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TPRS® for the Extremely Skeptical: A Case for the Efficacy of the TPRS® Methodology Your Goal • •

What is your ultimate goal for your students in your language classes? Are you happy with the movement you are making towards that goal?

Possible Problems

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What is the major problem you encounter that keeps you from your goal?

Common Myths about TPRS®

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TPRS® is the same as TPR. – TPR • Total • Physical • Response – TPRS® • Teaching • Proficiency through • Reading and • Storytelling TPRS® is only for teaching commands. – TPRS® is for teaching grammar structures through repetitious, comprehensible input. TPRS® is merely a bunch of silly stories. – The content of the story does not matter. TPRS® teaches the structure of the language through any story. • Bizarre • Exaggerated • Personalized You have to have a weird personality to do TPRS® well. – The bottom line is that • you must care for your students and • truly want to see them succeed in the language. Students are not active during the TPRS® process. – Students are constantly involved in responding to the story. – Student responses are very high because they are involved in the story and are able to add details as well. TPRS® teachers do not teach grammar. – pop-ups • The girl gave it to him. (Now, what is that word “it”? What does that mean? What is “it” referring to?)

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• The boy has some dogs. (Why did we use “some” instead of “a” here? What would we change if we changed the “boy” to “boys”?) You have to be extremely fluent to teach TPRS®. – Stories are told very slowly so students can fully comprehend them. – This gives the teacher adequate time to think of what they are saying. – Stories are first scripted out so teachers have them in mind. TPRS® holds back the quicker students until the slower students can catch up. – Processing a language is more than just understanding what is being said. – Quicker students are: • jumping ahead to add interesting details to the story • asking questions about syntax • processing it on a higher level than the slower students

• TPRS® students don’t learn much vocabulary. –

While there are only 2-3 focus structures, other vocabulary is brought in through: • Personalized Questions • Details • Reading

Goal of Language Teaching

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Focus on the truly important. – Do you think the way you were taught to speak another language was effective? – Is it more important for a student to say that “to him” is an indirect object pronoun or to be able to use it correctly in conversation? Grammar is merely a means to fluency. It is not the goal. The goal is fluency. Tradition for the sake of tradition. – We’ve always done it this way. – That’s just the way you do it. – It was good enough for me. – Kids have learned that way for years.

The REAL Traditional Method

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Traditionally, learning a language was done through normal conversation, questioning, and storytelling. – Children learn through hearing normal conversation. – Children learn through listening to the same stories/songs over and over.

Conversation with a Child

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Look, there’s a bunny. Can you say bunny? What color is the bunny? Yes, it’s a pretty pink bunny. Look at the pretty pink bunny. Does the bunny have long ears or short ears? Do you have long ears or short ears? Where’s the bunny’s nose?

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Reading to a Child

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Once upon a time there was a boy who had a cat. – Look, honey, can you see the boy? What does the boy have? See the cat? Can you point to the cat? Is it a pretty cat? What color is the cat? What’s the cat’s name?

Examples of Real Students I gave an unannounced 10-minute speed write for part of their final and they had to incorporate 6 of the 15 of given structures. They had 5 minutes to plan and organize their writing before writing. Anyway, I had level two students writing 225 words to 300 words in 10 minutes with minimal errors. Kids used multiple tenses correctly, past participles, direct and indirect objects, reflexives, passive voice, you name it. I even had a level 2 student use "como si” past subjunctive. On the AP test, the minimum is 200 words in 45 minutes. TPRS® never ceases to amaze me. Just thought I'd share. I am soooo fired up for next year. Happy Summer break everyone!!! Mark Webster Spring Lake HS, MI After using storytelling all year with the extended readings and LICT I decided to try an experiment. I gave 2 sections of French 1 (48 students) the final comprehensive exam from the grammar based “Discovering French” program. There were 100 questions, all multiple choice. I did not help the students at all. I told them this was a completely new test format; that it was a good exercise in case they ever had to take a French language placement test in college. Here are the results: scoring 90 - 100: 4 students; 8% of the 48. scoring 80 - 89: 16 students; 33% scoring 70 - 79: 13 students; 27% scoring 60 - 69: 8 students; 17% scoring 59 or less: 7 students; 15% So 68% out of the 48 students scored between 70 and 100 on the test. That isn't bad for a test format they had never seen before, containing some vocabulary that was unknown to them. Of the students scoring 60 or less, there are two possibilities. One - they just didn't care because they knew it wouldn't count. Two - they tried, but storytelling did not help them with this test. I am optimistic. I would rather look at the 68% that were able to negotiate this exam after 9 months of storytelling and conclude that if a teacher uses storytelling, the students can still pass a standard, grammar based test. Storytelling works. Mike Delbar Paso Robles High School California

