TESOL FRANCE - Here I come!

I leave tomorrow morning for Paris on the TGV.  I'm going to present TPRS at the annual TESOL Conference in France.  Tesol means Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

I've decided not to try to do a Power point.  It would probably bug anyway.  I only have an hour, and I doubt that anyone has ever made the momentous decision of entirely changing the way they teach after an hour long talk. All I can do in an hour is spark their curiosity and point them towards online sites that can help them understand what TPRS is all about.

So I'm simply going to talk to the people who come to listen to me.  There are six or seven speakers at the same time, so the competition is going to be stiff.  I'm going to tell them a bit about me and my journey on the TPRS road.  I thought I would assign tasks, as I would in a TPRS class.  Ask someone to sketch scenes from my story, ask someone to count the number of times I say comprehensible input, assign barometers who are to signal when they don't understand.

And then I have this daring idea.  I wanted to demonstrate with my son Daniel.  He teaches Breton and I thought I could coach him through a lesson.  But he can't make it, and everyone present speaks English and French, the only languages I speak fluently.  I know, Carol Gaab learned enough Hebrew from her telephone answering machine to give her first workshop in Hebrew, but I'm not Carol Gaab.  So I'm going to look for someone in the audience who speaks a little known language, maybe even Breton, and coach them through some PQA with "He has".  I told Ben Slavic about my idea and he was too kind to say he thought I was crazy, but he did suggest that I just do it in English.

The problem is that everyone in the room will be an English teacher.  So I'm going to try.  

I've prepared a handout with TPRS sites and also some information about some of the people who practice TPRS in Europe.  There are more than I thought.

Sites to visit:

Blaine Ray – The founder of the movement is still active, giving workshops and mentoring.  He can always be picked out in a crowd.  He’s the guy in a shirt with palm trees and bright blue parrots. http://www.blaineraytprs.com/ 

Stephen Krashen His work on Comprehensible Input is the solid foundation on which TPRS is built. www.sdkrashen.com

Susie Gross was one of the first to understand the importance of Blaine Ray’s techniques. Her “influence on the current massive change in foreign language education in the US cannot be overstated.” http://susangrosstprs.com/

Daily Kos - For an unbiased review of “the Green Bible.”  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/18/1066137/-Book-Review-Fluency-through-TPR-Storytelling

Laurie Clarq – An experienced teacher, workshop presenter and frequent participant in moretprs discussions, Laurie is always able to embrace two sides of an argument by seeing the hearts behind the words. She helped develop the recent innovation in reading called “Embedded Reading” which is explained on her site. http://blog.heartsforteaching.com/

Ben Slavic – My guru – Ben has a way of saying things that resonates with me.  His book TPRS in a Year helped me to see how all the pieces fitted together. His web site has free resources and videos of him in class. For the price of a monthly cup of coffee, it’s possible to participate in his Professional Learning Community.  The books can be downloaded.  http://www.benslavic.com/

The American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages has taken the position that 90% of classroom speech should be in the target language and suggests that TPRS is an effective way to achieve this goal. *http://www.actfl.org/publications/the-language-educator/sample-articles

Karen Rowan manages Fluency Fast, TPRS courses for adults and helps edit The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, which often carries articles by Stephen Krashen and other big names in the TPRS world.  You can find her at www.TPRStories.com or www.fluencyfast.com . You can subscribe to the free online version of IJFLT at www.tprstories.com/ijflt .

Carol Gaab is a spectacular demonstrator when she’s not publishing material for teachers, writing readers for students or traveling to workshops around the world.  www.tprstorytelling.com

Jason Fritz is another early member of the TPRS adventure.  He has taken the Reading in TPRS and made it something exciting which he calls Reading Theater. www.comprehensibleinput.com .  He founded the International Forum on Language Teaching which is at www.iflt.org

Teri Wiechart is one of a group of TPRS teachers who have worked to improve coaching at conferences and in the classroom. You can contact her  to learn more about coaching at profdev@ofla-online.org or twiechart@hotmail.com .

Moretprs This is a yahoo group forum which began early in the millennium with a handful of teachers who were trying TPRS and wanted to exchange ideas.  There are now over 6000 followers and daily digests. Blaine Ray, Susie Gross, Karen Rowan, Stephen Krashen and many other well known names participate regularly in the discussions. Beginners often describe their difficulties and ask for advice. Here is where information is posted concerning workshops and National TPRS Conference.  Go to www.yahoogroups.com and register to follow the discussions. 

