Picture:
Blaine Ray with ETU teachers.
At ETU school, we are passionate about language acquisition. We are dedicated to bringing Comprehensible Input methodologies to our teachers and students with the idea that all of us are capable of acquiring multiple languages and that language learning is an enjoyable and successful experience for a majority of learners. How do we do this?
We believe the student-centered TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) is a powerful and engaging second language teaching methodology that uses interactive, personalized and compelling stories to develop language proficiency.
In May this year, we were excited to host Blaine Ray, the inventor of Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling for his TPRS workshop at ETU with all of our English teachers, educators and individuals who have passion for second language learning and teaching.
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ETU English and Chinese
Teachers
Discovering
How to Make Lessons More Comprehensible at the TPRS Workshop with Blaine Ray
on May 5
th
.
This coming November 9-10, we are honored to invite Mr. Blaine Ray to Beijing again for a 2-day comprehensive TPRS workshop, which will walk you through the whole TPRS process from storytelling, circling, reading and writing, to movie talks!
Given the limits of the space, the workshop will accommodate no more than 40 people, you are most welcome to join us!
Click on “read more”
at the bottom to
register for the class
, NOW!
About Blaine Ray, the creator of TPRS
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Blaine Ray is the inventor of TPRS and TPRS author. Mr. Ray taught high school Spanish in Ontario, Oregon and Bakersfield, California, USA for more than 20 years. He took the above principles of Asher and Krashen and made his students a part of the lessons. He asked stories and used simple and comprehensible language input to develop his students listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.
The method has greatly evolved in the 20 plus years since its inception and it is changing the way students acquire their 2nd, 3rd and 4th languages! Blaine Ray has presented his workshops in all 50 states and in more than 18 countries around the world like China, India, Turkey, Egypt, France, Mexico and more! Come and receive training in a method that is being adopted by schools in the United States and abord
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While the skies were dark outside ETU’s TPRS workshop, the presentation and stories of Blaine Ray brightened the classroom, demonstrating that acquiring foreign language is something that each of us can do with ease, joy, interest and relevance.
It has been 7 years since I attended my first workshop with the storyteller Blaine Ray, the creator of Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling, and my 5th time to a workshop or conference.
I never tire of sharing how TPRS and Comprehensible Input has changed classroom communities across the globe for countless students and teachers. I can say that this method honestly changed my life as a teacher, my relationships with my students, and changed my students lives not only as the acquisitionists of language, but for them as human beings as well.
ETU School was incredibly honored to have Blaine Ray join us in Beijing for a day of meaningful language acquisition and training. Returning to another TPRS workshop with Blaine, our storytelling guru, I thought about the traditional importance of our stories and our students’ stories. I was reminded how storytellers have been our language instructors and keepers of verse long before grammar books and online language learning.
It is the storytellers’ tales we still remember and give us hope, it is our students who will carry on this tradition of sharing through language and TPRS and Comprehensible Input are leading the way developing student’s language skills. ETU prides itself as a leader in providing best language acquisition practices and the keys to the engines of imagination.
TPRS is a method that began in the 1990’s in a California Spanish classroom. Blaine Ray, a teacher of more than 20 years, noticed his students were no longer listening to stories but rather analyzing the pieces and construction of Spanish. Undoubtedly, they were bored and frustrated with language learning, it held no meaning for them. Familiar with Dr. James Asher’s TPR and Dr. Stephen Krashen’s theories of natural language acquisition, TPRS was created by Blaine and has continued to evolve over the years with input from Dr. Krashen and other language teachers like Joe Nielson, Susan Gross and many others.
At ETU, we actively plan to bring story, imagination, creativity and comprehension into every lesson during the week, emphasizing understanding and building a language base with students’ lives in mind. We believe that our student’ stories are important and their thoughts matter.
RICH was the acronym of the day, and highlights the key elements of a Comprehensible Input storytelling classroom. These are all elements which you will find in an ETU English lesson. The elements are:
R
epetitive
I
nteresting
C
omprehensible
H
igh Frequency
1
Repetition through Circling
By the time a child is 6 years old, and speaking quite fluently, this child has received more than 20,000 hours of spoken input, that is many hours of stories! If we look at a foreign language classroom that meets every day for an hour, most foreign language classrooms don’t meet this often, students in those classrooms receive about 180 hours of input a year, if the teacher is providing input in the second language. Over the course of 6 years, this totals 1,080 hours of input, a far cry from the amount of language young children receive in their daily lives.
