Question

6 thoughts on “Question”

1. Lori Corgatelli

   January 21, 2018 at 10:54 pm

   I am an eclectic approach teacher, with my backbone of teaching being “old style” TPRS, very old style. I primarily use Blaine Ray’s Look I Can Talk books, and add in a variety of other resources and techniques. Since I only teach part time out of my own home, all the controversies and new methods which require expensive seminars have passed me by. I didn’t realize about the wars going on over target structures! Circling always seemed awkward to me, so now I can put that on the back burner and not feel guilty about it! I still love Blaine Ray and the light of enthusiasm he brought to teachers and students. But I also so appreciate your encouragement to let loose from the plan for the day, and talk in the target language about the kids’ interests. On Friday, part way through a geography activity, we digressed into a 20 minute discussion about why Haiti speaks French, and the history of the Haitian revolution. Mostly done in Spanish, and the students were interested and contributing. I plan to do more Person of the Day type interviews with the kids, and maybe try out Movietalk. But mostly just converse more, and about their lives in particular. Thank you -Lori

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2. Ben Slavic

   January 21, 2018 at 11:22 pm

   Lori said:
   …I still love Blaine Ray and the light of enthusiasm he brought to teachers and students….
   I still love him too Lori. We all should. He consciously set about to make Krashen’s ideas work in a classroom. Consciously, intentionally. But then it became a religion, and a big money product. In March of 2016 I sent Blaine an email asking if he had ever consciously targeted, and he said “Gosh, I never thought about it. I guess not.” I have that email.
   So I had always been non-targeted like Blaine which explained why I never fit in with the TPRS folks, why it was so frustrating. It wasn’t Blaine’s fault, but the army of presenters who followed him and turned it into what it is now.
   I wish I could have been in on that discussion about the history of Haiti, esp. in the light of current political comments. Thank you for this comment.

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3. Lori Corgatelli

   January 22, 2018 at 10:22 am

   I think the targeted structures somehow grew out of Blaine’s “guidewords”. The way I use the guidewords is to provide a memory framework for the story I’m telling, if it’s a pre-written one from Look I Can Talk, so I don’t forget a chunk of what I want to communicate. Then the students also have those phrases/words available for their re-telling, which helps them incorporate the newer vocabulary. But focusing on 3 target structures, and doing the heavy circling that presenters started emphasizing, that didn’t ever resonate with me and I stuck closely to Ray’s original description of TPRS. At least as closely as an eclectic ever does! Picking and choosing what works with my personality type. Many CI techniques are the same way. If a teacher doesn’t feel comfortable with One Word Pictures, and all the class roles to make that successful, so what? Choose something else, but get close to your students, care about them, and help them love the language as well. I can appreciate TPR techniques that Garcia promoted, ways that Ray expanded on that with storytelling, but they have different personalities. If I try to copy them exactly, my whole class will lose authenticity because I am not being myself. Freedom in teaching helps us be our best.

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4. Steven

   January 22, 2018 at 4:24 pm

   “…TPRS has tried for so long to do that, but I don’t do TPRS anymore.” I never considered myself a TPRS teacher. I only attended single day workshops with the the trainers sweating, drinking copious amounts of coffee, pointing to every single HF word and going way too fast. It was uncomfortable. I knew I couldn’t do that. Things changed greatly when you, Ben made the questions sequence. This allowed my to create my own questions to facilitate the communication. With a good management system, it’s NT at its best. We only just started!

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   1. Ben Slavic

      January 22, 2018 at 7:30 pm

      Steven said:
      …I only attended workshops with the the trainers sweating, drinking copious amounts of coffee, pointing to every single HF word and going way too fast….
      I agree. Nervousness was the order of the day. And THANK YOU for pointing out the pacing value of the seven level questioning sequence, how it affects the sense of calm in the instructor. I don’t think people know about those questions much and their grounding effect on everyone in the room. I’m not surprised that you get it, however, since you have been two steps ahead of me for years now.

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5. Udo Wegner

   January 23, 2018 at 12:56 am

   I bought Susan Gross’s DVDs some time ago and was very impressed with her TPRS which certainly worked for her, her having this high-energy, outgoing personality, but felt instantly uncomfortable with the rules for and the amount of circling. I tried this heavy circling in one story and it worked well enough but I just couldn’t bring myself to doing this again bc I was sure that once the novelty faded it would become a stressful strain and bore for me.
   AND THEN THANK GOD I found the PLC and the NT-CI-approach which has set me free. On looking back over the last couple of years I can now see that I had been going more and more NT-CI by some kind of gut feeling although with a bad taste in my mouth: Whenever sth interesting came up I went with it even when it meant that I was the only one using L2 in the classroom. I just hoped that this wouldn’t be known to the parents bc I had no idea how to defend myself for “not teaching”.
   I’m ever so grateful I found you Ben and all you other great guys on this PLC!!!
   Although I haven’t found my way into all your great ideas and suggestions yet, I’m excited again about my last couple of years in teaching.

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