Total Physical Response



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. Listening serves two purposes; it is both a means of understanding messages in the language being learned, and a means of learning the structure of the language itself. Grammar is not taught explicitly, but is induced from the language input.

History
James Asher developed the total physical response method as a result of his observation of the language development of young children. Asher saw that most of the interactions that young children experience with parents or other adults combine both verbal and physical aspects. The child responds physically to the speech of the parent, and the parent reinforces the child’s responses through further speech. This creates a positive feedback loop between the parent’s speech and the child’s actions. [1]  Asher also observed that young children typically spend a long time listening to language before ever attempting to speak, and that they can understand and react to utterances that are much more complex than those they can produce themselves. [2]

How to use it
While the majority of class time in total physical response is spent on listening comprehension, the ultimate goal of the method is to develop oral fluency. Asher sees developing listening comprehension skills as the most efficient way of developing spoken language skills.[4]

Lessons in TPR are organized around grammar, and in particular around the verb. Instructors issue commands based on the verbs and vocabulary to be learned in that lesson.[7]  However, the primary focus in lessons is on meaning, which distinguishes TPR from other grammar-based methods such as grammar-translation.[8]

Grammar is not explicitly taught, but is learned by induction.[8]  Students are expected to subconsciously acquire the grammatical structure of the language through exposure to spoken language input, in addition to decoding the messages in the input to find their meaning. This approach to listening is calledcodebreaking.[9]

There is little error correction in TPR. Asher advises teachers to 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.



Activities
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTERichardsRodgers200176_10-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTERichardsRodgers200176_10-2" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]  Asher suggests that students can learn between 12 and 36 words for every hour of instruction, depending on their language level and class size.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTERichardsRodgers200176_10-3" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTERichardsRodgers200176_10-4" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]  However, beginners are not made to learn conversational dialogs until 120 hours into their course

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Materials
<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Total physical response lessons typically use a wide variety of realia, posters, and props. Teaching materials are not compulsory, and for the very first lessons they may not be used. As students progress in ability the teacher may begin to use objects found in the classroom such as furniture or books, and later may use word charts, pictures, and realia.

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<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;"> <h2 style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In action