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3 thoughts on “Communication is the Real Standard – 2”
I’ve been doing “invisible” stories for about three months now and I love it! I now truly feel liberated to not having any script and letting the stories go in any direction they may end up. Through our non-targeted stories, I have noticed the following:
-high frequency verbs/nouns repeatedly appear in our stories
-great emergent structures come up anyway (Why force them into a story where they may not naturally fit if the kids would rather have the story go in a different direction?)
-various verb forms come up effortlessly and naturally (1st and 3rd person plural, commands with direct object pronouns attached, etc.) In other words, students get a richer language experience and I literally don’t have to plan a thing.
Furthermore, I used to spend at least 5-6 classes on one story and/or targets (and each of my classes are 84 minutes) because I tried to give all my students enough time to acquire the “target structures”. Now, I do not have to worry about it. We spend about 3-4 classes per story and sometimes less. I feared that students would get bored with the predictability of creating a story one class, reading the story the second class and then doing some review, game or activity the following class just to start the process all over again. However, I find that students are very content. As Ben had told me before, the students are not bored because the content is always new and compelling.
I would never go back to standard TPRS. This way of teaching is so much more relaxing for both my students and I. We just hang out in the language, laugh, and tell stories.
It’s really awesome, isn’t it?
Keri has street credentials bc she really did try so hard for many years at TPRS. She’s been in our group for about ten years, and she never minced words when it came to expressing her frustrations w TPRS, so it is really nice to see her happy now. I went to Connecticut a year ago and now she’s got a good strong group going there. So many new little pockets of NTCI all over the place.