Tell To Teach
Teaching through storytelling was always very appealing to me. After all, most of what we learn is through stories, and we mostly communicate through stories. When I heard about TPRS I was a bit skeptical in the beginning, to say the least, but little by little I discovered the power of its core principles, truly a natural approach to teaching languages. TPRS, an acronym for “Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling” is an exciting, input-based approach to teaching language.
In this method we use the whole body as well as our psychic and soul capacities while we learn. We use movement, we use gesturing, we may use short melodies, repetition; we create stories, and have fun in the process.
Students are presented with usually two to three vocabulary “structures” or chunks of language, such as “there is” or “goes to”. They practice their meaning through gestures and by hearing their use repeatedly in context, usually involving the students themselves as the main characters. Then the teacher guides the class to artfully craft together a short story involving those structures, which will be easily understood and retold by the students by the end of the class.
Magic? Yes, magic ... and so much fun!
This is how it works:
Language learning is not a set of rules; it is a skill
In using this method, we are not focused on having the students learn a language in the same way we learn a math formula or a science concept. Speaking in a foreign language is an acquired skill; it is not about simply replacing each L1 (native language) word with its corresponding L2 (foreign language) word and we are done. After all, we know well that we learn to speak before we have the capacity to think, a clear proof that we don’t need to understand the rules and mechanics of language in order to communicate.
Language fluency springs not so much from the head as it does from the feeling realm. Thus, it requires some kind of conscious/unconscious training. Just as the skill required to ride a bicycle, or play the guitar, is always takes more practice than intellectual knowledge. What we are doing is helping our students truly “acquire” versus “learn” to speak in a foreign language.