Topic-Based Research 1

RESEARCH ON TPRS

This research paper by Dr. Karen Lichtman presented during the 2018 national TPRS conference (NTPRS) was eye-opening to me. Since TPRS came out in 1998, many quantitative studies with rigorous research designs were available. The key ideas of TPRS have been presented lively and clearly in the BER seminar: “Accelerate your students’ use of the target language”, by Ms. Jan Holter Kittok. The central ideas started with the importance of comprehensible input (CI), then the different teaching approaches between natural language acquisition and traditional language teaching, effortful language learning, and how to lower “the affective filter” and motivate students’ participation and make them feel confident in a language classroom. TPRS aims at the best use of class time for language acquisition and improves teaching and use of the target language in the classroom.

This research paper is especially valuable for me and my teaching because most of the studies were conducted in the U.S. with high school English speaking students (Gr. 9-12), the age group I have taught for the past 15 years. Although the research was mostly done in Spanish language classes, it is still very encouraging to know the positive results of the studies and research work. This motivates me to continue implementing the central strategies in my Chinese classroom. While I have attended PD seminars, developed TPRS curriculum and strategies, and improved TPRS and CI in Mandarin classrooms since 2013, I have learned many new ideas in this seminar, including building a bridge from input to output, stretching to fluency, scaffolding tools; personalization; and integrate culture contents into language teaching. This seminar also raised the challenge of preparing students for global citizenship and setting up “the big picture” curriculum, which is related to CI teaching.

Dr. Lichtman showed that most of the research from 2009-2018, shows that TPRS students scored significantly higher than traditional students on tests with large effect sizes. Some studies show TPRS groups even outperform traditional groups in writing and speaking, some in listening and reading, as well as grammar. Some studies even show significantly higher scores for TRPS groups after only one week of instruction. In this paper, studies also showed that students became more positive, and had less anxiety, as well as demonstrating significant increases in language skills after a few weeks or a semester. I have also observed stronger performance, as well as better participation, and happier students after implementing TPRS. Students are more interested, motivated, and determined they find the lessons fun and easy. I am extremely pleased my hard work has been worthwhile. My students’ outcomes and the research results match. Even though I don't support AP Chinese exams, some studies and research also conclude that TPRS students perform as well on the AP exam as students with more traditional instruction.

My experience also confirms studies that show TPRS is effective and fun and thus leads to positive teacher-student relationships, and promotes more freedom and creativity. While consistently employing TPRS Mandarin language enrollment has not only increased student enrollment at the beginning levels but has even enticed juniors and seniors who have already fulfilled their language requirements to enroll as well. 

Research also shows there are other challenges including Mandarin textbooks and curriculum, teacher exhaustion, and underdeveloped TRPS material and practice for Chinese language and Chinese classrooms. Most studies were conducted only to produce quick results and didn’t use textbooks or comprehensive sequenced materials. I have had to create and develop everything from scratch to reach my TPRS teaching goals in addition to teaching five levels and five classes. I cannot replace my entire curriculum with TRPS materials. I have only been able to insert stories into traditional texts.

Resource:

Karen Lichtman (2018). Research on TPR Storytelling (TPRS), 13 pages, Northern Illinois University

Topic-Based Research 2

TPRS WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

I have used this book as an important reference in teaching for about 5 years. It focuses on TPRS and CI in teaching Chinese language. It helped me to implement TPRS methods and design TPRS lessons. Chinese is a tonal language, character based, non-phonetic, non-alphabetic language. It has another layer of challenge for a 2nd. language learners. This book provided some guidelines to transform the best strategies of TPRS and CI into teaching Chinese while most of the available research and materials have been focused on western languages, such as Spanish and French, or ESL.

In this book, I learned the basic ideas of teaching with CI, I also realized the four language skills should not be taught at the same time. The three steps of CI implementation are: 1. Establish meaning while keeping the classroom in the target language: write/display new characters, pinyin and the meaning on the whiteboard; 2. The teacher speaks slowly, pauses and points, circling, and students respond; 3. Input through reading. These steps help me design lesson plans and scaffold class activities. It is especially important for teaching Chinese that teachers should make students feel at ease, relaxed, interested, and successful from the beginning. It has been emphasized in Ms. Kittok’s seminar too. I entirely agree that “there’s nothing better than having a class of beginners leave the classroom after 40 minutes able to tell a simple story in Chinese.” The chapter of  “Day 1: Starting out right” is most inspiring to me, and repeatedly makes me put lots of thought in designing the first weeks’ lessons of all levels from beginning to AP level (level 5 honors) carefully and thoughtfully.

The book bridged TPRS and CI into Chinese classrooms. The structure of the book is reader-friendly. It breaks down the theory of Dr. Stephen Krashen and the existing research on CI to daily Chinese teaching practices. The book started by introducing the concepts of TPRS and CI, then dividing the strategies and activities into four major topics that represent the characteristics of the Chinese language. The four parts are: Listening and Speaking; Reading; Writing (in Characters); Tones and Structures.

