Reading a film II

The first step was choosing a film for the group.  I knew immediately which one I wanted to use.  I had used it before and most students found it not too difficult but very moving and were quickly hooked by the story line.  The Mighty is about two boys who were marginalized at school, the kind of boys that other kids call “Freaks”.

Although Sharon Stone plays in it and the other actors are well known and Sting does the music, the film doesn’t seem to have been a big box-office hit.  The only reason I had ever heard of it was that one of my students had brought it to me and insisted that I watch it. He was a nice boy and I always associate him with my first stumbling attempts at TPRS.

In those days I was doing it all wrong.  I was working with Shawshank Redemption and I wanted to prepare students for the scene in the prison yard where Andy meets Red.  I had a long list of vocabulary words that my students wouldn’t know.  Pickax, skull, gem shop, rock hound, bull queer, lawyer, etc.  My plan was to use a TPRS story to introduce the vocabulary.  Now I know that stories are used to teach structures, not vocabulary, which should be sheltered as much as possible, but in those days I had not yet been able to attend a workshop and I had just started reading Ben Slavic's TPRS in a year.  I scripted a story about a thief getting shot at in front of a gem shop and needing a lawyer.

I began my story with a chimpanzee.  This was a TPRS story, right?  What color was the chimpanzee?  The class eventually proposed purple, and I went for that.  I needed an actor, so I chose the boy who seemed the most likely to play along.  He was a bit of a loner and not very “cool”, but he gave the impression that he enjoyed my classes.  What was the purple chimpanzee’s name?  The class made several suggestions, and someone called out “Darwin!”  My actor grinned at that, so I went with Darwin.  We actually did get through the story and I was able to work in most of the vocabulary I had listed, although I doubt they retained much of it.  But the name Darwin stuck.  The kids started calling him that and he even signed his papers “Darwin” from then on.  Thinking back, I’m sorry I took a chance of making him appear ridiculous in front of the whole class by acting out the story of a purple chimpanzee.  But that was when he brought me the film to watch.  Perhaps he wanted me to understand what it can be like to be a “freak” and how some very brave souls are able to assume the fact that they are different.  

Today I still use Shawshank Redemption with students, but I approach that scene differently.  I give them a short summary of the scene in three versions as an embedded text.  Once they have read through all three versions, they are ready to watch and understand the scene on screen. I now realize that using a story to introduce over twenty vocabulary words is not effective.  As a matter of fact, it's not much different from traditional methods.  But the students enjoyed the story, Darwin found an identity that suited him, and though I blush at the memory of my mistakes, I console myself with the thought that "bad TPRS is better than no TPRS".

I recommend The Mighty to anyone working with teenagers.  I think even students who appear very self-confident worry about not being accepted by others and they adopt the two characters whole-heartedly.  They buy into discussing their problems because they share the same problems.   Personalization doesn't always have to be called personalization.    To be continued …..

"Reading" a film

Everyone agrees that films are life-savers on a Friday afternoon just before the holidays, and that there is a lot of potential in using films in the classroom.  But how much do students really learn while watching a film?  And what about weaker students?  The ones who glare and say, “I don’t understand anything”.  I’ve used films for many years to keep my students interested.  I often gave them cloze activities to do as they listened.  But as I went around the room, I realized that my weak students were unable to recognize even the simplest words.  For them the soundtrack was meaningless noise.

Last year I worked with four groups of students who were failing English in their “seconde” class in a French lycée.  Sitting in classes without understanding anything that was going on, each year they had fallen further and further behind.  Some of them reacted by becoming trouble-makers. Others simply gave up and retreated into their shells, knowing that any effort to participate would cover them in ridicule.

I began doing classic TPRS with them and I soon had a positive atmosphere with students participating enthusiastically and enjoying their classes.  They had the choice of returning to their regular class at any time and they preferred to stay with me.  As a matter of fact, I used that as the ultimate threat when some of them had to be reminded that I needed attentive students.  Then I worked on a couple of songs with them.  I wanted them to realize that with improved English they could get more enjoyment out of their favorite songs.

I was very aware that there was little chance of the experiment being continued the following year.  I could see that they were progressing but I was afraid that once they were back in a regular class they would find it difficult to keep up and would become discouraged once again.  I wanted them to become autonomous learners.  So I thought about students I had encountered who had attained a high degree of proficiency outside the school system.  And I remembered a girl whose English was so good that I assumed she had lived abroad for many years.  When I asked her, she told me that she had never traveled but she had spent the summer streaming her favorite American series.

