Project based learning, Bill Gates and Speed Lessoning

As I explained, my Friday afternoon class is writing a novel.  We now have four characters, Vincent Team, Johnny Spider, Jackson Sixteen and James Blonde. They are bachelors who live in a large Georgetown mansion.  Their professions are secret agent, FBI undercover agent, bank guard and body guard. We have decided on their ages, their physical descriptions and their personalities.  We also discovered what kind of cars our heroes drive, and the ecologists would be horrified.  When they're not behind the wheel of a Jaguar or a luxury model Landrover, they're on a Bugatti motorcycle. Does such a thing exist?

The next step was to identify the problem that they had to solve.  It appears that Bill Gates disappeared on Friday, the 21st of December, 2012, and every Friday since then an important and influential person has disappeared, every time from a different country.  We began the list of vanished personalities, and for our next lesson the boys will do research to complete the list. They are to bring a short description in English of the missing persons.

I used this class in a "Speed Lessoning" exercise at the TESOL workshop in Toulouse.  My colleagues came up with the idea of preparing a map of the world showing our missing persons, such as you would find in the crime room of a police investigation.  I like the idea and will try it, complete with thumb tacks and strings. We can post notes on the wall as we gather clues.

What is Speed Lessoning?  Paul Scanlan, a charming fellow from New Zealand, put us in groups of three.  Each person was to present the group with a class and the others had 20 minutes to help him prepare a lesson for the class.  After 20 minutes, we helped the second person prepare a lesson for a different class and then on to the third person.  Paul gave us a phrase to use if our partners were going off on a tack that didn't suit us and our teaching style.  "Maybe not this time."  I liked the idea of being able to reject ideas without giving offense.  In an hour my group had three lessons prepared and ready to roll.  One was for university students studying American institutions, another for post baccalaureate students who would be selling farm equipment and the third for my middle school boys. Talk about variety!

It was a very enriching experience. It's true that outsiders can give you a fresh look and perspective on your classes.  This would be an interesting exercise to try in the staff room of a large school.

Project Based Learning and TPRS

There are four boys in my Friday afternoon class.  We began working together last November and they, their parents and I are very pleased with their progress.  We’ve done lots of stories and read stories created by other groups. They are a great group, enthusiastic and confident about their English since their grades have improved in school. But recently I’ve wondered if the stories weren’t becoming a little too much of a routine.  So last Friday I told them that we are going to write a novel.

They were immediately enthused. I explained that each of them would have an avatar (No, you don’t have to be blue…) and we spent the rest of the hour inventing names and descriptions of three of the characters.  There’s James Blond, the secret agent, Jackson Sixteen, a body guard, and my favorite, Vincent Team.  (With a French pronunciation that’s vingt centimes.) Next week we’ll finish the description of the fourth character and decide upon the Problem.  Then every week we’ll create a story of their adventures as they try to solve the Problem.

I foresee that there will be lots of travelling. And that I’m going to ask them to research sites in English about the places we go, so that we can work in some local color. There will be opportunities to talk about history and different cultures.  I’m already excited about seeing them next Friday and it’s only Sunday.

More on TPRS corrections

Two of my adult classes are watching the movie, Shawshank Redemption.  Last week we watched the sequence that showed Brooks, the old prison librarian, being released after fifty years inside the grey stone walls of Shawshank. It's very much a story within a story and after some discussion they were able to retell what happened to Brooks.  Since they seemed moved by Brooks' plight, I asked them to write a summary of the scene and send it to me by email. 

These are highly motivated adults, so I received their summaries several days before our next class.  That gave me time to edit their work.  The most frequent mistakes were with prepositions. And some of them had looked "se pendre" up in the dictionary and found "to hang oneself."  So they stated that "Brooks hanged oneself."

I printed three corrected versions of the summary on my computer and returned them to the students without naming the authors. I asked them to read the three versions and ask any questions they had.  As before, I saw students reading attentively, comparing the different ways of describing the scene and the different vocabulary choices.  There were few questions, but they were pertinent. Someone asked about "Brooks hanged himself" and I explained that "oneself" is used only with the infinitive and is rarely found outside the dictionary. 

No one asked about the prepositions which I had changed.  And I doubt that there is any satisfactory answer to why we get in a car and get on a train.  I believe that prepositions have to be acquired one structure at a time and that these students are not yet ready for an explanation about the difference between dynamic and static prepositions in English. I'm satisfied that they read the correct expressions over several times, so that their subconscious will stock up those repetitions. When they have absorbed enough repetitions, the correct preposition will pop into their mind when needed. I did note a problem with "afraid of" and will begin the next class by asking them what they are afraid of and get in as many repetitions as I can.

