Learning a new language through storytelling.
When I was in Nice at the ECIS conference, I saw a very inspiring teacher Susan Gross presenting a session about promoting proficiency through music. Susan happens to be a fan of TPRS® (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) which I didn't know before.I was really intrigued about this concept and I saw that Susan delivered a session about TPRS® during the pre-conference, which I didn't attend. However I could download her notes, which I did and I read! When I read them, I totally agreed with her method.
She says: " An important difference between classroom acquisition and “baby acquisition” is: students have greater cognitive ability than babies. However, they have significantly less time in the language than babies do. Therefore teachers must make the best use of precious classroom time." which is true. I was always told that the best way to learn a language is to learn it like a baby does. The problem is our students are not in the same situation as toddlers are, so we cannot expect them to learn a new language the same way!
Susan also says: "Classroom language must be repetitive, interesting, and varied. Without these elements, we are not using class time in the best way possible. Our challenge is making the language comprehensible while at the same time making it repetitive and interesting." This is true as well, especially the repetitive process. After reading Susan's storytelling concept, I wanted to try it out straight away. I bought some IKEA finger puppets and so I decided to tell a little story to my grade 6 students (11-12 years old) about a girl called Ramona who goes to a school in Barcelona. The story was very basic and the goal was to introduce "to like" in Spanish as well as to revise the vocabulary related to school and school subjects. I did not follow the TPRS® steps but I tried to incorporate some tips from the handout. For example I knew the whole class hated music, so I made Ramona hate music! When I told the story, I filmed it with my Flip camera and then posted the film to the school blog. That way, my students can view it again to revise.
- when I told the story, students were very attentive and all, even some distracted boys wanted to respond to my questions.
- I didn't use English at all, even though I said new words in Spanish students didn't know.
- It was great to recycle old vocabulary.
You can view the video here, bearing in mind it is the first time I do this so the filming is not great and the story is not the greatest either!
Areas to be improved:- I want students to say a whole sentence as an answer, not just a word.
- Next time, I will try to follow the handout's exact steps.
What about you? Have you tried TPRS® before?
