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

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."

Lilou Wants a Cat

This story was created by two students in a private TPRS lesson.  The goal was to use has, wants, gives.

There is a girl.  Her name is Lilou.  She is tall and she has short blond hair.  She has a big pink dog, but she doesn’t have a cat.  She wants a cat.

She goes to Claire’s. Claire has two cats but her cats are big.  Lilou wants a little baby cat.  Claire  doesn’t give a cat to Lilou.  Lilou is sad.

She goes to Miriam’s.  Miriam has four little baby cats.  She has a black cat, but Lilou doesn’t want a black cat. She has a black and white cat, but Lilou doesn’t want a black and white cat.  She has a brown cat, but Lilou doesn’t want a brown cat.  She has a grey striped cat, but Lilou doesn’t want a grey striped cat. Miriam doesn’t give a cat to Lilou.  Lilou is sad.

Lilou goes to Bordeaux by bus.  She goes to a pet shop.  She sees a little orange cat.  She wants the little orange cat.  She gives 44 euros and 37 cents to the man in the pet shop.  He gives the little orange cat to Lilou.  The man has his money and Lilou has her cat.  Everybody is happy.

The End

How to get students to write ...

When you ask a student to retell a story, it's doable because they've been hearing the structures and words they need over and over again as you asked and circled your way through the story.  Retelling is production or output, but you only do it after tons of input.  Writing works the same way.  They can produce good, coherent writing using correct structures only after they've been reading and done tons of reading.  So I probably wouldn't ask beginners to do much writing at all.  Perhaps simply ask them to write down the story after several have been able to retell it.

When you do ask them to write, have them do it in class and only for a maximum of ten minutes.  There are TPRS people who say five, but it takes my French students five minutes to get their pens out, so I went for ten.  At the end of ten minutes I told them to draw a line and count their words.  I didn't get hysterical if someone finished a sentence.  Their grade was based on the number of words.  My own system, to be adapted, was to do three "fluency writings" in a trimester.  I graded them by giving one point if they wrote something, two points if they wrote more than 50 words and three points if they wrote more than a hundred.  So they could get 9 out of 10 with three grades and most students managed to get 6.  (Students with less than 5 could try to do another one at home.)  I would read through their texts, but I DID NOT correct or underline mistakes. ( By the way, underlining things in red is a big mistake, because invariably they remember what was underlined and repeat the same mistake over and over again.)  I would draw smile faces next to something I liked or found funny or interesting.  That means, I read for content, to learn more about my students and not to give them a grade.  Occasionally, if I found something that was really excellent in content and with very few grammar mistakes, I gave an extra bonus point, so it was possible for a student to have 10/10.  

As students become more autonomous and get into writing in English, you can assign it as homework.  I liked to do it over a two week holiday.  I would ask them to write 10 minutes a day for 10 days.  Then I would collect and grade them over ten.   They could write about anything they wanted.  Retell stories, invent stories, nightmares, etc., but a lot ended up making a kind of journal out of it, and I found those the most interesting because I learned so much about my students through their journals.  But it was always their choice and I told them that the things they wrote didn't have to be true.

Since I taught in lycée, my students had to learn to write long essays to prepare for the bac.  Again, I worked on quantity.  If students get to the point that they can produce a fair amount of text, you will find that the quality rather miraculously follows.  I'm rather proud of the fact that my colleagues recognized that my students wrote well.  I would give my students a typical "bac" subject and the minimum number of required words.  They would have one hour to do it in class, with dictionaries and me going around answering questions.  This was their first draft and I made it clear that if they wrote the required number of words they would have 10/10.  Most, but not all, lycée students can do this.  I collected the papers and underlined IN GREEN everything that was correct.  I made no annotations or suggestions.  I then returned the papers and they had one week to rewrite it and recopy it.  Sometimes I let them do this in class because there's a lot of learning going on when a students asks "Why isn't this right?"  When I collected the papers again, I asked for the original as well as the final draft.  It was interesting to compare and see what they had done to improve their texts.  And sometimes I could see that the final version had a mistake that I had overlooked the first time through, so I didn't penalize it.

