TPRS Post - Judy Debois

Great post on the MoreTPRS goup from Judy Debois that I didn't want to forget!

Interesting questions, Deb. Here are some of my thoughts, for whatever they're
worth.


IMHO vocabulary lists will help some students, those who as you say have visual
memories and those who are interested in languages, as Dr. Krashen says. I
don't see how they can hurt the others, who will ignore them anyway, right? 
Unless you tell them to memorize them, in which case they will waste a lot of
time and effort that will not be very productive. Memorization is by definition
short term. I prefer to give my students a story, maybe a new story, that uses
the vocabulary in question. If they read it through they'll get revision in
context, which will give them new associations to help them remember the
structures. Once they have enough associations, the word/structure will be in
their long term memory. You might ask students who are artistic to illustrate
the new story, which will give even more associations, visual ones, with the
structures. So basically, you have to decide whether your limited time is better
spent making up three categories of vocabulary lists or making up a new story
for the most important vocabulary. (And you can cheat by giving them a story by
a student/students in another class using the same vocabulary.)


Illustrated student stories, written and illustrated by students, are a good way
to build up a library for FVR. It's a struggle for us to make the language
simple enough, but they do it automatically with the limited language they have.
In a small school like yours I'm sure they'll recognize the author's name and
will find it "compelling".


I think you're doing it exactly right when you "echo" what a student has said. 
This is what "caretaker speech" does all the time. Baby says "peas" and you
echo back "please". Student says "la verte voiture" and you smile and nod and
say "Oui! La voiture verte!" The student may catch what you changed and take
note or they may not catch it, in which case it means that they're not ready for
that yet. But they won't feel humiliated because you pointed out that they had
made a mistake, which will make them think twice before speaking up again.


As for "correcting" written work, I prefer to "edit" it. I've explained this on
my blog, but my examples are from small groups of students. With a class I
would choose three papers, one very basic, one more complex and the best paper
of the lot. Then I would "edit" them so that there are no mistakes. I type the
three papers up, and bingo! You have an embedded reading. (I understand that
this is how Laurie Clarq first started doing embedded reading.) When you return
their papers where you have underlined in green everything that is correct, you
also give your students the three edited versions, telling them that they were
written by students in the class but not giving the names. You will see them
reading them closely. Each time I'm amazed at how attentively students read
texts written by their classmates and how willing they are to read the same
story three or four times. I call that compelling comprehensible input. I
answer any questions about structures and vocabulary, smiling like the cat that
ate the cream because I know that they're going to retain my answers to their
questions. If there were frequent mistakes that you corrected and no one asks
why, it means they're just not seeing them yet. You may want to target those
structures in your next lesson.


Basically, one thing that I have learned from horse riding is that it's much
more effective to teach a horse how to do something right than to spend time
teaching it not to do something wrong. Pointing out mistakes is teaching
students not to do something wrong. Giving them correct models is teaching them
to do it right.