After the first two input units of “Zhongwen Bu Mafan” textbook. Freewrite from a student aged 13, Australia. Teacher says: “I had 15 minutes up my sleeve today at the end of the lesson so I thought I’d try a free write with them. To this point I had not done any kind of writing activity with them. This little gem made my day ….”
Speech sample in Cantonese after 9 hours of TPRS instruction by Skype. No homework except listening to lesson recordings once or twice between lessons. One one-hour lesson per week (with some missed weeks).
7th grader, 1st year Chinese, no previous background in the language. This is a “volunteer video” she made for the fun of it. The assignment was simply to re-tell the class story.
Teacher: La Sripanawongsa
Video link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05RsV2Ir44
In-class writing. I call this a 10-4 write, because we start with a list of 10 phrases, either ones I give them or ones we brainstorm, like today.
First we brainstormed 10 “new things” (new structures or vocabulary) from the first three chapters of “Susan you mafan”:
Then, through a complex and convoluted process of numerology I made up pretty much on the spot (“Write down your birthday. Write your mother’s birthday. Write a friend’s birthday. If any of the numbers are over 10, add their digits until you get a number that’s 10 or less. You should have four numbers — write a 100-word story containing the phrases with those numbers.”) they chose four out of the 10 structures to include in their stories.
Here are the results. (Students of Terry Waltz.)
http://www.zhongwenbumafan.com/laoshi/Files/Chinese%201%20Writing%2020140502.pdf
1st year student retells a class story she has heard circled. Student of Haiyun Lu.
Student: zero previous Chinese
Day 10 of intensive Chinese camp. 2 hrs TPRS-based instruction daily (1 hr oral, 1 hr reading) plus 1 hr writing. Students were allowed to refer to reading materials when writing, but did not copy more than single characters from those stories. Students received no instruction in handwriting or how to form characters.
Assignment: Write a response to the question “Is it wrong to text at a movie?” (carrying over language into non-fiction writing task, when previous reading input was all fictional stories.)
Are you teaching Chinese with TPRS or Comprehensible Input?
Thinking about making the leap to a more brain-friendly, student-centered way of teaching?
Here you’ll find actual samples of real students showing what is possible using the TPRS® method of teaching Mandarin. By providing students with large amounts of input that they can truly understand — 100% — teachers who use Comprehensible Input and TPRS® achieve results that look quite different from traditional “book-taught” students.
Student: 10th grader, no previous Chinese experience or background
Class: 100% TPRS 1st year Chinese class, 21 students, 10-11 graders
Task: Draw a multi-panel cartoon without any language on the page, and tell the story to the teacher. Total preparation time, including drawing: 10 minutes. No notes allowed during test. (Student of Terry Waltz.)
