Kader Bilgiç and Nahide Nur Soylu are undergraduate students in the ELT department at Kahramanmaraş Sütçü Imam University, Türkiye. They are both senior students. Responsive to the problems in English language teaching classrooms, they spent time reading about modern methods used in English Language Teaching, which they hope will enable them to become responsible teachers. 

Email:bilgickader906@gmail.com, soylunur05@gmail.com 

 

Introduction: The emergence of TPR

Around the late 19th century, Frenchman François Gouin who failed his German class that included traditional teaching methods, had a chance to observe his nephews. He saw that his nephews learned with lots of physical movements and gestures. This inspired Gouin to develop an idea: lessons consisted of a series of actions that were simultaneously enacted and described. Gouin also observed that boys have a certain time between listening and speaking (an ‘incubation period’). Gouin's findings were influential in language teaching and continue to have an impact in our times (Thornbury, 2017, p. 26).

A long time later, in 1972, James Asher developed Total Physical Response (TPR), which may be seen as a technique rather than a method. It is based on the conviction that not only is listening critical for the development of speaking, but children acquire listening skills in a particular way. As there is an undeniable relationship between children's kinaesthetic movements and the language and the method, TPR is built around coordination and movement. This unique method-technique aims to use the language through motor activities. TPR seeks to exploit movement for second or foreign language learning purposes.

TPR requires following commands given by the instructor (or a peer) to elicit a physical response. According to Asher, the fastest and least stressful way to understand the target language is by following the commands given by the teacher. For example, the teacher says, "Stand up" and the students stand up. The instructions become more complex as the class progresses, and Asher claims that it is quite possible to embed vast amounts of syntax into the form of a command. It is important to state that the students speak only when they feel ready, which also appeals to their affective filter, and helps them become better language learners. It makes their anxiety level decrease. In such a situation, educators should be models and encourage especially introverted students to do the movements, as well (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011).

According to Jean Piaget, most of the language-related work is done in the left hemisphere of the brain, but including motor movements in language learning through TPR, appeals to the right hemisphere of the brain as well. It is known that second language teaching should be directed to the right brain hemisphere, which controls motor activities, while the left hemisphere controls verbal processing. For instance, motor activities promote right-brain learning and long-term storage in a process similar to learning to ride a bicycle (Cole, 1980).

There are basically two ways that a learner can achieve an understanding of a rule of grammar teaching: one of them is deductive and the other one is inductive. TPR is driven by the insight that inductive grammar teaching is preferable. It suggests that learners will find out the correct form of the rule during the class activity. It also stresses that learners are given enough time to think and monitor their mistakes during the silent period. TPR supports the active participation of students, helps the instructors to know if an utterance is understood or not, and additionally provides contexts to help students understand the language they hear. TPR also requires detailed pre-lesson preparation so that students receive clear instructions on what they need to do and why they need to do it (Hargraves, 2021).

 

Grammar teaching - some considerations

Coursebook designers and teachers often perceive grammar as a series of items or points, but rather than this understanding suggests, grammar is the glue of language that sticks one unit to another to make meaningful units (Thornbury, 2001). Teachers and coursebook designers often draw a prescriptive approach in their teaching and they actually discourage learners from producing the language. As to them, language should be pure and should be the same as the ''standards''. On the contrary to this point of view of language, natives speakers are likely to engage in conversations like this:

''Coffee?''

''No milk and sugar please.''

''Okay''

For this reason, in language classes, we need to include as many authentic, real-life-related conversations as possible. Therefore, teachers should encourage creative language use. This enables them to prepare language learners for the diversity of real-life communication outside the school walls. Moreover, by fostering creativity, teachers develop their learners’ skills along with critical thinking, collaboration, motivation, and metacognition. Thornbury (2017) suggests a simplification of authentic texts used in the classroom or to write the teacher´s text such as narratives.

Harmer (2007) points out that the personal way of teaching in the classroom requires choosing the appropriate method of teaching for individual classes. This respects the environment of learning and students as well.

