I have been around TPRS long enough now to find myself often wondering why many of those pure academics at the college level can’t make the jump into this heart-based method. The best answer may be somewhere in the question!

But, luckily – and Susan Gross has drilled this point home with me over and over – I don’t think about stuff I can’t change, and I don’t seek others’ approval. I just enjoy the method and the kids!

Susie is so right. Thanks to her, I was able to break an addiction to seeking approval via national language contest results, and another addiction to wanting to criticize those who don’t do TPRS.

Ultimately, whoever came up with this stuff (if it wasn’t Blaine it would have been someone else), the world is a better place for it. There are a heck of a lot more happy language students who stick with their studies over years, with engaged hearts driving their engaged minds. What else counts but that? Thanks for that neat insight!

Ben

My wife, a native Spanish speaker, also pointed out that none of the innovators appear to be native speakers of the languages they teach. That might simply be a reflection of the large percentage of language teachers who are not themselves native speakers but it certainly belies the notion that being a native speakers confers some special advantage for the teacher.

I am just a wannabe pioneer lucky to have been a student of a true pioneer, Susan Gross. For my part, the method is more like a Thing that has a life of its own, morphing every day in my classroom, and i am this kind of pawn, trying to follow where it is going next. When such a thing as that happens in one’s teaching, it certainly describes real, not false, paradigm activity in education. Certainly I am personally in awe of this Thing. I can’t stop thinking about it, it seems, ever.

The Realm has forced me lately into a kind of abeyance, a kind of “Hey, Ben, go learn how to do regular stories better before you get into the Realm.” If TPRS is a Thing then the Realm is a Big Thing. Blaine told me it is not something he would do. Many have said that. But then there are serious road warriors like Regina Oliver in Tuscon – she has an entire castle set up in her classroom, and a bunch of Realm characters ready to roll every day. So TPRS in the Realm! is, hélas, right now a mere jumble of ideas, and i need to have some quiet time with it, and let it grow, and I should take it off my site as “soon available”. I guess the most honest thing to say here is that I am just beginning to see that the original form of TPRS that Blaine has given us is crystal pure stuff, and the real work lies in diving deeper into how we work with a story, going deeper into the art of it if we feel we have learned the nuts and bolts. The way Blaine designed it, there is no end to the learning that we can experience with it, if we are willing to dive deep, and not just stand on the shore talking about it. Thanks, Mark, for your ideas here. Please stay in touch as the Thing morphs forward each day, in each of our classrooms….

Thanks for that very clear excellent explanation. I’m really very impressed at how you pioneers of this method have continued to develop it and improve it. I can’t imagine that there are very many subject teaching methodologies that are being as actively refined developed as this is.
I’m looking forward to your book on TPRS in the Realm. Do have a link to any sample pages. The last I tried the link on your website it didn’t work.

Mark

Mini-situations and mini-stories, if I understand your use of those terms, used to be called passive pms’s and pms’s, which then became part of a larger chapter story.

The large chapter story, in my view, is long gone as part of TPRS. As far as passive pms and pms, Susan Gross, my teacher, agreed with me about a year ago that those terms are inelegant and confusing. Accordingly, i have chosen, with Susie’s blessing, to describe the process of creating both mini-situations and mini-stories from PQA as merely “extending PQA”.

Extending PQA, in my view, is best done in a free way, and whatever direction the discussion goes is fine with me. Whether the original three structures show up in the class doesn’t matter to me. I am trying to deliver comprehensible language. If my students and I stay in PQA the whole period, fine. If we move right into a little scene, or a bunch of them, fine. If we go from the structures directly into a story, skipping all PQA, that is fine.

Therefore, free discussion, which I define as following the pathway that the discussion naturally follows, is wonderful. Trying to stay too close to the story can and does remove the instructor from the awesome cute answers that the kids are always trying to get into the discussion. When we listen to their cute answers, as Blaine says and as I quoted in the post you are asking about, a natural flow occurs, comprehensible input is occurring, and all is well. When we don’t listen to their cute answers, staying too close to the original story script, the discussion becomes dry.

