Application Of Total Physical Response In Primary School English Teaching

TPR was proposed by James Asher, an American professor on psychology, in the 1960s. It has been applied in foreign language teaching since then and enjoyed a high reputation all over the world. Based on theories about TPR as well as observation and investigation about English lessons of lower grades in primary schools, this paper aimed to prove TPR’s effect and to adapt English teaching in lower grades to both language acquisition theory and children’s psychological development, furthermore, to enrich English teaching methods in lower grades and to improve its efficiency.Therefore, the teaching experiment in this paper was practically carried out in lower grades of primary schools.28 students that were in Grade Two from a primary school and had no access to English before were divided into two groups. Then the experimental group and the control group were taught at the same time but with different teaching methods. There were a total of 12 lessons with 10 categories of English words involving food, colors and actions etc, which primary students were familiar with. Besides, there was a review test at the beginning of every lesson and a classroom test at the end. After the experiment, there was a comprehensive final test. Students’scores in classroom tests and review tests were analyzed through SPSS 18.0. The results showed that the experimental group did better than the control group on seven times in classroom tests. Meanwhile, in both review tests and the comprehensive final test, the experimental group did far better than the control group.The outcome of this paper proved that TPR is efficiently helpful to motivate students in lower grades to memorize English words, especially a long-term memory and continuous learning. The result will more or less contribute to research about TPR and furthermore improve English teaching efficiency in primary schools.