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TPRS in ESL/Multilanguage Classrooms
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6 thoughts on “TPRS in ESL/Multilanguage Classrooms”
Hello people
I seem to be flaming the blog tonight… sorry. Ah well I’m using TPRS – or having a good stab at using it! For EFL teaching in small groups. Here’s what is working:
– Ben’s crazy questionnaire (with Thai translation – I got my Thai friend to do that) has been working well. Especially after I did an example one with my answers, as a little test – match the picture to the question. Picture of supergirl flying and me claiming this as a superpower, etc. I think you have to show the students how to fill it in by your example. it’s a good icebreaker. If you let them fill it in in L1 when they need to you can get someone to translate it. Means you know what celebs etc they’re into so you can base classes around their frame of reference.
With one teenager I got a silly story going that she is going to be an icecream chef and lady gaga goes to her in a helicopter for her vanilla icecream, etc and that she keeps a dinosaur in her garden.
– the intro cards work great – Miss B and picture of instrument… and the circling questions… am a teacher or a spaceman… then draw a spaceman on the board… the teenage students and adults loved this. It makes the start of the class really easy to understand, gives the students time to get used to your accent and sets the tone for the class being fun. It’s great to give them questions they can easily answer – just one word.
– list of question words, preferably with their translations in L1 – this is brilliant because you point to the correct one and it takes all the pressure off the student. Everything becomes clear.
– giving a quick translation of a word if you know it. I was taught on the CELTA not to do that. But if you know a bit of the student’s 1st language or can have someone in the classroom who does. It relieves the student’s anxiety. And we all learn better when we are relaxed.
– common vocab for stories with translations in L1 – I did this with google translate, checked some myself because I know some and got someone else to check the others. Pointing to the vocab is very useful I found in L1 – the students relax.
– Writing down things after I say them. Pointing to them. Students are very grateful for this.
I think the ideal is to have good photos / images of common words you use – eg the random crazy ones for the either /or questions. Like spaceman etc…
This is all I’ve got to work form me so far. It is a bit different with TEFL. But I think TPRS does challenge your thinking and makes you make more effort to make it really clear and not-stressful for the student.
You seem to be doing naturally what takes us years, in terms of details. Like all circling answers should be only one word, and generally yes/no. So you have a lot of the technique down. If it’s working, you must be doing all those little things that make it work. My only advice is to focus on these three key things:
1. SLOW – go more slowly than you want to. Go painfully slowly.
2. Circle more than you want to.
3. Believe everything you say.
Also, yes it is fine to give quick translations of words but don’t do it too often. Avoid new words. Keep the focus on the one word or structure that you happen to be working on in the moment. They always get less than you think.
When you get to a low spot in the flow of the discussion, just add a new character or a new event and it will crank back up. Keep sending in these kinds of reports from classes.
This is great thank you for being sweet about it – I’m sure I’m making lots of mistakes. Just I console myself with at least I”m going in the right direction, even if it’s a bit wibbly wobbly. Yes the SLOW thing and KEEPING IN THE CIRCLE – I don’t think I”m very good at this. It is a real language teacher knack. I takes such discipline and concentration. For a start, with each new student I teach I don’t know what their circle actually is. Should I be doing a vocab test on them – the lextutor one which assesses the % of words they know in the word frequency bands? eg first 1000, 2nd 1000?
Or should I work out some sort of test of the 132 words on that stories vocab list of Ben’s? Would that be my starting point to estimate how wide the student’s circle is?
Also the language point. I’m not sticking to a particular phrase / language point in a lesson. I need to find out how to do this. I mean how to decide what target language to do with a particular student. I’m assuming this goes up in a graded fashion – ie language points in the order of natural acquisition? I don’t even know what that order is for English. Does Blaine Ray’s book suggest the order in which to teach these and what they are?
I’ve been thinking to buy one or more of his books – the look I’m talking / still talking or ministories… presumably I won’t be teaching many at a true level 3 so the Thai “intermediates” will really be level 2s…
Ah choices choices. Thank you again for allowing me into this community of visionaries;)
…would that be my starting point to estimate how wide the student’s circle is?…
If they have never been in a comprehension based classroom before and thus have never heard the language spoken while they simply focused on meaning (this process is called acquisition), then their vocabulary is next to zero, no matter how many years they have been studying. Whgy is their vocabulary zero? Because if they know a word but can’t understand it as part of a sentence it doesn’t count.
So your starting point with them is zero. No need to test or analyze. That is something that teachers do. We, having given up the teacher moniker bc there is so little respect left in the term, just talk to them. We talk/ask stories. We are co-creators of language with our students, that’s all. Teachers have failed. It’s over for them. They blew it. Time for a radical new change.
By the way, I’m not sure we are on the same page re: the term a wide circle – the term refers to the order of questioning we use when doing a comprehension based class. When I say don’t go too wide in circling I mean to stay with the structures you have targeted for that lesson. It is described elsewhere on this site or in my books.
Make sure you understand circling – it is square one on the board. I know, lots of confusing terms, but you have learned more in the past few days then most CI teachers learn in months. Your intent is true. It is going to be wonderful. Promise!
The best way to decide which grammar points your students need is to have a short conversation with them and pick up the mistakes that make you wince. Those are the ones you need to work on first and the ones you’ll get the most mileage out of. There can be no list or order to teach, because the needs vary widely with each native language. My students are native French speakers and I found that something that I needed to work on with every class was “tell someone to … / want someone to …. It seems so simple, but the French want to put a subjunctive in there and invent all kinds of strange structures. And it can vary from student to student. I have an adult student whose English is not too bad, but she still confuses his/her. Look for basic mistakes that have been “learned” but not acquired. Since your students are not beginners you need to recognize their most glaring errors and work on those first. Free writes are very helpful to let you see what mistakes crop up over and over again. Those are the structures that your students need to be hearing.
…there can be no list or order to teach, because the needs vary widely with each native language….
Another reason that there can be no list or order to teach is that Krashen has shown us that no matter what aspect of grammar is presented in a book or in some structured program in an analytical/conscious way, the brain will not accept the information in that order. So an internet search on his Order of Acquisition hypothesis and you will see that the deeper mind, where actual real grammar (real grammar I define as properly spoken speech) occurs, will accept and reject and parse and acquire language structures in its own way and at its own rate no matter what the book’s order is or when the teacher presents it. The brain is wired to accept what it wants when it wants and it will do that no matter what is presented in class. It needs to hear the language to learn the grammar. It is an unconscious process and we can’t control it. This is a good thing bc it means you can relax and just enjoy speaking with your kids in ways that are honoring and uplfiting and easy for them to understand (easier said than done). then you will see some things about this work that are very happy things, things that will make you realize the human potential in language teaching, so that you can have a rich and rewarding career.