I decided to try to teach my students to watch a film in a way that would make them autonomous.  I knew they would need a lot of help at the beginning, but I decided to trust the principle of Comprehensible Input.  If we “read” the subtitles, discussed the meaning, talked about the action, the problems and the characters, they would be hearing the same words and structures over and over again.  Even better, they would be hearing the words as they saw them written on the screen, so the input would be simultaneously written and spoken.  This was not straight TPRS, because the story was the film, but I used the techniques used to read novels by TPRS teachers.                   To be continued …..

Horse-riding and Speaking a Foreign Language

Horse-riding has helped me see the difference between learning and acquiring. Throughout my life, whenever I’m confronted with something new, I go out and buy a book. Laugh all you like, but when I found out I was pregnant for the first time, my first stop was a bookstore. But when you’re sitting on a horse, it doesn’t matter what you’ve memorized and how many chapters you can recite. I have two shelves of books about horse-riding and some of them I’ve read three or four times. Some of it is very valuable information and has helped me to improve, but acquisition is what you do when a barking dog bursts out of the bushes and believe me, you don’t have time to look it up. Horse-riding is about developing automatic reflexes, and that is what fluency requires too. I may have seemed gifted in languages, but I am very much ungifted in riding, and it has opened my eyes to how difficult it is to acquire something to the point where you can do it without thinking about it. I’ve also come to realize that the hardest part in riding and in speaking a foreign language is unlearning bad habits that have been acquired and shouldn’t have been.

What is TPRS?

Wikipedia says:

"TPR Storytelling (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling or TPRS) is a  method of teaching foreign languages. TPRS lessons use a mixture of reading and storytelling to help students learn a foreign language in a classroom setting. The method works in three steps: in step one the new vocabulary structures to be learned are taught using a combination of translation, gestures, and personalized questions; in step two those structures are used in a spoken class story; and finally, in step three, these same structures are used in a class reading. Throughout these three steps, the teacher will use a number of techniques to help make the target language comprehensible to the students, including careful limiting of vocabulary, constant asking of easy comprehension questions, frequent comprehension checks, and very short grammar explanations known as "pop-up grammar". Many teachers also assign additional reading activities such as free voluntary reading, and there have been several easy novels written by TPRS teachers for this purpose.

TPR Storytelling prioritizes the development of fluency over grammatical accuracy. Proponents of TPR Storytelling, basing their argument on the second language acquisition theories of Stephen Krashen, hold that the best way to help students develop both fluency and accuracy in a language is to expose them to large amounts of comprehensible input.  The different steps and techniques in TPR Storytelling help teachers to provide this input by making the language spoken in class both comprehensible and engaging. In addition, TPR Storytelling uses many concepts from mastery learning. Each lesson is focused on just three vocabulary phrases or fewer, enabling teachers to concentrate on teaching each phrase thoroughly. Teachers also make sure that the students internalize each phrase before moving on to new material, giving additional story lessons with the same vocabulary when necessary.

TPR Storytelling is unusual in that it is a grassroots movement among language teachers. After being developed by Blaine Ray in the 1990s, the method has gained popular appeal with language teachers who claim that they can reach more students and get better results than they could with previous methods.  However, so far it has seen little support from publishers or academic institutions. Teachers have instead published their own materials and teaching manuals, and training in TPR Storytelling is generally offered at workshops by existing TPRS teachers rather than at teacher training college."

^Comments: 

^{The three steps, according to Blaine Ray, are the essence of the method.}  

^{1) Presentation of a limited number of structures, usually one to three, using  images, gestures, TPR or even translation.  The teacher "circles" the structures by asking questions based on her first statement.  If the structure is likes she may say, "Georges likes chocolate.  Does Georges like chocolate or does Marie like chocolate? Does Georges like chocolate or does Georges detest chocolate? Does Georges like chocolate or does Georges like carrots?  Does George like carrots? Who likes chocolate?  What does George like?"  By talking about the students in the classroom, comparing their likes and dislikes, she makes the content real and interesting.  This is called PQA.  Personalized Questions and Answers.}

^{2) With the understanding that imagination and creativity are more compelling than factual truth, the teacher develops a story with the class, asking them to furnish the details.  She has a basic plot in mind.  The hero, usually a student in the class, has a problem.  He tries to solve it and fails.  He goes somewhere else and tries again and fails again.  He goes to a third location and solves the problem.  The repeated attempts allow repetition of the target structures, so that students are hearing them over and over again. The teacher selects suggestions from the student that are BEP ( Bizarre, Exaggerated, and Personalized), which help the students to remember the story.  She then asks the students to retell their story.}

^{3) The students read either their story or a different version using the same structures.  In reading, the students translate the text with help from the teacher, who will ask questions in the target language about each paragraph, checking for comprehension and sometimes developing a parallel story by comparing a student with the hero of the story.}

 ^"TPR Storytelling prioritizes the development of fluency over grammatical accuracy."

