays

Joanna Wiseman
A class of students sat at desks in a classroom looking at their teacher stood at the front

The new academic year is here and we're getting ready to head back to the English classroom. Yet, after a long and relaxing summer holiday, some students may feel unmotivated to return to the same class routine, especially if they have been learning English for several years. So, how can we reinspire students to keep learning and reconnect with English? By bringing in new resources, learning approaches and targets, we are sure you'll be able to rekindle their love of learning.

So let's look at five ways to reinspire your English students in the coming academic year.

1. Set new goals

Students may lose interest in classes or feel discouraged when they don't have a clear target to work towards. If this is the case with your class, have them write up a list of five new goals they'd like to achieve.

These goals must be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. So rather than just saying "I'd like to learn more vocabulary", have students make it SMART.

For example:

Specific: "I'd like to learn new advanced vocabulary to use in my writing."

Measurable: "I'll test myself to see if I can define and use 20 new words in sentences."

Achievable: "I will dedicate 2 hours a week to studying the definitions and writing example sentences in context."

Relevant: "This will help me get a good score in myas I struggle with formal academic language."

Timely: "I will learn 20 new words by the end of September."

If learners find it difficult to think of goals, ask them to write one for each language skill: listening, reading, writing and speaking. You can also refer to the GSE Teacher Toolkit, which has hundreds of learning objectives organized by age, level, skill type and more.

The idea is to encourage them to set clear objectives, giving them an exciting new challenge to work towards for the year ahead.

2. Encourage students to find conversation partners

Students may lose interest in improving their English if they've only been studying in a classroom. They may see it as something boring and unrelated to their real lives.

A great way to tackle this is by encouraging them to talk with English speakers outside of class. By doing this, they'll pick up new vocabulary and expressions, giving them more confidencein their language abilities.

Suggest that they attend a language exchange.andaregreat platforms to find regular language exchange events in their local area. While this is suitable for intermediate learners and above, it may be a bit daunting for beginners.

In this case, the appmay be a suitable alternative. Similar to a language exchange, learners can connect with people from around the world. They can choose people with a similar level as them and either write messages, send short audios, or do video calls, depending on their ability and confidence.

Communicating with real people is a fun and encouraging reason for your learners to want to improve.

3. Introduce interesting new vocabulary

Students may become disheartened if they've been learning for years but aren't seeing much progress. A simple and effective way to help them improve their level is by encouraging them toexpand their vocabulary.

They already have to study a lot of vocabulary from their textbooks, so why not give it a more personal twist and ask for suggestions of topics that interest them?

Maybe they are gamers and want to learn how to communicate better with other players around the world. Select vocabulary about styles of games, turn-taking, and strategizing that they could use – they can practice in class and be thrilled to be given homework.

Perhaps some of your students want to study or work abroad. This may be a common topic, but one thing that is not frequently discussed is how to deal with the paperwork of living in another country. For example, getting into more specific language about banking, housing rentals, or setting up wifi will help them feel more confident about their move. Though these things differ between countries, there is a lot of overlapping vocabulary and roleplaying will do wonders to reassure and excite them about their upcoming adventures.

By allowing your students to take control of their learning, their motivation is naturally higher and you too will enjoy finding out specific language about their interests.

4. Work on specific problem areas

Language learners may become frustrated and lose motivation if they continue to make the same mistakes. It may cause them to feel disheartened in their abilities and want to give up, especially for those who aim to sit exams. You can help them level up by identifying specific problem areas and tailoring your classes to work on these.

Tests can help your learners discover their weaknesses and avoid the frustration of sitting and not passing an exam. They'll be able to pinpoint what they need to work on, and you can dedicate your classes to exactly what they need, rather than cover areas they may not have problems with.

For example, if students are experiencing difficulties with reading comprehension, you could try introducing more varied reading materials. Ask them to bring in blog posts, magazines and news articles on topics that they find interesting. Highlight keywords in the text to enhance their understanding of the piece and create comprehension questions similar to the test format they'll take.

By giving a little extra attention to fixing problem areas, learners will soon start to see their progress, encouraging and inspiring them to keep going.

5. Change your class format

Sometimes learners become demotivated simply because they have become too used to the format of the classes. If this is the case, you might want to take a break from the textbook and try more creative language learning methods. For example:

Use interactive games

Suitable for all levels, you can use platforms such asor to test your learners. They offer a new dimension to the class, encouraging students to have fun with the language. Divide them into teams to add an element of competition – there's nothing like a friendly game to excite students!