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Standardized Testing Results New York Proficiency/Regent Exams, AP tests, National Exams ®

(e-mails come from Susie Gross’ website and the MoreTPRS Yahoo group)

Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 From: "Carmen" Subject: Re: AP Spanish Teacher Training Class I also have used TPRS® in the AP level and it works for me and my students. Last year 81% of my students passed the AP who took it (some 30ish students) and it was the highest pass rate on the Spanish exam since our school has been open (10yrs). The first 5 yrs was a traditional grammar teacher, the last 5 have been mostly TPRS®. This year my results were not nearly as stellar (and I was not expecting them to be given this crop of students), but even students who earned 3s on the exam are testing into level 300 (5th semester) at different colleges/universities and are typically the only freshman with juniors in the class. Many have said that their professors have complimented on their abilities to speak. And interestingly enough...many will remember that once you get to those upper levels, any sort of direct grammar instruction is few and far between...they're mostly literature courses. Jenna Brown’s NY State Proficiency exam: 1999-2000 (pre-TPRS®) 2001-2002 out of 78 kids out of 88 kids 21 5 5 4 15 28

(27%) ( 6%) (6%) (5%) (19%) (36%)

scored below 50 scored 51 - 60 scored 61 - 70 scored 71 - 80 scored 81 - 90 scored 91 - 100

5 (6%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) 8 (9%) 13(15%) 61(69%)

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 13:41:15 -0800 (PST) From: Carla Selters Subject: Re: numbers please Blaine, this is my 4th year teaching at my school. I have done TPRS® at all levels all years. The previous teacher was very traditional textbook. Here are some comparisons: 1999/2000: combined Spanish 3/4 = 29 2000/2001: combined Spanish 3/4 = 21 2001/2002: combined Spanish 3/4 = 55 2002/2003: dedicated Spanish 3 = 25 dedicated Spanish 4 = 33 Basically, we've doubled our advanced class enrollment by using TPRS®. The huge

