7 Stories in 3 Tenses for Spoken English practice (as a native)

This is a pack of 7 lessons for spoken English practice. Each lesson is made up of 3 parts:

1. Future tense (2-4 mins), where you just read and listen to the story on screen.
2. Present tense (6-8 mins), where you follow the conversational story on screen, in the present tense, and read the yellow text out loud each time is your turn to speak.
3. Past tense (6-8 mins), similar conversational story, but slightly modified, where you don't look at the screen anymore, but listen to the story and respond to questions.

Each lesson is for one particular day, Monday, Tuesday… Sunday, and is designed to be repeated 4 times, once for each week of the month, a technique known as deep learning.

This is the full version for Monday:

The lessons are targeted towards intermediate English speakers (B1, B2, C1) who want to solve one, or more of these problems:

1. Translating in your head before speaking
2. Lack of confidence (fear)
3. Lack of practice in the real world
4. Thinking too long for what to say

Within 3 months we believe you should be seeing considerable progress. The best way to test it is to observe yourself having real-world conversations, and there will be a high chance of you noticing that somehow the words just go out, without too much thinking or effort from your side. This will happen mostly because of the 3rd part of the lessons, the Past tense.

The secret ingredient

The 3rd part of each lesson is where the magic happens. That's when you are actually rewiring your brain to speak English fast, and because you will be repeating the same 7 stories every week, 4 times a month, you will trick your brain into believing that you’ve had perfect conversations, the words should just flow naturally by the 4th week.

At level 3 you are encouraged to speak out loud and feel as if this would be a natural conversation, meaning you stand up, you don't look at the screen, and you talk with your whole body, use your facial expressions and force your brain to speak fast, without thinking, letting the words flow out, even if it's with mistakes or an incorrect grammar or not the right pronunciation.

Just because you go through the same story, again and again, for 4 times, you will have mastered most of the things subconsciously. Everything, the grammar, the new words, the pronunciation will get imprinted in your brain, a technique known as deep learning.

Master each story, every month

You need to feel the mastery of all 7 stories at the end of each month, and this 3-part process is designed to make this journey easy and enjoyable.

You do this for a few months and you will have no problem engaging in the real world, with native English speakers, no more awkward pauses or long delays from your part, you will start feeling like a native yourself.

Note: At level 3 it doesn't really matter what you say, it just needs to sound natural and contextual with the whole story. You can be creative here. Just say whatever comes to your mind and be open to everything. Speak fast! ...and use your whole body.

This whole process mimics the natural way of how children acquire a language, but at the same time it is forcing you in the end to actually speak, making you acquire the natural feel of the language much faster, not years. A realistic expectation for when you will start seeing results is 3 to 6 months. You will start noticing how the words in English flow somewhat effortlessly, without you thinking too much about what to say, you will just be much more immersed in the actual conversation, and think more about what you are actually trying to express, or convey and entirely forget about the English language.
...and this would be an amazing milestone!

How it works

A TPRS lesson is usually a short story that's simple and interesting, and will contain multiple instances of the target structures. The goal of the lesson is to provide as many spoken repetitions of the new structures in various contexts such as positive, negative, intensifying the meaning, and also use them in combination with other words. This increases the effectiveness of easily remembering the new target language structures whenever you are in free speech.
This method is also known as the circling questioning technique, which works in tandem with other methods such as Comprehensible input, Pop-up grammar, Personalized questions.

Dr. Stephen Krashen, suggests that there are two distinct ways of learning a language:

• Language "learning" is learning that takes conscious effort on the part of the learner. It is characterized by learning grammar rules, memorizing vocabulary lists, and performing speaking drills.
• Language "acquisition" is learning that is subconscious and takes little or no effort on the part of the learner. It is characterized by listening to and understanding messages, reading interesting books and articles, and other enjoyable activities that take place in the language being learned.

According to Krashen's theory, the only thing that can lead to fluency in the language is language "acquisition". Language "learning" can only be used as a way to consciously edit speech or writing, and it is never the cause of spontaneous, unrehearsed speech or writing.

The origin of TPRS

We would also love to mention that the foundation of TPR Storytelling is TPR, Total physical response, a method developed by James J. Asher. His principle is to focus on learning a new language with your whole body. Make each word, phrase into an action at the same time.

In his words from a lecture at Cambridge University, England:

"Do not start the journey to fluency with a direct attempt to get students to speak, read and write. Except in rare cases, I do not believe one person can directly teach another person to talk."

"Human beings are not wired to acquire languages with a “frontal assault.” They do not respond to launching immediately into the foreign language. The explanation is in brain organization, which is obvious when you observe infants."

-- which he then very accurately explained on how this would work in the real world:

"The parent utters a direction and the child is silent but responds with a physical action. The child acknowledges understanding by smiling, standing, walking running, and other basic physical actions, each of which I call, a Total Physical Response or TPR."

"The conclusion: Human beings are wired to acquire a language by listening and acting. After a year or so of what I identify as “language-body conversations,” —that run into the thousands, the young child is ready to talk. And when speech appears, it will not be perfect. There will be many, many distortions, but gradually the child’s speech shapes itself in the direction of a fluent native speaker."

Please read more about James Asher's views on language learning on his official website.

Your brain will automatically absorb English - all thanks to the TPRS method

The grammar, the new words, the idioms, the pronunciation will automatically be digested by your brain because you mimic the way you would have a conversation in the real world, with other people speaking English.

At the end of each week you will have practiced 2 HOURS of spoken English / 8 HOURS each month.

Each story is unique

- a unique emotion: Anger, Joy, Happiness, Envy, Love, Mercy
- a different accent: British middle-aged male, American young female, Irish young female
- new word combinations: It’s not that… but… I would rather… than…
- new idioms: to earn a living, at all costs, beyond one's means
- different tenses (past, present, future)

Not just for language learning

The stories are not designed only for people whose mother tongue is not English,
they are designed to build confidence and help you find your own flow by engaging with many different styles so that you pick up only the things that are useful to you.