The essential book for CI/TPRS teachers or any teachers who want their students to become fluent in the target language. (CI = comprehensible input)

The definitive treatment of TPRS (Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Story asking). This book will show you how to help your students actually become proficient in the language you are teaching—to understand speech and writing, to speak, and to write. The keys are:

A. Full comprehension all the time in class

B. Hearing again and again the basic grammatical features of the new language in meaningful contexts

C. Interesting content, especially about students themselves

Keep these keys functioning regularly in your classes. The benefits will be evident early and often. Students instantly understand more and more of the spoken and written language as they go along and thorugh the year they start being able to express in speech and writing what they want to say.

Basics:

• The keys to fluency in the language classroom
• Essential concepts and practices
• The 3 steps:
  • Establishing meaning
  • Asking the story, co-creating it with the class
  • Reading
• Grammar as meaning and/or custom
• Teaching elementary school

New features in the 8th edition:

• Blaine Ray's current ways of teaching
• 100+ techniques in chapters devoted to comprehension, repetitions, interest, and personalization
• Particular "new" techniques: Blaine Ray's "triangling," Terry Waltz's "super 7" verbs, Mike Peto's "sweet 16" verbs, Sabrina Sebban Janczak's "Étoile de la semaine (Star of the week)," Jody Noble's "The Chair," Lisa Horvath's "Minimalist Elementary Teacher," and Bryce Hedstrom's passwords
• 6 approaches to classroom management, including Blaine Ray's and Jon Cowart's "new" approaches
• An updated appendix by Karen Lichtman on research about TPRS
• An appendix by Erica Peplinski on brain research related to language acquisition
• Longer lists of "rejoinders" in American English, Spanish, French, German and Mandarin
• Basic frequency word lists for American English, Spanish, French, German and Mandarin, quoted from Routledge frequency dictionaries

Other appendices:

• The option of beginning with TPR (Total Physical Response)
• List of resources, including language schools
• Best posts and messages from teachers and students
• Multi-level classes, raising enrollment and a study on teaching present and past together
• Standardized tests and starting TPRS^® ASAP
• Transitioning a department towards CI/TPRS^®
• Convincing Administrators and Parents