I'm also pleased to see that all of the students did the homework with a certain evident pleasure.  They now know that I am not going to embarrass them in front of their friends by giving a lecture on "frequent mistakes".  Those who want to nitpick can compare my edited version with their original and bring their questions to the next class, if they have any.  I find it far more effective to save my explanations for when they formulate a question, rather than giving the explanation first, whether or not they have any questions.  The Dogma people talk about emergeant language.  I believe that emergeant language produces questions and that's the ideal moment to supply the appropriate answers.  Giving answers and explanations that have not been sollicited is like trying to feed a baby bird that has its beak closed.  

With a larger class I would choose three papers, one very basic, one more complex and the best paper of the lot.  Then I would "edit" them so that there are no mistakes and type them up.  Bingo! We now have an embedded reading.  (I understand that this is how Laurie Clarq first started doing embedded reading.)  When you give your students the three edited versions, you tell them that they were written by students in the class but not who.  They'll want to figure it out and you will see them reading closely.  Each time I'm amazed at how attentively students read texts written by their classmates and how willing they are to read the same story three or four times.  I call that compelling comprehensible input.  I answer any questions about structures and vocabulary, smiling like the cat that ate the cream because I know that they're going to retain my answers to their questions.  If there were frequent mistakes that you corrected and no one asks why, it means they're just not seeing them yet.  You may want to target those structures in your next lesson. 

One thing I have learned from horse riding is that it's much more effective to teach a horse how to do something right than to teach it not to do something wrong.  When we point out mistakes we're teaching our students not to do something wrong.  When we give them correct input, we're teaching them to do it right.

A TPRS way to do error correction

Some time ago I woke up and realized that all those red pens had done next to nothing in helping my students "correct" their mistakes.  I had spent hours and hours and hours hunched over the table, painstakingly trying to understand what they were trying to say, conscientiously trying to be sure that I didn't "miss" any misspellings, wrong tenses, wrong word order, etc., etc., etc.  All for nothing beyond giving my students and their parents the impression I was doing my job.  Let's be honest.  How many students actually read your comments and careful explanations?  How many simply look at the grade and toss the paper?  And if there are a few who do try to "learn from their mistakes", do they really benefit from being told how wrong they are?

Krashen says no.  Kohn says no.  There are very serious studies out there that prove that corrections are at best neutral, and often have a negative influence because they raise the affective filter.  And common sense tells us that the best way to produce a stutterer is to correct a baby every time it opens its mouth.  Yet that's what we tend to do to our students.  We destroy their confidence, not to mention their pleasure, by constantly telling them they are wrong.  Although I speak and write French well  enough to have passed the French Agrégation, I still make occasional errors (mainly in gender agreement).  And I will admit that when I am in a serious discussion and someone corrects something I said, it annoys me.  It annoys me because to me it means they are more interested in my grammar than in the subject we were discussing, that to them form is more important than content.

Currently I work with adult students who learned English the traditional way, yet did not acquire it, since they feel the need for lessons and have little confidence in their ability to speak the language.  They want to write texts and be corrected.  I want them to listen and read simple texts in correct English.  I recently found a way to make everyone happy.

We created in class a story about one of the women who went shopping in Paris.  It was based on another of Anne Matava's stories, "Try it on."  At the end of the lesson I suggested that they write up the story at home and send it to me by e-mail.  

To be honest, I didn't expect to get many and thought that I would have one or two on which to base a simple reading for the next class.  Well, they are a motivated group and get along well and communicate with each other, so I actually received six versions of the story from seven students.  I copy- pasted them into a document and corrected the mistakes.  That is, I edited them, so there were no mistakes in the final version.  I also added a little vocabulary for some that I think are ready for more advanced structures.  I printed the six little stories on two sheets of papers without giving the names.  At our next meeting I simply handed out the papers so that everyone had three stories to read.

Now what do we look for in reading material in TPRS?  Compelling input with repetition of our target structures, right?  Well, my students had three versions of the same story to read.  Was it compelling?  Absolutely!  They read to recognize their own story, they read to see what I had changed and they read to see what their friends had written and what was different.

I told them that if they had any questions about the changes I had made, to ask me.  I did not give a lecture on "frequent mistakes".  My reasoning was that if they were not ready to recognize their own mistakes, they had not yet reached i+1, and lectures were wasted breath.  One man asked me about a conditional structure.  It's obviously emergeant for him, and I will include examples of the same structure in our lesson next week. Instead of humiliating them by returning papers heavily marked with red, I gave them a text they could be proud of and share and compare with their friends. My goal was to have them read three versions of the story, but they were so engrossed that they spontaneously exchanged papers and read all six versions. I asked them to write another version for next week by combining the best elements of the three stories they have.  Can you see my Chesire cat smile?  They're going to be reading and rereading the stories once more, and then we'll have another text for next week.  I have no doubt that by then the target structures (try it on - I like it - they don't fit) will be acquired.

