This is a follow up to a post here a few days ago. It is a lengthy post describing an online interchange between Lizette Liebold, who goes to great pains to represent the position of the Old Guard (preferring to stay with targets) of TPRS, and a response from Tina in defense of the current push toward non-targeted comprehensible input, which is more aligned with Krashen and especially Beniko Mason, and which can take the form of just talking to the kids, doing Story Listening (Beniko has a new book coming out on it) and the Invisibles.
Lizette:
Thanks for your thoughtful and lengthy response, Tina. So I will respond thoughtfully as well. I have not read TPRS The Easy Way. I am willing to review it for my blog-to-be if you or Ben would provide me with a copy. I would also be able to speak more knowledgeably about it in my upcoming workshops. I’m assuming that the system described within is an extension of TPRS. My take is that it implies that TPRS is not easy. I understand that TPRS is a skill and as with any skill it requires training and practice. Am I wrong to conclude that the system described in the book builds on TPRS. I’m hoping that Ben gave credit if not homage to those who guided and supported him throughout his TPRS journey.
?I’m sorry you found circling and using chosen structures? taxing. I’m wondering how much training you had. If you have found added success by adding the Invisibles to your craft good for you! I am not debating the merits of the system. Do you disagree with my statement that, “The Invisibles are a creative way to develop characters” But I’ll stand by what I said, that they are a creative way to create and use personalized characters. Bravo!
But, where would they be without TPRS? TPRS has been earth-shattering. This system seems to have enhanced it.
Tina responds:
Hi Lizette,
How fun to engage in a professional dialogue. It is interesting to hear your perspective. I love discussing this work.
Yes, the book *WAS* called TPRS – The Easy Way (The new title, for the second edition, is called A Natural Approach to Stories – The Invisibles: A Happier Way to Teach). Both titles are actually homages to Dr. Steve Krashen, without whose elegant theory and tireless advocacy we would all be teaching in much less-natural, and less-happy ways indeed.
I am not the only person who finds circling and using pre-selected target language taxing. Because I opened up very quickly to the non-targeted versus targeted language debate, I have had the opportunity to hear from many teachers in workshops, at conferences, on Facebook, and on Ben’s blog, and among my friend group (which are mostly teachers…go figure…I like teachers!) that circling and targeting are difficult. I have herd from many that TPRS is hard to implement. The iFLT conference is even offering a “CI” Track as well as a TPRS track, and states that TPRS represents a “steep learning curve”. Terry Waltz, a staunch proponent of what I would call Classical TPRS, has said many times that TPRS takes a lot of practice and has a large skill set to master, and therefore she asserts that new practitioners need hours and hours of training and coaching, to begin implementing it successfully. I am probably not quoting her exactly, but that is a message I have heard from her over the years.
You inquired about my training. I am only 40 years old, and I had my daughter at the age of 21, so I did not start my teaching journey (aside from a year in AmeriCorps in ESOL teaching in 1999) until 2003 when I worked as a French TA at Portland State University. I took my methods class, the professor gave a short demo of “Comprehensible Input” based on Dr. Krashen’s work, talking about her bike and cycling gear, and I was immediately hooked. I discovered TPRS through TPR which I found by researching ways to provide CI since it just made perfect sense to me. I began using TPR in my college classes and then attended a Blaine Ray workshop with Donna Tatum-Johns in 04 or 05. About five minutes after I sat down in that room, I knew that I wanted to use this method and that I would love it, and that I would one day want to work to spread it to others like Donna was doing. It just “clicked”.
I loved using TPRS, Lizette. Much like Ben, I was a staunch proponent of the method for years, and I consumed everything I could get my hands on. In those days, the internet was not dial-up (that was during my high school days!) but it was much less-stuffed with TPRS and CI websites and such. I felt so lucky to discover this list which I think Donna may have recommended to us in the training, as well as Ben’s blog in 07 or so. It was like a goldmine to me. I used many different materials – Look, I Can Talk, Pauvre Anne (which was one of the only titles…also Fama va à Californie), Raconte-Moi, and I also told stories with targets that I just kind of pulled out of thin air. (As the only middle school language teacher in the district, teaching one or two periods of French a day, I had no curriculum to follow.) In 2008, I attended a BER training with Carol Gaab called “TPRS Beyond the Basics”
I enjoyed TRPS. For years, I adhered very closely to the skills I had learnt in the trainings I did. I thought I was having a great time. I was. I was mostly having a great time. Except on days when I was tired, or the kids were grumpy, or the story fell flat, or I was in a funk, or it was March and the kids were getting antsy. Most of the time, I had an amazing time in class. Except that there was one thing. I remembered all that time that back in 08 or 09 Ben had written about the Realm – an unplanned, unscripted, untargeted medieval world he created with his kids, kind of like a living, breathing soap opera that continued day after day with kids taking on personae for the duration – the Baker, the Town Crier, the Village Idiot. He was even planning on writing a book called TPRS in the Realm! but he didn’t. He said he could not get the Realm to work because the plot was lacking, so I never tried it, but I was always curious…is there really a Pure Land of just being creative with the kids? That thought never left me as I continued to form stories around the targeted language I had been taught to use. Mostly good, solid stories, mostly fun, but there were some duds. And then those tantalizing Home Run Days would pop up, and I would see the potential of TPRS and those bright spots would keep me going, to try again.
But then, Ben shared on his PLC a video of himself telling the story of Pringle Man. If you watch the video,[Link here], it just oozes happiness. I had seen Ben teach on videos before, but this was different. And he was gushing about how happy he was telling these stories with these characters. I tried it that week. And though it was clunky at first (a fight almost broke out over the marital status of the invisible cat Skye, and those kids still sigh when we reminisce about that epic class!) it was really fun. I stuck with it, ended up helping Ben with the writing of the book, and I am now, as I said, much happier in my teaching than I was. In the book I think I said to Ben, “This system has made me go from Super Happy to Be Using TPRS to Incredibly Jazzed About the Stories” or something to that effect.
I have been taking videos every day of my classes [Link here]. This year. But I did not ever take a single video in the old days. I was PETRIFIED. I cannot BELIEVE that I do this now. I only decided to do it in the last minute, on the spur of the moment, like an hour before class, on Day Two of school, as I realized that I was about to embark on a journey this year that few have taken, a commitment to providing all NT CI for the duration. I wanted to document it so bad that I ignored my own trepidation to be on video. And even though I never even wanted to watch mySELF teach, I decided to put them on YouTube. This was hard at first but now it is easy So, sadly, I do not have videos to share of my old lessons. However, I assure you that I was a happy TPRS user who received solid training and implemented the method faithfully. Most of what I do, I implement it very faithfully. The same way with Reading and Writing Workshop which I taught alongside French for nine years.
I am not sure if we paid enough “homage” to TPRS in the book, for your satisfaction. Like every fourth-grade book report ends with, “Read the book and find out!” 😉
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