This is a double correction, which my colleagues always insisted was too much work, but it was effective and I had far fewer mistakes to correct in the final draft.  I found it doable.  I gave the final draft a grade over 20 for "quality".  By weeding out the careless mistakes that they found easy to correct with the first draft, I was able to see which structures were still giving them problems and needed more work in class.  Most students were able to get a passing grade, especially with the "quantity" grade over ten to boost them, so they felt successful and less intimidated at the idea of writing in English.

If you have to have a manual, I suggest that you take a text from your manual which is towards the end of the year, something that appears quite difficult, and over a trimester you work on the structures and vocabulary, incorporated into several TPRS stories, without ever assigning the actual text.  Then, when you think they are ready, have them read the text in class and answer questions about it as a test.  I would expect them to do well on it and that should convince them that your method is effective.  You can also use the results of your test to show your non-TPRS colleagues that your students are learning and are up to standard.

Good luck.  And enjoy.  I'm still teaching, but this year most of my students are adults and I find I really miss my classes.  Believe it or not, I miss the troublemakers most of all, because they're the ones who give you the most satisfaction when you actually get through to them.

Ceasar talks too much!

(This story was created in class by students from 508. I was delighted by the imagination they showed and their willingness to play the game with me.)

Ceasar talks too much. He talks all the time. He talks about video games and horror movies and he talks about pen spinning. Ceasar is a champion pen spinner.

In biology class with Mr. Azemat, Ceasar talks too much. Mr. Azemat says, “Stop it!” But Ceasar doesn’t stop talking. He talks the whole time. Mr. Azemat says,”Get out!”

Ceasar goes out of his biology class and he goes to the movie theater to see Shining. He sits next to Stephen King. Ceasar talks to Stephen King the whole time. He talks about horror movies, but Stephen King wants him to stop talking. He wants to listen to the movie, but Ceasar talks too much. Stephen King says, “Stop talking! Stop it!”

Ceasar doesn’t stop talking. He talks all the time. So Stephen King says, “Get out!”

Ceasar walks out of the movie theater and he goes to Bordeaux. The trip lasts one hour and eighteen minutes and thirteen seconds. He gets on a ship, “New France,” and he goes to Japan. The trip lasts eighteen days and five hours and sixteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds. He gets off the ship in Yokohama and he gets on a high speed train to go to Tokyo. The trips lasts forty-three minutes and eleven seconds.

Ceasar is in Tokyo for the World Pen Spinning Cup. Ceasar is a professional pen spinner. He wins the quarter finals and then he meets Vincent. Vincent is an amateur pen spinner, but he’s very good. Ceasar spins his pen for three hours forty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds, but he talks too much. He talks all the time and he doesn’t concentrate. Ceasar drops his pen. The judge says, “Get out!”

Vincent spins his pen for five hours and sixteen minutes and one second. Vincent wins. Vincent qualifies for the final match.

The final match is against Nicolas Sarkozy. Angela Merkel is his coach.

Ceasar is Vincent’s coach. Ceasar tells Vincent to sleep twelve hours. He tells him to eat sushi and maki and lots of wasabi. He tells him to drink Red Bull.

Angela tells Nicolas to sleep twelve hours, but the baby cries too much. The baby cries all the time. Nicolas sleeps for four hours, but the baby wakes him up. Nicolas says, “Stop it! Stop crying!” The baby stops crying and Nicolas can sleep two more hours, but Nicolas is tired.

Angela tells him to eat soup. He needs to eat a lot of soup, but Nicolas doesn’t like soup. Angela tells him to drink champagne. Nicolas likes champagne and he drinks a lot of champagne.

The final match begins. Nicolas and Vincent spin their pens. They spin their pens all the time. After eight hours they are still spinning their pens. Ceasar talks all the time, but Vincent doesn’t listen. He spins his pen.

Ceasar talks too much, and Nicolas Sarkozy can't concentrate. He says, “Stop it! Stop talking!” But Ceasar doesn’t stop talking.

Nicolas gets angry. He calls Claude Guéant. “Arrest this boy,” he says. “He talks too much! He talks all the time.”

Claude Guéant says, “Get out!” But Nicolas drops his pen and Vincent wins the final match. He is the new World Champion Pen Spinner.

The End