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leap you see in my 3rd year is because those who started in Spanish 1 with me my first year stayed on for Spanish 3 my 3rd year. An interesting aside: these numbers happened in absence of any academic counseling. We had a burnt out, overloaded lame duck principal and no academic counselor. Basically, students signed up for whatever they wanted. So, no one took Spanish unless they really wanted. We are a school of 350 students. We've gone from 5 sections total of Spanish (my first year) to 8 sections total. Around 2/3rds of our students are taking Spanish. Saludos, Carla Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 From: "Kirsten Calkins" Subject: Success! TPRS® Friends, I know you're all tired of success stories. What a drag to have such a powerful method of instruction that yields such positiveness! (hee-hee) I'm finishing up here in New York State and gave my 2 state exams in French. (One after level I, and the other after Level III.) Now, remember these are tests sent from our state educ. dept., and we never see them ahead of time. I have always had success on them, never had a kid fail before, so I figured that was as good as it gets. However, I was terribly worried this year, having changed ALL my classes to TPRS® and having not covered the same material (or amount) as in the past. During the tests, I was sweating- I was sooooo nervous, so much depends on these exams. So, here are my results: Level I - 2 100's, no failures and 76% of my kids scored in the "distinction" level (85% or higher) Level III - 2 100's (I've only had 1 other in my total of 10 years teaching!), no failures, and 75% scored in the "distinction" level. I have special ed. kids at both levels! I have been doing TPRS® for a year now and I can't believe what results they've brought me already! I thought I'd have to wait a few years, until the kids had it under their belts for feedback. I was wrong. I didn't think I could do better and I'm hopeful that all my kids will be able to score in the "distinction" level in the years to come. It's been a great week for me - a $1,500 grant and these results. What a great way to start the summer! Kirsten Calkins Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 16:23:35 -0700 (PDT) From: Naomi Graham Subject: nys proficiency results Dear list people, I am an inexpert TPRS® teacher who tossed the textbooks this year to go totally TPRS® after just one workshop last summer with Kristen Caulkins. Toward the end of the year, I was shocked at how little of the LICT I had "covered" this year with my French I - only 4 chapters! - perhaps because it takes me at least 2 days to get through the seven steps, as my classes are only 38 minutes long, and we sing songs and stuff, too. Anyway, I was a little concerned about the NYS Proficiency Exam, and whether the students had enough of the expected vocab to get through it. We did some practices to the test, but the kids were so not into it that results were not very encouraging.

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Test was administered today, and scores (only 10 kids in the class) are as follows: 98, 74, 93, 93, 100, 97, 85, 92, 89, 84. 80% of class at mastery level (85) or above. My first score of 100 on the proficiency exam. The IEP student with an 85 (during the test he complained to me "Why do they make us write letters? Why can't we write stories instead?") Basically another testimonial to (even bad) TPRS®. Thanks to Blaine Ray and Susan Gross and the collective wisdom I have gleaned from this list. Naomi Graham REGENTS STATISTICAL INFORMATION for Naomi GRAHAM French Proficiency Exam 99/00 00/01 01/02 # of students: 11 15 6 average score: 85 85 74 # of failures: 0 1 2 % at mastery: 64% 60% 33%

02/03 (TPRS®) 10 91 0 80%

French Regents Exam 99/00 # of students: 14 average score: 80 # of failures: 1 % at mastery: 43%

02/03 (TPRS®) 8 91 0 100%

00/01 14 86 0 64%

½ 8 80 0 25%

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 00:07:55 -0400 From: "Marie Dzielak" Subject: Re: nys proficiency results My first year using TPRS® and I'm most pleased with the results. Of 80 students, there were 5 100s, no failures, and the lowest score was 76. 90% achieved mastery (85) or higher. I can't wait for results for the next 2 years, since we started doing TPRS® in Grades 6 and 7 this year, too. So in 2 years, those students will have been learning with TPRS® their entire language program. Marie Dz Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 18:52:23 -0000 From: "Amanda Makepeace" Subject: even more NYS results On comparing 2002 to 2003 (when I found TPRS®), this is what I discovered: 2002 2003 17.25 avg SPKG 20.61 avg 37.64 avg RDG/WR/LST 51.41 avg _________ __________ 55.29 avg TEST SCORE 67.73 avg

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32% passed 8% at mastery 8% over 80% 36 kids took speaking 34 took written 95 90 22

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BEST GRADE NEXT HIGHEST LOWEST

70% passed 8% at mastery 20% over 80% 34 kids took speaking and written part 94 92 19

In 2003 group, I had three students who absolutely refused to try the speaking part, and one student absolutely refuse to put in any effort on the remainder of the exam (wrote all 3s for multiple choice and still scored a 19% overall). It's not as good as I hoped, but MUCH BETTER than last year. Amanda Makepeace

