Are you a foreign language teacher who has ever wondered
how to inspire a deep and passionate interest in learning
a second language in your students?
Have you ever wanted your students to get
fired up about your class, speak the target language all
period long and laugh the whole time?
Have you ever wanted your students to leave
your class.....bilingual? Then you're in the right place.
TPR Storytelling is a foreign language teaching
methodology that was invented by Blaine Ray of Bakersfield,
California. TPR Storytelling (TPRS) teachers tell personalized
stories in their foreign language or English as a Second
language classrooms as their students act those stories
out.
 |
|
Dale Crum,
Dr. Steven Krashen and Karen Rowan at a conference
in Denver in 2001
|
Students comprehend the stories by virtue of the live
action visual aids and acquire the target vocabulary because
it is repeated dozens of times within the daily story.
Sentence structure, vocabulary and grammar are acquired
because non-stop comprehensible input is provided by the
teacher.
Blaine Ray's TPR Storytelling is used by thousands of
elementary school, middle school, high school, college
and adult education English as a Second Language, English
as a Foreign Language and Foreign Language teachers nationally
and internationally. The long-term memory strategies,
constant comprehensible input and intense personalization
of this methodology are based on the pedagogy of Dr. James
Asher (TPR) and Dr. Stephen Krashen (The Natural Approach).
TPR Storytelling is similar to Classical TPR, except that
the 3 Steps of TPRS® allow students to acquire the narrative
and descriptive, rather than the imperative, modes of
speech. The goal of TPRS® is to make students fluent and
proficient in a second language through ample exposure
to interesting, comprehensible input. TPRS® teachers direct
their efforts toward their students, rather than the textbook,
the grammar or the curriculum. We teach kids. As a result,
we have students who are excited about foreign languages,
eager to stay in our classes all the way through school....
and who are bilingual.
TPR Storytelling begins with introducing the
vocabulary (step 1). Students then act out the stories as
the teacher tells (or, more accurately, "asks")
re-tells and asks questions about a story that uses the
vocabulary words (step 2). The oral story is then followed
up with reading (step 3). Students rapidly acquire the second
language just as Dr. Krashen imagined: effortlessly and
involuntarily. The method relies heavily on the five hypotheses
of The Natural Approach: the acquisition hypothesis, the
input hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the affective
filter hypothesis and the monitor hypothesis, which are
explained in detail in Foreign Language Education The
Easy Way, by Dr. Stephen Krashen, as well as lots of
comprehensible input through access to books. Find out
more about TPRS!
