Like Dorothy, who simply had to click her heels to be home, all we need, all of us, to succeed at TPRS is to quit making it into so much of a mystery, quit trying so hard, quit obsessing about all the steps and procedures involved in comprehension based instruction, and quit insisting on making a simple thing complicated.
Meg once posted on this topic on the TPRS listserve:
…I think something that Blaine said has to been restated and remembered. TPRS is all about repetition and making meaning. If you are in the target language and making meaning, if there is lots of intelligible input going on, if there is interest and excitement in your class, then you’re doing it right. If the thought of doing something new or different stresses you, work on building your skills in what you know. You need to keep yourself at a comfort level. TPRS is a wonderful, exciting way to teach, and it is extremely successful, but don’t let the success be at the cost of a nervous breakdown. Don’t stress over anything other than repetition and making meaning….
My personal view, to restate what I said earlier, is that the absolute bare minimum functional requirements for TPRS/CI to work, and the only ones necessary, are:
- a non-cluttered physical environment
- students who convey a sense of respect in their posture and in their eyes
- a relaxed teacher, one not trying to be a clown or a cheerleader
- silent spaces during which kids can give cute answers
- a teacher who knows how to personalize a classroom, which is so much easier than people have made it out to be when you go truly slowly so that the kids’ personalities can emerge in the slowness of it all, because there is space for that to happen.
I have concluded that the single most detrimental force against good TPRS is unsolicited, ill-timed, and out-of-place comments from children who are too young to understand that and so MUST BE TAUGHT by the teacher to be part of the solution (silence except for the target language) and not part of the problem (their ill-timed comments).