You Say You Want a Revolution…

Abstract

If you're like many Americans, you took a couple years of French or Spanish in high school—because you had to—and another two years in college in order to get your degree. And you don't remember a word of it. Statistics show that approximately 95 percent of those students enrolled in foreign languages in the United States drop out of the program before achieving minimal communicative skills; the figures for college programs alone are even higher. So what needs to change? Dr. Shelley Thomas, Associate Professor of French at MTSU, had been wondering that too. Then while attending an ACTFL (American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages) conference in 1999, she learned about TPR (Total Physical Response) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Story-telling). It's been shown that students taught foreign languages using these methods achieve high scores on standardized tests at secondary and post-secondary levels. " When I learned about this, I had already been a teacher for over twenty years, and I thought, I need to get this out there, like, tomorrow, " she says. " I developed a graduate class on these methods to start teaching future teachers right away. " We'd all love to see the plan… TPR and TPRS use body movement and storytelling, two means by which new information gets put into long-term memory; these are elements of what's known as brain-compatible learning. This might seem a bit obvious—we use our brains to learn anything, don't we? Sure—but then what happened to you in that high school Spanish class? The answer is that traditional language instruction, focusing on memorization and workbook drills, teaches to short-term memory. But now we know that learning that's compatible with the way the brain stores information stays with you. Brain-based learning must be a positive, fun, constantly changing physical experience that happens in a comfortable, stress-free environment. And since research has shown that 99 percent of learning is subconscious, it makes sense to place students in an environment that supports nonfo-cused (subconscious) learning that occurs naturally. TPR/TPRS are considered brain-compatible methods because they make use of props, colored visuals, appropriate music, games, stories, and activities that provide a context for the subject at hand. How does this work in practice? Using the foreign language, the teacher tells her class to stand, and performs the action for them; they stand. Continuing to model the desired movement, the teacher issues commands …