Chapter 1
Background
Total Physical Response (TPR) is the name
given to a learning strategy which has been developed and promoted by Professor
James Asher of San José State University in California. It is now being
practiced successfully by many teachers all over the world. James Asher
developed this method as a result of his observation of the language
development of young children.
Asher outlined three main hypotheses about
learning second languages that are embodied in the total physical response
method. The first is that brain is naturally predisposed to learn language
through listening. The second is that effective language learning must engage
the right hemisphere of brain. And the third is that language learning should
not involve any stress , as stress and negative emotions inhibit the natural
language-learning process.
Total Physical Response (TPR) is a method of
teaching language using physical movement to react to verbal input in order to
reduce student inhibitions and lower their affective filter (stress). It is
built around the coordination of speech and action; it tries to teach language
through physical activity.
The basic technique of TPR is simple.
Learners act out commands given by the teacher. Learners are totally involved
in TPR activities because they are allowed to concentrate on one thing only:
they act out what they've heard. There is no pressure on them to speak the
foreign language yet. This is with good reason. Before any learner can start to
speak a foreign language spontaneously and creatively he or she must feel the
inner readiness to do so.
Goals of Total Physical
Response is to provide an enjoyable learning experience, having a minimum of
the stress that typically accompanies learning a foreign language.
Chapter 2
2.1. Approach
For
this dimension of his learning theory , Asher draws on three rather influential learning hypotheses :
1.
There exists a specific
innate bio-program for language learning, which defines an
optimal path for first and second language development.
2.
Brain lateralization defines
different learning functions in the left- and right-brain hemispheres.
3.
Stress (an affective
filter) intervenes between the act of learning and what is to be learned; the
lower the stress, the greater the learning.
Total physical Response
is an example of the comprehension approach to language teaching. Methods in
the comprehension approach emphasize the importance of listening on language
development and do not require spoken output in the early stages of learning.
In Total Physical Response, students are not forced to
speak. Instead, teachers wait until students acquire enough language through
listening that they start to speak spontaneously. At the beginning stages of
instruction students can respond to the instructor in their native language.
While the majority of class time in Total Physical
Response is spent on listening comprehension , the ultimate goal of the method
is to develp oral fluency. Asher sees develping listening comprehension skills
as the most eficient way of developing spoken language skills.
Lessons in TPR are organized arround grammar and in
particular around the verb. Instructors issue commands based on the verbs and
vocabulary to be learned in that lesson. However, the primary focus in lessons
is on meaning, which distinguishes TPR from other grammar based methods such as
grammar-translation.
Grammar is not explicitly taught, but it is learned by
induction. Students are expected to subconsciously acquire the grammatical
structure of the languag through exposure to spoken language input. In
addition, to decoding the messagees in the input to find their meaning. This
approach to listening is called codebreaking.
Total Physical Response
is both a teaching technique and a philosophy of language teaching. Teachers
don’t have to limit themselves to TPR techniques to teach according to the
principles of the total physical response method.
Because the students are only expected to listen and not
to speak, the teache has the sole responsibility for deciding what input
students hear.
So, we can make these followings as the summary:
·
Teaches language through physical (motor) activity.
·
Reduces learner stress and creates a positive mood by involving
game-like movements
·
Establishes a memory connection
·
Grammar is taught inductively
·
Learners primary role is listener and performer
2.2. Design
-
Objectives
The general objectives of Total Physical
Response are to teach oral proficiency at a beginning level. Comprehension is a
means to an end, and the ultimate aim is to teach basic speaking skills. A TPR
course aims to produce learners who are capable of an uninhibited communication
that is intelligible to a native speaker. Specific instructional objectives are
not elaborated, for these will depend on the particular needs of the learners.
Whatever goals are set, however, must be attainable through the use of
action-based drills in the imperative form.
-
The syllabus
The type of syllabus that
uses can be inferred from an analysis of the exercise types employed in TPR
classes. This analysis reveals the use of a sentence-based syllabus, with
grammatical and lexical criteria being primary in selecting teaching items.
Unlike methods that operate from a grammar-based or structural view of the core
elements of language, Total Physical Response requires initial attention to
meaning rather than to the form of items. Grammar is thus taught inductively.
Grammatical features and vocabulary items are selected not according to their
frequency of need or use in target language situations, but according to the
situations in which they can be used in the classroom and the ease with which
they can be learned. A fixed number of items be introduced at a
time, to facilitate ease of differentiation and assimilation.
A course designed around Total Physical
Response principles, however, would not be expected to follow a TPR syllabus
exclusively. We
are not advocating only one strategy of learning. Even if the imperative is the
major or minor format of training, variety is critical for maintaining continued
student interest. The imperative is a powerful facilitator of learning, but it
should be used in combination with many other techniques. The optimal
combination will vary from instructor to instructor and class to class. (Asher
1977: 28)
-
Types of learning and teaching activities
Imperative
drills are the major classroom activity in Total Physical Response. They are
typically used to elicit physical actions and activity on the part of the learners.
