Chaz Pugliese is an author and trainer working of Paris, France. Currently Director of Education and Teacher Training at Pilgrims, Chaz has over 30 years experience in the field of Foreign Language Teaching, has trained teachers in 35 countries, and has been a featured speaker at all major ELT events. In 2018, Chaz, founded, with Alan Maley, the Creativity Group. His publications include: ‘Being Creative’ (Delta), ‘Principled Communicative Teaching’ (with Z. Dörnyei and J. Arnold, Helbling)) and ‘Creating Motivation Helping)’. His interests include: Psychology, Creativity, Motivation and SEL. Chaz loves playing tennis and playing jazz on his beloved Gibson guitar.

Motivation (‘why we do what we do’), is closely related to and hugely impacted by our emotions: when we’re experiencing positive (pleasant) emotions we feel energized and more motivated to do the task at hand. If we want our students to stay motivated and thrive, we need to make sure they’re in an environment that is psychologically safe and is conducive to pleasant emotions. In this session we will first look at the importance of paying attention to the group processes and the quality of the interpersonal relationships within the group. We will then consider a few strategies to help the students sharpen their focus and tune into the lesson. We will conclude by arguing that getting the students to pay attention to their emotional state can help them sustain their motivation.

Attention is scarce these days, we all know it. So, how do we get our students to focus? Can we motivate anyone to do anything for us? Probably not, but creative ideas can have an impact on our students’ depth of engagement. Ideas that are novel generate surprise, which captures the students’ attention, triggering their curiosity and leading them to excitement. But just what is creativity, how do I fashion surprises that are pedagogically effective, and what else can a teacher do to create a motivating environment? In this session, we will deal with these questions and we will also look at the role pleasant emotions have in the learning process, and how they impact focus, memory and retention.