Thornbury (2001; 1999) stresses two important approaches to teaching grammar: rule-driven learning for the deductive approach and discovery learning for the inductive one.  

There is trial and error in the inductive teaching. Students may make mistakes when developing their rules, and in this case, the teacher provides guidance and feedback to the learner. The mental effort that is made by students ensures 'cognitive depth' in inductive teaching. It helps learners develop autonomy, spending a lot of time and energy eventually leading to the discovery of the rules. Thus, teachers should select and organise the language input carefully when preparing lesson plans. 

 

Coming back to TPR

Earlier we stated that TPR sticks to inductive teaching. In the next section, we will explain how we can teach and practise the past continuous tense into the lesson using the TPR method. We will present a lesson plan to make our point.

Mahoney (2006) argues that real communication is spontaneous and unrehearsed. For this reason, if students are to acquire more than just a few stock responses or ritualize the language routines, there has to be a greater scope for individual input. He shows how drama techniques and strategies can be used to adapt grammar exercises and dialogues. The tasks students are given then approximate much closer to purposeful, real-life communication. Our idea supports spontaneous utterances in the language learning classrooms, as students' production and performances are valuable contributions to their language learning.

 

The idea

The idea behind this lesson plan is to teach students the past continuous tense by support of TPR. The TPR activity encourages learners to write sentences collaboratively and have other classmates act the content out. In particular, we were driven by the following considerations:

First of all, the reason for this idea was to get rid of traditional methods of teaching grammar to students and provide more creative, thus permanent learning. As it is known, teaching grammar in a literal way restricts the creativity of the student, and as Thornbury (1999) said, grammar is a kind of "sentence-making machine" (p.15). We thought it would be more beneficial to teach grammar to students with an inductive approach without restricting their creativity. That's why we apply TPR. As stated above, there are many benefits of applying TPR. It lifts the mood of the class, and it is very memorable. It helps students recognize phrases or sentences. TPR can be used in both large and small classes. It works well in mixed-ability classes so that all students can understand the language effectively and practise the target language. It is very effective for teenagers and young students. Moreover, it involves learning with both the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

Last but not least, we prepared this lesson plan with a pragmatist approach based on the principle of learning by doing. To facilitate learning, students must do something that is meant to produce results and that has its meaning. Producing results helps students internalise language. It is beneficial to have students develop content collaboratively. Collaborative learning is also encouraged in TPR. 

With the contribution of the TPR, the students have a chance to produce their sentences in the target form and they monitor their peer’s sentences kinaesthetically.   

We started from Dewey's four basic principles (benefit, interest, experience, and integration) (Hargraves, 2021). First of all, in the principle of benefit, it is emphasised that everything students learn is beneficial and should be relevant to their lives. It reflects students' interests and needs. Thus, it increases student motivation and participation by making learning more practical and meaningful.

Secondly, the curriculum content needs to include students' interests, as these are natural sources of students' curiosity and research. It reveals the interests of students who have speaking, researching, building, and creative capacities. The aim is to appeal to students' interests and encourage their excitement and passion for learning.

Thirdly, experience is seen as the primary source of knowledge and learning. Students can learn abstract concepts all day long, but they never fully understand them unless they experience them in action. Experiential learning, which involves learning by doing rather than by listening or reading, is emphasised here. Therefore, teachers need to create opportunities for students to learn, experiment, and engage in hands-on activities.

Finally, teachers need to encourage students to show students how concepts in different topics relate to each other and to the world at large. Teachers need to allow students to explore a topic from multiple perspectives and areas, thereby fostering their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

We believe that by using TPR and applying these principles in the classroom environment, teachers will create a more student-centred and democratic learning environment.