Zen and TPRS

Greg is a young teacher who first heard about TPRS last week and has decided to start using it in his classes Monday ... tomorrow.  That's a remarkable decision and a very brave one.  He's got one of the best tutors in the world in Ben Slavic who is guiding him through the transition.  In his case, as Ben says, it's more like a high dive, but he's probably right.  The sooner you shake off your doubts and hesitations and dive right in, the easier it will be.

Greg was worried about lesson plans.  He has 90 minute classes and is used to having them programmed.  Ben pointed out several routines that other TPRS teachers use and which are posted on his site.  I can remember my first training session after having passed the CAPES in France which made of me a "real" language teacher employed by the ministry of Education.  (In the States you train and when you are certified, you look for a job.  In France you get the job first and then they train you.)  We were given a lesson plan template:  

• 5 minutes warm-up 
• ten minutes revision 
• ten minutes presentation of new material 
• 15 minutes application 
• 10 minutes reading a text
• 5 minutes discussion
• 5 minutes summary + trace écrit ( an elegant way of saying copy into your notebooks what is written on the board)

When we were inspected, the inspectors expected to see this basic plan (with a few brilliant innovations if possible).  Our students expected to see it too, since that is how they were used to being taught.  If you didn't follow it, your lessons "were not structured".  Parents and inspectors checked students' notebooks for the trace écrit and used it to judge what was happening in your classroom.  And if you didn't manage to jump all the hoops within the allotted time, you had pacing problems.

When I realized that TPRS allowed me to throw that kind of lesson plan out the window, it was a breath of bracing sea air, tasting of freedom and open spaces.  I now go into classes with little more than three structures in my mind.  

Hears something - is afraid - runs away*  

I start chatting, asking my students if they had a good week, what they did, where they went.  Why it was good or bad.  Then I hush them and ask if they hear anything.  What do they hear?  When they are at home at night, do they hear anything?  These questions in English allow me to work on something/anything/nothing, always a good idea, and to learn a little more about my students.  We're doing PQA according to the plan, but I'm actually just having a relaxed conversation with my students.  Talking about what they hear at night gets us into what they are afraid of.  Spiders and snakes, etc.  I tell them that I've lived in Africa and I'm not afraid of spiders and snakes and rats, etc., but I'm terrified if I see a little mouse.  I run away.  What do they do?

When they seem to have nothing more to say, or I can think of nothing more to ask them, I announce that we are going to "make" a story.  Since they are starting to understand how the game works, they grin and look at each other.  I understand this to mean that they are ready to play, eager to come up with fun ideas.  I ask who the story is going to be about, we spend a little time inventing our hero and learning more about them, then I start asking the questions that build the story.  They make suggestions and I accept or refuse as it suits where I think the story may go.  

If the story becomes complex and we run out of time, we'll continue it next time.  Or not, depending on how interesting it seems.  If there's a resolution and we still have time, I can ask for retells.  Or, as I did yesterday, give them their story as a dictation.  I asked a question, got an answer that starts the story, repeated it and asked them to write it down as a dictation.  Then I wrote it on the board so they could see if they had it right.  We had enough time to go through the entire story, though as we progressed I stopped asking questions, just gave them the next line as a dictation.  They really seemed to enjoy doing this, made very few mistakes and self-corrected almost without any help or explanations from me.  It did allow me to make a few pointers. And we have the story all written down for a reading.

My point, as I explained to Greg, is that in TPRS the important thing is the journey and not where you end up.  As long as you are speaking in the target language and your students are engaged and understanding everything you say, they are acquiring the language.  So it doesn't really matter how far you get with your lesson plan.  What matters is how much they acquired along the way. "The journey matters more than the destination."

* Thanks to Anne Matava for her Story Scripts

Grant Boulanger says .....

Changes are coming in our local language instruction ecosystems. Administrators who are paying attention to what happens in their buildings have become openly concerned about the lack of equity in language education in the United States.

When administrators understand that method is important (it isn’t important in all subject areas) and shifting method (which we can do if we have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset) can increase results, they begin to understand that the goal of comprehension based language teachers is not a personal vendetta against colleagues who do things differently.

Rather, it’s about college readiness for more students by getting more and more people of all shapes and sizes through second year language classes and into the upper levels. It’s about growing, changing and adapting as professional educators to improve what we do for the benefit of our students.