This statement is used by those who reject TPRS to claim that TPRS students don't know grammar or are very inaccurate in their use.  Actually, most TPRS students are quite accurate in their use of the structures they have been taught. Grammar is taught in what I call "homeopathic doses", or pop-ups.  In the example given above, after the students have been hearing "He likes... and "They like ..." the teacher may ask the student when they hear the final s and when it is missing. The reflection should not last more than a few seconds.  What is often not taken into account by those who prone giving more time to grammar instruction is the difference between learning and acquiring. Learning is done with our conscious, rational, analytical mind and goes into our short term memory.  Acquiring is unconscious, spontaneous and goes into our long term memory.  TPRS teachers are not interested in preparing students to do exercises on a worksheet.  They want their students to spontaneously produce correct language without thinking about it.

^"TPR Storytelling is unusual in that it is a grassroots movement among language teachers."

TPRS evolved and is still evolving through the interaction of language teachers on the internet, notably on the moretprs forum.  It has been tried and tested by each new user, and through their comments and experiences the method has improved.  Although Blaine Ray was a very dynamic teacher whose students found his stories about blue chimpanzees hilarious, teachers with different personalities are able to adapt the method to their style of teaching.  Personally, I am struck by the number of language teachers who have switched to this method after many years of apparent success with other techniques.  When I started trying to use the method, I saw my students retain what I was teaching, whereas before I had the impression that even good students erased everything we had studied once they had taken the test.  It is not easy to adapt and change decades of work habits, but it is often said that "Bad TPRS is better than no TPRS."  Krashen explains that as long as the students are getting comprehensible input they will acquire the language.  Although in the early years TPRS teachers were often isolated and confronted the hostility of more traditional teachers, today entire language departments have switched.  In general, enrollment figures go up when teachers begin using TPRS and many minor language programs have been saved because the teacher discovered TPRS and was able to attract more students to her courses.  Administrations who have recognized the positive effects of TPRS now tend to recruit teachers who use the method.

"So far it has seen little support from publishers or academic institutions."

A TPRS teacher does not need a textbook.  Her students don't do grammar exercises or worksheets and the comprehension questions are asked orally.  Every class develops its own, personalized story, so there is no need for a one-size fits all textbook story, which most students find boring.  Thus TPRS is not popular with publishers, although some have tried to adapt their material to the method.  Academic institutions  traditionally look down on grassroots movements and few of them have taken an unbiased look at the claims made by TPRS teachers.  The exception is Stephen Krashen who at first limited his support to saying that TPRS produced Comprehensible Input, and is now an active participant on the moretprs forum.

When Students Resist Change

A colleague has decided to switch from traditional, grammar oriented teaching methods to Comprehensible Input and TPRS.  His students are uncomfortable with the change and are resisting his efforts.  He now realizes that building a personal relationship with the students at the beginning of the year is vital to the method and regrets that he didn't take the time to do it then and now he is paying for it. This is my reply. 

Trust begets trust. If you want your students to trust you, you need to be able to trust them, to show them that you trust them. And you do that by being honest with them. I would talk to them, tell them that you are relearning how to teach because you want to be more than a good teacher, you want to be an excellent teacher.

I read a story about Tiger Woods years ago that impressed me. He was recognized as one of the best golfers in the world, he had won several major tournaments, when he decided that the only way he could progress and improve his game was to change his swing. This meant unlearning things that had become completely spontaneous and re-learning how to swing a golf club. It took him two years of hard practice and during those two years he didn’t win a single tournament.

It took a lot of courage and determination, just as it takes a lot of courage and determination for a teacher to decide to re-learn how to teach. But unlike Tiger Woods, you have the satisfaction of seeing that even with “bad CI” your students are making progress and are better than they would have been if you had not changed. Tell them so. Tell them that you now understand that the charts and drills and worksheets that you used to be proud of were not effective because using a language must be as automatic and spontaneous as a well practiced golf swing.

