Private Classes and TPRS/CI

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2 thoughts on “Private Classes and TPRS/CI”

  1. 1. Kath Burke in Thailand has had success with it as I understand from some posts on this question last fall. We got some good reports from her. The feeling I got was yes we can work one on one with students doing TPRS but I can’t remember the details. I do remember that she had to deal with some kids who were, in a few words, not the easiest to teach. I would like to know how that played out over the year and what Kath’s thoughts on this topic are now.

    2. The question of how often they come to their TPRS/CI sessions is a huge one. Once a week in my opinion is far too little, and in fact the time that most of us in school settings have is also woefully inadequate at 125 hours of realistic time that actually can be devoted to CI in one year. One of Robert’s point in his recent document was this:

    …the time necessary for true mastery far exceeds the time available in the school setting, even in the best of circumstances….

    When people use CI I think it is important that their students understand that they must not be swayed by hyped expectations. Students’ gains will always be completely determined by how much CI they hear or read that is interesting and meaningful to them in class. Our students must hear the language far more than we think for the language to be acquired, for real things to happen. In fact, this is a great point to make with teachers new to CI. Your job is to provide as many minutes as possible of input of the language you teach in the form of listening and reading during the first four years (which is only 500 hours of the tens of thousands needed). The students must be focused in class on the message being communicated and not on the medium for its delivery. So new teachers who in a few months from now are feeling frustrated that their kids aren’t acquiring, just take a stop and think that 20 hours or so is just not going to make much of a dent in the work (when in fact the system that builds languages in the brain needs input like an automobile that burns gas needs it to go down the road) and so these new teachers must relax and stay the course. All they have to do is keep doing input in the form of listening and reading. That’s the whole nine yards, the Whole kit ‘n caboodle, all she wrote. Certainly, going back to the old way of speaking about the language in English fails to take advantage of even those twenty hours, and so in a month or so (20 hours of class time) we will once again be in a situation where in the U.S. very few kids in language classes will be any closer to fluency, and those will be the ones whose teachers bothered to figure out ways to deliver comprehensible input to them, the term TPRS being only one way to do that and a pretty tricky one at that when you start talking about stories without laying down a stronger beginning of the year foundation just seeing how long I can run this sentence along.

    There was an article on this topic of the first 20 hours recently here:

    https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/08/05/the-first-20-hours/

    Starting in with no experience is the way Susan Gross tells people to do it. I would qualify that by saying that the teacher make sure that they are doing TPRS/CI instruction that is consistent with what we know works. Susan also has shared with me her opinion that most (she said 99%) of the teachers who attend workshops go back to their classroom and misrespresent it, some egregiously, resulting in the current skewed body of opinion out there about TPRS right now.

    4. Adults will make a commitment if they buy the concept, if they buy into Krashen’s hypotheses. Others may have a comment on this and the other questions from Maria.

  2. 1. Can I use TPRS/CI in a one-one tutoring situation?
    Yes! I did this last year with a rather unmotivated but cooperative student, and just recently began with a highly motivated, rock star kind of learner. Both were in 7th/8th grade, learning Chinese. (One other difference: the less motivated student had traditional language classes; the other has been in my class for 2 years.)

    2. How often do you think I should recommend they come?
    If all you can get is once a week (like my situation), you might consider supplementing with listening/reading during the week using similar key structures or words, if you can. Ex, I assign Chinesepod.com lessons and FluentU.com videos to my current tutoree. He listens/watches, and they provide practice exercises. Then we meet and that’s where he is really progressing, but there’s some benefit to a few more times hearing/reading.

    3. If I have no prior experience in teaching with TPRS, can I start with it?
    Yes. Personally I think that tutoring provides a nice opportunity to get used to TPRS. I would definitely plan to have bail-outs ready if you need a change of activity. See “Alternatives to Stories” category at right.

    4. Do you think adults will make a commitment? No experience here. Perhaps if you make a package plan (6 sessions then re-evaluate? or something)?

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