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TPR & Listen First

Ok, welcome to the commentary for the “TPR & Listen First” article.

This is a very interesting article. I’m very fascinated with TPR. TPR is a fantastic technique for teaching languages. It is especially great for low beginners.

Now you can use it for many different levels, but if you have somebody who has zero language, zero English, zero Japanese, they want to learn the language and they know nothing, TPR is a great way to start them learning. In fact, I think it’s the best way that I know to start the learning.

TPR has a lot of great research about it, around it. So, we know from a lot of research that TPR is more effective, more powerful, more successful than traditional methods, more successful than audio-lingual methods, more successful than grammar analyses. Not just a little bit more successful, a lot more successful.

TPR is very powerful. If you want to learn a new language and you have zero ability, try to find a TPR program because it’s a great way to learn a language.

TPRS stands for TPR storytelling. It’s kind of the next technique that comes after TPR, and TPRS, TPR storytelling, that’s what I do in our mini-story lessons. So they go together quite well.

But anyway, in this article, it’s a research article; basically, it’s kind of a casual language research article. I changed the language a little bit to make it more conversational, more direct.

But anyway, it discusses a few different studies. These studies are quite interesting. There are a lot more studies. When I was doing my master’s thesis, I learned about some of this research.

Because when I got my masters in teaching English, I knew something was wrong. I had already been a teacher. I had been teaching English several years before my master’s degree.

I had also tried to learn Japanese, I tried to learn Italian. I tried a little bit, tried to learn Spanish in the past. I even taken Mandarin, I took two semesters in Mandarin Chinese in university.

And these methods totally failed me. They did not work. I took two semesters that’s, you know, almost one year, of Chinese and now I remember possibly one sentence in Chinese, maybe 6 words. That’s not good.

But even worse, after two semesters I could not remember very much and I certainly could not use Chinese and I definitely could not understand it. The same happened with Spanish.

When I studied Japanese on my own, I lived in Japan. I was living in Japan for 6 months in Aomori surrounded only by Japanese people, studying Japanese every day, myself, and yet I could not speak Japanese after six months at all.

I mean, not a little bit. I could not chat at all in Japanese. Someone said something in Japanese unless it was super simple like, “koh-nee-chee-wah, hello” I didn’t understand.

So I thought, for a long time I thought something is wrong with me. “A.J. Wow! You’re a smart guy but man, you’re bad with languages. You’re just stupid with languages. You cannot learn a language”, that’s what I thought. I thought I had some problem.

But, then I became an English teacher and I noticed, wow! A lot of other people have the same problem. All these students are failing, not just in my classes but in everybody’s classes.

And these English classes, the students are studying for years, one year, two years, four years, six years, studying English and they still cannot have a normal average conversation. They still struggle, it’s still difficult. And I started thinking, wow! Something is wrong.

It’s not the people, it’s not the students, it’s not me. I don’t have a brain problem with languages. The problem has to be something else. And I realized after I started doing my master’s degree, I started learning about a lot of this research.

I realized, aha! The problem is the teaching method. The problem is the textbooks, are the textbooks that we use. That’s the problem. That’s why so many people fail foreign languages. That’s why so many people hate foreign languages. That’s why so many students think foreign language study is painful and horrible and frustrating.

And just like the article says, so many people, especially in America, they study a foreign language a few years, and they learn only to hate the language. That’s all they learn. They never learn how to use the language or understand it well.

The only thing they learn is, “Oh man! Spanish is very difficult, it’s complicated”. And that’s Spanish. You know, Spanish is pretty easy actually for English speakers, it’s quite close to English, compared to Japanese or Chinese or Korean.

But still, you know, I took some Spanish classes in high school and I thought, “Oh my god, this is so complicated, all these grammar rules, the subjunctive and ah! I don’t understand it”. I was confused.

And then I listened to a tape in Spanish, I listened to Spanish speakers. I have no idea what they’re saying. Even if they speak slowly, even if they would speak very simply, I still could not communicate. It was very frustrating.

But I started my master’s program, I started reading this research. I became excited, because I realized number one, the old methods don’t work, clearly for most people. Yes, a few people can succeed with traditional methods, it’s true, a few. But it’s like 5 or 10 percent only, not many people. Most people fail with those methods.

So I realized the methods are the problem. Even better, even more hopeful and optimistic, I found out there are successful methods. There are much better methods that are, number one, they’re more successful, number two they’re more enjoyable, they’re more fun. Number three they teach communication, not grammar rules, not standardized tests.

And I started finding these different kinds of methods and studying them. I was very lucky that I would lived in Bangkok, Thailand for a while. The article mentions the AUA Thai program. A Listen First Thai program, Thai language program in Bangkok, Thailand at AUA, it stands for American University Alumni school.

It’s a very respective school in Thailand. They have an English program for Thai people and they have a Thai language program. Now, their English program uses normal methods I think, I don’t know really, but their Thai program is special. It uses a Listen First approach. People learning Thai, just listen to Thai for a long time.

