TPRS+with+Textbook

=How can we incorporate TPRS with a standard textbook and more culturally relevant material?=

Key issues involved in question:
 * TPRS is an effective method.
 * TPRS supplements provided with textbooks are often irrelevant or not useful in the classroom.
 * TPRS workbooks do not include culturally relevant material to which students can relate.
 * School districts are often driven and paced by the material in the textbook.

__TPRS Purpose & Beliefs__

TPRS is a language teaching method that focuses on language proficiency instead of grammar drills. The purpose of the method is to increase language use and speaking abilities by providing comprehensible input. Vocabulary is selected and repeated through gesturing, pictures, personalized questions and answers, and stories. Words used must stay "in bounds", meaning all students comprehend meaning. You can keep words in bounds by translating or acting out the meaning of unknown words. Followers of the method believe that more frequent use of fewer words though comprehensible input leads to proficiency. By limiting the amount of error correction and providing opportunities for students to hear, use, and speak the language freely, students will feel more comfortable and willing to speak in the Target Language.

__TPRS Pros & Cons__ Pros: Students are provided with authentic examples of language use Comprehensible input provides the basis for lessons Stress on errors is removed and fluent speech is encouraged Focuses more on "communicative competence," which is what potential employers are looking for

Cons: Students are not provided with structure and grammatical explanations Students may speak freely but with errors Vocabulary used in most popular TPRS resources are not relevant to students' lives or culturally informative

__Textbook uses:__

Grammar is clearly explained and conjugation charts are readily available. There is a wide variety of vocabulary and themes. Culture is incorporated into topics.


 * __Should TPRS and Textbook methods remain separated? Is Foreign Language Instruction really so Black and White?__**

We say: NO. Methods can be and should be incorporated. The focus should be what works! If a little of this and a little of that makes your classroom the best learning environment it can be, then that is what should be used.

__**Who are the stakeholders?**__
 * One teacher said, "Just after teaching a grammar lesson in class, I ran into a student in the hall who had left my class an hour earlier. I asked her something in French from the lesson I had just taught. She looked at me and said, 'what?' That was when I decided to switch to TPRS."
 * Besides how teachers feel about the effectiveness of TPRS, the students benefit from a TPRS based lesson because they can hear and read structures and vocab before being asked to repeat and create with the language.
 * According to Dr. Carl Falsgraff from the [|Center for Applied Second Language Studies at the Northwest National Foreign Language Resource Center] and keynote speaker at the Michigan World Language Association's 2007 conference, Colleges and especially potential employers are not looking for people who can conjugate all irregular verbs, but rather those that can understand and be understood from a holistic perspective.

Step 1. Lay out the vocabulary and structures covered in the chapter. Step 2. Once you've got everything you have to work with in front of you, pick one structure to teach for each lesson. Step 3. "A little bit of this, a little bit of that." Step 4. Now that you've got your vocab grouped together, it's time to think of a story. Step 5. Teach it! Keep talking Step 6. The other main component of TPRS is READING. The theory is that just like in English, the more students read in the target language, the better writers they will be. Step 7. Things from the textbook.
 * How do I do create a TPRS based lesson with the vocabulary and structures from the textbook?**
 * In each chapter, there may be 2 or 3 vocabulary groups (such as weather, sports, and clothes) and 2 or 3 structures. (a verb, a verb stucture- verb + infinitive, negation, double object pronouns, etc.)
 * Let's say there's three major structures in the chapter. If you have 3 weeks to teach the lesson, you may want to structure it so that the most difficult structures get more time, but find some way to divide up the time so that you're only focusing on one structure at a time.
 * You may want to break verb conjugations up so that students learn "I do, you do, he does" one week, and "we do, (plural) you do, they do" another week. Remember that the goal is not to fill out a verb paradigm, but to actually use the verb naturally without thinking about it.
 * Begin to pull vocabulary from the "vocab pile" that might go well together and lend itself to an interesting story.
 * The point is not to tell all the sports or all the clothes at once, but to mix them together so that the students do not have to memorize all the clothes or all the weather expressions at once.
 * Let's say in week 1 you're going to teach a few weather expressions, a few sports (using the verb 'to do'), and a few clothes using the verb (to wear) Your story should include all of this.
 * According to Blaine Ray and Contee Seely, authors of [|"Fluency Through TPRS Storytelling,"] a good TPRS story
 * Has a problem that is solved by the end of the story
 * Takes places in 3 different locations (the characters move)
 * Is Bizarre, Exaggerated, and Personal.
 * The theory about a bizarre story is that it helps the students to remember. If a girl in the class is wearing high heels and playing basketball in the snow, that mental image is going to stick with the students.
 * Exaggeration helps to practice numbers, sizes, superlatives, etc. If a character thinks for a moment, why not have him/her think for 2387 1/2 minutes?
 * Keeping the stories personal keeps up student interest. The locations in the stories can be places the students know and the characters people in the class. (On a personal note, I've found that this is the most important characteristic of a good TPRS story...and also where the TPRS books fail. My students have said to me, "Why do I need to care about wolves and shepherds? I want to say that I play basketball after school!" I feel that standard textbooks do a good job of using vocabulary that the students can immediately use to relate to their lives, hence the point of this page.)
 * The students might also like to hear culturally relevant stories. The stories can take place in country where your language is spoken, and the characters can do culturally specific things. I've found that the students are actually very interested in culture.
 * You're going to need a least one mini-story for each group of vocab + structure.
 * You're also going to need a bigger story that incorporates all of the vocabulary and grammar structures. You can use this as your goal. The students should be able to tell this story without help by the end of the chapter.
 * There are many helpful resources that will help with you with the TPRS teaching method. Here is a concise version.
 * Keep talking in the TL. Tell the story over and over again. Ask your students for details. Ask yes or no questions about the story. Ask either/or questions about the story. Ask open ended questions about the story.
 * Some textbooks have readers. You can decide if it would be helpful for the students.
 * You may have to write your own stories for the students to read. Hey, you already wrote stories to tell in class!
 * I've found with reading that it's okay to use some words and structures that the students don't know. They can look them up or ignore them. It's i + 1 (or 2), but never i + 34. Make sure that it's understandable, but enough of a challenge to maintain interest.
 * You may not be able to use all the speaking and writing activities from the textbook right away because you're not teaching in the order the book goes in. You could use them as a synthesis at the end of the chapter when the students will have finally heard, read, and used everything!

With TPRS, you are focusing on the input. When the students hear or read a story, they are getting input. The more input the students get, the easier it will be for them to internalize the vocabulary and structures so that eventually it becomes natural language production.

Remember, you (and the students) want to talk in the language, not about it!

While we do not believe that TPRS is the solution to all of the problems in American world language education, a teacher cannot rely on a textbook alone. As with most other things, we believe that the solution is somewhere in the middle.

__Resources__ Blaine Ray- http://www.blaineraytprs.com/ Blaine Ray and Contee Seely, "Fluency Through TPRS Storytelling. 4th edition." (Referred to by some teachers as The Green Book.) Look, I Can Talk! Series Pobre Ana novels Susan Gross, Carol Gaab, Jason Fritze, Kristy Placido- http://www.tprstorytelling.com/, [|http://www.susangrosstprs.com] TPRS Publishing Cuentame Mas! and its French equivalent, "Raconte-moi encore!" FLTeach: http://www.cortland.edu/flteach/ [|Yahoo discussion forum] specifically designed for teachers who want to adapt their textbook to TPRS.