The Research Of TPRS Teaching Method In English Class

TPRS,Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling,was proposed firstly by a Spanish teacher,Blaine Ray,in California,USA.The method was derived from three abstract sentence structures,repeated and asked personal questions in order to make up stories,which leads the students to a condition that it develops from the lower-level TPR,Total Physical Response,questions,including yes or no question,making choices and W-word question,to higher-level fantasy creation and personalization.The teacher combined the TPR teaching method from James Asher with Stephen Krashen's Second Language Acquisition,thus making his own teaching approach,with both the fun of interaction and the function of comprehensible input.He targeted on personalization and aims to improve students' interaction,by means of repetitive story asking and storytelling,thus boosting students' learning enthusiasm and class participation.During the summer courses in 2014,the author of this paper learned the Input Theory about Mr.Krashen,which explains that only with comprehensible input,can students acquire the language.The following three years witnessed my empirical study about comprehensible input via a multitude of activities and teaching materials,from the burgeoning unfamiliarity to the eventual improvement of students' grades and conspicuous shift of their learning attitude and class atmosphere.Nonetheless,there are still a clutch of students who cannot catch up with the class and the class participation seems to concentrate only for those intermediate and advanced students.Consequently,a more powerful teaching method,with no one left,awaits me somehow.In the year 2017,fortunately,I got the opportunity to attend the workshop about TPRS in ACTFL,American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages,and the webinar called Comprehensible Input with Story Listening by Professor Stephen Krashen in 2018,as well as professional training about CI and TPRS.Moreover,I had the online courses,Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting MOOC and observed the teaching method of American teachers in Diamond Canyon School.The experiences above aggregate to my conclusion that TPRS teaching method is the one that I have always pursued.Besides the TPRS conferences and workshops,I also immersed myself in the ocean of TPRS teaching ideology and theories.Along with a deep analysis of the syllabus and textbooks,an empirical study of TPRS was applied in the English teaching of Shangtang Middle School.This paper has analyzed the background information of the two classes,the control one included,together with the textbooks and syllabus.Besides this,it covers the comparison of the teaching methods,the practise and feedback of TPRS teaching method in the pre-teaching,while-teaching and post-teaching,and the relationship between teaching and learning.From all above,it is primarily shown that TPRS has exerted a positive influence on students' learning enthusiasm,long interest,learning achievement and class interaction between both teachers and students.It is hoped that this study,which aims at the practice of TPRS in Middle school English teaching,with its analysis of the experiment and positive fruit,can play a promising role in the upcoming English teaching by reflecting on its strengths and drawbacks.