You are actually asking them to re-learn how to learn a language, so it’s normal for them to be a bit upset. Explain to them why, ask them to be patient while you work out the kinks and reassure them that they will be the true winners. I’ve always found that when I was frank and honest with my students about my difficulties, they made honest efforts to meet me half-way. Then the hard part was living up to my ambitions and not slipping back to old habits.

Can I help you?

I am an American who has been teaching English as a foreign language to French speakers since 1967.  I have taught in Quebec, in Cameroon, in France and in Switzerland.  Since 1995 I have been teaching in a French lycée in Agen and I passed the French Agrégation in 1997.

Throughout my career I have tried to keep up with innovations and use the most effective methods to help my students master English.  In 2005 I first heard talk about the method called TPRS, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.  At first I was merely curious, convinced that while it might work in American high schools, it wasn’t adapted to the French educational system.

Yet, as I began dabbling with a few techniques I saw better results in my students.  I was able to attend a workshop in St. Louis in 2006, then a National TPRS conference in Minneapolis in 2009 and another in Chicago in 2011.  The more I learned about the method, the better I was able to apply it in my classes.  I began seeing students who produced correct language without thinking about it, who improved vastly in comprehension and writing ability.

In 2009 a friend who teaches English in Switzerland asked me to do a workshop for her and her colleagues.  I spent three days in her lycée.  The first day I demonstrated the method in four different classes at four different levels.  The second day I explained the method and helped volunteer teachers to prepare a class using TPRS.  The third day I observed four teachers in class and then we had a debriefing.  The teachers were very enthusiastic about the experience.

I would like to continue to share what I have learned with other teachers.  If you are interested, I will come to your school and demonstrate the method with your students and help your teachers to adapt the method to their needs.

Judith Logsdon-Dubois

The Fish Philosophy

 The four principles of the fish philosophy:

1. Be There – show up physically, mentally and emotionally
2. Play – enjoy what you do
3. Make Someone’s Day – do something for someone else
4. Choose your Attitude – then act that way.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt8bQ8QeyhE&feature=related

Participation in the Class

Ben Slavic says, "As you interact with students, check to see if they are fulfilling the requirements of Interpersonal Communication. It isn’t “participation grade”, it’s an academic grade based on demonstrated performance in the areas of culturally appropriate listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing and signing. Are they actively negotiating meaning in the target language, or are they passive or even working against the negotiation of meaning? Are they observing and monitoring the teacher (not just each other) for understanding in the target language? Are they indicating the need for clarification and adjustments? Do they attempt to participate in a genuine conversation and interaction in the target language – or do they speak in their native language? I cannot emphasize it enough: this is not the traditional 'participation grade'; it is an academically rigorous assessment based on the emphasis in the Standards on the Three Modes of Communication."

I believe he's on to something.  A student that actively listens and negotiates meaning in class deserves a grade that reflects on what is more than an effort.  It's a serious, honest attitude that ensures success.

Slow and easy to understand

Balou Breaks Away

Balou is a Teddy Bear. He is forty years old. He has twelve children and twenty-four grandchildren. He has thirty-seven mouths to feed. He lives in the jungle with his family and he is very poor. He doesn’t have any money and he doesn’t have a job. His children and his grandchildren are hungry.

Balou goes to Sao Paulo to find work. He gets a job in a toy shop and he works very hard. He wants to buy food for his children. But his boss is not honest and he doesn’t pay Balou. Balou is angry, so he leaves the toy shop.

He sees Bill Gates. He asks Bill Gates to give him $2,167 dollars. Bill Gates turns his head and looks the other way.

In desperation, Balou roams the city. He sees an old grey Volkswagon and steals it. He goes into a bank with a gun. He steals 987 dollars. He tries to escape, but he doesn’t get far in his old car. The police gather round him.

Balou cries.

The End

One of my students, a muscular rugby player, told us that he has a teddy bear that is 40 years old which he inherited from a cousin. So we made him the hero of a story. Much of the vocabulary in the story is found in Elvis Presley's "In The Ghetto".

What is TPRS?

The method I use is called TPRS, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. It grew out of TPR, Total Physical Response, which you've probably heard of. You give orders to beginning students, Stand up! Sit down! Clap your hands! Turn around! And in no time at all they are understanding and acting on a large number of commands. The hard part was where do you go from there? A man named Blaine Ray, who was teaching Spanish in California, found that by making up little stories with his students, he could get them to acquire the language much better than with traditional methods. A group of teachers started using his method and carried it further, using the internet to communicate their experiences. One of the remarkable things about the method is that the internet allowed many different teachers to experiment and give each other feedback in order to enrich and develop their techniques. This is truly a movement that grew from the ground up.

