What’s Your Story? 3 Online TPRS Resources for French Teachers

When was the last time you and your students genuinely had fun during your French lessons?

Was it… once upon a time?

If you actually have to make an effort to come up with an answer, you’re ready for a change.

Well, you’re in luck! The change I’m about to propose is trying TPRS—a new(ish) teaching method based on storytelling that has been rocking French classrooms since the ’90s.

Its promise?

To make language learning more fun, effective, personal and, yes, memorable!

Here’s everything you need to know about this exciting teaching strategy.

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What Is TPRS?

TPRS stands for Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.

It was invented by Blaine Ray, a Spanish teacher in Bakersfield, California, in 1990. He realized that students were disinterested in learning a language from textbooks, but did a lot better when hearing stories. The method focuses on giving students plenty of exposure to a language through listening practice, just like infants learn their native language.

What better way to do this than storytelling?

Storytelling keeps students engaged for a long period of time without losing interest.

Ray also found that letting students act out the stories enables them to better internalize the language. TPRS expands upon the Total Physical Response method, in that movement is a key component of TPRS learning. It makes lessons also more memorable, as students are asked to really embrace the unique features of a story and overdramatize them through acting.

TPRS has tremendous potential for boosting French language acquisition. Fun, engaging and intellectual, some studies show it also proves to be significantly more effective in the classroom when properly implemented than traditional teaching methods. The method invites students to innovate and express themselves, providing them with an opportunity to also acquire invaluable social skills in the process.

How to Teach TPRS: The 3 Steps of TPRS

The TPRS method is divided into three main steps: establish meaning, ask the story and reading.

Step 1: Establish Meaning

This is where you introduce and personalize the vocabulary words.

Start by writing them on the board with translations in English to help check meanings. The idea is to give students the tools to understand the story by removing difficult vocabulary and complex structures to study at the beginning.

Have students record the words or phrases in their notebooks. Read them out loud together in French. These new phrases are always repeated several times during the first step to facilitate internalization.

Use gestures, mnemonics or memory aids whenever possible. The idea is to really break away from boring, impersonal word lists and support memorization in whatever ways possible.

Seeing vocabulary in context is also a great way to establish and remember meaning. You should make sure to include as many authentic examples of the French words as possible, and this should include videos with native French speakers. For that, I recommend FluentU.

Another good tip at this stage is to ask students personal questions using the vocabulary. Ask students about each other. Seek unusual responses, responses that make them look good, responses that make everyone laugh. This will help them activate the words and hasten adoption through pronunciation and repetition in a stress-free environment.

Step 2: Ask the story

Don’t tell the story. Ask it!

In TPRS, you’re co-creating the story with your students. Where they were passive listeners in traditional classroom settings, they become active participants in this collaborative activity.

Achieve this by asking questions. Interact with your students, listen to them and identify interesting answers about the story. Encourage them to share unusual, creative details and use personal elements you’ve uncovered about them in the first step to really personalize the story.

Then find student actors to dramatize the story and act out scenes. Ask them to change the pace of their performance, and use bizarre or exaggerated acts. This will help make the story more memorable. Retell your story without actors if you need to, but make it fun!

Step 3: Reading

In this last step, the instructor delivers a story similar to what has been created as a collaboration. One option is to include a story you had pre-written before the session. It will perhaps lack the colorful details envisioned by the students, but will serve as a generic template for the reading.

Another suggestion is to give a dictée of the story you’ve imagined together. This will be more personalized and will activate both writing and reading skills.

Students should then be asked to read the text and use translations to clarify grammar and structure. Ask one student to read the text in French while you provide instant translations for difficult words as you come across them together.

Encourage free voluntary reading and ask students to read aloud in turns or to themselves. Rather than putting students on the line, the goal is to keep them motivated and make them feel a part of the storytelling process.

End the session by discussing the story. Highlight key cultural information behind the story and character choices, including what the character learns in the story, what prompts the hero to take certain actions and whether they would have done things differently.

2 Phenomenal TPRS Resources That’ll Uplift Your French Classroom

The Internet is a goldmine for ready-made TPRS lesson plans and resources for your French classes. Here are our favorite ones.

Ben Slavic

Ben Slavic is considered one of the most reputable experts on all things TPRS. Ben has more than 30 years experience as a French teacher and currently teaches French to students at the high school and university level in Boulder, Colorado. He also specializes in AP French.

His blog features plenty of creative advice and materials to turn your lessons into TPRS magic. From TPRS posters to background music, handouts, quizzes and recommended websites, you’ll be equipped with all the essentials throughout each step of the process.

Susan Gross

Susan Gross is another big name in the TPRS world. An educational consultant and workshop presenter, Susan taught languages for 33 years in public schools and uses research-based techniques to teach foreign languages.

Her site will help you get started with TPRS, from in-depth articles to personal blog posts where she shares her experience as a TPRS teacher.

You’ll also find plenty of mentoring for free in the downloadable guides in her resources section, along with lesson plans. If you’re unsure how to use them, fear not! Each plan includes detailed instructions on how to begin, develop and end a lesson. And yes, there are also quite a few interesting homework ideas!

Now that TPRS holds no secrets for you, all that you need is to get in that classroom and get started!

What are you waiting for?

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)