8. TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE

Introduction: Comprehension approach gives great importance to listenin comprehension. A baby spends many months listening to the people arounda her long before she ever says a word. Krashen and Terrel’s Natural Approachshares certain features with Direct Method. Emphasisis is placed on student’s developing basic communication skills and vocabularu through their receiving meaningful exposure to the target language. Students listen, don’t speak at first. Teacher helps them to understand her by using pictures occasional words in their native language. Winitz and Reed’s Self Instructional Program and Winitz’s The Learnables: students listen to tape-recorded words, phrases and sentences while they look at accompanying pictures. Students show that they understand the language but don’t speak. Lexical Approach is less concerned with student production and more concerned that students receive abundant comprehensible input. Students are given exercises and activities which raise their awareness about lexical features.

James Asher’s Total Physical Response is the fastest, least stressful way to achieve understanding of any target language. It is to follow directions uttered by the instructor (without native language)

Experience: She introduces the method they will use to study English. She explains in native language. “You will not speak at first. You will listen to me and do as I command in English.” She call 4 students, gives the commands and they all perform the actions. She gives the commands again, changing the order and saying them quite quickly. She again gives the command but remains seated. Other who have been sittin abserving her and 4 students perform the actions accordind to teacher’s commands, even though they2ve not done them before. Next teacher turns the 4 volunteers and says “Stand up, jump to the desk.” Teacher writes the new commands on the board, each time she act it out. No one except the teacher had spoken a word.

Observations → Principles

  1. Teachers gives a command and performs it with them → meaning in target language can often be conveyed through actions. Target language should be presented in chunks, not just word by word
  2. Students say nothing → their understanding should be developed before speaking
  3. Teacher gives the commands quite quickly → students can learn rapidly by moving their bodies
  4. Teacher sits down and gives commands to the volunteers → imperative (emir) is a powerful linguistic device
  5. He directs students other than volunteers → they can learn through oserving
  6. He introduces new commands → feeling of success and low anxiety faciliate learning
  7. Teacher changes the order of commands → students shouldn’t memorized fixed routines
  8. When they make an error, he repeats the command acting it out → correction should be carried out in an unobstrustive (engelleyici olmayan) manner
  9. He gives commands they’ve not heard before → they must develop flexibility in understanding novel commands. Novelty is also motivating.
  10. He says “Jump to the desk”. They laugh → learning is more effective when it is fun
  11. He writes the new command → spoken language should be emphasized over written language.
  12. A few weeks later, a student who hasn’t spoken before gives commands → they will begin to speak when they are ready
  13. A student says “shake hand with your neighbour” → teacher should be tolerant of errors

Reviewing The Principles

  1. What are the goals of the teacher? Having the students enjoy, reducing the stress, encouraging them to persist in their study
  2. What is the role of the teacher and the students? Teacher is the director of all student behaviours. Students are imitators of his nonverbal model
  3. What are some characteristics of teaching/learning process? Modeling of teacher. Students demonstrate that they can understand the commands. The observers also demonstrate their understanding. They develop flexibility.
  4. What is the nature of student-teacher and student-student interaction? Teacher is speaking and students are responding nonverbally. Students can learn by watching each other.
  5. How are the feelings of the students dealt with? Forcing them to speak creates anxiety when they begin to speak perfection shouldn’t be expected. Make language learning as enjoable as possible. Feelings of success and low anxiety faciliate learning.
  6. How is the language and culture viewed? The oral modakity is primary. Culture is the lif syle of people who speak the language natively.
  7. What areas of language and which language skills? Vocabularu and grammatical structures. The imperatives are single words and multi-word chunks. Understanding the spoken word shoul precede its production. Spoken language is emphasized over written language.
  8. What is the role of student’s native language? After the introduction native language is rarely used
  9. How is the evaluation? Observing their actions, commanding them individually
  10. How does teacher respond the errors? He should be tolerant of them only correct major errors, unobstrusivley.

Reviewing The Techniques

Major tecnique is the use of Command to direct (komutlara davranışla karşılık verme. Asher bütün gramer kalıplarının komut yöntemiyle öğretilebileceğini söyler)

Role reversal (öğrenciler diğerlerine komut verebilir)

Action sequence/operation (birbiriyle ilişkili sıralı komutlar)