In this article Chris comments on PQA and on a term made by James – BSITL – Bullshit in the Target Language:
When I first heard of “PQA” I took it literally and I asked repetitious, boring “personalized” questions to and about students. If it wasn’t for being mentored by Ben, that’s what I’d still be doing and it would be awful and it would probably be more fun to go back to the textbook. Since I took the leap to looking at it as BSITL, my class is much more lively……….actually, too lively because everybody wants to one-up each other on the creative answers. And since I”ve begun looking at it as BSITL, I actually dislike doing stories now. I’d rather BS the entire period, letting the CI just flow instead of doing a story which is always hit-or-miss. I’m really starting to understand now why so many people are calling this method TCI rather than TPRS. TPRS is just something that fits under the wide TCI umbrella. Teri Wiechart, here in Ohio, always tells people at workshops that they don’t have to do stories………and it’s completely true. I’m at the point where I just don’t like stories right now. Maybe after another workshop or two I’ll change my tune and I”ll be gung ho over stories again but as of right now I’d rather just let the CI flow and see where it goes. I actually really like Ben’s idea of a novel and PQA/BSITL based classroom. In my level one, we’ve been doing a boat load of reading lately. I could do reading everyday for the rest of the year but I know that’s not the best idea as there are some things I have to make sure they can do before they go to level 2. I probably won’t go back to stories in my level 1 class this year though because they can’t handle it. I only have one or two who are kind of behavior “problems” but it’s really just that my level one class is a high school credit class in middle school and it’s basically seen as an “honors class” here so it’s a bunch of serious 4%ers who are too serious for stories.
To get kids to BS, I just tell them that lying is encouraged in Spanish class. That may or may not work in others’ classes depending on the relationships you have with students. Saying that “lying is encouraged” may not be the best word choice for some, but it works for me.
Here is a related article from 2009 on this topic: https://benslavic.com/blog/2009/04/19/zipless-tprs-5/
