By Jay Celuch, high school Spanish teacher

Anyone who has ever studied a language other than his or her native tongue would agree: becoming comfortable with thinking in and speaking a language is the best way to learn and remember it. We can all think back to high school and the language other than English that we studied. How much do we actually remember? When we left school, could we speak the language? Memorizing vocabulary lists and grammar constructions so we could pass the next test did not really help us learn to speak and remember the language.

Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) is a methodology in language teaching that allows students to listen, read and ultimately speak the target language through teacher guided stories. TPRS was developed by language teacher Blaine Ray in the 1990s and is a method that is used all over the world.

I, along with the other Spanish teachers at PDS, took the time to attend a professional development class taught by Blaine Ray this summer. We learned how to tell basic stories in the target language with minimum prompting for the students. We also learned that after presenting the basic facts, we could ask the students questions about what they just heard. By the students’ responses, teachers could tell whether or not they understood the story. Repetition and rephrasing helped those who were struggling. Everyone could remain engaged with the story by listening to and answering the questions.

In addition to storytelling and questions, TPRS also focuses on reading. Students are given stories to read with a partner. One student reads a sentence in the target language, the partner translates, then they reverse roles for the next sentence, and so on. It is an excellent way for students to help each other and build comprehension.

As teachers we think, “Listening to a demonstration is one thing, but will this work in my class?” Well, I have used the storytelling and questioning part of TPRS several times this year and it has been successful in getting the students to think and speak in Spanish. The definite advantage to this method is that it can be tailored to what you are teaching and how you teach. If you start a chapter with vocabulary, your story and questions can include the new words. If you are studying a certain verb tense, your story and questions can reflect that tense.

To conclude, getting students to think and speak in the target language is an important goal of language teachers. The TPRS method, incorporated into the curriculum of a language class, can be helpful in allowing students to practice and enhance their listening, reading and speaking skills.