Many teachers are being told to use more cooperative activities in their classrooms, but does this approach actually improve student acquisition? Below are some common ideas about cooperative learning in the foreign language classroom, and a Comprehensible Input-based response to each. Idea: The more time spent in pair and group work, the better. Time spent in pair and […]
Posts Tagged ‘Criticisms of TPRS’
Cooperative Learning: A Comprehensible-Input Perspective
Posted by Terry Waltz on November 26th, 2014
Posted in General, Methods 
Tags: Cooperative Learning, Criticisms of TPRS, Project-Based, Task-Based, TPRS 
Comments Off on Cooperative Learning: A Comprehensible-Input PerspectiveTPRS and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge
Posted by Terry Waltz on November 23rd, 2014
Okay — first of all, depth of knowledge has to do with knowledge, not acquisition…but assuming that many teachers do need to provide this sort of administrivia, let’s see how beautifully TPRS and common TPRS-related activities fit! Incorporating some of the action words into the descriptions of tasks, and breaking down each individual action or […]
Posted in General, Outside Forces Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Evaluations, TPRS Comments Off on TPRS and Webb’s Depth of KnowledgeBut TPRS is so unstructured!
Posted by Terry Waltz on December 23rd, 2011
On a discussion board talking about learning Chinese, the comment was recently posted: It was only after I’d been learning Chinese for a while and had acquired most of the grammar structures that I felt comfortable learning Chinese in a non-structured way. This statement seems logical on the surface. After all, you have to “learn” […]
Posted in Curriculum, Methods Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Non-Structured Language Learning, Thematic Units Comments Off on But TPRS is so unstructured!Differentiation: is it needed for acquisition?
Posted by Terry Waltz on October 7th, 2011
So everyone’s going nuts about differentiation around here, with the new teacher evaluation standards and so on. And the admins are thumbing through their lists and saying, “You TPRS people aren’t differentiating.” Should we be? Differentiation is for LEARNING. Being able to diagram sentences, conjugate verbs in charts, or list the four principal exports of […]
Posted in Methods, Outside Forces Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Differentiation, Learning vs Acquisition Comments Off on Differentiation: is it needed for acquisition?What if they…?
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 10th, 2011
My concern is that if these students were to transfer schools and go on to level 4/AP (which our school doesn’t offer yet), would they be totally lost? When is education going to stop playing the “what-if” game? This isn’t a strike against the teacher who posted the above comment on a language teachers’ list […]
Posted in Curriculum, Methods, Outside Forces Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Vocabulary Comments Off on What if they…?The Culture Club
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 9th, 2011
The cry goes up: TPRS doesn’t teach culture. TPRS is a language acquisition method based in Comprehensible Input. As such, it believes that the road to acquisition lies in having students hear and read lots of language that they can understand completely. So where does culture come in? Culture is often mentioned in curricular documents […]
Posted in General, Outside Forces Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Culture Comments Off on The Culture ClubWhat about “memory aids” for ser and estar?
Posted by Terry Waltz on February 20th, 2011
On a language teachers’ List, the comment recently appeared, in the context of a discussion on how to teach ser vs. estar in Spanish using TPRS: I hope there’s nothing “wrong” in providing a guideline for those students who are analytical – or who become analytical in a testing situation, when some students start to […]
Posted in General, Methods Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Fluency, Mnemonics Comments Off on What about “memory aids” for ser and estar?