I recently did a webinar and I got the following question from someone afterwards. It’s not the first time I have been asked, so I thought it would be a good idea to get my thoughts down here as well because maybe more people will have the same question/concern.
I would love to learn more about how to implement TPRS 2.0 in my Chinese classroom. I teach Chinese 1, 2, 3, and AP Chinese at a public high school, and each of my classes has more than 20 students. One challenge I anticipate is that giving most students the opportunity to answer the circling* questions could take a significant amount of class time. I'm also concerned that students who are waiting for their turn may lose focus. I would appreciate any suggestions you have for managing this in larger classes.
*I am making the assumption that this is referring to the vast amount of circling and triangling questions as well as Describe the Situation. I think it would be easier to break each of them down individually.
Students Get Bored
But first, I’ll acknowledge the elephant in the room. Students get bored. People get bored. Kids get bored. Teachers get bored (in teacher meetings, right?). It’s a part of human nature that we can’t take or leave. And quite possibly, people’s affinity to boredom correlates to their usage of technology that is constantly getting their brain to fire dopamine throughout the day with texts, emails, apps, etc.
So, yes. It is quite possible that your students will get bored if you teach with TPRS 2.0. Internally, Craig, Von, and I have been debating what that means for us. We have thrown around the terms: Entertainment and Engagement. And for so many years, to me I thought I was needing to entertain my students to keep them paying attention. But as we dove deeper into our debate, we realized that entertainment is passive. When we entertain, we pay attention, we laugh, we want to know what’s next. Entertainment is also more “me focused” as a listener. I am getting something out of this. But is the listener contributing? I also think of entertainment, especially for our demographic as “funny”. The issue with entertainment is that students might find me “entertaining” (or funny) one moment and then as soon as I try to jump into the lesson, they are back to boredom.
I like to think of engagement as something similar to entertainment. We have someone’s attention, but it is more active. While someone entertained is listening and maybe reacting with laughter, someone who is engaged is listening because something about what you’re saying resonates with them. The best conversations in my life have been engaging, without needing to be entertaining. Is there a way, then, for us as TPRS 2.0 teachers to get students engaged? I think if they are engaged, that will be a more powerful connection than simply being entertained. This past year of teaching, when I would compare notes to teachers like Craig Sheehy, I realized that I wouldn’t necessarily be funny in class. And my goal wasn’t to be funny. Instead it was to make sure that students listened, looked, answered questions, and retold the story in the language. And I believe that even if I wasn’t always entertaining, most students were engaged. And the data I collected with speaking samples, writing samples, quizzes, tests, etc show growth to support that claim.
Strategies for Engagement
So how do we keep students engaged? We have a variety of tools as teachers. Some things I demo’d were gestures for words. I would ask students to gesture when I would say a word. Not necessarily entertaining, but it forces the student into the active participant role instead of the passive observer who might check out as soon as it isn’t “funny” anymore.
Celebrations are so great for numerous reasons, but they also keep us paying attention while making the class a more positive place. When students answer correctly or Describe the Situation, it’s always nice to celebrate them.
Gestures are a great way to bring students in. You could create gestures for question words, verbs/actions, nouns, etc. When you use the words, the students have to gesture along with you to show they are following along.
Vocal cues like “OOOOOH” and “OOOOH NO!” show us students are understanding the story and the direction of the story. We are asking them to react to information in the story. For example, if they interact positively to something negative (or vice versa) in the story, we know that they didn’t understand.
Rejoinders can be another fun way because we have students interject to show their understanding with expressions in the language like, “It’s obvious”, “No way!”, “Of course!”, “Poor baby!”, etc.
Closed eye quizzes can help too where we get to a point in the lesson and tell students to close their eyes. They can put a thumbs up if the answer is Yes/True or a thumbs down if it’s No/False.
Classroom jobs can help students who can contribute positively to class during class as well to make your life easier. You can phase these in during the year and get rid of them as they are no longer necessary
Use recognizable characters in the stories from pop culture, movies, games, etc to bring students into the fictional world more
Signals like one for not understanding help keep students engaged because if they want to know what something means before they tune out when they are lost, you can keep them engaged by addressing the problem.
Varied questions via circling and triangling, which we will touch based on momentarily.
Describe the situation, which we will also touch based on momentarily.
For a moment, let’s consider that TPRS 2.0 classes are probably unlike most classes students will experience, especially in Middle School and High School. Since we need students engaged to understand the language, a lot of what we are doing is built to maintain that engagement. And the best ways to do that are through Circling, Triangling, and Describe the Situation. In the next sections, let’s talk about how those build into engagement, but also what to do if students are losing interest.
Boredom during Circling
Circling questions are great because they are simple questions that show the understanding of the content at the class level in one-word answers. When you hear strong and healthy responses from the class, you know they understood and felt confident to respond. However, students might get bored during circling because they feel like they understand since it’s on the board and translated. But understanding superficially and being able to express themselves int the language as we play around with the language are two different things.
There are times when class responses can be weak. That’s generally for one of two reasons:
1) Students didn’t all answer because they didn’t understand the question. In that case, ask the class in English, “What did I say?” Then allow a student to translate it. Then I ask again, slower to see if they got it. And I might come back to that question later to make sure students can understand it.
2) Students didn’t all answer because they didn't want to. It’s a classroom culture thing. From day one, I have to teach my expectations that they are letting me know they understand the information by answering, gesturing, etc. I have to coach them when they aren’t doing a good job. If some students aren’t answering along with the class, maybe I ask them individually the questions. Or I ask them to translate a question I ask. Not as a punitive thing, but to check in with them. And if there are problems in comprehension, we can work on those.
