Sunday, February 28, 2010
TPR in Chickasaw
Hi everyone! I just had to share about what we're seeing this weekend. I am currently in Ada, OK (along with Jill) for a service learning trip with another class on Endangered Languages, and we have been meeting with people who are Chickasaw. We went to a children's language club on Saturday morning where they used TPR (total physical response) to teach the kids Chickasaw. The kids were completely into it, and the teacher did a great job of letting them roam around in organized chaos and then bringing it back in to review. He commented that he actually reviewed a few English translations to help with classroom management and also make sure that they were getting some key grammatical points along with the vocabulary. Tomorrow we go to observe a high school classroom where I think they also use TPR, as well as TPRS (which adds Storytelling as a main component). I know that this isn't related to teaching English, but it is teaching a second language using techniques that we've discussed in the past. We'll have to report back with more.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Actually, it does seem relevant to me. Come to think of it, the Nation book made mention of using gestures with words, although, I will need to look back at the chapters to get an exact page on that one. It is something I tried in my service learning.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I suppose using gestures isn't exactly the purest form of "TPR" as it is known. Nonetheless, the two share some attributes. In this post-designer method world we live in, I think it is good to strategically incorporate some of the good points of the methods.
As with TPR, I find I need to move when learning language sometimes so I think it does help. I made that comment about the last presentation in class that is was good the class was moving around. That is a good lesson for some 'TPR type' materials in it.
Still, I think for children, it is especially good. I suspect it isn't as important that children learn fast and it is more important they are kept entertained by the language. Although, someone with more experience teaching children can correct me on this one.
Over in Garland and Rowlett, they used to contract elementary Spanish teachers who would visit different elementary classes every day, so that the students got one Spanish class every one or two weeks, and then their individual teachers were supposed to practice with them in between lessons. The teachers almost always taught straight vocab, and did so with TPR. I understand it was quite successful in terms of the 'fun factor' for the students, and, at least at first, the students were really learning a lot. But what I heard a lot of were complaints from the regular classroom teachers, who had to deal with a group of 2nd graders who had gotten all pumped up by fun and active TPR, and then got returned to their regular classroom - and who wants to do math after that?
ReplyDeleteAny ideas on how the teachers might channel that energy into more fun classroom stuff, or into more effective language learning after the TPR is done?