Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) is the method that I use in the Success with Stories program.
TPRS was developed by an American Spanish language teacher named Blaine Ray.
There are a few key components of the method that I think are very important and I want you to know about them.
1. Comprehensible input: In order to acquire a language, you must understand what you hear. If you mostly understand what you hear (or read), it is comprehensible to you. Listening is so important!!
2. Stories: It is easier to learn new vocabulary and pick up grammatical structures naturally by listening (and understanding) stories that are short, funny, silly and involve emotions or surprises. Learning new vocabulary by studying flashcards or vocabulary lists is not very effective, but you probably already know that by now.
3. Question and answer lessons: Telling the story and answering lots of questions serves two functions.
- First, because the question and answer lesson is very repetitive, asking similar questions over and over again throughout the lesson, you get to hear the vocabulary and grammatical structures many, many times, which leads to better understanding and more retention. (This means you remember the words better!)
- Second, because the questions are simple and repetitive, you begin to understand quickly and answer quickly. Learning how to answer the questions quickly, without translating, without thinking will lead you to becoming a fluent English speaker.
To experience how powerful this method can be, listen to the Sample Lesson Set. It includes a little bit from each of the 4 different lessons in each set: story, vocabulary, question and answer, and the point of view story.
Link to the sample transcript.
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