Conversational dialogues are delayed until after about 120 hours of
instruction. Other class activities include role plays and slide presentations.
Role plays center on everyday situations, such as at the restaurant,
supermarket, or gas station. The slide presentations are used to provide a
visual center for teacher narration, which is followed by commands, and for
questions to students, such as "Which person in the picture is the
salesperson?". Reading and writing activities may also be employed to
further consolidate structures and vocabulary, and as follow-ups to oral
imperative drills.
-
Learner roles
Learners in Total Physical Response have the
primary roles of listener and performer. They listen attentively and respond
physically to commands given by the teacher. Learners are required to respond
both individually and collectively. Learners have little influence over the
content of learning, since content is determined by the teacher, who must
follow the imperative-based format for lessons.
-
The role of instructional materials
The teacher plays an active and direct role
in Total Physical Response. The teacher decides what to teach, who are the
models and how to present and selects
the new materials and the supporting materials in the class room. The
teacher must prepare and organized the lesson well.
2.3. Procedure
The majority of
class time in TPR lessons is spent doing drills in which the instructor gives
commands using the imperative mood. Students respond to these commands with
physical actions. Initially, students learn the meaning of the commands they
hear by direct observation. After they learn the meaning of the words in these
commands, the teacher issues commands that use novel combinations of the words
the students have learned.
Instructors limit the number of new vocabulary items
given to students at any one time. This is to help students differentiate the
new words from those previously learned, and to facilitate integration with
their existing language knowledge. Students are suggested can learn between 12 and 36 words for every hour of
instruction, depending on their language level and class size.
While drills using the imperative are the mainstay of
total physical response classes, teachers can use other activities as well.
Some typical other activities are role plays and slide presentations.However,
beginners are not made to learn conversational dialogs until 120 hours into
their course.
There is little error correction in TPR. Teachers should treat learners’
mistakes the same way a parent would treat their children’s. Errors made by
beginning-level students are usually overlooked, but as students become more
advanced teachers may correct more of their errors. This is similar to parents
raising their children; as children get older parents tend to correct their
grammatical mistakes more often.
TPR lesson plans should contain the detailed commands
that the teacher intends to use. He says, “It is wise to write out the exact
utterances you will be using and especially the novel commands because the
action is so fast-moving there is usually not time for you to create
spontaneously.”
Here are the procedure of
Total Physical Response:
·
Review
This was a fast-moving warm-up in which
individual students were moved with commands such as:
1.
Pablo, go out!
2.
Jeffe, throw the red flower
to Maria!
3.
Maria, scream!
·
New commands
These verb were introduced :
your
hand
1.
Wash your face
your
hair
the
towel
2.
Look for the soap
a comb
·
Role reversal
Students readily volunteered to utter
commands that manipulated the behavior of the instructor and other students.
·
Reading and writing
The instructor wrote on the chalkboard each
new vocabulary item and a sentence to illustrate the item. The instructor wrote on the
chalkboard each new vocabulary item and a sentence to illustrate the item.
Then she spoke each item and
acted out the sentence. The
students listened as she read the material. Some copied the information in
their notebooks.
Chapter 3
Conclusion
Total
physical response (
TPR)
is a
language teaching method developed by James Asher, a professor
emeritus of
psychology at
San José State University. It is based on
the coordination of language and physical movement. In TPR, instructors give
commands to students in the target language, and students respond with
whole-body actions.
The
method is an example of the
comprehension approach to language teaching. The listening
and responding (with actions) serves two purposes: It is a means of quickly
recognizing meaning in the language being learned, and a means of passively
learning the structure of the language itself. Grammar is not taught
explicitly, but can be learned from the language input. TPR is a valuable way
to learn vocabulary, especially idiomatic terms, e.g., phrasal verbs.
Total
physical response is often used alongside other methods and techniques. It is
popular with beginners and with young learners, although it can be used with
students of all levels and all age groups.
From all explanation above we also can conclude
the advantages and the disadvantages of Total Physical Response Method, namely:
Advantage :
-
It is fun
-
It is easy to implement
-
It is reduce pressure and stress for students
-
It is good for kinesthetic who need to be active in the class
-
It can be used in large and small classes
Disadvantage :
-
It is only for young teenager and children
-
It is only for limited courses; drilling and repetitive
-
It is only focus on listening comprehension and speaking
-
Students are not generally given the opportunity to express their own
thought in as creative manner.
-
Can be a major challenge for shy students
References
Richards, Jack and Theodore Rodgers. 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.
Cambridge University Press.
Richards, Jack and Theodore Rodgers. 2002. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.
Cambridge University Press.
Arnold Mủhren, MA ODE. 2003 (e)Learning Designer & Adviser Alkmaar,
Netherlands
Diane Larsen-Freeman. 2003. Techniques and Principles in Language
Teaching.
