Cahnmann-Taylor, M., & Coda, J. (2018). Troubling normal in world language education. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1-23. doi:10.1080/15427587.2018.1450632
This article explores if and how ‘normal’—conventional ideas of second language (L2) teaching and conventional (i.e. dominant) conceptions of gender—can be challenged in a L2 classroom that uses a “new approach called Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS)” (p. 1). The authors define TPRS as an approach “with a focus on meaning-making and natural acquisition over instructed linguistic form” (p. 2) and works by building “confidence and fluency using targeted second language structures in high interest ways supported by key gestures and engaging repetition” (p. 2). It evolved from the idea that “SLA is most effective when it follows a similar, “natural” approach as occurs in first language acquisition” (p. 6). TPRS teachers give students a lot of “engaging and comprehensible input” but require “minimal output” (p. 6). The authors highlight that learning another language has the potential to challenge or transform “preconceived rules, inhibitions, restrictions, and regulations that govern the speaker in one language” (p. 4). They want to find out in what ways TPRS, “which troubles conventionalized language teaching practices” (p. 8), also troubles conventions with respect to gender and sexual identity. For this purpose, the authors conducted a qualitative study and analyze (1) interviews with queer world language (WL) teachers and adult TPRS learners, and (2) observations of language classrooms in which TPRS is practiced. For the classroom observations, one of the authors was a “participant observer” in three different TPRS “adult language learning settings” (p. 9) with 10 to 23 participants (from age 22 to 50). All class meetings were video-recorded. The interviews with WL teacher were “semistructured” (p. 9) and centered on a 10-question interview protocol. The interview with TPRS learners were “informal” (p. 9). Through the interviews, the authors learned “heteronormativity … is still influential in classrooms and schools” (p. 10). For example, interviewees reported how students’ and teachers’ gender and sexuality was policed in schools (e.g. by “legislating proper attire” (p. 10)). Interestingly enough, “none of the interviewees discussed gender-neutral movements” (p. 14) or “radical challenges to heteronormativity” (p. 15). The observations revealed that gender binaries often get reinforced in TPRS settings (e.g. through engaging in stereotypes such as using heterosexual couples for improvised love stories). The authors, however, point out that there were a few instances in which gender and sexuality norms got challenged in the observed TPRS classes. In one class, “male and female students … identified as princesses” during a TPRS exercise in which students ““become” something or someone in L2 class that they were “not”” (p. 15). This practice also gave female students the opportunity to deny being a princess or decide to become a (male) superhero. In another class, “a love triangle resulted in the happy ending of a homosexual relationship” (p. 17). The authors stress the drawback of this playfulness is that the challenge to gender norms might appear as a “comical joke rather than new normal” (p. 17).
This article is a helpful resource for anyone who would like to learn more about TPRS and about gender and sexual identity in the second language classrooms. It shows that TPRS has the potential to challenge conventional conceptions of gender but that dominant gender norms currently get often reinforced in TPRS classes. It is also important to note that the challenging of norms in this article’s study usually was initiated by the students, not the teacher.