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 19:27:32 -0400 From: "Joanne Goldstein“ Subject: NYS Proficiency Results Since everyone is posting their NYS Proficiency results, I thought I'd join the crowd. I gave part of last year's exam (2002)to my 8th graders. I gave them the listening, reading, and writing portions. I just didn't have time to administer the speaking exam. 102 students took the exam 95% passed 84% scored 80 or above I did have 5 failures. While I would have loved everyone to pass at some point you have to recognize that learning takes a child who is open to learning. All 5 of these students worked at failing. I did have 4 students who did not have Spanish last year. 2 of these students had A's while the other 2 had B's on the exam. Joanne Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 20:57:47 -0500 From: "Pam Fricke" Subject: NYS Proficiency results I will add my results on the NYS proficiency test. I tested 58 students. 14 scored 95 or better, including 2 100's. I've never had 100's before (nor probably 14 total 95 or betters in all the 14 years I've been giving the test combined), 11 with grades from 9094. Many in the 80's. As a matter of fact 80% got 80 or better! Only one failure, a 63. I'm

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so excited. One student who has great speaking ability (he once told me in class this fall that he doesn't even think about what he wants to say in Spanish, it just comes out), but failed all year because he just was off-task during class and turned in no classwork or homework, got a 91 on the test. I will call him personally to tell him how proud I am of him. The five others who have gotten failing grades all year long passed as well, in the high 70's and low 80's. When I told my principal the results he said it must have been an easy test. Some support. Oh well, I feel great about the results and I know that TPRS® is the reason, even if I don't do it so well and the kids complained. Congratulations to all you others on your great results. Let's give ourselves a pat on the back, even if our administrators won't. Pam Fricke Blaine: I want to let you know the results of my trial-run with TPRS® at Collegiate. I decided to suspend "normal" class in 2 of my classes in order to give TPRS® a full shot (other teachers at Collegiate have tried to integrate it with their current texts, which simply sounded like a lot of extra work to me!). So, my 6th graders spent 3 weeks with TPRS®, and my juniors (French IV) spent about 2 1/2 weeks. We did the first 4 mini-stories, which gave them about 60 new words/expressions. Then I prepared written tests similar to the ones you described. In the 6th grade class, the lowest grade was 86%; the girl who earned that score had been absent for 3 days (in the "old method", a 3 day absence would have meant several afterschool sessions just to help her catch up and writing a special test just for her). As for the juniors, the lowest grade was a 98%! But the real proof of TPRS®' effectiveness came when 2 6th graders, who haven't scored above a 75% on any test or quiz all year, scored 90% and 92% on the TPRS® test. And for the first time, I feel like I have students who can speak the language creatively rather than "grammatically." Needless to say, the students are all begging me to continue using TPRS®! I'm a sucker...I said yes! Well, I'm having a good time with it, too. And I must say that the thought of returning to a grammar-oriented approach using a textbook/workbook set is a bit nauseating. Sarah Moran Blaine had 14 students that were true beginners gets scores of 3 or 4 on the AP test after only three years of Spanish. These kids had Spanish I with a textbook and then he taught them the last two years. Blaine had 6 students get scores of 3 or 4 on the AP Spanish exam after only two years of TPR Storytelling Spanish. He found these kids before they started high school and started them right away in his Spanish 2 class as freshmen. Janette Holman of Incline Village, NV, had a level 4 TPRS® class (no AP prep in this class) where 12 students took the Spanish AP test. 9 of the 12 scored 3 or higher. In her level 5 non-TPRS® class (it was an AP prep class and they had taken textbook Spanish from her the preceding 4 years), only 3 out of 9 got a score of 3 or higher.

