FInd out about the Oxford Reading Club, a digital library of over 1,000 graded readers that will allow your students to read anywhere, anytime, and help teachers to track the reading progress of their students easily.

Many university instructors of low-level English students carry the burden of teaching lethargic, unmotivated classes - a burden increased by online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research into student motivation can ease the burden, but understanding and applying that research to actual classroom learning is challenging and time-consuming. As stated by Self Determination Theory, students who feel a sense of improvement and achievement within their learning over time are expected to be more motivated to put effort into their work. This presentation will show how a 5-part SMART checklist (not to be confused with SMART goals) created by the presenters can be used to better clarify the efforts that students are expected to make within classes by defining the language use which will be assessed, as well as how their performance will be measured. A full explanation of the SMART checklist acronym will be given by the presenters and examples of how it can be applied to help English communication courses shown. Furthermore, a simple formative assessment sheet, which aligns with the checklist to help students identify their strong and weak areas, will be presented as a practical way for teachers to help students improve their performance autonomously over time.