I once asked my teacher Susan Gross what percentage of teachers who claimed to do TPRS really did the method as it is supposed to be done. The answer was a snarky 1%.
We somehow get the false idea that not only do we have to learn the challenging skills of the method, but also now, impossibly, to be a kind of actor whose sole job is to be the “life of the party”, the center of all fun and laughter in the classroom.
This is impossible, because it is impossible to be more self-centered than a teenager. You can never defeat a kid when it comes to a battle of wills to be the center of attention in a classroom. Teenagers are wired to do two things in a classroom:
- be the center of attention, or
- withdraw into a passive observational posture (or alternatively into a passive aggressive one)
This means that the model of a TPRS teacher as the clever and funny one running around the room making kids laugh is a doomed model and must be discarded in favor of a more natural model, one best personified, perhaps, by Blaine Ray.
In this more natural model the teacher allows herself to be whom she wants to be in the classroom, in the game, which is usually just a person who is hanging out, spending time in the target language with her kids. This natural model is almost crucial, given that most teachers have five classes every day. The kids will pay more attention if you hang out with them in the TL and ask them questions and really listen to what they say.
The reader is asked to connect this image of a teacher functioning in a more relaxed, natural way with the students with the idea presented earlier that the students must function with clear eyes, and straight backs, not to mention clear and enforced rules about the use of English.
Unfortunately, TPRS is a subtle method whose effect can be obliterated if there is even a shadow of disrespect in the classroom. It is just more than the teacher can bear, trying to do the method and deal with rude kids both at the same time. It can’t be done.
So the issue of classroom discipline in TPRS must be visited and revisited and talked about all the time. The teacher must function in a near silent classroom, except for the language. Creating such spaces of quiet allows the spotlight to shine where it should shine – on the language and on the kids, as they are given space in which to interject cute answers.
When such spaces are created, the teacher need but ask questions, uncovering their own skill nuggets over time in a natural way, without force. If boredom is written all over such spaces of CI, that is just fine. The boredom will not last long when the kids (think they) are in charge, supplying cute answers. The teacher need but circle along, without trying to be something she is not.