Michele has a few questions in this larger email to me. I defer to my colleagues on the question about TPR:
I know that Ben is always revisiting Susie. I have just watched all of the Susie videos in the three-video set. Can you believe that, while my school paid for those, I hadn’t had a chance to watch them ’till now? They’ve been so much watched that the last forty minutes of the first one are worn out, so I missed some, but I got everything else including the Problem with Good.
All I can say is, “Wow.” There was so much there that helped me. I loved the brain picture, and the slow explanation of acquisition. I’ve been mouthing the “acquisition, not learning” idea but now I feel like I understand it. I had found my TPR books and tried an experiment on my adult single student the other day to use TPR to teach her some vocabulary that was going to be in the story we were going to read. I told her I wanted to practice, because I was thinking that maybe I should do TPR for the first few weeks to get in a bunch of vocabulary next year. It didn’t go well. I know that I went too fast, for one thing, and that means I don’t really know whether it would work. But she also said that she was very aware of “learning.” She kept saying, “I have to think,” when usually we just hang out and talk, or so it seems to her. Having just done that to her, I was ripe to hear again that acquisition is effortless.
Does either of you have any opinion on the TPR-from-the-beginning idea? I’ve done TPRS from the first day the last couple of years, and it seems to have been fine–probably I shouldn’t mess with what works, right?!
I also loved Susie’s complete explanation of “nothing motivates like success,” and loved all the demonstrations of how to make that success happen. I’m tempted to make all my newbies required to watch these six hours next fall so that they come prepared to our assessment discussion, which is the first thing that they’ll have, otherwise.
Most of all, I guess I’m amazed that after two years of facilitating discussions about TPRS, hanging out on Ben’s blog and moretprs and yahoo, practicing using TPRS/CI in my classes, two workshops with Katya, one NTPRS, a workshop with Kristy, two WEEKS with Susie, a workshop with Blaine, and separate presentations with Ben, Susie, and Scott, I can still learn so much from watching six hours with Susie. Am I just totally slow? Or is it just hard to truly acquire this?