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We believe...
1. That PQA should be done for up to four months in the first year. We point to the supreme importance of getting to know
the students during that period of the first year. Our new publication, PQA in a Wink! provides new teachers with a complete
step by step program on how to make PQA work for them. With PQA in a Wink! new teachers can become masters of personalization,
and can build up to using stories over a period of months instead of being thrown right into stories at the beginning of the
year.
2. That PQA should be done only in the present tense. The current focus on using the preterite in PMS's in beginning classes
causes confusion on many levels, loading new teachers and students with overly unwieldy material. We believe that full blown
stories and the past tenses should be introduced only after the three to four months of PQA, when PMS's should be introduced.
3. That verbal output should be an integral part of any TPRS class. We believe that with output students see they are
learning and they see that there is a purpose to what they are doing in the classroom and so they want to learn more. Focusing
only on comprehnsible input underestimates the importance of how the student affectively perceives their role in the learning
process. They need to feel their role as active, not just passive.
4. That the current overly formulaic version of questioning students (yes/no/either/or etc.) can be softened in a less
rigid way, allowing both students and teachers more freedom of more personalized communication. This softer version of "circling"
takes the form of PQA centered around the abilities of the kids in sports, music, etc. as outlined in PQA in a Wink!
5. That so-called slow or resistant kids can be taught using the storytelling method. TPRS works for unmotivated students
too! Our direct experience as teachers with this student population leads us into a very pro-student stance. Our stance on
discipline can be found in our publication TPRS in a Year!, written by Ben Slavic.
6. That extensive auditory input must precede any attempt at writing in the target language or teaching the grammar system
of the target language. Without this auditory base, the student has no frame of reference for the writing and grammar study,
and it becomes useless in acquiring the language, a mere waste of time.
7. That TPRS can be complemented by other teaching approaches. We seek to support the efforts of teachers to bring meaningful
comprehensible input to their students, in the form of music, video and supplementary reading.
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