Here’s a self-description by the person who wrote the words below:
I’m quite an extreme-acquisitionist hard-liner! 😉
And here is what she wrote:
Until the students acquire structure, which is the heart of any language, words can just as well be read out of the dictionary one by one. And IMHO this is the crux of the problem in most FLES programs these days — too many words, too little (language) structure
(I’ll pay Terry royalties for stealing her words….. I mean structures)
The point of this is that tprs and similar approaches to language learning focus on grammar/structures. Sadly, we abound in teachers who believe the way to install these structures in students’ minds is by teaching the structure as a cognitive fact to be memorized and practiced, and then produced on demand, as on a test or worksheet. And if your method doesn’t do that, you’re not teaching grammar. That’s one reason so many teachers hate tprs.