Now you don’t just listen, listening is not the only important thing. You have to listen to something you understand and if your level is low, ooh! that’s a tough job for the teacher, how can I give them English, for example, how can I give them language that is simple enough for them to understand.

Well TPR uses actions to convey meaning, to show meaning. That’s why it’s so powerful. TPR does not require translation. I can teach English with TPR with no translation. I do not need to know the student’s language. I do not need to translate to Spanish or Japanese or French or anything.

With TPR I use actions to show them what the words mean. And I can teach someone who knows zero English using this technique and they will learn quickly, very quickly as a matter of fact, they will very quickly learn to understand the meaning of the English words.

And also very quickly they will learn to understand first, single words, then phrases, then full sentences. TPR is powerful, it is so fast, I love it. I wish I could use it somehow on the internet. Maybe in the future I might use video to do that. Create some video TPR lessons.

However, the truth is, most English learners are not low beginners. You have all learned in your schools. Unfortunately, you learned with bad methods, most of you, but still, you have a good amount of vocabulary, so TPR is not so necessary.

However Tomoe is starting Effortless Japanese and Tomoe will use TPR, because with Japanese… Most people have not studied Japanese before. There are a lot of low beginners, a lot of zero level Japanese learners.

So, she’s going to use learning guides plus TPR to teach low level Japanese starting from zero. If you know no Japanese at all, nothing, you can listen to her lessons and read her lesson guides and you will learn Japanese and quite quickly I think. You will start to get a good feeling for Japanese and it will not feel difficult, it should feel easy.

Her website actually is starting at the end of this week, she will start testing it. She will probably accept a few data test members. I don’t know how many, I have to ask her, I will be one of them of course. I will be one of her test student so I will begin learning Japanese with all of you and my Japanese skill is very, very low. So I’m excited to learn. I can finally learn something with TPR, it’s great.

So anyway, with English however, I think low, low beginners, it’s not so necessary on the internet. So, I focus more on TPRS, TPR storytelling which is another excellent technique that is much more effective than traditional methods.

And this is not just my opinion because I like it. There’s a lot of research about this. This is another technique I found when I was doing my master’s thesis for teaching English. I found out about TPRS, TPR storytelling and I think, “Wow! This is much better”.

The students learn vocabulary without trying to memorize wordless. The students learn grammar without studying grammar rules. And they learn real communication, and they can tell the stories themselves. They learn to really understand and communicate and that is number one, the most important goal.

There’s another very powerful technique which I use here in San Francisco. It’s called Focal skills. Focal skills, there are different parts to Focal skills but the best part, my favorite part is the movie technique. You use movies to teach the language.

You don’t just show the movie. That’s not enough. Most of you know if you just watch a movie in English; it’s too fast, you can’t understand it. So that’s not good.

But if a teacher shows the movie, if they show one scene of the movie maybe 2 minutes, they show it one time, normal speed, then they stop, they rewind. Next they show it again but they pause every few seconds and they explain what’s happening, they use simple English that you understand.

They might explain some new vocabulary or slang that is used in the movie. They might describe what’s happening in the movie. They might point to people and things and describe them and then they play the scene again. Then they go back one more time.

They play the same scene a third time. This time they pause. They ask the students many questions. Who is this guy? What is he wearing? What does he look like? What is he doing? Why is he doing that? What is going to happen next?

So it becomes a conversation. The teacher’s asking many, many questions about the movie and the students are answering these questions. So after you watch each scene like this, three different times, the teacher then goes to the next scene.

It takes a long time to watch one movie, but the point is not to watch a movie, the point is to learn the language. And in this way you learn real language. Movies are much more real than textbooks. Textbooks are fake. Nobody speaks like that. Don’t use textbooks English. Movie English is much closer to real conversational English. Movies are perfect textbooks. Textbooks are not good.

Anyway, that’s another different kind of technique. There are many techniques, not only one. Effortless English, I tried to use the best techniques I know that can be used on the internet, so that’s what I’m doing with you.

TPR storytelling, reading articles and listening to them many times, changing the point of view for the articles, for the mini-stories. These are things that can be done easily on the internet that you can do easily by yourself. It’s very cheap for you, it’s very simple and it works. It works much better than a textbook.

If you need to find a school, some people like schools, some people want to see a teacher face to face, that’s fine. But try to find a school that uses TPRS or Focal skills or TPR or a natural approach. Try to find that.

They all say they use the natural approach, just be careful. All these schools they say, “Oh! We use the natural approach”, but in fact, most of them do not. In fact, most of them use the same textbooks and the same methods. So, if you’re looking for a school, be careful when you shop, ask a lot of questions.

Alrighty, that’s all for today’s commentary; It’s a topic I’m quit fond of, I like it a lot of course. Good luck with your English learning. Just keep listening, listening to those mini-stories. I think the mini-story lessons are the best. That’s why I added a new one. Now you have 2 mini stories for each lesson.

Please, listen to those many, many, many times and then listen to the articles, etc. Ok, I’ll see you next time, good luck. Please enjoy your English learning, have fun, be enthusiastic. Bye-bye.