If you weren’t focusing on teaching certain words and phrases, what would you focus on? Have you struggled with storytelling? Could it be smoother without the pre-selected targets? Would your students learn enough? Why even consider it?

Ben Slavic and Tina Hargaden ventured out from the TPRS story-creation process that served them well for many years to explore the possibilities of non-targeted input. Discover with them how letting go of pre-selected targets allows the teacher to focus on the words students want to know and the compelling characters they create. As a result, the kids acquire the language happily, and engagement skyrockets for students and teacher.

Of course, you can’t just speak and hope that kids understand, and you can’t jump into creating stories without laying some groundwork.

A Natural Approach to Stories helps you:

• Set the stage for stories with The Classroom Rules, Student Jobs, Story Listening, and One-Word Images.
• Create powerful stories using Student-Created Invisible Characters and the Seven-Level Questioning Sequence.
• Get the most mileage from your class-created stories with a variety of reading options.
• Assess to fulfill your school’s directives, in ways that are compatible with a comprehension-based approach.

You may recognize some ingredients of this approach. They include the solid foundational skills of TPRS, but this is a new recipe for storytelling: with joy, with ease, and without targets. Every teacher’s classroom is a different environment, usually one that comes with a heavy load of requirements. If you can set aside those rules and regulations for a little while and try non-targeted storytelling, tremendous gains in community building, student enthusiasm, and painless language acquisition await you.

©2017. English. 354 pages.

Book Download: PDF. Adobe® Reader® required to view PDF.

Print Book: Softcover. 6 x 9 inches.

Bundle: Includes both print book and PDF download.

About the Authors

Ben Slavic is a nationally recognized TPRS expert. His simple message is that people learn languages with joy first and analysis second, and not the other way around.

Tina Hargaden is a MS French and Spanish teacher, teacher trainer, and writer on a mission to simplify CI instruction to the basics: delivering interesting comprehensible messages aloud and in writing.