I’m not sure but I think this got lost in the queue. I think I got it from a group member in March. To that group member I apologize, bc the question needed to be answered by last April. Oops. Anyway:
Hi Ben,
In my Seminar in Research and Theory in FL Education grad class my professor would like me to do a mini-workshop in TPRS in April. I’m probably the only person within a 30 mile radius that is into TPRS so I guess that makes me the most knowledgeable person around. I’ll have about 2 and a half hours. What exactly should I do and cover? How should I structure this? It’s my chance to sell TPRS to about 9 FL teachers.
My response:
I’m putting this out to the blog group. You can get more than one opinion. You have to be very careful. It is very likely that most of your audience already knows about TPRS and Krashen and have either rejected it or scrapped it because they don’t want to go that route, being largely 4%ers.
I wish I had a nickel for every Chesire Cat face I have encountered in presenting in different places about TPRS. They smile at me but whisper to the person next to them how stupid the method is because they have decided that it is. Do you want that pressure as a teacher new to this stuff on your back for the next three months? I wouldn’t.
So what to do? The first question you must answer is,”Do I feel enough confidence and do I have enough experience to demo the stuff that we do? If the answer to that is yes, then the next question is, “Can I pull off a presentation?” Personally, I find presenting to be nerve wracking, precisely bc the expresssions on the faces of most attendees are so uninviting, like we have to convince them about something.
So, one thing is to know your audience. Who are these people? For example, presenting in Maine, with their 70 teachers who have drunk the Kool Aid, is just plain fun. For years, Skip Crosby has tilled the soil along with Alice Yates and Anne Matava, and they are great.
But there are few states like Maine. So that factors in. I’ll just throw this out to the group. Let’s see what they say.