Elissa asked me to post this great question:
Hello community of TPRSers-
The 7th and 8th grades in my school will be traveling to Costa Rica in May. (Yes, I get to go with them!) And I am feeling stuck trying to figure out how to best prepare them. I’m new to TPRS and have bounced around from LICT to Cuentos Fantasticos to a lot of PQA since I started this job in November. I think I’m getting stuck because I want to be teaching the kids things that will be really useful on their trip – like communicating with their host families, asking directions, shopping, etc… yet in class we end up talking about cats with no eyes or albino lepricons, things which we most likely (hopefully!) won’t encounter in Costa Rica. Has anyone out there designed curriculum/story scripts based on communicating with people while traveling? Or created a list of words phrases for these practical kinds of situations? I realize that as long as there is CI and P I can’t go wrong, but I’d love to be more intentionally teaching them some basic, helpful communication in a way that is TPRS-y. I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. ¡Mil gracias!
Elissa (in Vermont)
[ed. note: Elissa’s question is sure to spur some discussion about TPRS in that it raises a classic point that those who oppose TPRS like to raise, that we talk about crazy stuff like albino lepricons. This argument is bogus, however. We teach kids how to understand the spoken language – nothing is more important for its acquisition. My own answer to the question is that, if we don’t get the travel expressions in a story, which over the years we certainly will, I personally put them in readings, or my kids learn them from other readings or even from the thematic units and CD’s that I use. Plus, I have Bucky Goes to Paris and Bucky Goes to Mexico, which I wrote precisely to target travel expressions – some people use it in the classroom but I don’t. The more CI they hear, the more they will hear and learn how to use the expressions she is asking about. Let’s remember, as Elissa says, that, as long as there is CI and P, we can’t go wrong, and let’s see what y’all come up with. Or we could use the book, where travel expressions, but nothing else, are all laid out as neat as a pin, but separately and thus totally dérisoire (useless) vis-à-vis their actual value in teaching for real acquisition.]