This year Clairbourn’s Spanish teacher and French teacher, Mary Drazic and Cara Barker, have both revolutionized their language classrooms with the Comprehensible Input (CI) style of instruction (also known as TPRS®—Teach Proficiency through Reading and Story-telling). Below, Mary Drazic provides insights into how CI is applied in language classrooms, followed by a brief history of the origins of CI (or TPRS®), as well as the research on its effectiveness, by French teacher Cara Barker:
Spanish Teacher Mary Drazic Shares Her Experience:
To prepare for this new style of teaching, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop with the founder of the TPRS® method, Blaine Ray. He instructs in the CI (or TPRS®) style that we have brought to Clairbourn School, and the training was a game-changer! We learned German during the workshop. It was fantastic to not only learn the new instructional style, but also to be a successful product of it. By the end of the training, I could tell a story in German!
I am so happy to share with you my first impressions of this new instructional style as applied in Clairbourn’s language classes. The students’ engagement is through the roof. I have never seen students respond so well to Spanish—they are even laughing at jokes in their new language. When learning a topic, they can emote by acting out what is happening during instruction and they can practice having appropriate responses to situations. For example, they are asked to respond in the target language with expression like, “Oh no!,” “That’s gross,” or “Ridiculous!” Each student’s involvement enriches the overall experience.
Continue reading “Comprehensible Input: An Effective New Approach for Clairbourn’s Language Program”