It is still evolving, but all TPRS teachers agree that students learn through Comprehensible Input in the target language and any time spent in class on activities that are not CI is a waste of time (grammar lessons, excercises, drills, etc., etc.) The second element that makes the method effective is Personalization. You talk about the students, you let them make up the stories, which are about them, so they're interested and motivated. I started using it a few years ago, rather timidly at first because I doubted it would work with French students, but as I saw that my students were acquiring what I had thought were "advanced" structures effortlessly, I became convinced that there was something to it. And when I talk to other converts, that seems to be a fairly common pattern: experienced teachers who were considered good teachers became curious, tried it a bit and quickly switched because they could see the difference in the way their students were learning.

It's largely based on the research of Stephen Krachen into how languages are acquired. To put it in a nutshell, traditional "grammar" approaches work with the left brain, analyzing the language, and relies on our short term memory. (Students memorize the vocabulary and memorize the grammar rules.) TPRS works with the right brain and long term memory through constant repetition of the target structures. (Tests are unannounced in order to test what has been acquired rather than what students crammed the night before.)

You can Google Blaine Ray, TPRS, and Ben Slavic to learn more about it. Blaine Ray's site sells what is known as the "Green Bible" which explains all the theory behind it. It's called "Fluency through TPR Storytelling". There are two listserves, where teachers using the method ask for advice, comment on what works and what doesn't work for them, etc., and they have been very helpful to me. The yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/moretprs/join is the oldest, but they've recently started another one http://www.moretprs.net/ which is easier to navigate. If you're seriously interested, I highly recommend reading Ben Slavic's two books, "TPRS in a Year" and "PQA in a Wink". They helped it all come together for me. PQA means ¨Personalized Questions and Answers" which I found very difficult (asking teenagers personal questions!! Horrors!!) until I read his book and understood how to approach it.

I was able to attend a TPRS workshop in St Louis, and later I went to the National TPRS conference in Minneapolis, met Blaine Ray and Susie Gross and learned some Mandarin. I was able to go to another NTPRS in Chicago in 2010. I organized a school exchange with Lynnette Lang in Wheaton, Illinois, who has been using the method for many years and she did a demonstration for us while she was in Agen. Karen Rowan also came and did a 3 day workshop for us. I was asked to do a workshop in Switzerland by an old friend of mine and it went very well, the teachers there seemed more open than my French colleagues. Or braver. I also did a workshop here in Agen for "La Maison de l'Europe". There were only two participants, but they enjoyed it. I'm convinced that it's far more effective than more traditional methods and gets better results. I've used it with primary students who loved it and I'm now using it with lycée students who were failing in English. It's so rewarding to see them progress with almost every lesson.

A story from Paulo Cuelho

This story could be a Koan, one of the stories that Taoists used to teach their students about the world and themselves. I'm giving an easier first version and then the original.

Coin = pièce de monnaie Path = piste Beggar = mendiant
gate = portail Wise = sage wisdom = sagesse

I

There was a young man. He wanted to be wise. He went to a wise old man. The wise old man told the young man to give a coin to every person who insulted him, every person who upset him, every person who made him angry. He told him to do this for one year.

After one year, the young man returned to the wise old man. “What do I do now?” he asked.

“Go into town and buy food for me,” answered the wise old man.

When the young man was gone, the old man changed his clothes. He dressed like a beggar and went to the gate. When he saw the young man returning from town, he began to insult him.

The young man laughed! “For a whole year I had to pay the people who upset me. Now it’s free. I don’t have to spend any more money on insults.”

The wise old man smiled. “Now you are on the path to wisdom,” he said.

II

Step = pas spending= dépenser removed = enleva

“Over the course of one year, give a coin to each person who offends or upsets you,” instructed the abbot of a young man who wanted people to follow a spiritual path.
For the next twelve months, the boy gave a coin to each person who offended or upset him, as he was instructed. At the end of the year, he returned to the abbot to find out what the next steps were.
“Go into town and buy food for me,” the abbot responded.
Once the boy left, the abbot changed his clothes, disguised himself as a beggar and went to the gate. When the boy approached, he began to insult him.
“Good!” said the boy, “for a whole year I had to pay the people who upset or offended me, and now I can be offended for free, without spending anything!”
Hearing this, the abbot removed his disguise.
“He who does not take insults seriously, is on the path to wisdom.”
Paulo Cuelho