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The Total Physical Response (Tpr) Is A Teaching Method

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The Total Physical Response (TPR) is a teaching method that was developed by James Asher, a professor of psychology at san José state university. It mainly relies on the coordination of speech to actions in order to teach language. But what is Total Physical Response? What theories was it based on? What are its characteristics? What are the roles of learners and teachers in this method and what advantages and drawbacks does it have? This essay will examine the Total Physical Response as a teaching method for second language learning and will demonstrate that after considering its characteristics, advantages and drawbacks Total Physical Response can be used successfully in some ESL classrooms. Total Physical Response was first used in 1963 …show more content…

The learner is liberated from self-consciousness and performance anxiety and that why the results will be a better performance. Total Physical Response can also be linked to other theories such as brain lateralization (second language learning is mostly concerned with the left hemisphere of the brain) and trace theory of memory in psychology: “The more intensively a memory connection is traced, the stronger the memory association will be” (Richards & Rogers, 2001, p.73) Total Physical Response bears also some of the principles of behaviorism that views imitation, drilling and habit formation an important part of language learning. It is clear that Total Physical Response stems from multiple theories and this is a very good sign as previous methods who were based on one theory and discarded all other possibilities have shown various loopholes in their approach to language learning if they did not utterly fail. A Total Physical Response course teaches basic speaking skills and aims to reach a good level of oral proficiency at a beginner stage: “a TPR course aims to produce learners who are capable of an uninhibited

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