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Joe Neilson of Salpointe High School in Tuscon, AZ, has lots of statistics. They have teachers who use Dime and other teachers use TPRS®. They have a 100-point entrance quiz for their level-two classes. He says that the teachers who use Dime get an average of 45 out of 100 on this test. Another teacher who uses TPRS® in level one has students who average 60 on this test. Joe’s students (also TPRS®, but Joe is such an outstanding teacher) average 88 on the test. Here is his comment about the National Spanish Exam: Year after year the kids at Salpointe take the National Spanish Exam. The kids in the non-TPRS® classes consistently average between 37 and 41.Tthe kids in the TPRS® classes consistently average between 62 and 68. They tried forcing all of the teachers to teach using TPRS®. The scores for all students went up. Nevertheless, some teachers rebelled and refused to continue using TPRS® because it was too hard. Their student scores have dropped down to “normal” again. AP results in the year 2004: Joe Neilson just told us his AP results. He had 25 out of 25 pass the AP test. The non-TPRS® teachers had 5 out of 6 and 10 out of 12. That was at the same school. Donna Tatum had 100% of her French students pass the AP test at her school last year. (Using a score of 3 or better to represent “pass”)

Advantages I’ve Noticed •

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Increased language processing ability – Students learn auditory processing skills from the start. – Students have an increased ability to read in the language. – Students’ spelling is better. – Students learn how to understand questions and respond. Students have a much more positive attitude towards learning a language.

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Students have actually said that they **gasp** ENJOY my class. Parents are more positive because they are impressed with the results they see. I’m not spending all my free time grading papers yet I know how each student is doing. I’m able to be a lot more creative than with grammar. I’m not near as stressed as I normally am. I’m not emotionally or mentally fatigued at the end of the day.

Final Questions • •

What exactly do you want to teach your students? What do you want your students to be able to do at the end of their language study?

Is your present method giving you the results you really want?

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His French Comes Out Greek By Jack Engelhard, Philadelphia Corner With the Flyers in Montreal: If there is one thing I was taught in high school it is that French is not something you speak. but something you conjugate. I can still hear my French teacher: “All right, class, now, in unison, let us conjugate the verb – To Have.” “J’ai. Tu as. Il a. Nous avons. Vous avez. ils ont.” Those of us who did not know it by heart read from the blackboard which had all the major verbs conjugated in a row going from up to down. Every day we conjugated from up to down, and now, though I am unable to complete a sentence in French, you ought to see me conjugate. But here in Montreal, the French evidently never took high school French. They show no respect for conjugation. In fact, they seem quite confused by it, and, what’s worse, they expect a foreigner to speak French, never mind up and down, but sideways. They make a person who can speak up and down, no matter how well, really feel out of place. For instance, here we were on the team plane where the French hostess leans over and inquires of me in French, “How are you feeling, sir?” In her language, I replied, “I am fine. You are fine. He or she is fine. We are fine. You are fine. They are fine.” She walked away without saying anything. Not a word about how flawless a performance. In school, at least, I would have gotten a gold star. For the rest of the evening in the hotel, I tried to stick close to the hockey players who speak English, or those who understand French up and down. But the next day I got restless and decided to take a walk around Montreal. Half of the population of Montreal is French, the other half English, so every second person you run into is bound to either be French or English. I ran into what turned out to be a French girl and, putting on the old charm, I said, naturally in French, “May I buy you a cup of coffee? May you buy you a cup of coffee? May he or she buy you a cup of coffee? May we buy you a cup of coffee? May they buy you a cup of coffee?” She simply walked away. I stood there wondering if perhaps in my rush to get it all out I had missed a vital pronoun. Then I continued my promenade and before long I was lost, with only an hour to go for the hockey game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Montreal Canadians. I do not have to tell you how awful it is for a person who can only talk up and down to be lost in a city where almost everybody talks sideways. I stopped a chap who could be either French or English-speaking and I said, in French, “I am lost. You are lost. He or she is lost. We are lost. You are lost. They are lost.” Luckily, he was an American. “Perhaps I can be of help,” he said in perfect high school French. “Perhaps you can be of help. Perhaps he or she can be of help. Perhaps we can be of help. Perhaps you can be of help. Perhaps they can be of help.”