Darcy Pippin, a teacher-leader in Oklahoma, has some amazing statistics as her department has transitioned to comprehension based instruction (TCI – Teaching with Comprehensible Input) over the last six years – going from approximately 15 kids in 4th year and 15 in AP to 30 in each. Besides that, she went from around 30% passing the AP test (that’s about 5 kids of 15) to around 75% passing (that’s about 23 kids of 30). Those are impressive stats.

If we contrast this with existing district statistics where TCI (Teaching with Comprehensible Input) is not used, it’s all the more powerful. What is your district’s retention rate over four years? Retention rate in a traditional public high school, which will be mirrored across the country, will be <10 4="" over="" p="" retention="" years.="">

Those students who make it to upper levels of study will be mostly white, mostly female, nearly all high-achieving students. Does that reflect your district’s student demographic? If not, why not? Does it reflect your district’s dedication to closing the achievement gap? If not, should it? If so, what changes do we need to make?

But these are just statistics. And people are naturally skeptical of statistics, as they should be. It’s only one part. The stories that are being told in schools across the country right now are what people are starting to notice and respond to. It is the stories about comprehension based instruction that will create in other teachers the feeling that they can be a part of this change.

Everyone wants to feel successful and feel like they’re good at what they do. Everyone wants their kids to buy in and feel successful too. So, there’s the special education student who shines in your class and, in fact, outshines many higher-achieving kids.

There’s the social outcast who raises her head, laughs and smiles. There’s the obnoxious kid who gets kicked out of all his other classes but not yours. There’s the high-achieving kid who is writing better by March than many level three kids from grammar-centric classes.

There’s the shy kid who doesn’t say a word, yet scores at Intermediate Low on listening and writes beautifully. What’s the common denominator here? How do we tell these stories to colleagues and administrators?

Then there’s teacher X who, just three years ago was a staunch traditional grammar/book based instructor, honing his explanations and packets for years and who had written off TCI (an umbrella term that includes TPRS) because of an underlying fear of change. It probably sounded more like, “I tried that already and it doesn’t work”.

But, after more encouragement and better understanding of the method, he now says things like, “Wow, my kids are so much more engaged. They’re not resisting me anymore. We have so much more fun and I’m so much happier.”

These are the stories that are now being told in various parts of the country and tipping points are being reached inside many WL departments, one teacher at a time, even as the corporate model applied to education is moving students into a more robotic mode.

Teachers are being evaluated now largely in terms of work accomplished, and kids are increasingly becoming mere robotic memorizers plagued with more work that can reosonably be accomplished in one day. There is less pursuit of happiness and more pursuit of work.

When comprehension based instruction/TCI is used in a classroom, however, the opposite happens, as described in the examples above. The human part of language education, which alone guarantees mastery of the language, is preserved in language classrooms that are based on comprehensible input, and great gains in actual fluency (vs. bogus testing) are the result.

In my district, we’re reaching the tipping point. Working from within the existing structures, we have crafted and presented a TCI-friendly goal statement that will be adopted for the district secondary language classes. It’s only a starting point, but this statement is clearly drawn from our district’s own language around equity and the ACTFL 90% statement published in 2011.

It’s a statement of district intent that is very hard to argue with. The harder part will be putting the goal statement into action. But our district is supportive. They’re implementing Balanced Literacy in language arts and it’s a big shift for a lot of teachers.

So, the district people are saying that they will support our department in the same way, with ongoing training and a transitional period so people don’t feel as if they need to change tomorrow. This is critical. They’re recognizing that change is scary, but that transitioning to a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset, is the first step.

Grant Boulanger is a teacher of Spanish in St. Paul, MN.  

Big News!

There will be a TPRS workshop in Agen, France in August, 2013. As far as I know, this is the first TPRS workshop to be held in France.

I have been able to organize this opportunity for teachers in France with Teri Wiechart, who coaches at NTPRS.  Alike Last from the Netherlands and Lynnette St George from Wheaton Academy near Chicago are in on the adventure too.

When?

August 6^th – August 10^th, 2013

Morning sessions 9:00 am – 12:00 am

Afternoon sessions 2:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Why?

Teachers of English as a foreign language in France or elsewhere will discover TPRS in sessions where they are taught a new language with the method and then they will learn to use it in training sessions with students.

This international workshop is also designed for teachers of French as a foreign language who wish to visit France while improving their teaching skills with TPRS.  Teachers of other languages are welcome. Both beginners and advanced users of the method will benefit from being coached by our experienced staff.

Where?

Agen lies in the Garonne valley in Southwest France at the heart of a rich agricultural area.  You can get to Agen by high speed train (TGV). The trip takes about an hour from either Bordeaux or Toulouse and a little over four hours from Paris.  The site of the workshop is within easy walking distance of the main shopping area, a dozen hotels and the train station. There is a free bus to get around the city center every twelve minutes.

