Talk:TPR Storytelling

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 31 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kelsedgelow.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have rewritten the entire article, and expanded it considerably. I have tried to keep the old content where appropriate, but the vast majority is solely written by me. I'd appreciate help checking over it - here are some things you can do:

• Cite assertions in the text (this is the most urgent)
• Make appropriate links to existing Wikipedia articles
• Add an example story script
• Add relevant photos
• Add information about schools that use TPRS, TPRS materials, the conferences, IJFLT, etc...

— Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 10:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

More things to do:

• Rewrite/move "Reception" section as per Talk:Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling#Criticism. Deleted section as it was unsourced and vague. See WP:CRITICISM — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 18:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
• Add more action research studies to Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling#Research. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 06:15, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

It seems to me that most of these criticisms are not really about TPRS, but about Stephen Krashen's SLA hypotheses. How about we rename this section to "Common misconceptions", shorten it, and move some of the material to the relevant SLA articles? - — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 10:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Criticism: "Criticism sections should not be used to describe attributes that are likely to be criticized unless and until a meaningful individual has criticized the subject for that attribute. All criticism in the dedicated section should be attributed to a specific critic. Attributes which are likely to draw criticism may be documented elsewhere in the article if relevant."

Unless someone can find a specific critic that supports the points in the old "criticism" section, I plan on rewriting it as something akin to a "common misconceptions" piece, with references. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 11:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

References

I've decided to use the Harvard references template for this article. The syntax can be a little difficult if you're not used to it, but it makes adding references very easy, and it doesn't take much space in the article text when you're editing. For help on using it, see this page for examples. For reference, the style to use in the article text can be found on the Template:Harvnb page, and the style to use in the References section can be found at Template:Citation. Specifically, see Template:Cite book and Template:Cite web for common examples. For other types of references, find the appropriate template at Category:Citation templates. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:10, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Quotes and sources that need homes

Four-percenters

I found the source for the "four-percenters" claim, but my information is second-hand. I found it in page 3-40 of James Asher's "Learning Another Language Through Actions" (6th ed.), but the original source is Lawson (1971).

To quote Asher, "Teachers of a second language often have a strong conviction that their teaching procedure produced excellent speech. This may be an illusion if the conclusion was based on selected data. That is, by Level II, according to Lawson (1971), 64 percent of all students who started in Level I have dropped out. By level III, 85 percent of all those students who started in Level I have dropped out, and by Level IV, 96 percent of the students who started in Level I have dropped out."

• Lawson, J. H. "Should foreign language be eliminated from the curriculum?" In J. W. Dodge (ed.), The case for foreign language study. New York: Modern Language Association Materials Center, 1971.

Maybe someone with access to the original source can confirm this? — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 09:05, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

500 Class responses　

"Your goal is to get 50 to 100 repetitions of the word and 500 class responses as you tell the story and ask the questions during step 2." Ray 2004 p63. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 04:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Languages are stored in implicit memory

From Slavic (2007) p130:

In their book "Human Neuropsychology" (Kolb, Bryan and Ian Q. Whishaw, New York, W.H. Freeman, 1991), the authors state that languages are put into long term implicit memory, and not long term explicit memory. Content that results from memorizing rules is stored in long term explicit memory, but the learning of language cannot be done explicitly, by the memorization of rules.

— Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 07:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

How TPRS fits in with communicative language theory

Found some useful info on TPRS and other SLA theories - it turns out they fit together very well, although this is by accident rather than design. From Scholarsbank:

"In terms of Second Language Acquisition Theory, TPR Storytelling gives most of the credit to the researcher Stephan Krashen, though his theories are now somewhat outdated. Although Krashen’s theoretical system gives teachers a simple framework to work off of, in the end it compromises the strength of TPRS’s theoretical foundation through its exclusiveness. This is unfortunate, since many of the actual practices of TPRS do actually correspond quite well with some of the more recent findings of Second Language Acquisition research and could even be seen as innovative and effective means of employing them in the classroom. It will be seen that TPRS is in a similar situation with regards to pedagogical theory. While it claims inspiration from classical TPR and Krashen’s “Natural Approach,” it disregards the important principles of contemporary Communicative Language Teaching, which it in fact incorporates in its own innovative way." — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 17:31, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Blaine Ray on the silent period

From Ray (2004) pp7-8:

The main reason usually given for not having the students talk immediately is that they are unfamiliar with the words and therefore it would be stressful to them to try to produce them. In other words, they're not ready; they can't do it adequately. While the silent period is important, it is even more important to focus on thorough vocabulary acquisition, which is extremely important at the beginning and at every other level. If a student knows a word well enough, s/he can use it in speech - at any level.

— Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 11:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Michael Long on explicit instruction

From Long 1990 p36:

Developmental sequences have been well documented by second language acquisition researchers for such phenomena as word order, negation, interrogatives, articles, and relative clauses (see, e.g. Johnston, 1985), as has the inability of formal instruction to alter them in any fundamental way (see, e.g. Pienemann and Johnston, 1987; Ellis, in press).

— Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 06:10, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Books to check

• "From Input to Output: A Teacher's Guide to Second Language Acquisition" by Van Patten. Ref from Slavic (2007) p126.

Articles I want to read

On JSTOR

• Teaching German with TPRS (Total Physical Response Storytelling) by James Davidheiser. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 05:19, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Exam results from TPRS

From TPR Storytelling: The Teaching Method Most Consistent with the Principles of Second Language Acquisition by Erin Sibelius:

Comparisons of test scores between TPRS students and traditionally-taught students show encouraging results. Valeri Marsh (1997) cites the following data: In the spring of 1993, middle school students in a pilot pre-Spanish I introductory TPRS program at Phoenix Country Day School scored above the national average on the Level I National Spanish Exam (NSE), a discrete-point grammar test intended for high school students who have completed one year of Spanish I. In 1991, honors-level high school students at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, Arizona outperformed the national average of 41% on the NSE by 21 percentage points, even though they had only had one semester of Spanish I. Overall scores on the Level I NSE at Salpointe improved by 12 points (from 33% to 45%) in the first year that all Spanish I teachers switched to TPRS. It is worth mentioning that these comparisons are being made between TPRS and those methods that educators and curriculum writers today believe to be the best methods- we are not comparing TPRS to the outdated and already debunked grammar-translation or audio-lingual methods.

— Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 23:19, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Neutral Point of View Dispute

I would agree that this article needs more references before it can definitely said to be neutral. However, at the moment no specific claim has been made as to which parts need to be changed. Please add any specific claims to this talk page. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 03:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the edit that added the point of view dispute header was vandalism. I'm taking it down now. If it wasn't vandalism, feel free to put it back up, but make sure you say the reasons here, plus the specific passages which are affected. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 12:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion below. The requester has made a solid case that "TPR Storytelling" is more common and recognizable than "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling". - GTBacchus^(talk) 04:50, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

---

Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling → TPR Storytelling — This is shorter than the existing name, still precisely defines the topic, and is more common in actual usage. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 01:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Original rationale

I tried moving this page to "TPR Storytelling" yesterday, but it's been reverted back. Here are the reasons I want to move the page:

• "TPR Storytelling" is shorter than "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling".
• It still precisely identifies the topic.
• "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" is not the most common usage. For example, Blaine Ray, the original developer of TPR Storytelling and owner of the trademark "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling", calls his teaching manual "Fluency Through TPR Storytelling". Ben Slavic calls his teaching manual "TPRS in a Year". (See List of TPR Storytelling resources for details.)
• The name changed from "Total Physical Response Storytelling" to "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" with the introduction of the 4th edition of Blaine Ray's book "Fluency through TPR Storytelling" around 2004. Some people may be familiar with "Total Physical Response Storytelling" but not "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling". "TPR Storytelling" and "TPRS", however, have remained the same throughout its history.
• While "TPRS" is the most popular term for the subject, it is an acronym and also has other meanings. For example, see this German company named TPRS and the Tenant Participation Resource Services Program.
• "TPR Storytelling" is more recognizable than "TPRS", and is more informative for those unfamiliar with the subject.

