The Application Of Total Physical Response Method In Teaching Chinese To Primaryschool Students In South Korea

Given the rapid development of economy and foreign trade, and its rising sinternational status, people around the world would like to know more about the contemporary China, paying more attention to Chinese learning."The Mandarin fever" in our neighbouring country South Korea is gradually heating up, and its low age has been a general trend.However, due to their younger age, the early grades students’cognitive ability and autonomous learning ability is not fully formed, coupled with Korea’s Chinese education is in its initial stage, all the aspects are not perfect enough, especially with regard to the teaching methods. Therefore, how to teach Chinese to those primary school pupils who are starting from scratch has been an urgent problem that need solving.Total Physical Response Approach (TPR), a learning method proposed by James Asher, which advocates that associating language and behavior acts in the process of the target language teaching. It also proposes that let the students speak after the full comprehension, and teaching language in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere, such as teaching language as playing game or listening to the music, to name just a few, for it not only arouses the enthusiasm of students’language learning, making them remember easier the content of the class, getting better learning affect, but also conforms to the children’s laws or characteristics of physical and mental developments.After been introduced into China, TPR has been widely used in English teaching, however, rarely in the study of the Chinese. Hence, this thesis has certain senses of innovation and novelty. Based on the interpretation of the TPR, incorporating practices and theory, this thesis aims to design the classroom exercises and games that can arouse children’s interests in Chinese learning, present its practical application in Korean primary school and also state the author’s teaching experience and reflection.And also, in this thesis, the author lays more emphasis on the practice of teaching, presents a lot of teaching cases and lesson plans, which shows how the TPR was used in the classroom of Chinese teaching. Moreover, the author hopes that her teaching plans will benefit the increasing international Chinese volunteer teachers who are engaging in children’s Chinese-teaching in South Korea a lot. It is also the value of this thesis.