Prices at downtown hotels range from 25 euros to 125 euros a night. You can get a decent meal for 12 euros in numerous excellent restaurants. For more information you can visit the Tourist Office site:   http://www.ot-agen.org/

Who?

Teri Wiechart

Teri Wiechart worked as a French teacher at Delphos Jefferson High School from 1975 to 2010.  Since then she has been working as a consultant to the Ohio Department of Education, working on updating the learning standards for Ohio’s K-12 students and implementing the new standards.

She has been a TPRS/CI trainer since 2001, working as a Presenter and Coach at the National TPRS Conference since 2007.  She has also served as the coaching coordinator at the International Forum for Language Teachers, 2010, 2012, and 2013. Teri has a Masters of the Arts in Teaching and she studied abroad at l’Université de Strasbourg. She is currently President of the Ohio Foreign Language Association.

Lynnette St George

Lynnette St. George grew up in a French-American family in New England in a community infused with multi-cultural influences  from France and Canada. Lynnette holds 2 Masters degrees, an MATL from Nova Southeastern University in Miami in Florida and an MA in French with a specialization in pedagogy and linguistics from L’école française of Middlebury College. She recently adapted the novel Le nouvel Houdini and its teacher's guide for TPRS publishing. Currently, Lynnette is the head of World Languages at Wheaton Academy, a Christian prep high school in the Chicago suburbs. Lynnette is a frequently requested speaker at professional conferences as well as a guest lecturer for University methods classes. 

Alike Last

Alike Last lives in the Netherlands. She is a French teacher and organization psychologist. She introduced TPRS in the Netherlands in 2007 and organized several TPRS workshops for Blaine Ray and Susan Gross in the Netherlands. Alike Last initiated network meetings for Dutch and Belgian TPRS teachers who are interested in TPRS and she is co-founder of a Dutch platform for TPRS. Alike Last bases her French lessons on Multiple Intelligences and she teaches French with TPR and TPRS to adolescents at a Hotel school and in her own language institute she teaches French to adults. Alike Last is also a TPRS-teacher trainer and in 2012 she gave several workshops at the NTPRS in Las Vegas, one with Bryce Hedstrom, called: "The art and genius of going slowly".

Judy Dubois

Judith Logsdon-Dubois began teaching English to French speakers in 1967 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon.  Married to François Dubois, she moved to France in 1984 with their four children.  She began teaching adult learners in 1986 and earned a Masters and then a DEA in English Literature and Civilization from the University of Bordeaux III.  In 1991 she began teaching translation and American literature at the DEPAA, an antenna of the University of Bordeaux for future English teachers.  In1995 she passed the French civil service exam for teachers and obtained the aggrégation in 1997. She taught at the Lycée Jean-Baptiste de Baudre in Agen from 1996 to 2012.  She is a published author and since her retirement has been giving private lessons and travelling around France to talk about TPRS. She has led TPRS workshops in France and in Switzerland.

What?

The workshop program will be centered around experiencing the method, first as a student, learning Dutch from Alike Last in Fluency Fast sessions, then observing experienced teachers work with real students, and finally practicing with the same students while being coached.  There will be sessions on classroom management, Embedded Reading, working with films, Krashen’s underlying theories, and French literature and culture. Considerable time will be spent in debriefing sessions, so that there will be more back and forth communication between the presenters and the participants than can be handled in larger programs.  On Saturday, August 6^th, there will be an optional  trip to Bordeaux with a guided tour of the city.

We will help participants to find lodging if requested, but we cannot advance the cost of booking a hotel.

How Much?

For five days, morning and afternoon sessions, the price is 395 euros. We are deliberately keeping the price much lower than is usual for a five day workshop with such highly qualified presenters in order to encourage European teachers to discover TPRS. We are able to offer this exceptional price only because of the generosity of our workshop presenters who hope to see TPRS develop in Europe as it has in the United States.

Contacts:

We will be glad to answer any questions.  Don’t hesitate to contact Judith Logsdon-Dubois by e-mail: judyldubois@aol.com  

Special early bird price : 295 euros

The Hungry Cowboy

This is the second story which I use to introduce the vocabulary which my students need to understand a song. I give the students more liberty with this story than I did when I presented Michael Jackson, the blind grey bat.  They decide on the cowboy's name, how many children and grandchildren he has and where he goes.  We do the arithmetic of figuring out how many mouths to feed he has on the board, practicing our numbers.  In almost every TPRS story you ask how many there are, in order to work in the use of numbers as often as possible.  When students do arithmetic regularly, instead of in a specific unit, they retain the numbers better and no longer flinch when they have to say anything larger than twenty. This story is fun to act out and the entire class can play the "angry crowd".  Have you guessed what song we are going to listen to?

