Language Acquisition vs Language Learning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKAECRp2qJE&feature=share

^^^^ Please visit the video in the above link.

I am sharing this to help explain my in home Spanish class. 

What is learning Spanish through TPRS?

Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling- 

a different experience and a different result from the average in-school Spanish class.

Why I love it?

I find this method (although carefully constructed) to feel the most natural to students.  They learn in a similar way to the way a child learns his first language.  There are not the same pressures to produce or memorize.  The class and stories can be personal and reflect the delightful, interesting and wonderful students themselves.  It is a joy to teach and most students enjoy learning with this approach.  In my experiences, it is the Spanish that sticks.  So at elementary ages, it becomes a foundation that will prove invaluable once a more formal and intense study begins.  At the middle school level, our Spanish Stars class becomes where students apply and cement the most relevant and useful language and grammar that they are studying more formally in class at school (where the program usually is using a more traditional approach).  Even with Spanish Stars only meeting once a week, it is a wonderful advantage to those who wish to not only learn Spanish but wish to acquire Spanish as life long language speakers.  It really sparks a love of learning and a confidence and fluency that continues to impress me.

(copied from Wikipedia)

"TPR Storytelling (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling or TPRS) is a method of teaching foreign languages. TPRS lessons use a mixture of reading and storytelling to help students learn a foreign language in a classroom setting. The method works in three steps: in step one the new vocabulary structures to be learned are taught using a combination of translation, gestures, and personalized questions; in step two those structures are used in a spoken class story; and finally, in step three, these same structures are used in a class reading. Throughout these three steps, the teacher will use a number of techniques to help make the target language comprehensible to thestudents, including careful limiting of vocabulary, constant asking of easy comprehension questions, frequent comprehension checks, and very short grammar explanations known as "pop-up grammar". Many teachers also assign additional reading activities such as free voluntary reading, and there have been several easy novels written by TPRS teachers for this purpose.

Proponents of TPR Storytelling, basing their argument on the second language acquisition theories of Stephen Krashen, hold that the best way to help students develop both fluency and accuracy in a language is to expose them to large amounts of comprehensible input.^[1] The steps and techniques in TPR Storytelling help teachers to provide this input by making the language spoken in class both comprehensible and engaging. In addition, TPR Storytelling uses many concepts from mastery learning. Each lesson is focused on just three vocabulary phrases or fewer, enabling teachers to concentrate on teaching each phrase thoroughly. Teachers also make sure that the students internalize each phrase before moving on to new material, giving additional story lessons with the same vocabulary when necessary."