An ESL teacher asked me several questions about TPRS, and I forwarded the questions to a couple of group members. After commenting, Robert received the following “comprehension check” and shares his comments to it below (in italics):
Your response was helpful – thanks for taking the time. I’d like to check my understanding, if you don’t mind: TPRS is a specific method designed for an ideal classroom of around 20-25 beginning students who share the same L1. The teacher employs stories, personalization, and frequent repetition of the target structures to teach the students. Grammar instruction comes in brief, not very frequent ‘bites’. The students are engaged with the teacher at all times and employ agreed upon negative/affirmative sounds to signify their comprehension of what is being said by the teacher. Have I missed much in this outline?
Where situations differ from the above it will be up to the teacher to creatively modify the basic approach and methods…
Now, I just have to decide whether learning this approach and the methodology and then coming up with modifications is worth the effort. Any thoughts? I must admit to a little caution given that not many others seem to be using the method outside of the ideal classroom.
Below is Robert’s reply:
I would say your basic understanding is correct, but some of your conclusions are a little off.
First of all, there is no such thing as an ideal classroom. I use the method with classes of 40+. That is far from ideal, especially in a school setting. I deal with students who are unmotivated, who are in the class only because they need a language for college, whose parents told them they had to be there, whose friends are in the class, and who are there for reasons that have nothing to do with genuinely wanting to learn the language. Nonetheless, I use TPRS for a significant portion of instruction. The problem is that the classes are so large that I don’t always “catch” students who don’t understand something or who are doing something else. That’s simply an issue of class management, not a problem with the method. Under no circumstances in a public school setting will you ever have students who “are engaged with the teacher at all times”.
I told you the parameters that I thought were optimal or ideal; that isn’t necessarily what the method was “designed for”. I do believe traditional TPRS works best when teacher and students share a language that can be used for comprehension checks and clarification while negotiating meaning, but it is not absolutely necessary. The agreed-upon indicators of understanding or lack thereof do not have to be vocal; you can use signs or gestures as well.
I don’t know what your options are, but I think that some version or adaptation of TPRS is well worth pursuing. However, the most important thing is that students receive comprehensible input. That’s what all the experts say: the single most important element in acquiring a language is comprehensible input.
Full immersion where there are alternatives (e.g. a common language) is problematic because it does not make the most effective use of time available. All too often the teacher is not able to clarify fully for students what is being indicated in the target language. Take, for example, a teacher pointing to his wrist or wristwatch and saying a word or phrase. Is he say this is a watch? Is he saying “The time is . . . .”? Is he indicating “now”? The problem with a grammar-based approach is that students do not have sufficient language to process the meta-cognitive piece effectively. Imagine trying to teach students the attributive, commutative and distributive properties of addition and multiplication before they have learned to count or know how many “ten” is.
As far as adaptation is concerned, I don’t think it is as difficult as you are imagining. The most difficult piece will be Constructing Meaning at the outset. How do you currently get students to understand new vocabulary? That’s the first step in TPRS and can be done in a variety of ways. At the beginning of the school year I make a lot of use of Total Physical Response, in which I give students a lot of vocabulary that we can act out or touch or see without using our common language of English. Once the initial meaning is established, then you can go to personalized questions and answers based on that vocabulary. From there you move to stories based on the first two steps. At this point you actually have a certain advantage if your students don’t all have a common language: it forces you to stay narrow and go deep with the language. For those of us who share a common language, it is very easy to introduce far too much extraneous vocabulary and overload students. In your case, not having an easy “translation aid”, you have to stick with the vocabulary you have already taught them, either in this lesson or in earlier ones. What is more difficult for you is the comprehension check, but as an ESL teacher, I’m sure you have already developed ways of checking for understanding. “Asking stories” and getting repetitions through personalized questions don’t have to make use of a common language as long as you have a means of checking for understanding and don’t use extraneous vocabulary that hasn’t yet been introduced.
I hope that helps clarify things a bit better. Feel free to ask for further comment or clarification.
Robert