The Hungry Cowboy

Mark was a cowboy. He lived in Kansas City. He had thirteen children and 26 grandchildren. He had 39 mouths to feed. He had no money and no job. His children and his grandchildren were very hungry. They were cold because they didn't have jackets.  They had runny noses. Mark decided to break away. 

 He went to Chicago. He wanted to buy 39 hamburgers, but he didn't have enough money. He asked Bill Gates to give him 152 dollars, but Bill Gates didn't understand. He looked the other way. 

Mark roamed the West. He got to Phoenix, Arizona. In desperation, he stole a horse with three legs. He went into a bank with a gun. He stole 318 dollars, but he didn't get far, because the horse had only three legs. An angry crowd gathered round him. Mark cried.

Michael Jackson the Blind Grey Bat

This is a story that I use to preteach vocabulary which my students need to understand a song that I use often in class.  I'll not give you the title of the song, an old classic, older than Michael Jackson.  Let's see if you can figure it out.  

There was a blind bat.  He wasn't black and he wasn't white.  He was grey.  So his name was Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson, the blind grey bat, lived in Alaska.  He had a big problem.  In Alaska it snows every day and the cold wind blows.  In Alaska there are not a lot of insects.  Bats eat insects.  Michael Jackson, the blind grey bat, was a very hungry bat.

So Michael Jackson, the blind grey bat, decided to break away.  He flew to the ranch of Michael Jackson the singer in California.  

In California it doesn't snow and the wind doesn't blow.  It isn't cold in California.  There are a lot of insects in California.

Michael Jackson, the blind grey bat is no longer hungry.  Now he is a fat blind grey bat.   

*     *     *

This story is easy to circle and you can get in a lot of repetitions.  It's good for weak students or beginners.  It's possible to use the present tense throughout the story if you prefer. I explain to my French students that "blind as a bat" is an expression that corresponds to "myope comme une taupe."  I also point out that any verb followed by "away" is likely to mean partir.  So they are able to grasp the idea that to break away would imply a kind of rupture with the past.  And they often use the French expression se casser to translate it.

New Year's Eve and the Yellow Ferrari

This story was made up by my class of adult beginners.  It's based on Anne Matava's "Who's paying?"

It’s New Year’s Eve.  Gerald and Frank go to Le Tal Toul. They go on foot, slowly.  Gerald wants six bottles of champagne. One bottle costs 46.32 euros.  Six bottles cost 277 euros and ninety-two cents.  Laura asks, “Who’s paying?”  

Gerald says, “I’m not paying!”  

Frank says, “I’m not paying!”  

No one pays.  Laura says, “Get out!”

Gerald and Frank go to Le Ranch in Aiguillon.  They go on foot, very slowly. At Le Ranch Frank orders six bottles of Veuve Cliquot champagne. One bottle costs 125.05 euros.  Six bottles cost seven hundred and fifty euros and thirty cents.  The manager asks, “Who’s paying?”  

“I’m not paying,” says Gerald.  

“I’m not paying,” says Frank. 

No one pays.  The manager says, “Get out!”

Frank and Gerald walk. They go on foot, very very slowly.  Angelina Jolie sees them.  She drives a yellow Ferrari. She stops and smiles at Frank.  She says, “Get in.”

There are only two seats in a Ferrari.  Gerald is in the trunk.

They go to Bordeaux.  They go by car and they go very quickly.  They go to the Grand Théatre.  Gerald orders six bottles of Dom Ruinart Rosé 1996. One bottle costs 204 euros.  Six bottles cost one thousand two hundred and twenty-four euros.  The barman asks, “Who’s paying?” 

Frank says, “I’m not paying.”  

Gerald says, “I’m not paying.”  

“I’m paying,” says Angelina Jolie. 

The champagne is very good.  Happy New Year!

Adults can make stories too.

I have a new group of students, adults who want to improve their English in order to travel.  Some of them are planning a trip to Australia.

We often think that TPRS stories are for kids, but adults can have fun with them too.  Here is a story that my new students came up with.  I used Anne Matava's script "The Thirsty Boy".  The original structures were : is thirsty, goes to and I'm sorry. I suspected that my students were already familiar with I'm sorry, so I replaced it with an expression they will certainly hear often when they travel, What would you like to drink?  

There was a very handsome vampire.  His name was Edward and he looked like George Clooney.  He lived in a castle in Scotland near Loch Ness.  Edward was very thirsty.  He wanted to drink.

He took the Eurostar from London to Marmande.  Then he hitchhiked.  Angel was driving from Marmande in her yellow Ferrari and she saw the handsome vampire, so she stopped. 

“Where do you want to go?” she asked.

“I want to go to Aiguillon,” Edward answered.  “I’m very thirsty.”

