I made it through the last fifteen years doing whatever TPRS is in a kind of cloud. It made me crazy enough to write books about it in order to figure it all out because I learn by writing. I’m starting to see why now. Without Anne Matava’s story scripts, I never would have made it. That is not an idle comment. So recently, in my effort to try to understand my recent coming out of the closet on nontargeted comprehensible input (finally!), I decided to ask Anne to confirm something we have actually always agreed on, for about ten years now, that she never ever really targeted anything, not in the school sense.
Here is her response to my inquiry:
…I have only skirted around the periphery of the current conversation, but have gleaned enough to want to tell you this about my scripts: the three phrases at the top are not so much “targeted” phrases as “new” phrases for my students. I strive to not throw too much new language at them at once. The scripts help me stay in bounds and the three phrases are not on anybody’s agenda or list, but I give them more as a glossary than anything. And once in a while there is a phrase or two that you can PQA forever. Like “talks too much”….
My conclusion is that Anne’s scripts have always been non-targeted. She only put the three targets up there in compliance with the experts. We don’t need to do that anymore. If she actually targeted stuff, her scripts would suck.