A Study Of The Application Of TPR Teaching Method In Oral English Teaching In Primary Schools

Total Physical Response(TPR)was proposed by Professor Asher in 1960 s.It is a teaching method which connects the language with the body actions together to teach learners the second language by using body actions,pictures and objectives.This method of teaching tries to make the target language remembered firmly through the right side of the brain.Its main idea is that people will be more active in a relaxed and happy situation,so in order to achieve the best learning effect.It's necessary to provide a pleasure and interesting environment to avoid nervous and impatient moods.Although some scholars have collected a lot of advantages of TPR in the second language teaching,we can rarely investigate and discuss the effectiveness of the total physical response in oral English teaching.So it is necessary to get a full research on the language teaching methods for young learners who stay in the best period of language acquisition.Based on the input hypothesis,the left and right brain division theory and the trace theory,the author does an investigation and analysis on the application of this teaching method used in oral English teaching in a primary school of Lianyungang.The objective of the research is to investigate whether the TPR teaching method is effective to improve children's speaking ability.The experiment was carried out according to the following three questions.1.Is TPR suitable for being applied in primary school to improve students' speaking abilities?2.What's the students' reaction when using TPR in an oral English class?3.What influence does TPR have on primary school oral English teaching?Based on the input hypothesis,the left and right brain division theory and the trace theory,Experimental investigation method was carried out into this thesis.An experiment was done to the 60 students of different classes from Grade 4 of Lianyungang Jingqin primary school.The 60 children who were attended in this study were divided into two groups,that is,the experiment group and the control group.The number of the students in the two groups were the same.The mean scores of the two groups was almost the same too.Here were the steps of the experiment.First,the experimental group was taught by using TPR method while the control group was taught by using normal teaching methods.Then the control group and the experimental group were given the same post-test.When the experiment finished,the researcher counted the mean score and some other indicators of the experiment group and thecontrol group individually.Based on the data analysis,the mean score of the experiment group is 56.73 while the control group is 78.5.The researcher found that experiment group's mean score was much higher than that of the control group.The result of this research indicated that the children's scores in the experiment group were improved highly by using TPR teaching method.The results strongly suggested that this outcome is no coincidence.The questionnaires indicated that Total Physical Response was the practical oral English teaching technique that the pupils need.The TPR teaching method could not only improve the students' speaking ability but also help the English teachers organize the oral English lesson better.