So Angel drove Edward to Aiguillon and they stopped at the Terrace.

“What would you like to drink?” asked the waitress.

“I’d like some champagne,” said Angel.

“I’d like some blo….. cranberry juice,” said Edward.

The waitress brought a glass of champagne for Angel and a glass of cranberry juice for Edward.  Edward drank and said, “Yuck! This is horrible.”

So Edward and Angel left the Terrace and went to the Bierbel café.  “What would you like to drink?” asked the waiter.

“I’d like a glass of champagne,” said Angel.

“I’d like some ..... tomato juice,” said Edward.

The waiter brought a glass of Buzet for Angel and a glass of tomato juice for Edward.  Edward drank and said, “Yuck!!! This is awful!” 

So Angel and Edward went to the Ranch. “What would you like to drink?” asked the barman.

“I’d like some champagne,” said Angel.  “I’d like some pink champagne,” said Edward.

The waiter brought a big bottle of pink champagne.  Angel drank the whole bottle and Edward was very happy.  He likes champagne-flavored blood.

The End

The Dangers of Forced Output

A lot of teachers who say they are "eclectic" or "communicative" have a quick glance at TPRS and say, oh, that's a lot like what I do.  And they pick up circling or embedded reading and add it as one more tool in their teaching kit.

And there's nothing wrong with that.  That's how I first got into TPRS.  But as I read more about it, followed the discussions on moretprs and went to workshops and listened to speakers at conferences, I realized that TPRS is not just a technique we can pull out of our hats from time to time.  It's a unique approach to language learning, a philosophy, a way of looking at the world that requires honesty.  You either believe that people learn to speak a language through comprehensibile input or you don't.  And once you have become a true believer, there's no turning back.

I read a few articles by Stephen Krashen, but mostly I followed his comments and arguments on the moretprs forum.  He convinced me because everything he said fitted in with my own experience, both as a learner and as a teacher.  I was taught German for nine months by a teacher using something like the Natural Approach.  (I don't remember her ever giving a name to her method.)  I must have acquired something because today, fifty years later, I can still catch the gist of a conversation in German.  I studied French, Spanish, Latin and New Testament Greek with more traditional methods and only became fluent in French through immersion.  My Spanish, Latin and Greek are long gone.

If we accept that comprehensible input is the key to acquiring language, then it follows that we need to give our students as much input as possible, to use the limited time we have with students as efficiently as possible. Asking students to produce language is what Krashen calls weighing the pig, measuring what has been acquired.  And he states quite emphatically that weighing the pig doesn't make it heavier.  In the real world we live in, it is necessary to test students and give them grades, but with as little stress as possible.  Since TPRS is concerned with what has been acquired in the long term memory and not with what the students have memorized the night before a test, it is suggested that tests be unannounced. Or regular little exit quizzes on what has been acquired during the class.

In a perfect world, students receive maximum input in a relaxed setting, listening to stories that amuse them and touch them, and one day the language just "falls out of their mouths".  In an imperfect world an inspector sits in on your class and tells you that you're being too frontal.  That you need to organize debates among your students and have them work on projects.  Teachers who feel the pressure push their students to produce language, to give presentations, to make reports.  Student output looks great in a lesson plan.  I've done this.  And sat there and cringed at the language I heard.  And felt sorry for the shy, tongue-tied student clenching his notes in sweaty hands, never once looking up.

Ben Slavic says, "Output activities should not be done until many hundreds of hours of input have occurred.  That's what the best research we have says."

I would like to make the point that forced student output is almost always incorrect, poor quality language when it is not totally incomprehensible.  Whether or not it is helping the speaker in any way, it is definitely harmful to the other students to listen to it.  When we force output, we oblige the student to try to say things that he has not yet acquired, so he mobilizes his notions of grammar, however vague, and cobbles together sentences that are neither fish nor fowl.  The damage comes when he does this often enough that it begins to sound right.  And he hears his fellow students saying more or less the same thing, so he's convinced that it is right.  Eventually the error is repeated often enough to be acquired. He writes it and his teacher underlines it in red.  His brain remembers it, because it was underlined in red.  The error becomes fossilized, and it will take a major excavation to get rid of it.

The other day I had a discussion with my riding instructor about mistakes that I make when riding.  I know perfectly well what I should be doing, my conscious mind is quite clear about what the correct position should be.  I've been taking lessons for almost ten years and I've read dozens of books. But as soon as I become apprehensive, my subconscious takes over and does what it learned to do when I first started riding.  I was sixteen when a friend of my father's put me on a horse and told me to kick to make her go forward and to pull on the reins to stop her. Until ten years ago that was my one and only riding lesson.  My riding mistakes are fossilized because I wasn't taught correctly at the beginning.  The instructor and I agreed that it's much more difficult to unlearn something than it is to learn it correctly from the start. It takes endless hours of conscious practice to erase the wrong muscle memory.