Something I have to do all year is to remind my classes that their job is to listen, look, answer questions, and retell the story. If I don’t hear the whole class answer, I assume they aren’t all understanding, so I have to go slower to make sure they do understand. And then I proceed to go slower to make sure and see if they start answering. Whenever given the option, some students will choose passive over active. I have to remind them that they need to show me their understanding in class.
Boredom in Triangling
Triangling questions are also useful because they are simple questions that show the understanding of the content at the student level in full sentence answers. When you hear strong and healthy responses from the class, you know they understood and felt confident to respond. However, students might get bored during triangling because it’s talking to individuals instead of to the entire class. So some might think they can check out at that time. Here are some ways I try to help combat that.
1) I remind students that whenever someone is speaking in the Target Language in class, they should be listening
2) I give them the challenge to answer in their head faster than the person speaking
3) we celebrate when the different people answer, helping students check back in
4) I like to randomize who I call on. Just because I called on you doesn’t mean I can’t come back. I also like to ask numerous questions sometimes. For the students who do better, there are times I ask them a few questions to show off.
5) Sometimes I go from triangling back to circling to ask the class some questions again, to get them to check back in
6) Sometimes I repeat back the wrong information so students correct me.
Boredom in Describe the Situation
Oh, Describe the Situation, or DTS. This is such a huge part of what makes TPRS 2.0 successful as it is so important for all students to actually speak in the language to really experience where they still aren’t confident about the language from the story. Yet it also can potentially be a place where students tune out due to not being engaged.
There are three basic components to DTS, the teacher retells the story to class, the students all retell the story (to hand, partner, etc), and individual students retell for the class. In the last layer, that is where we typically see that students can tune out.
Some ways to bring them back:
Remind students: While the language is being spoken, you need to make sure you listen and understand.
Remind students: Try to retell the story before they do.
Remind students: Listen in and see if they say anything interesting.
Break up individual DTS: Have 1-2 students go after me. Then describe to your hand/partner/etc. Have 1-2 more students go.
Have students retell different characters/parts of the story
Vary how students retell (“Retell to me. I am George.” “Retell, but you are George.” etc.)
Lies from students are fun because there are times I tell students, “Try to slip in a lie.” And then the class can yell out, “Mentira” when it’s wrong.
Lies from me in the retell/recast. Once a student Describes the Situation, I will often retell the information back to them in perspective. But I can tell lies to catch the class as well. This was a helpful one to find out students were listening and paying attention even if they weren’t always looking forward.
Have students recast the information instead of me. Once one student describes the situation, have a student retell in perspective to that other student. I do this later in the year and just explain (playfully) how tired I am. Could someone help me out and do it for me this time (or today).
Perspective and buy-in
Something I have also been wondering about as I used this last year in my classes was the difference between this and CI methods, TPRS 1.0, and/or storytelling. In those, the students are more passive and having to understand. But they don’t have to output the language. And they often aren’t the characters themselves. In TPRS 2.0, we are asking students to interact with a story in the language, and then respond to questions as the characters.
Somehow, this little tweak is magical. Because not only do students get to speak in the first person forms as the character, but it also seems to invest them more in the story because they get to pretend. For example, when we talk about George wanting a Coca-Cola, the students have to pretend they are George and they want a Coca-Cola. And we created a back-story where his enemy drank the Coca-Cola. When they would retell the information, I would playfully say, “Poor thing” (in Spanish) or react to what a terrible person his enemy is (in Spanish). And students would learn to do this too. These types of reactions and playfulness with being the character were infectious and also helped students develop empathy for the character’s situation. And by the end of the story, the class applauded when George finally got a Coca-Cola weeks after we had started the journey. By the same token, one of our parallel characters also got friends and the class cheered and smiled.
While I could be wrong, I believe us having the students pretend to be the characters also connects them to the story in a new way as they put themselves in the shoes of the character, so the story means more.
Brain Breaks
But even with all these amazing strategies, sometimes it’s a matter of sitting for too long in class. I believe I have heard something like younger students’ attention spans require them to get up and move every 10-15 minutes, while older kids might be 15-20 and adults around 20. But we will lose students if we have them sit too long. Something that is a simple tweak in our classes is asking students to get up to perform a task. Or integrating a moment or two in the class for students to get up to stretch their legs and move around such as:
True/False quiz where they stand up for true answers or sit down for false answers
Songs / Rhymes are a nice way to get students up and moving. Sometimes I’ll jump into something like a simple song with gestures for 1-2 minutes to get students up and moving (TPRS Books has some really cool ones in the Spanish curriculum, that hopefully are coming to other languages)
Total Physical Response (TPR) can be a nice way to get them up and moving and interacting with language. I find it to be a nice complement to TPRS to give them some more action words in their vocabulary that we can use later in stories. And some days, I build in a few minutes to practice them.
Have students get up and DTS to another student
Have students DTS to the wall
Have students walk in a circle while they DTS
Have students tell a partner what something means / how to answer a question / etc. (not getting up, but moving and changing focus for a minute)
Get up and grab a piece of paper from the stool, table, etc. (while I could pass them out, them moving is super important)
While this is hardly an exhaustive list, these are things I have found helpful to get students moving a little during class to help them focus throughout.
Ideally we can maintain 100% of students engaged 100% of the time. Or at the very least, when the students’ minds drift for a moment, we can bring them back pretty well so they can internalize the language and speak it with confidence!
Of course no classroom is perfect. That’s where we constantly are tweaking what we are doing. And there are students unfortunately that no matter what I do, they will simply not stay engaged. But at least we can try. And hopefully there are ideas in this post that are helpful to you to keep engagement high during class with the TPRS 2.0 formula. Have an idea or comment? Write it below!