However, I didn’t find “cold character reading” useful, The open-ended format didn’t work for students’ learning or have a positive experience. It’s time-consuming to have the class go on a wild goose chase without providing guidance or sufficient vocabulary. As discussed during the Seminar, Jan Holter Kittok didn’t think all the TPRS strategies were equally practical or useful in all situations. Story asking wasn’t entirely worth the class time. I loved her method of using some of the famous classic children’s picture books to teach a lesson, which serves both language and culture content goals I will definitely try this method. I have been writing my own TPRS teaching material in the past. Children’s books with colored images are engaging and interesting, and would be a nice supplement to my own curriculum.

I think “pinyin timed writing” activity of this book is the same as Ms. Kittok’s timed writing activities bridging input to output. But pinyin writing is not the output for Chinese language, pinyin is just a tool, not the outcome where students demonstrate their skills. I believe, instead of writing phonetics (pinyin), it’s more effective to let students type in Chinese. Typing is a training of both pinyin skills and character reading skills at the same time. Why not use technology (texting, computer typing, etc.)? I also prefer providing tools, such as word banks, vocab sheets, required structures, etc. Activity assignments should focus on repetition first on the most current lessons and then expand to the recent units to accumulate knowledge in a quarter and a semester.

In this book, it is also recommended that “pop-up” grammar should be casual, the same as presented in the seminar, grammar teaching should be in a communication context, in sentences, in a story. Just teaching and drilling grammar is not the right approach. The concept of not making Chinese grammar a big deal is very effective as Chinese doesn’t have much grammar in comparison to Western languages. There are no verb conjugations, no articles, few prepositions, simple and consistent sentence-building rules, etc. It makes TPRS methods even more important and effective because most of the learners’ difficulty is listening, correct pronounciation, and reading with a large vocabulary, not grammar.

I found this book very helpful for understanding and designing special methods for teaching Mandarin.

Resource:

Terry T. Waltz (2015). TPRS with Chinese Characteristics, 176 pages.

Topic-Based Research 3

TEACHING PROFICIENCY THROUGH READING AND STORYTELLING: A METHOD TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ABILITY

This research article laid out the benefits of TPRS in teaching English as a foreign language to Indonesian students (first year in high school) with a focus on the development of students’ speaking skills, which I believe is the most important and challenging communication skill\ in learning Chinese, especially for adolescence and adults. It is also a skill requiring teacher-assisted classroom practice and meaningful feedback.

Studies show two main reasons students are hesitant to speak, fear of making errors and negative feedback, and a lack of vocabulary. Researchers advocate TPRS methods to improve students’ speaking ability.

The researchers in this paper explained the steps of the methods, which are Establish meaning; ask story and read and discuss the story. They also established the cycle of TPRS teaching: planning; implementing; observing and reflecting. The measuring instruments of students’ outcome were pre- and post-speaking test. The research started with analyzing the challenges of teaching speaking proficiency, explained why TPRS worked to improve students’ speaking proficiency by overcome the challenges: it is engaging, creative, expressive and fun, and makes students stop thinking about judging or worrying. Students establish self-assurance in speaking. Tests were conducted after the first and the second cycle of TPRS teaching.

After thoroughly explaining the TRPS concepts, history, steps, and the function of TPRS method in teaching speaking, this article also analyzed TPRS in connection with preserving students’ high interest and the classroom management. The techniques help overcome some problems in the classroom. The researcher stated three techniques in this article: preserve interest through comedy, exaggeration; teacher’s enthusiasm and excitement through body language, voice, appearance; personalize the story to relate to students’ life. In my past teaching, I find the boring text book content has been a major issue for implementing and delivering TPRS in my classroom. I had to create my own material, write fun stories with surprising endings and exciting thrilling plots. Thankfully through the workshop, I learned to expand the resource to authentic children’s books and stories, or find Chinese popular Children’s stories with integrated cultural teaching, then turn it to a TPRS lesson.

The conclusion of the research was not surprising: the testing result indicates that students’ speaking ability improved from 15% of the students at 80-100 points level to 80% of the students scored at 80-100 level after two cycles of TPRS teaching. The study proved that TPRS methods benefits students’ speaking ability. This finding was very positive and encouraging.

I found the suggestions towards the end of this research was especially reflective and useful. It indicated a few common possible failures in a TPRS classroom, which I have experienced all, namely: The story should not be too long and too difficult to a level, so it is crucial to choose or create a suitable story to teach; Teachers should establish rules to control students’ attention. Because a TPRS classroom is usually noisy, lively, possibly too lively that It’s hard for some students to focus or follow teachers’ instructions.

However, I do not entirely agree with some researchers’ recommendations for TPRS method is more suitable to elementary or junior high school students in improving their speaking ability. In my past teaching, it is absolutely beneficial for 9th-12th high school students and adults. I think the only challenges relate to shortage of material, teacher’s exhaustion, underdeveloped practice for Chinese language. I think it would be interesting for Chinese language teachers and educators.

Resource:

Nurul U. Namkutu (2018). Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling: A Method to Improve Students’ Speaking Ability.
Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 145