TPR-S is a method of teaching a second language that has evolved quite a bit in the last three decades but has proven to improve student fluency and raise test scores of all students by one standard deviation (that is 36%!!!) and is just much more fun than laboring and belaboring grammar and vocabulary lists. The main goal is to get as much comprehensible input in the time that you have in a class as possible. The teacher "asks" a story. This involves the teacher asking a lot of questions, some of which allow students to determine details and direction of the story. The rest if just to review the story and check for understanding and to put add humor. The key is to incorporate tons, tons and tons of repetition. Did I say repetition? Ways of keeping these repetitions interesting enough for the students are to use props, pictures, content that is about the students themselves and student actors.
Problems that I have had with using TPR-S: student not staying in Spanish, boredom (the death knell to all learning!), lots of work for me with little apparent return, department head not on board, difficulty adapting the method to the brand new text book.
At this workshop the necessity of going slow was emphasized. To bring this need into clarity a new language was taught, using this method, and I now know some German! (Es gab ein madchen. Das madchen heist Heidi. Heidi ist eine gutes madchen. Heidi mochte ein grosse kuh. Heidi geht zu Dingdong, TX. In Dingdong Tx es gab ein man. Der man ist Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt hatte drei kuh...All this a week later in two minutes and no previous German!) As I learned this German (one hour by the way) I realized how very slow Blaine was going and how fast it seemed to me.
Another point that was made clear was HOW to maximize repetitions! Frankly getting in 50-125 (range required to convert into long-term memory) repetitions of one word or structure without adding new material is difficult! There are ways to do it. First, after you ask the question, always restate the answer after the students have answered. Second, add another detail (when, where, how and/or why). Third, add in more characters if I have run out of ways to ask, state or reiterate a structure.
A further modification that has proven to get good results is to always, always use student actors and when using student actors: ask the actor the questions so that the change in perspective is demonstrated. A change in tense can also be used. The key is to
Another thing that became glaringly obvious to me is that the teacher is to be 100% in control of the story, class, content and atmosphere; My initial impression of the TPR-S method was that it was very relaxed. Upon further observation, I noticed how very strict the teacher actually was about how everything went, what was said and how it was said. Everyone had fun and was engaged but the atmosphere was very much under his control.
The benefits of TPR-S method are: less paper work, you get more grammar and students will be more fluent.
In one week of TPR-S the first day of the story should be all background, all kinds of details. The second day should be action but first review and add in details that "you forgot" to say yesterday. Again, as many repetitions as possible! As many repetitions as possible!!! You must go very, very slowly. Third day, read! The process will be similar to the story asking. Do rewrites, retells, draw the stories. Timed writes and relaxed writes are next. Quizzes should be as brief and focus on comprehension.
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