HOWEVER, I find that staying close to a story script AND listening to their cute answers is best. There is a pull and a push – an encouragement of freedom and a need to be disciplined enough to not leave the original story completely. We try to recreate the story line with new information but keep it parallel to the original script. This is an art form.

Although TPRS may look complex, it is not. The novice TPRS teacher need only learn how to circle, pause and point, go slowly, and focus on CI and personalization to the exclusion of everything else. As long as one is doing CI and personalization in some form, the requirements for doing TPRS are met.

Nothing could be more important to the novice teacher than a feeling of being on safe ground at the beginning of a storytelling class. Nothing could be more satisfying to the novice teacher than the knowledge that the story is going to develop naturally with little fuss, that it won’t have to be forced, that they can pull a story with only CI + P, and that there will be little worry involved in preparing for a TPRS class. These things will happen if you know that:

1. you are safe because you know that you don’t have to do all the skills, but only those that appeal to and work for you.
2. you are safe because you know that in signing/gesturing, PQA, and extended PQA you have very powerful tools that will effectively establish meaning, not to mention a sense of fun in the room from the very beginning of class.
3. you are safe because you know that you can spend as much or as little time as you wish doing PQA and/or extending it. You feel confident knowing that you can move away from them into a story at any time.
4. you are safe because you have a scripted story completely written out in front of you. All you have to do is replace the information provided in the scripted story with your own and let the story build, sentence by sentence. The first sentence in the scripted story becomes the first sentence in your story, with personalized variations. The scripted story sits in front of you like a good friend, waiting in the wings with the next scripted sentence for your story as soon as you are ready for it.
5. you are safe because you have nothing to focus on except personalizing each new sentence from the story script in front of you. In one story a single word – “smiles” – was repeated for 45 minutes amidst frequent laughter. Then, when it felt right all I had to do was start the story, letting facts emerge as natural extensions from the scripted story, and so a strange looking dog looked at Elizabeth and smiled, Simon threw a chicken at the dog, etc., and everything evolved sentence by sentence. I did not think of these things before the class. They just emerged as I tried to personalize each new sentence from the scripted story. Thus, because our discussion was not pre-fabricated, it was alive.
6. you are safe because you know that you don’t have to get anywhere during class. You don’t have to stay in or leave PQA/extended PQA at any certain time. You don’t have to do anything but speak in the target language while keeping the focus on your students. At its base, teaching a language is a very simple thing that unfortunately has been made complicated, but now is becoming simple again.

Here is a visual metaphor that helps me feel safe. At the start of a class I sometimes think of a little TPRS “room” in my mind. The floor is tiled. Each tile, in order starting in the upper left hand corner of my field of vision, has one of the sentences from the story I will be using in my scripted story. The story is metaphorically the floor, the foundation, for the work I am trying to do. I go from tile to tile, from sentence to sentence in creating the new story.

Then I look to the wall to my left. It has a bunch of picture frames on it, each with an imagined photo of each of my students in that class. This reminds me to personalize the sentence I am on. Thus, if the story script says, “A boy wants to buy his mother a gift,” it becomes through personalization, “Alex (from French class) wants to buy his dog a car.”

Then I look to the wall to across from me. It has a bunch of circles on it. I start circling the new personalized sentences. I remember to point and pause when I circle. The original story script begins now to take on a life of its own, reflecting the people in the room.

Next, I become aware of the wall to my right. On it is one of those “Slow – Children Playing” signs. It reminds me to circle the personalized sentences slowly. Whenever I finish the process with one tile I go to the next one. The story unfolds in a stable way, thanks to my visual metaphor. Of course, the ceiling is made up of CI, which keeps the lid on the class, so to speak.

Here is a detailed example of how these steps can be applied to the following scripted story:

There is a short monkey. He’s in Denver. His name is Bucky because of his teeth. Bucky feels like traveling to Paris.

Begin by circling the first sentence until it changes into something personalized, then take the second sentence, and so on:

Class, what is there? (suggestions are dog, cat, hippo, clown)

You choose the suggested response “clown” simply because it strikes you as the right one, the one that potentially can generate the most humor and interest.

Class, that’s right! There is a clown!