As teachers and parents, we must first recognize this the fact. We should do our best to refrain from asking our young language acquirers questions like,
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"You are studying language in school, why don’t you know this? "
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"I taught you this yesterday, why don’t you remember?"
Language acquisition takes time and lots of Comprehensible Input. Please allow your child to have this time.
This unrealistic pressure actually activates what Krashen calls the Affective Filter, and can hinder the language acquisition process.
Next, we can observe foreign language classes and ask,
Teachers must offer plenty of input. Often times, classes discuss grammar rules in the student’s mother tongue, so there is no second language input. In other instances, the teacher says a word and asks for students to repeat what they just heard or has students memorize bits of dialogue and output these phrases. Many programs ask students to memorize lengthy word lists, with no structural context of how to use the language. In other texts, students are learning the sounds of words that they don’t yet understand.
At ETU, we have begun to change the way students receive their second language instruction by putting input first, and have seen amazing results. Giving large amounts of repetition through circling is the way in which ETU educators provide a comprehensible and language rich environment focused on the child.
TPRS circling does not require students to produce language immediately, either through speaking or writing. A TPRS teacher wants to provide comprehensible language in order to develop students’ understanding and feel for the language. Circling empowers teachers to ask varied questions students can understand in an interesting way that allows students to hear the structures of the language over and over again. This is why young humans can speak with grammatical accuracy at a young age, they have had tens of thousands of hours of input hearing the language, even though they have not learned grammar rules.
It is difficult to mimic this environment a baby receives, but by providing circling to the students the teacher can increase the amount of comprehensible language input to their students, making that time with them full of rich high frequency language, and developing the feel of the language naturally.
Here are the steps to circling:
1.
Start with a statement.
2.
Ask a yes/no question where the answer is YES.
3.
Repeat back the answer.
4.
Ask an either/or question.
5.
Repeat back the answer.
6.
Ask a yes/no question where the answer is NO.
7.
Repeat back the wrong answer and restate the correct one.
8.
Ask a Who?, What?, Where?, How?, Why?, etc. question.
9.
Repeat back the answer.
10.
Add a detail and start circling again.
Looking at these questions you may think, I ask my students these questions in class already. It’s true, circling mimics the way we naturally communicate, it just allows the teacher to give more repetition in their limited class time.
In the workshop with Blaine Ray as a new student of German, I was reminded about the importance of providing circling repetition for our new learners, all the repetitions didn’t feel repetitive. The circling allowed me to feel successful, it allowed me to understand and cultivate a feel for the language. Circling also naturally allows teachers to differentiate lessons for students of varying levels, one can simply ask different leveled questions for students with varying language abilities. Lastly, circling provides instructors immediate comprehension checks and feedback to determine if students are following the conversation. You can practice these circling techniques to improve your own language skills and communicate with your students or child. ETU currently offers its own training programs for parents and educators as well.
Some of the most intriguing memories come from hearing or telling stories about meaningful events. Stories are an integral part of every culture. At ETU in our English classrooms, our students’ stories help to shape our classroom culture. We discuss their lives and it is their imaginations that drive our stories and lessons.
In TPRS, there is a saying, TEACH to the Eyes, meaning that a TPRS teacher engages with their students. They are not looking down reading grammatical rules from a book, they are talking and looking at their students’ eyes. You can see a lot when you do this. Students' eyes tell us when they don’t understand, when they are happy and when they are upset. Students are the most important thing in my eyes, more important than word lists and grammar rules, and they are very interesting little beings. When ETU TPRS teachers conduct personalized questions and answer activities, using circling and commonly used language, we demonstrate to our students that their lives matter to us. We take time to talk about topics that are of interest to them, while simultaneously learning the language.
At ETU, our students are the heroes of our stories. Their lives, interests, passions and dreams become the foundations upon which our stories are built. They feel special because they are being recognized as interesting beings with ideas and feelings, not just robots to memorize and regurgitate lists and rules for tests. They have become a new generation of storytellers simply by engaging them in a comprehensible and personalized way. The TPRS method is a full language program and its weekly routines ensure students are able to engage in the story process in all skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing.
Here are a few examples of personalized language instruction at ETU School.
A. MeTalk Journal
Through art and journaling, ETU instructors engage in personalized conversations with students about their lives and preferences. We use the circling method to create repetition and practice high frequency language. Lessons are simple to differentiate for students at different skill levels. Our storytellers have so much to share!