When we give our students high quality comprehensible input without forcing them to produce, we are giving them a chance to learn the correct forms from the start.  When we force them to produce before they are ready, we are pushing them to make errors that will become fossilized and be extremely difficult to unlearn.

Michael Jordan once said, "You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong all you will become is very good at shooting wrong." I paraphrased this.  "You can practice speaking eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong all you will become is very good at speaking poorly."

Framing students and sentence frames

Until recently most of my private students have been adults.  And almost all the young people I had for lessons were actually studying English for the pleasure, not because they were in difficulty.  One fourteen year old begged his mother for private lessons because "he was bored" at school. His English is already fluent, so doing grammar exercises and memorizing dialogs ......

In addition, I'm now giving lessons at a tutoring center. My new students are kids who are coming to me in hopes of improving their grades.  Several of them have been told by their teacher that their English is catstrophic, that they are two or three years behind.  I can't imagine talking to a student like that.  And after meeting the students, I can assure you that I've see far worse in my career.  Even if I thought a student was far below the expected level, I didn't tell him that.  After all, the purpose of grades is to tell students and parents and the school administration what the student's level is.  Why rub it in by making negative personal comments? I only made suggestions about what he could do to improve and I encouraged him whenever I saw progress.  

The problem with telling students that they are weak and not meeting your expectations is that they may believe you and become convinced that "they're not good at languages".  From then on, there's little you can do to help them progress because you have convinced them that they lack something essential and are beyond help. Of course, the teacher who denigrates her students has an easy out for their lack of improvement.  The students' total ignorance of the fundamentals are the problem and she can not be held responsible for their failure.  This is what I call "framing the students".  We paint a picture of them that is so gloomy that no one can expect us to teach them anything. When worried parents come to plead, you point them to grammar books and lists of irregular verbs, knowing full well that even heroic efforts will make no difference.  Of course, there are private lessons for those who have the means. 

Today I met a girl who told me that although she had decent grades last year, this year, her fifth year of English, she is failing.  Her teacher told her that she's at least two years behind the rest of the class. After talking to her a little, my impression is that her English is about average and she's very shy. Also very willing, since she came to me with two brand new grammar books with exercises that she had just bought at the book store.  I suggested that she could try to return them and get her money back.

I explained that we would be talking more than writing and once she could understand without thinking about what I'm saying and answer without thinking as well, she would have no problem with grammar. She plays volleyball, so I compared it with seeing the ball coming in your direction.  Do you think about how you're going to hit it, or do you just do it? Speaking a language should be the same way. She seemed to grasp what I was trying to say. 

She said her teacher spoke in English almost all the time, but that she didn't understand much of what she said.  I told her that I would be speaking in English, that was my job, but I would try to make it comprehensible.  And her job, her only job, was to let me know when she didn't understand, so I could backtrack, repeat, speak more slowly, reword and translate if necessary.  I explained that we would be talking more than writing and once she could understand without thinking about what I'm saying and answer without thinking as well, she would have no problem with grammar. 

With my new students that I am meeting for the first time I have been using sentence frames, as developed by Robert Harrell on Ben Slavic's PLC. I gave them the sentence frames which are intended for use after the Christmas break.
        I went to....
        I saw ....
        I got* ......
        I ate ...
        I played .....

So I asked my students where they went during the holiday.  Who did they see?  What did they see?  What did they get for Christmas?  What did they eat?  What did they play?   (All the girls played JustDance4 on their Play Station 3. All the boys played Call of Duty. )  I also told them where I had gone, what I had seen, what I had got, etc. Then I asked them to complete the above sentences in writing.  We circled them once more then I asked them to add details, which we also circled.  

The final step was to ask them to answer the questions again, but to lie this time. You should have seen their eyes light up at the idea that they could invent a holiday and use their imagination. I don't think I'm going to have any trouble getting them to buy into TPRS.  

Sentence frames seem a good way to ease students who are used to traditional language teaching into PQA with the questions about their holiday and then into a story as we start to invent things for the fun of it.  I wish I could have taken timed pictures of their faces as we gradually went from "stiff and prepared to suffer" to "puzzled" to "intrigued" to "really?" to "you must be joking!" to a wide grin and shining eyes. And we were speaking in English for more than 95% of the time. Is there any better formula for improvement than speaking in English and having fun?

*Robert used "I received" in German.  For my French students this is a no brainer because "receive" and recevoir are transparent.  I prefer to use "I got" because it's higher frequency in English, and an irregular verb and sounds more natural.