translation convert

When I first started looking at TPRS oh these long months ago... (February) I was what Ben termed a "purist" I allowed no translation whatsoever in my room. Dictionaries were forbidden, and everything was done in the TL.

I taught with pure TPR, so I established meaning through actions, pictures, realia, etc. Blaine Ray was presenting in my state at our spring conference, so I went. I was not impressed. (Sorry Blaine!) The part that I could not get over was the use of translation. This went against everything I believed about language acquisition.

My beliefs centered around the acquisition of L1 as babies, and we do not have translations then, so I wasn't giving any in my class either.

Fast forward to yesterday and today. I'm in the middle of a 3 day workshop being presented by Von Ray and Karen Rowan. We had a story presented in Bulgarian yesterday. And today, we read a story in German. I don't speak either language. And yet, with the translated terms we were able to quickly progress into a story. I easily understood the questions, and with enough circling (another aha! moment) I actually stopped looking at the translations and was able to leave that crutch behind. And, although we only translated one paragraph of the story, I was able to later read the other two paragraphs of the story on my own, because the meanings had been well-established. So, I can say confidently that I am a convert now. And thank you Von for your patience with my many questions.