Episode 99: Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling: A Deep Dive with Dr. Karen Lichtman

In episode 99 of Growing with Proficiency, we welcome back Dr. Karen Lichtman for a great conversation on TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling). Dr. Lichtman explains the three core steps of TPRS: establishing meaning, asking a story, and reading. Our conversation also highlights the importance of co-constructing stories with students to make language learning both engaging and effective.

In this post, I’m highlighting our discussion, but to hear all of the details including practical tips on lesson planning and maintaining a balanced approach in language classes, listen to episode 99 above or here.  

Communicative Language Teaching

Dr. Lichtman is the author of the book Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), so I knew she would have great information for us regarding this topic. To start, I asked her to explain communicative language teaching. She said this, “It means that you are using the language to communicate, as opposed to talking about language”. It has also been the dominant form of language teaching for a few decades. Comprehensible, on the other hand, means that the students should be able to understand almost every word that’s going on. Dr. Lichtman goes into a little more detail on this; listen to it here. 

Comprehension and Communication

Next, I asked Dr. Lichtman to talk a little bit about comprehension and communication. “The whole idea of comprehensible or comprehension based is that it’s about input”, she explained. When you’re talking about input, you’re talking about what the learners read and listen to. In order to acquire the language, or have language grow in your mind, you have to get language into your head. That’s input. Make sure that more class time is used for input, and less class time is used for output.

The idea of communicative, on the other hand, is that we want them to actually use the language to communicate. That’s why it’s important to have it be communicative, we’re able to actually use language, not just learn it. 

TPRS

TPRS, teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling, is the language teaching method that brought the whole idea of how to do comprehensible input into the mainstream. The thing that sets TPRS, apart from everything else, is that you co construct a story with your students. So, you and the students are making up a story together with student input, and it’s all in the target language. It can even be all in the target language from day one. 

3 Steps of TPRS

Dr. Lichtman also detailed the three steps of TPRS. 

TPRS Step 1: Establish meaning

Step one is when you introduce new words and phrases to your students. Typically, Dr. Lichtman explained, the fastest way to do that is just with a target language phrase and an English translation or gesture. Just make sure that your students know which words you’re teaching that day. TPRS establishes meaning of structures that are high frequency. Listen to episode 99 to hear more about resources for these structures. 

TPRS Step 2: Ask a story

Step two is when the teacher leads the students through making up a story together. Often, the teacher has some sort of idea in mind. Usually, you start out by creating a main character, describing that character, and then asking what that character wants, or likes, and what’s going to motivate the action of the story. You might ask several students, and then you choose what you’re actually going to incorporate into the story. For beginners, a standard structure is the character wants something, they go looking for that thing, usually in one or two places, and then they find it in a third place. And that’s the end of the story.

TPRS Step 3: Read

For the reading part, I asked Dr. Lichtman to give us some examples of what that would look like. In an ideal world, she explained, you could just give the students a reading, they would read the reading carefully, ask any questions they had, and then move on. However, usually, you can write it together with the students or write down the story that you just did. You could also have a prepared story of how you imagined that the story would go, and you can then have them read that and then compare it with how their story worked out.

Circling in TPRS

The questions in step two are called circling. They’re called this because you keep circling back to the same words or the same sentence without moving on. You don’t want to move very fast through your story. You’re asking about it to make sure that they get the sentence or words that you want. It’s a very repetitive thing. Listen here for examples of circling. 

Either or questions are really beneficial for beginners. The reason is that either or questions are a way to sneak in input. So, it sounds like you’re asking for output, but you’re actually giving input. I’ve found that not only is it a way to provide more input, but it creates more engagement. It also creates a sense of competency.

Slowing Down in TPRS

Dr. Lichtman talked about slowing down the story. The slower you go, the more repetitive it is. When you don’t know the language, that feels good. So, it’s more comfortable for the students. You also don’t want to give students the impression that they can just tune the questions out and let the best students answer the questions. 

One thing that I do in my classes is to recap the story during step two. This slows me down so much and really helps my class to see where we are. I also tell students to write down everything that they remember about the story. I give them about one minute and then tell them to share with their partner. 

Lesson Planning TPRS

I also asked Dr. Lichtman to give us some tips on lesson planning for TPRS. She said, to start, you might think of a story lasting a week. You begin with selecting words or structures based on how much you think your students can handle in a week. Then, have those words or phrases spread out over the week ending by combining several sets of words into sort of a main story. Also, repeatable activities are key to lesson planning. We talk more about this in episode 99. 

Many teachers ask about grammar in TPRS. Grammar can be brought up in TPRS. For example, you can explain a grammar structure and ask them about the same thing the following week. You want to build in the repetition of noticing little aspects of grammar. One thing that I like to do is write and discuss as soon as we finish the story. I explain this in episode 99. 

In episode 99, we also share how we create balance in class and how using other activities like Star Student Interview or Weekend Chat allows us to use the language in different contexts and expose our students to different grammar forms. Listen above or here for valuable takeaways on enhancing your practice with TPRS.