How to Motivate

I don't know why this just sprung to mind but I'm reading now about effective teaching methods and acquisition so maybe that's it, anyway, last summer I taught a six week long winter camp for university students. The students came every day from 9-1 and studied with three different teachers. It was a long and very intensive course but the students were extremely motivated. I was teaching them by getting them to create group projects, for example a news broadcast. It was high energy and a lot of work but they threw themselves into it and seemed to be learning a fair amount into the bargain. Well by the 5th week they were beginning to show signs of exhaustion. I decided to take a day out to do something a little different and light hearted: Swear words!

Their level was quite high, some were nearly fluent and everyone needs to at least know how to effectively use and understand such a salient part of our linguistic repertoire. What I'm saying is that there were genuine pedagogical motives behind the lesson, believe me or not.

I have never seen such a genuinely interested group of students. I have never before nor since seen so many students in one class take notes and ask so many questions. One thing that made them laugh was the fact that my face would turn a bright shade of crimson every time I said a swear word or had to explain the literal meaning to them, which totally led them to ask me more questions.

The best part of the lesson was teaching the flexibility of the "F" word. I handed out a list more than a page long of different situations in which the fascinating word can be used. We talked about the different emotions it conjures up. I showed a video which you no doubt have seen, or if you haven't here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaWCcDlI5s

The class was only one hour in duration but I have never seen a group of students acquire a new grammatical or lexical item quite so fast. As the time was drawing to a close one of the students raised his hand:

Me: Yes?

Jin: Can we fucking go now?

Me ...

Jun: Yeah, I'm bloody hungry

Cain: Absofuckinglutely

Me: Don't you dare bloody swear in your other teachers' classes.

Jun: No fucking way.

I've never been so proud.

EDIT: as an aside, the two students on the left are not aware that their hand gesture is considered extremely insulting to many native English speakers, well they are now but they keep forgetting.