Possible effects of the teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling TPRS) approach on very young learners' l2 vocabulary acquisition

Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) is a methodology developed by an American teacher in 1990s to teach Spanish to adolescent and adult learners. Based on the principles of Asher's Total Physical Response and Krashen's Natural Approach, this methodology aims to provide language learners with considerable amount of comprehensible input through stories for language and literacy development. Although it has already demonstrated high potential with adolescent and adult learners of English, its implementation within the context of young and very young learners and its impact on their language acquisition is an issue that remains to date underexplored. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the possible effects of TPRS on very young learners' L2 receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition. Nineteen four-year-old kindergarten students of a private school constituted a single treatment group of the study. The target vocabulary was selected from five age appropriate storybooks used by the school following the steps of frequency check with an online vocabulary profiler tool and a children's dictionary. The study had pretest-treatment-immediate posttest-and delayed posttest design. For the TPRS treatment that lasted five weeks, lesson plans were prepared by adapting the establishment of the meaning, asking a story and reading stages of TPRS to the context of very young learners. In order to check children's knowledge of target vocabulary prior to the treatment and to measure their immediate recall and delayed retention two weeks after the treatment, receptive and productive picture tests were developed and administered by the researcher in one-to-one sessions with each participating child. The scores obtained on the tests were analyzed using descriptive statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of the method on target vocabulary acquisition. The results of the study show that TPRS has a positive effect both on recall and retention of receptive and productive vocabulary. The study provides guiding implications for language teachers and curriculum developers at preschools who would like to adapt this method to the context of very young learners considering the special needs and characteristics of children at this age. Key words: Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS); very young learners; vocabulary acquisition; receptive and productive vocabulary; using storytelling in vocabulary acquisition.