For those newer people who are still not quite comfortable with asking a story from a story script, this is an attempt at simplifying it. It’s partly taken from TPRS in a Year! –
Although working from a story script may seem complex, it is not. The novice TPRS/CI teacher should simply focus on comprehensible input and personalization to the exclusion of everything else. Circling and SLOW are also keys to the process.
Nothing could be more satisfying to the novice teacher than the knowledge that the story is going to develop naturally with little fuss, that it won’t have to be forced, and that there will be little worry involved in the process. These things will happen if you know that:
1. You are safe because you have a scripted story completely written out in front of you. All you have to do is replace the information provided in the scripted story with your own and let the story build, sentence by sentence. The first sentence in the scripted story becomes the first sentence in your story, with personalized variations. The scripted story sits in front of you like a good friend, waiting in the wings with the next scripted sentence for your story as soon as you are ready for it.
2. You are safe because you know that everything will evolve sentence by sentence and that if you never get past the first sentence, and no story happens, you have done the right thing because the goal is not to finish a story but to fill the class with interesting and meaningful input in the target language and that is all.
3. You are safe because you do not have to think of anything before the class. The details of the story will just emerge in a natural way and all you have to do is watch questions and listen to cute answers from kids and guide things along, following the script and changing the underlined variables as you gather personalized and localized information in the form of cute answers from your classes. Thus, because your discussion with the kids is not pre-fabricated, it is alive. You end up teaching the same vocabulary to all five classes, but each class is different, so you don’t have to bear the burden of teaching the same thing all day.
4. You are safe because you know that you don’t have to do anything but speak in the target language while keeping the focus on your students. You know that if the PQA gets good, you never even need to start the story at all. You know that when you stand an actor up, the PQA has ended and a story has begun.
Here is a visual metaphor that helps me feel safe. At the start of a class I sometimes think of a little TPRS “room” in my mind. The floor is tiled. Each tile, in order starting in the upper left hand corner of my field of vision, has one of the sentences from the story I will be using in my scripted story.
So the story is metaphorically the floor, the foundation, for the work I am trying to do. I go from tile to tile, from sentence to sentence in creating the new story. When I have circled the first sentence of the story enough, I go to the second, adding in the new information provided by the class to replace the underlined variables in the script so that the story changes to reflect each class in a different way. When the second sentence has been fully circled and new variables provided, I go to the third sentence, with no need to get to the end of the story.
Then I look to the wall to my left. It has a bunch of picture frames on it, each with an imagined photo of each of my students in that class. This reminds me to personalize the sentence I am on. Thus, if the story script says, “A boy wants to buy his mother a gift,” it becomes through personalization, “Alex (from French class) wants to buy his dog a car.”
Then I look to the wall to across from me. It has a bunch of circles on it. It reminds me that, although I know the language, my students do not, so circling one sentence many times instead of just a few is a huge motivating factor for them. It gives them the feeling that they can “do this”.
Next, I become aware of the wall to my right. On it is one of those “Slow – Children Playing” signs. “It reminds me to circle the personalized sentences slowly. Whenever I finish the process with one tile (sentence from the story script) I go to the next one.
The story unfolds in a stable way, thanks to my visual metaphor reminding me to circle slowly from sentence to sentence, while always personalizing the variables. Here is a detailed example of how these steps can be applied to the following short scripted story:
There is a short monkey. He’s in Denver. His name is Bucky because of his teeth. Bucky feels like traveling to Paris.
Begin by circling the first sentence until the variables change it into something personalized, then take the second sentence, and so on:
Class, what is there? (suggestions are dog, cat, hippo, clown)
You choose the suggested response “clown” simply because it strikes you as the right one, the one that potentially can generate the most humor and interest.
Class, that’s right! There is a clown!
Heap the praise on the student who came up with that suggestion, then circle the sentence:
Class, is there a monkey or a clown? (clown)
That’s right, class, there is a clown! (ohh!)
Class, is there a monkey? (no)
Correct, class, there is not a monkey. There is a clown! (ohh!)
Class, is there a dog?
Remember that if this is a class that is just beginning its study, and they haven’t yet seen the word “dog”, the teacher must go to the board, write the word down in the target language and in English, pause and point to the new word for five seconds while the new word is absorbed, and only then return to the circling:
That’s right, class, there is not a dog. There is a clown. (ohh!)
Finish up the circling with:
Class, what is there? (a clown)
Then, to finish the sentence, since the scripted story was “There is a short monkey” and you are just circling in a parallel fashion from what is offered in the scripted story, you circle the adjective:
Class, is the clown short? (“Yes” and “no” are offered. You choose “no”.)
Class, the clown is not short! (ohh!)
If a student insists that the clown is short, tell them clearly with a grin on your face that this is your story.
Class, the clown is not short. He is tall! (ohh!)
Class, is the clown short or tall? (tall)
Correct, class, he is tall. (ohh!)
Class, is the clown of medium height? (no)
That’s right, the clown is not of medium height, he is tall. (ohh!)
Notice that you are using vocabulary that has been presented before this class so that there is no difficulty in comprehension, thus propelling the story forward with ease.
Notice also that the circling need not be in some sort of perfect order, in fact it should not be. It should be fluid, not mechanical, responding to the communicative needs of the students. As long as it is comprehensible, all of this input can be circled in any fashion.
Once you feel comfortable that you have created something new but still parallel to the original story script first sentence, you go on to the next sentence, creating the story. Remember to have the original story script in front of you so that when you end a sentence you have the model right there to begin building the next new sentence.
Eventually, the story morphs into something like:
There is a tall clown. He’s in Oz. His name is Face because of his big face. Face feels like traveling to Kansas.
Believe it or not, the above four sentences could require up to one hour of circling to establish. As each sentence, one by one, reflects more and more the personalities of the students who suggest the cute answers, the students’ interest is heightened, and so it is an hour well spent.
Of course, it is possible to create a new story of four sentences in just a few minutes. But why hurry? TPRS is about slow repetitive comprehensible input, and as long as that is occurring, CI is being done and the kids are acquiring the language.
In this example it was not necessary to introduce an actor, because everything developed in a clear fashion, but to ask a student to pretend he was the clown was certainly possible.
This room metaphor may not appeal to all readers, but it has proven very effective for many teachers who are just beginning TPRS. It works to remember the idea of going sentence by sentence while personalizing and circling slowly.
