Pamela had said that her students reacted to Circling with this response: “Do you think we are stupid? We did understand who did what where when and how. Stop asking that question over and over again.” She went on: “Even though I know that they even don’t understand easy texts and cannot produce one single sentence without a mistake. Maybe I’m not the right teacher for TPRS. I don’t know. It doesn’t work for me. On the hand, the class is expected to create a story. On the other hand, I need to prepare a story. That’s a contradiction.”
Tina continues her response to that concern:
In TPRS the way I was taught it, the teacher has a “skeleton” story which is basically a fill-in-the-blanks paragraph-length scenario that will be repeated in three locations, and in the third location it will be solved.
For example, to teach the structures “He wants to stop” and “He is really tired” and “He can’t”, you could prepare something like this (which I made up just now so use it if you want to!):
Location 1: There’s a boy. His name is __. He wants to stop __. He is really tired of __. He is in ___. He can’t stop __ in __. He is (doing the thing he wants to stop)__ in __ with __. But he can’t stop __. He is sad because he is really tired.
Location 2: (Name of boy) really really wants to stop __. He is really tired of __. He goes to ___. He can’t stop __ in __. He is (doing the thing he wants to stop)__ in __ with __. But he can’t stop __. He is sad because he is really tired.
Location 3: He really really REALLY wants to stop __. He is really really really REALLY tired of __. He is in ___. He can’t stop __ in __. He is (doing the thing he wants to stop)__ in __ with __. He goes to sleep while he is (doing the thing he wants to stop). He has stopped. He is happy. And he is not tired. He is asleep!
They are expected to come up with creative answers, but how, when they don’t know the language? Doesn’t make sense to me – at least I don’t understand how this should work for beginners.
Then you stop when you get to the blanks, and ask them for suggestions. They can call them out in the L1 if you share the L1, or they can call out things they know in L2, or you can tell them to use proper nouns like names of people you all know, or places you know. They could also, if you do not share an L1, all quickly sketch their ideas, and hold them up so you can see and select an idea you like. I just thought of that and have never tried it, so that might not work but I do not see why it wouldn’t.
Pamela