Heap the praise on the student who came up with that suggestion, then circle the sentence:

Class, is there a monkey or a clown? (clown)
That’s right, class, there is a clown! (ohh!)
Class, is there a monkey? (no)
Correct, class, there is not a monkey. There is a clown! (ohh!)
Class, is there a dog?

Remember that if this is a class that is just beginning its study, and they haven’t yet seen the word “dog”, the teacher must go to the board, write the word down in the target language and in English, pause and point to the new word for five seconds while the new word is absorbed, and only then return to the circling:

That’s right, class, there is not a dog. There is a clown. (ohh!)

Finish up the circling with:

Class, what is there? (a clown)

Then, to finish the sentence, since the scripted story was “There is a short monkey” and you are just circling in a parallel fashion from what is offered in the scripted story, you circle the adjective:

Class, is the clown short?

“Yes” and “no” are offered. You choose “no”.

Class, the clown is not short! (ohh!)

If a student insists that the clown is short, tell them clearly with a grin on your face that this is your story.

Class, the clown is not short. He is tall! (ohh!)
Class, is the clown short or tall? (tall)
Correct, class, he is tall. (ohh!)
Class, is the clown of medium height? (no)
That’s right, the clown is not of medium height, he is tall. (ohh!)

Notice that you are using vocabulary that has been drilled over the course of the previous five steps so that there is no difficulty in comprehension, thus propelling the story forward with ease.

Notice also that the circling need not be in some sort of perfect order, in fact it should not be. It should be fluid, not mechanical, responding to the communicative needs of the students. As long as it is comprehensible, all of this input can be circled in any fashion.

Once you feel comfortable that you have created something new but still parallel to the original story script first sentence, you go on to the next sentence, creating the story. Remember to have the original story script in front of you so that when you end a sentence you have the model right there to begin building the next new sentence.

Eventually, the story morphs into something like:

There is a tall clown. He’s in Oz. His name is Face because of his big face. Face feels like traveling to Kansas.

Believe it or not, the above four sentences could require up to one hour of circling to establish. As each sentence, one by one, reflects more and more the personalities of the students who suggest the cute answers, the students’ interest is heightened, and so it is an hour well spent.

Of course, it is possible to create a new story of four sentences in just a few minutes. But why hurry? TPRS is about slow repetitive comprehensible input, and as long as that is occurring, CI is being done and the kids are acquiring the language.

In this example it was not necessary to introduce an actor, because everything developed in a clear fashion, but to ask a student to pretend he was the clown was certainly possible.

This room metaphor may not appeal to all readers, but it has proven very effective for many teachers just beginning TPRS. It works to remember the idea of going sentence by sentence while personalizing and circling slowly.

Some teachers may wish to construct a visual metaphor in their own minds that is unique to them. Such images can function as stabilizing devices that keep the teacher from going too wide or out of bounds during a story’s creation.

Knowing that your scripted or “guide” story will see you through, you focus on CI and personalization, using circling and SLOW, with no desire to force the story to go anywhere in particular. Use as few or as many skills you are comfortable using, and just have fun with the kids.

Blaine once expressed this idea in this way:

When we teach kids, we glorify their responses. We are so interested in them. We laugh at the cute things they say. We enjoy their humor and have fun with them.

Finally, avoid prescribed ideas, lists of questions, and rules about TPRS. There are no rules! Whether a story gets acted out or not doesn’t matter. Whether the structures for the day are signed or not at the beginning of the class really doesn’t matter. Whether there are three locations doesn’t matter. What matters is:

1. that at some point meaning of structures is established, by whatever means the instructor prefers.
2. that the structures of the day be repeated over and over and over in personalized form.
3. that there be a lot of reading in the target language.

The form that the above takes is completely up to the instructor. As long as there are lots of repetitions, CI, and personalization, with large amounts of SLOW thrown in for garnish, TPRS is being done, and your students will show excellent gains.

One question I have. Do you suggest nesting mini-situations inside mini-stories inside a larger “main story” as Blaine’s earlier materials recommend? Or do you recommend allowing the recycling of vocab and structures to be more free?

Thanks