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Kindergarten MeTalk Journal &
2nd Grade MeTalk Journal
B. Imaginary Friend
ETU students are constantly engaged in the story creation process by creating images, characters, settings, problems and solutions to their own stories. Imaginary Friend brings more imagination and art into the mix. As the rest of the class creates a character for the day, our class artists listen and draw what they hear being discussed.
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2nd grade students cooperating and drawing the image of the day.
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ETU kindergarten student and their Imaginary Friend.
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ETU first graders writing and illustrating theirclass story.
C. Writing
After creating the character, teachers take time to review and put into writing the characters, settings or problems that the students have created. This story is usually written out as students review and retell about their creation. The language is heard again, circling questions are asked about the statements and the words are written or typed as the students say them, creating a direct link to spoken and written language and offering more repetitive input. Students later have the opportunity to write their own stories. We print out our stories and they have become a part of our ETU library.
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ETU student writing peformance evaluation before and after TPRS.
D. Reader’s Theater
Following story creation, students are able to dress up act out the story creations as they read along. Students enter the reading section of the language process with strong comprehension of what is occuring because of all the input and circling received in the above processes.
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ETU 1st graders enjoying a Christmas Reader's Theater.
E. Reading
ETU TPRS teachers continue to read the discussions that have taken place in class offering more Comprehensible Input. We also conduct Free Voluntary Reading (FVR )time each day after lunch for 20 minutes. FVR provides students with more input. Reading helps naturally build vocabulary and a feel for the language.
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ETU 1st and 2nd graders reading their story books and receiving feedback.
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Students enjoying free reading time.
There is, in fact, many years of research supporting the results that we see taking place with our ETU English students. Numerous studies have found TPRS and Comprehensible Input not only improves students’ language skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar，but also changes students attitudes about learning foreign language. Student surveys reveal a change in their perceptions of themselves as being successful acquirers of foreign language.
For myself, as I acquired German with the rest of my classmates at the Blaine Ray workshop, I felt confident and motivated learning a new language. I also felt great enjoyment as the teacher took time to speak and smile with us. I was drawn into the language as he made us laugh and took our ideas weaving these words into a meaningful, simple and personal story. Inspired, I couldn’t wait to get back into my classroom and Make More (story) Magic, as we say at ETU.
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Comprehension and High Frequency
Comprehension is key to language acquisition, and after 40 years Krashen’s simple input hypothesis has still not been disproven. Therefore, it is the teacher’s goal for students to understand 100% of what the teacher is saying. Teaching with Comprehensible Input and TPRS is not immersion. The CI community says, “involuntary immersion is called drowning.” A TPRS instructor does not allow students to guess at meaning, they use their first language to quickly tell students the meaning when necessary, TPRS teachers translate. Students who ask questions in their other subjects like math or Chinese are not treated in this manner, their teachers work to make the concepts understandable, it is reasonable that we do the same in the second language classroom. Teaching in the second language using language the students don’t already know is a waste of energy and time for teachers and students, and will quickly activate students’ affective filters, making them turn off and not listen.
To make the language in your classroom more comprehensible, here are some skills to begin integrating into your language classroom immediately.
Speaking slowly demonstrates to students that their teacher understands how difficult learning a foreign language is. We begin speaking slowly so that students have time to process and understand what we are saying. After circling the phrases, the language will naturally begin to speed up because students can understand what you are saying. By pausing and pointing to your key words, and their translations, you will help yourself slow down and keep the language comprehensible or “In Bounds” for your students.
“In Bounds” means using language students already know and minimizing the amount of new language used by adding 1 new word or concept. This is called i+1 or Goldilocks level; the language is not too hard and not too easy, just right. With time and practice, teachers can limit their language to ensure that everything they say in class is “In Bounds” for their students.
Another way to keep our stories “In Bounds is to use high frequency language. TPRS teachers use natural grammar patterns, but they limit the amount of words they use and utilize only to high frequency language. In the workshop, we learned that the top 100 words in Spanish make up 60 percent of the language. In TPRS, we do not spend time letting student memorize huge word lists, we focus on a limited number of high frequency words and we talk about our students lives and create interesting stories. One would be amazed at how many stories you can tell with only the words to be, have, like, and to go. With these four words, many a story have been told in past, present and future tenses. Students unconsciously acquire language and have an enjoyable time weaving wondrous tales.
