Lesley Scott

Background

About Lesley Scott

My mission in teaching? To juice up that innate curiosity that makes us hungry to learn. To make learning as delicious as possible, I use proven recipe that's insanely popular. Where is this secret sauce to be found? In the world of video games! Game designers are "master chefs" who understand how to tap into people's INTRINSIC MOTIVATION. Being motivated from within makes us feel really engaged when these THREE KEY NEEDS are addressed: 1. COMPETENCE - it's vital that students feel confident about speaking, particularly pronunciation & accuracy 2. AUTONOMY - my course content is now designed around letting them make many meaningful choices 3. RELATEDNESS - encouraging as much meaningful student-to-student interaction as possible These three pillars of intrinsic motivation now determine how I teach anything. Some of my current techniques & GO-TOs: TESTING "TOO SOON": I often pre-teach vocab by having a student explain a new word to another student (RELATEDNESS), and then ask a question using new word. Because the word is new, both learners find using the word challenging. But this technique of testing a student on it before they feel ready, or “too early” has been shown to supersize how much people learn (the work of JEFFREY D. KARPICKE, Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University). Once students form a sentence, we then correct it together until it's perfect. As a result, the learner now has more COMPETENCE - so more INTRINSIC MOTIVATION. SPELLING CROWDPLEASER: I show a phrase which includes a word that is scrambled. Once students guess the scrambled word, they then have to spell it. Whether high level or beginner, they all LOVE doing spelling (COMPETENCE). They also get a kick out of competing with each other (RELATEDNESS) to unscramble and spell the word first. In classes where English proficiency covers a broad range of levels, I've found it's a wonderful crowdpleaser. VIVA LA PECHA KUCHA: The Pecha Kucha is a Powerpoint of 20 slides, each slide lasting for 20 seconds. I scaffold this for students by going first with "20 of my Favorite Things". They love seeing my favorite lunch – a hardcore green smoothie (I’m a health nut), my favorite trilogy (The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu), and me playing the guzheng (a Chinese zither). When they then present their own pecha kuchas (AUTONOMY), they get practice presenting in English (COMPETENCE), and learning more about each other (RELATEDNESS).