Here's the Google popularity poll:

• Results for "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" on Google - 4,340
• Results for "TPR Storytelling" on Google - 6,240
• Results for "TPRS" on Google - 73,400 (contains false positives)

Please let me know what you think. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 00:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC) - Moved from section above — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 05:53, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• To Kintetsubuffalo - I saw you wrote WPMOS in your move revert summary for this page. I'd appreciate clarification on how the Manual of Style WikiProject affects the name change. Perhaps you're referring to the TPR in TPR Storytelling being an acronym? — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 10:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed I am. You and I are familiar with the acronym, but Wikipedia is for the lay reader. We're educators (I am assuming you are...) but it should be immediately clear to those who are not, what the article is about. NBA and NHL are clear to many people, but the redirects go to the full name for those who are not. Thank you for the headsup at my talkpage!--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 13:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. And yes, your intuition is good! I'm an educator, and I'm also living in Japan. As for the article, if it were a simple acronym, I would agree with you. However, there are a couple of points which make this one special:

• The acronym was changed from "Total Physical Response Storytelling" to "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" around 2004, so some people may be familiar with the old acronym but not the new one.
• "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" is not really that descriptive. It is not clear what is meant by "proficiency", for a start - it doesn't necessarily mean anything to do with language. Even if you do know that this is a language teaching method, I would argue that "Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" doesn't give you any better idea of what actually goes on with the method than "TPR Storytelling". With the National Hockey League or the National Basketball Association it's pretty clear what's happening, but you don't get that here. Couple this with the fact that "TPR Storytelling" is more common in usage, and it seems better to use the shorter name. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 16:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I just had a little investigation into how much sway the Wikipedia acronym policy has over the policy on common names/short names. It looks like there is quite a bit of leeway - see IBM, BBC and CNN for just three examples. I think TPR Storytelling is in much the same vein as these. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 00:44, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose since the current title is both correct and clear. Trying to justify this by comparing it to companies like IBM is just wrong. They are not even in the same league. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course TPRS isn't as famous as IBM - that's not the point I was trying to make. Rather, the way that people use the name is similar. Most people know the name IBM, and only some people know International Business Machines, so the article is IBM. If we restrict ourselves to the language teaching scene in America, we can say much the same thing - most language teachers know the name TPR Storytelling, and only some know Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling, so the article should be called TPR Storytelling. The way I see it, it's more a question of which Wikipedia policies should take priority, the policy against acronyms, or the policies to use names which are short and in common use. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 01:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Support. I teach TPRS and call it TPRS. But I sometimes forget the full name!. I'll accept TPR Storytelling because, as mentioned before, it is more transparent than TPRS (and I don't forget what the S stands for). In any case, we have re-directs, so its not a critical issue. Kdammers (talk) 09:26, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Circling -- inconsistent.

The section on circling is logically inconsistent.

The point of asking these questions is not to force the students to speak;

...but later it says...

With circling, teachers can dramatically increase the number of student responses in a class.

Surely this final paragraph is irrelevant if student response is not a teaching goal? Prof Wrong (talk) 22:30, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I think student response is a teaching goal, just not the main one. I remember one of the TPRS experts (can't think of who right now, maybe Ben Slavic?) saying that "output isn't a dirty word any more". However, it's the input which is the main focus of the teaching because it is required for bringing about real language acquisition. In any case, I've removed the last paragraph as it wasn't really necessary anyway. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 17:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Invented in the 90s?

I was surprised to read that TPRS was invented in the 90s by Blaine Ray. I attended the Tokyo School of the Japanese Language (東京日本語学校) for two years in 2008-9, and their method, which they call the "Naganuma method" (developed by Naoe Naganuma) is extremely similar to TPRS. They have been teaching with this method for at least 50 years. I'd have thought it's a least worth a mention. They describe the method here.

I'm a total Wikipedia novice and unfortunately do not have the time to do the due diligence to research this right now, let alone read all the rules to make an edit that fits with community standards, but if anyone else felt like taking it up I'm happy to help in any way I can. Johnm831 (talk) 05:36, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Johnm831: It does sound similar to TPRS, but maybe we should have a separate Naganuma method article instead of putting both of these methods in the same article. Whether these methods need to be in different articles or not depends on how the sources treat them. If most sources treat them as part of one overall approach, then they should share an article. On the other hand, if most sources treat them as completely separate methods, then the articles should be separate as well. (One caveat is that if the former applies, and the resulting article becomes too big, then we can split the content out into two separate articles and summarise both of them in the main article.) As for the community standards, you can get away with reading just three pages: Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:No original research. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:51, 5 January 2017 (UTC)