On a language teachers’ forum, the question goes up: Does it mean that I’m not doing what I should or is it really pretty meaningless and and should stop worrying and not subject my students to it again? My principal likes this kind of thing because he thinks it shows that our students do well… […]
Posts Tagged ‘TPRS’
Why aren’t my kids scoring high on the Countrywide Swahili Test?
Posted by Terry Waltz on April 30th, 2011
Posted in Methods, Outside Forces 
Tags: Accuracy, Assessment, Tests, TPRS 
Comments Off on Why aren’t my kids scoring high on the Countrywide Swahili Test?Does fluency occur in stages?
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 21st, 2011
Here’s the problem with an all-TPRS Chinese program: there’s no reason why students would not be able to acquire virtually all the structure in modern standard Chinese by the end of the second year. Unlike the FIGS, where there are six forms to be taught for every tense (not to mention different endings within a […]
Posted in Chinese-specific, Methods Tags: Advanced, Fluency, Novices, Proficiency, TPRS Comments Off on Does fluency occur in stages?“There must be output…”
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 13th, 2011
A comment recently appeared — generally in support of TPRS, too — on a language teachers’ discussion list: To make TPRS effective, the instructor needs to go beyond just telling stories in the classroom. There needs to be instances where students are engaged into negotiation of meaning, purposeful uses of the target language, and opportunities […]
There’s time for a variety of “techniques”, right?
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 8th, 2011
Um, no. There really isn’t. Or, more precisely, it depends on what you mean by “techniques”. The thing that I think a lot of people do not understand is that while it is very accommodating to say “there is time for everything” in the foreign language classroom, the cold hard fact is that there is […]
Posted in Methods Tags: Legacy Methods, Proficiency, TPRS Comments Off on There’s time for a variety of “techniques”, right?