A Study On The Application Of Total Physical Response To Teaching Children English

Total Physical Response, known world widely as TPR and originated by James Asher, the prominent psychology professor, enjoys high reputation as an effective teaching strategy among teachers of different languages such as Spanish, French, German and English.Based on the theory brain lateralization by Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry, Asher holds that the optimal starting point in acquiring another language is to enter the right hemisphere. With this notion added to the findings about infant acquiring a foreign language, TPR advocates that adults can learn a second language through imperatives, in the same manners as children acquire their mother tongues at even a faster speed:before being able to produce any utterances in target languages, learners achieve understanding of the working mechanism of the target language by listening and rapidly acting out the imperatives, the commands, given by the instructors. When learners have been exposed to extensive listening for a given time, they will get the cognitive map of the language and that will enhance her desire to talk, read or write, skills which will be transferred from listening massively. Since 1960s when TPR was originated, numerous experiments have been conducted by Asher and his colleagues and have proved that it has great advantages:gain rapid understanding, be stress-free and maintain high retention of language.After exploring the theories related to Total Physical Response, the thesis will present the statistical data about a survey on how primary English education is and the use of TPR among elementary English teachers. After analyses of data, the following findings have been located:first, teachers are employing varied methods as to English education with a preference toward traditional testing methods. The biggest challenge facing primary education is that students know more individual words than sentences and it has hampered communication in English. Second, on the whole, there is a limited understanding of long sentences among pupils. Third, according to the analyses of data from the survey and information extracted from interviewing teachers, most teachers' students enjoy TPR, and it is being used by most of the subjects but not in a thorough or systematical way. To solve the problem facing primary English education, promoting Total Physical Response is a must due to its great advantages. Afterwards, an experiment with the grade one pupils of a public school was conducted. Within the experiment,24 pupils were divided into experimental group and control group, which were taught respectively with total physical response strategy and more traditional method. Through analyses of the collected date, the advantages of total physical response have been proved: gain rapid understanding, be stress-free and especially maintain high retrieval of language. Towards the end, the author gives her reflection on the experiment and puts forward the summary:TPR, as an effective teaching strategy, should be promoted in primary school English education, and thus the professional development of the teachers should be fortified. In addition, the government should take actions to create better English education conditions such as smaller classroom size and more spacious classroom for the students to move around.