TPRS IN EUROPE

Great Britain –  
Keith Rogers – a Latin and Ancient Greek teacher at Rochester Grammar School who uses TPRS and recently organised the first TPRS workshops (given by Blaine Ray) in the UK (see  http://www.smore.com/rk54)  which attracted 24 delegates. Keith has spoken on the principles of TPRS at various gatherings of Classical teachers (ROSA cluster group, Association of Latin Teachers Summer School, Joint Association of Classical Teachers INSET day, local feeder schools gathering, to student teachers on the King’s College teacher training course and at Septimana Latina  (in Latin!)).  He will be giving future talks to the Guildford Association of Classical Teachers and running an introduction to TPRS workshop at the Association of Latin Teachers summer school in 2013.
 
The Netherlands – Alike Last teaches French and does TPRS workshops for teachers.

Kirstin Plante and Iris Maas are both Spanish teachers, and the founders of TPRS Nederland, a teacher training company for TPRS. Kirstin owns a language institute near Amsterdam and teaches uniquely with TPRS. Iris works at a Hotel Management School and uses TPRS wherever and whenever she can. Together they give numerous workshops throughout the Netherlands and Europe, and they run a European webshop for TPRS materials.

General website: www.tprsnederland.com (Dutch)

Shop: www.tprswebshop.com (people in France can order here as well)

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TPRSNederland (English and Dutch)

twitter: Kirstin Plante (English and Dutch)

Spain  - Ignacio Almandoz gives private lessons in English and in Spanish. He says, “After 4 years, I'm still excited about teaching with TPRS and learning through CI.  (I'm currently learning Russian, German, Portuguese and Italian) without studying the grammar or doing exercises in the traditional way. So I'm trying all these techniques and possibilities on myself. It helps me understand much better the teaching and learning process. My own students are making me a better teacher day after day.”  You can contact Ignacio by Skype at blueaspen or by e-mail at lamparamaravillosa@gmail.com.

Germany – Martin Anders teaches at Kaltenkirchen Waldorf School and has been using TPRS for four years.  His site is at 

http://tprs-for-germany.com/blog/?page_id=12 

He says, “I am absolutely convinced that TPRS will be able to improve our teachingmethods, add interest and fun to our lessons and to improve language acquisition which – up to now – is quite mediocre.”  

France Judith Logsdon-Dubois, professeur agrégé. I taught in a French lycée from 1995 to 2012.  Before that I taught English in French-speaking Cameroon.  I first heard of TPRS in 2006; I began using it the following year.  Once I saw how effective it was, I could never go back.  Today I give private lessons and train teachers. I have a poorly organized blog called Mrs. D's Funny Little Classroom -  http://funnylittleclassroom.blogspot.fr  To contact me:  judyldubois@aol.com .

You could have!

You could have is an expression that gives a lot of problems to native French speakers.  They tend to want to translate it literally, Vous pouviez avoir, which means you had the possibility to have ??? And even when they learn to recognize and understand it, they hesitate to use it.

Here is a story I saw on the internet which gives all the repetition that we look for in a TPRS story, the repetition that students need to acquire a structure.  And it's funny, which makes it compelling input.  As soon as I saw it, I mailed it to all of my adult students.

A married couple was traveling by car from Victoria to Prince George .

Being seniors, after almost eleven hours on the road, they were too tired to continue and decided to take a room. But, they only planned to sleep for four hours and then get back on the road.

When they checked out four hours later, the desk clerk handed them a bill for $350.00.

The man exploded and demanded to know why the charge was so high. He told the clerk, "Although it's a nice hotel, the rooms certainly aren't worth $350.00 for four hours." Then the clerk told him that $350.00 was the 'standard rate'.  The man insisted on speaking to the Manager.

The Manager appeared, listened to him, and then explained that the hotel had an Olympic-sized pool and a huge conference center that were available for them to use.

"But we didn't use them," the husband said.

"Well, they are here, and you could have," explained the Manager.

The Manager went on to explain that the couple could also have taken in one of the shows for which the hotel is famous. "We have the best entertainers from New York , Hollywood , and Las Vegas perform here," the Manager said.

"But we didn't go to any of those shows," the husband said.

"Well, we have them, and you could have," the Manager replied.

No matter what amenity the Manager mentioned, the husband replied, "But we didn't use it!"

The Manager was unmoved, and eventually the husband gave up and agreed to pay. As he didn't have his check book, he asked his wife to write the check.

She did and gave it to the Manager.

The Manager was surprised when he looked at the check. "But ma'am, this is made out for only $50.00."

"That's correct. I charged you $300.00 for sleeping with me," she replied.

"But I didn't!" exclaimed the Manager.

"Well, too bad, I was here, and you could have."