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For Future Research: http://www.blainerayTPRS.com http://www.susangrossTPRS.com http://www.TPRStorytelling.com http://www.chalkboard-productions.com http://www.sdkrashen.com/ http://www.tpr-world.com http://www.TPRStories.com http://www.tprstories.com/ijflt/index.cfm

Blaine Ray Susan Gross Carol Gaab Deb Read Dr. Stephen Krashen Dr. James Asher Karen Rowan The International Journal of FL Teaching

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/moreTPRS Abdulla, Sara. (1998). NATURE NEWS SERVICE. Why do people gesture when they speak? Retrieved February 1, 2011 from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Website: http://www.nature.com/nsu/981126/981126-2.html American Sign Language Browser. (2011). Retrieved February 1, 2011 from Michigan State University. Web Site: http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm Armstrong, Thomas Ph.D. (n.d.) Eight Intelligences and How it Relates to TPRS®. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from Michigan State University Web site: http://www.msu.edu/~sandinkr/TPRS®8intelligences.htm Asher, James J. (1993). Learning Another Language Through Actions. Los Gatos, California: Sky Oaks Productions, Inc. http://www.tpr-world.com Asher, James J. Research for TPR Storytelling., http://www.tpr-world.com/research.html Chastain, Kenneth. (1976). Developing Second Language Skills: Theory into Practice. 2d ed. Chicago: Rand McNally. Continental Book Company. (2002). Retrieved March 20, 2001 from Continental Book Company. Web Site: http://www.continentalbook.com Dodson, CJ. (1967). Pitman Publishing. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from http://www.aber.ac.uk/~mflwww/seclangacq/langteach5.html Gardner, Ph.D., Howard. (2000) . Multiple Intelligences Schools. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from the President and Fellows of Harvard College, Web site: http://pzweb.harvard.edu/Research/MISchool.htm Gross, Susie. (2001, summer). TPR Storytelling Workshop. Educational Pamphlet. Horn, Kenneth (1996). Making Connections: Understanding Brain Biology & Multiple Intelligences, Muskegon County Intermediate School District, Symposium at Spring Lake

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High School. Krashen, Stephen D. (1993). The Power of Reading- Insights from Research. Libraries Unlimited, Inc. Englewood, Colorado. Krashen, Stephen D. (1987). Principles and practice in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Prentice-Hall International. Lafford, Barbara., Collentine, Joseph. (2000). The Acquisition of Lexical Meaning by Second Language Learners: An analysis of general research trends with evidence from Spanish. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from Northern Arizona University. Web site: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jgc/research/vocabstate/ Musumeci, Diane. (1997) The role of grammar in communicative language teaching: An historical perspective. The McGraw-Hill Companies. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign Web site: http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/foreignlang/conf/grammar.html National Board fro Teaching Standards. (2011). Retrieved February 1, 2011 from Web Site: http://www.nbpts.org/ Ray, Blaine. (2002). Improving TPRS®: Preface to the Third Edition. Fluency Through TPR Storytelling. Third Edition. Command Performance Language Institute. Bakersfield, CA. Ray, Blaine. (2003, March 1). Subject: Structure and Unconscious Learning. Retrieved March 2, 2003 from MoreTPRS® listserve, Web site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/moreTPRS®/message/36888 Rivers, Wilga (1990). Teaching Foreign Language Skills. (p. 28). The University of Chicago Press. Schütz, Ricardo. (2002, January 30). Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition. English Made in Brazil. Retrieved February 1, 2011 http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html Sebelius, Erin. (2002, October). TPR Storytelling: The Teaching Method Most Consistent with the Principles of Second Language Acquisition, National University. Segal, Berty. (2011). TPR Source. Web Site: http://www.TPRSource.com Trelease, James. (2011). Trelease-On-Reading. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from Web site: http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/ Wilson, Leslie Owen. (2002). Special Intelligence Indicators. Retrieved February 1, 2011 from http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/learning/miindicators.htm Wolfe, P. & Brandt, R. (1998). What do we know from brain research? Educational Leadership, 56 (3), 8-13. Resource Page American Council on the Teaching of Foregin Languages. (2003). Retrieved April 4, 2003 from ACTFL. http://www.actfl.org