Set project work

Put your class into small groups and have them work on a project to present to the rest of the group. Choose topics they might cover in their textbooks, such as occupations, travel or cultural traditions. Or even better – let students come up with their own! This activity can be modified to suit all levels and offers a challenge as learners will need to push their language limits.

Hold class debates

More suitable for intermediate learners and above, class debates get everyone talking. You can ask students to brainstorm topics they're interested in. You can offer prompts such as climate change, the advertising of junk food or the impacts of social media. They'll be happy to talk about things that concern them.

Throw in some unexpected activities to bring students' attention back to class and spark their interest in learning again.

Explore more lesson tips in our blog posts

More blogs from app

  • A young woman sat in a library with headphones around her neck reading a book

    Does progress in English slow as you get more advanced?

    By Ian Wood
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    Why does progression seem to slow down as an English learner moves from beginner to more advanced skills?

    The journey of learning English

    When presenting at ELT conferences, I often ask the audience – typically teachers and school administrators – “When you left home today, to start your journey here, did you know where you were going?” The audience invariably responds with a laugh and says yes, of course. I then ask, “Did you know roughly when you would arrive at your destination?” Again the answer is, of course, yes. “But what about your students on their English learning journey? Can they say the same?” At this point, the laughter stops.

    All too often English learners find themselves without a clear picture of the journey they are embarking on and the steps they will need to take to achieve their goals. We all share a fundamental need for orientation, and in a world of mobile phone GPS we take it for granted. Questions such as: Where am I? Where am I going? When will I get there? are answered instantly at the touch of a screen. If you’re driving along a motorway, you get a mileage sign every three miles.

    When they stop appearing regularly we soon feel uneasy. How often do English language learners see mileage signs counting down to their learning goal? Do they even have a specific goal?

    Am I there yet?

    The key thing about GPS is that it’s very precise. You can see your start point, where you are heading and tell, to the mile or kilometer, how long your journey will be. You can also get an estimated time of arrival to the minute. As Mike Mayor mentioned in his post about what it means to be fluent, the same can’t be said for understanding and measuring English proficiency. For several decades, the ELL industry got by with the terms ‘beginner’, ‘elementary’, ‘pre-intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ – even though there was no definition of what they meant, where they started and where they ended.

    The CEFR has become widely accepted as a measure of English proficiency, bringing an element of shared understanding of what it means to be at a particular level in English. However, the wide bands that make up the CEFR can result in a situation where learners start a course of study as B1 and, when they end the course, they are still within the B1 band. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their English skills haven’t improved – they might have developed substantially – but it’s just that the measurement system isn’t granular enough to pick up these improvements in proficiency.

    So here’s the first weakness in our English language GPS and one that’s well on the way to being remedied with the Global Scale of English (GSE). Because the GSE measures proficiency on a 10-90 scale across each of the four skills, students using assessment tools reporting on the GSE are able to see incremental progress in their skills even within a CEFR level. So we have the map for an English language GPS to be able to track location and plot the journey to the end goal.

    ‘The intermediate plateau’

    When it comes to pinpointing how long it’s going to take to reach that goal, we need to factor in the fact that the amount of effort it takes to improve your English increases as you become more proficient. Although the bands in the CEFR are approximately the same width, the law of diminishing returns means that the better your English is to begin with, the harder it is to make further progress – and the harder it is to feel that progress is being made.

    That’s why many an English language-learning journey gets abandoned on the intermediate plateau. With no sense of progression or a tangible, achievable goal on the horizon, the learner can become disoriented and demoralised.

    To draw another travel analogy, when you climb 100 meters up a mountain at 5,000 meters above sea level the effort required is greater than when you climb 100 meters of gentle slope down in the foothills. It’s exactly the same 100 meter distance, it’s just that those hundred 100 meters require progressively more effort the higher up you are, and the steeper the slope. So, how do we keep learners motivated as they pass through the intermediate plateau?

    Education, effort and motivation

    We have a number of tools available to keep learners on track as they start to experience the law of diminishing returns. We can show every bit of progress they are making using tools that capture incremental improvements in ability. We can also provide new content that challenges the learner in a way that’s realistic.

    Setting unrealistic expectations and promising outcomes that aren’t deliverable is hugely demotivating for the learner. It also has a negative impact on teachers – it’s hard to feel job satisfaction when your students are feeling increasingly frustrated by their apparent lack of progress.

    Big data is providing a growing bank of information. In the long term this will deliver a much more precise estimate of effort required to reach higher levels of proficiency, even down to a recommendation of the hours required to go from A to B and how those hours are best invested. That way, learners and teachers alike would be able to see where they are now, where they want to be and a path to get there. It’s a fully functioning English language learning GPS system, if you like.