Xenologue-What Exactly Do I Do?

So, here's where I explain the nitty-gritty of what I'm doing in the Spanish Classroom. Basically, my classroom uses

Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling (ECHO ECHO ECHO ECHO echo...) Which basically means that we teach Spanish by crowd sourcing stories from the classroom, and we do this with a focus on what's called, "Comprehensible Input." What does that mean? Well...
100% of the Spanish is...
100% compressible/ understandable to...
100% of the students,
100% of the time! (I skipped Yellow because I have a hard time seeing it on the white background of the pre-published screen).

Basically, the theory goes that students pick things up easier if they understand them. I guess, from a neurological point of view, if you're spending less brain power trying to figure out what is going on, you can spend more brain power committing it to memory.

So, what's the goal?

Well, we want our students to be able to communicate in Spanish, instead of understanding the basic grammatical forms. I mean, 

I don't know about you, dear reader, but most people at dinner parties back away if I ask them to identify the adjective in the sentence.

So, in other words, the students can use the grammar, but they don't know what it's called. In hoity-toity terms, it's the difference between Acquiring a language and Learning it. With Learning, there are long vocab lists, grammar worksheets, and a lot of stress. With acquisition, there isn't a lot of overt instruction, the only vocab that they learn is a relatively small amount that they practice again and again (our students generate it themselves, so we know that they are words the students will actually use), and the focus is on being able to get a message across, not on getting the message across right. As for why we use stories, it's to make the whole process fun. People love making and hearing stories. It's why Nanowrimo is a thing, movies, books, TV shows, etc are popular, and why news narratives work. People just remember a story far better than they remember a list of facts. 

The last big tenant of the program is that we want our students to feel comfortable. The idea is that students will remember things better and participate more if they not only feel comfortable in the class room, but have a relatively low-stress environment too.

So, what do I think of it?

I think that it works well. We just had conferences, and even the 7th graders--who had only been in the classroom for about 11 weeks (and not all full weeks either)--were able to start telling stories for their parents if they came to the conference. To be honest, their ability to produce the language and get a coherent point across is absolutely amazing, and I am very impressed.

Having said that...

I'm not completely convinced. The goal is to make learning Spanish the same as how our students learned English, and it's never going to happen. That's not because we don't try, but because we will never be able to fully create a) the environment, and b) the brain chemistry. The brain of a Middle Schooler is very different from the brains of babies and toddlers. They simply don't make the same kinds of connections, and are wired extremely differently. I mean, yes, we can give them a firm base in the language, but I simply cannot find the data to see how high up the language can go.

So, to wrap up, I think that the way that we are teaching Spanish will give us amazing results. I think that the students are able to get their points across with the language--our main goal--and that everyone is having a lot of fun. I also think that this is the best way for a novice to get acclimated to the language...but that adding in supplementary things could benefit the students as well. Helping them to make explicit connections--which we do sometimes in class--can have fantastic results. However, while I am a guest in this classroom, playing around with how I teach can only go so far. It will only be once I get into my own classroom--in whatever city, and on whatever continent that may be--that I will really be able to try out things and find a healthy medium that matches what I want to do as a teacher.

PS) If you would like to see an example of TPRS, please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtgHO1V4uDE