After TPR Comes the Series Method and Dialogue Generation

by Reid Wilson

First Appeared: Language Learning # 23

On the other hand, if a learner has a teacher/tutor/friend, it's easy to get plenty of individual words and short expressions through TPR and using objects and picture books. But at some point--say after getting 1,000 words that way--a learner needs to evolve up to more complicated forms of connected speech while still being exposed to comprehensible input. Two activities are ideal for this: the Series Method and Dialogue Generation. And used together, they are even more powerful.

The Series Method involves getting your teacher/tutor/friend to tell you the steps involved in doing something that you pretty much already know how to do. For example, perhaps your tutor would tell you how to make a cup of tea. Ideally you have learned your first 1,000 words and thus already know the words for teapot, teabag, sugar, spoon, water, stove, match, light, etc. Now you ask your tutor to tell you the steps involved in making a cup of tea, while you of course record it. You should be able to follow what your tutor says because you already know the main vocabulary, but most likely there will be some words you won't understand the first time. (Always aim to be exposed to stuff of which you understand 80-90%.)

You can get the words you don't understand during this session with your tutor or a future one, but eventually you'll want to go through the recording with your tutor and make note of every word you don't understand along with its meaning. After that, listen to the recording several times (either on your cassette player or as an MP3 file) until you understand everything in the text without having to refer to your notes. Also translate the text while you listen to it, and include the translation and your notes whenever you share the text with others. Once you understand everything, the text is in your comprehensible corpus and you can put it in a "to be reviewed every once in a while" stack.

Notice the focus on comprehension. At this point worry about learning to understand the text. Later on you can practice telling your tutor how to make tea, but for now don't spend much time memorizing your new vocabulary or sentence structure.

And because you're not taking up a lot of time memorizing, you will instead be able to elicit and learn to understand many different Series Method recordings from your tutor. Here are just a few ideas to get you started. You can of course adapt them to your particular context and needs:

• How to make a cup of tea
• How to make a cup of coffee
• How to dress a baby
• How to start a car
• How to unlock a door with a key
• How to lock a door with a key
• How to record someone using a tape recorder
• How to change a diaper
• How to make fruit salad
• How to cook mansaf (or any other food)
• How to make a bed
• How to brush your teeth
• How to get from your house to the store (or anywhere elsefor that matter)
• How to use a pay phone
• How to wash a car
• How to wash the dishes
• How to find a good TV show to watch

Notice that so far I've only listed solo activities; that is, none of the above involve any dialogue or discussion in order to get the task done.

If only life in a new culture were that simple!

Alas, most things we do in life involve interaction, and it is easy to develop a list of Series Method prompts pertaining to those situations as well:

• How to pay an electric bill
• How to buy stamps to mail a letter
• How to take a bus somewhere
• How to rent a car
• How to make a phone call
• How to apply for a residence permit
• How to apply for a job
• How to host a guest in your home
• What you do when you enter a home you are visiting for the first time
• How to ask for a date

Well, you get the idea. Once you've learned to understand a whole heap of the first type of Series Method text (the solo type), begin to get your tutor to record this second type of text. However, now you can combine Dialogue Generation to create even more input that is comprehensible, useful, and perhaps even fun.

With Dialogue Generation you ask your tutor to record typical interactions between two people in different situations, with the difficulty or complexity of the dialogue being aimed at your ability level. (This is a great time for your tutor's desire to be a movie star to shine through, because it helps to have two different voices for the two people. Or of course you could use two people to create the dialogs.)

For example, suppose I want to learn about the process of riding taxis. I first ask my tutor to talk about steps involved in riding a taxi. My tutor says, in the language I'm learning:

"How To Ride a Taxi. First, walk to the street. Then look for an empty taxi. When you see an empty taxi, hold out your hand. If the taxi stops, get in it. Get in the front seat if you are a man and in the back seat if you are a woman. Greet the taxi driver and tell him where you want to go. Make sure the taxi driver has reset the meter. When you get to your destination, pay the driver the amount that the meter says and say 'Good-bye.' Get out of the taxi and close the door behind you."

Hopefully by the time you ask for this text you can understand 80-90% of it the first time you hear it. Record it and go over it with your tutor, getting the words that you don't know.

Once you've done this, ask your tutor to record several simple, typical interactions between a taxi driver and a passenger.

The key is to get several such dialogues recorded. The problem with many foreign language textbooks is that they introduce dialogues too early (so that they are not comprehensible input) and they include too few of them because of the focus on oral production, pattern drill, and memorization. Then you're only exposed to the particular vocabulary in the dialogue once or twice with natural language and then a couple times in grammar examples and exercises. Plus, the nature of textbooks and classrooms is such that a teacher really can't say, "Go home and listen to these five dialogues until you understand them." (Although perhaps MP3 files will help this in the future, as each student could have a CD-ROM containing forty hours or more of recorded speech to use at home or in the lab.)

Anyway, if you just get one dialogue per topic, it's likely that the way people respond to you will be different than in your dialogue, especially if that dialogue appears in a textbook. However, by getting your tutor to record several different impromptu dialogues on the same topic, you're more likely to be exposed to "real language" like you'll also hear when you are in "real life" situations. Plus, by getting several dialogues you'll be learning to understand and ultimately produce more vocabulary.

Note also that these dialogues should be geared toward your ability level, so that more advanced learners can have their tutors create more advanced dialogues. In fact, as a beginning, intermediate, and an advanced learner you can use exactly the same topics to get dialogues with differing levels of complexity. For example, with a taxi driver and passenger the easiest dialogues could revolve around basic taxi use: greeting the driver, telling him where to go, paying him, and saying good-bye. The next level of difficulty could include the passenger giving directions to the driver as well as small talk between the driver and the passenger, about the weather or whatever else taxi drivers and passengers chat about wherever you live. An even more advanced level of dialogue could have the driver and passenger arguing about the fare because the driver didn't reset the meter when they began. And so on. (And of course, this is the same development that you'll see in your speaking ability. Simple first, then more complex, step-by-step.)

To summarize what I've been saying, as you are evolving out of stage one TPR-type vocabulary acquisition, begin to get your tutor to use the Series Method to provide you with slightly more advanced comprehensible input. Then add to that Series Method step-by-step activities that involve interaction, and then for each Series Method activity have your tutor record several dialogues at your level of how people in those situations typically interact. Over time, as your ability increases, provide your tutor with the kinds of scenarios that will allow them to give you dialogues of increasing but appropriate complexity. Learn to understand these Series Method texts and dialogues and systematically add them to your comprehensible corpus.

For a closing note, I'll add that the Series Method and Dialogue Generation are not the only activities you can do as you graduate from rapid vocabulary buildup through TPR. You can also get your tutor to tell you simple stories that you already know, such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you can get your tutor to talk about things that the two of you did together, and you can get your tutor to talk about what he/she did the day before.

The key idea is that there needs to be an evolution in the kind of "prop" that you need in order to understand the language. As a true beginner you needed props that were visual and "here and now": This is a book. This is a pencil. Stand up (as you watch me stand). And so on. In this second stage you still need props, but instead of being visual these props rely on your life experience (how the world works) and your previous knowledge. In other words, your main prop during stage two is predictability. "Tell me something I already know, at least more or less, but tell it to me in my new language."