Thoughts on TPRS so far

Okay, so I've been using TPRS for a couple of weeks now. I'm really not great at it....yet! I still feel like I'm reaching my students better with this method than with the old style teaching. Today was eye opening for me in one of my second-year classes. Those students are REALLY embracing this crazy new method. They were my super quiet...why am I here?...students before. But ever since the day we introduced Barney, the baby-eating big purple dinosaur (who is acted out by a boy in the class), they've blossomed. Today, they were so excited about what we were doing in class (reading a silly story about Barney and writing one of their own, following the pattern of the story I wrote) that they couldn't help coming up to me and bursting out in English about their stories. They were bubbly with excitement. This class has more kids who aren't really comfortable with each other, but the atmosphere that we are creating in class is giving them the confidence to talk to each other and the enthusiasm to WANT TO DO IT.

I told another French teacher when I began this process that I drank the Kool-Aid. I am ready to jump in the deep end with my students and throw direct grammar instruction out the window. And I got my book and DVD set from Ben Slavic today! I absolutely can't wait to watch him work his magic and read his tips to bring a bit of his skills into my classroom.

I'm in my third year teaching, but this is the first time I've actually felt really really really excited about what's going on in my classroom. I don't want to be the teacher who stands in front of the class and tells them to be quiet so I can explain indirect objects. Yuck! That may be perfect for other teachers, but it just doesn't work for me. Most of the time, I never knew what those words meant anyways...I just knew what they did. In fact, until two summers ago, I had no idea what a possessive adjective was. But I sure did know how to use them! Why is it so important for my kids to get all this book knowledge if they aren't going to be able to use it? My goal is for my kids to be able to communicate (no matter how basically they have to do it) with a native speaker and get their point across. The rest happens later, anyways. I had no idea how to speak French until I started living there...but I could conjugate verbs!