I would like to share something I wrote this back in 2007, when I was still trying to make TPRS work for me:
“When we divorce ourselves from any idea of establishing meaning, defining words, teaching from a word list, keeping up with a high frequency list, connecting our instruction to a chapter book that not all the kids could read, or even of the very idea that we are there to “teach”, then we have arrive at the threshold of a new world, a new experience as teachers.
“We are no longer clever entertainers who worry about how to make a home run story (home runs are boring in baseball – it’s become that kind of sport) so that we can become Teacher of the Year. We are just people talking to other younger people in a spirit of shared meaning and a desire to communicate and uplift each other’s experience of life by means of the vivid experience of imagining things together.
“This new kind of instruction will one day bring a new day of lighthearted discussion, laughter at the expense of none, students who look forward to coming to class because there is no burden on their young shoulders, language flowing like water in whatever direction that is the most natural and the most unforced, language that is free to follow in the direction created in each moment of class.”