 

Lesson outline: Teaching the past continuous benefitting from TPR

The material used in this lesson is taken from the coursebook New Headway Student’s Book Pre-Intermediate (Soars & Soars, 2001, p. 26-27). The text, based on a short story by Roald Dahl, reads as follows:

The Perfect Crime

Alice Jackson's husband, Henry, was a man of habit. So it was that at exactly six o'clock in the evening she was in the kitchen getting a beer for him out of the fridge and watching him walk up the path.

She was smiling. Today the routine was going to be different. It was their tenth wedding anniversary, and some friends were coming round for drinks at 8.00. There was a big ice statue of a couple kissing in the middle of the table in the living room, with twenty glasses waiting for the guests. Alice was looking forward to the evening. She was very happy. She had a beautiful baby sleeping upstairs, a lovely home, and a husband who she adored.

Henry opened the door and came into the kitchen. She turned round to kiss him and give him his beer.

'Sit down,' Henry said. 'I've got something to say.' Alice had no idea that in the next two minutes her whole life was going to change. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'And it's our anniversary, as well. But it's just that Kathy and I are in love. Bobby won't miss me, he's too young'.

She didn't believe his ears. She was in a dream. 'I'll get ready for the party,' she said.

She walked into the living room. When she returned, Henry was standing with his back to her, drinking his beer. She was carrying something heavy. He turned. 'What on earth …?' These were Henry Jackson's last words. His wife hit him over the head.

At first he didn't move, then he fell to the floor.

Suddenly Alice began to think very clearly. She took the ice statue back to the living room, and phoned the police. Then she turned up the central heating, and went upstairs to put on some make-up.

The police came quickly. 'Is he all right?' she asked. 'He's dead.'

Alice screamed. 'No, no, not Henry! My Henry! Oh Henry!' Through her tears she told how she put the baby to bed, and came downstairs to find Henry on the kitchen floor.

'Burglars,' said Detective Parry.

They took her into the living room. 'Sit down, Mrs Jackson. Sergeant Taylor, get Mrs Jackson a drink. A brandy with some ice. Phew! It's hot in this room. I hope you understand, Mrs Jackson, that we have to search the house immediately. We must find the murder weapon.’

The room was getting hotter. Suddenly an arm fell off the ice statue onto the table. It was melting. Sergeant Taylor went to the statue and picked up the melting arm. He broke it into bits and put some into Alice's brandy. 

'Phew! Can I have a glass of water, Mrs Jackson? It's so hot in here.' 'I think we all need one,' said the detective. 'And with ice.' They were all very hot and thirsty.

Alice's friends arrived. 'Poor Alice! Poor Henry!' They cried, and they tried to comfort her.

'Oh, thank you, thank you,' sobbed Alice. 'Please… stay and have a drink. Help yourselves.' They all had drinks - gin and tonic, whisky - and they all had ice. The statue was now nearly a pool of water on the floor. 'I wonder what the burglar hit him with,' said one guest.

'Who knows?' said another, taking a sip of her drink.

Alice heard this conversation, and smiled into her brandy.

The following stages outline how the reading text leads into a TPR activity. The lesson outlined is simplified, and teachers will adapt the idea to their own context, probably by adding intermediary steps. We believe that the activity (based on this text) works better to revise past continuous rather than to introduce it.

 

Stage 1 

The teacher shows, if available, pictures accompanied to the text showing scenes from the story and wants them to speculate about who the people are and what is happening in the story.

 

Stage 2

As the pictures are not in the correct order, the students now read the text to order them. The students’ answers are checked.

 

Stage 3

In the next stage, the students answer comprehension questions (either those in the coursebook or ones prepared by the teacher). Additionally, maybe before the comprehension questions, the students are invited to comment on the wife’s behaviour, the husband’s responsibility and other issues they consider significant. Additionally, the students may be encouraged to retell the story.

 

Stage 4

The teacher writes the following sentence on the board:

Alice was preparing for the party, when Henry came home.

The teacher asks the students which of the two activities was ongoing and which one was shorter (to introduce or revise the use of past continuous and past perfect). The teacher then invites two students to act out the scene. This can be repeated by using another sentence:

Henry was drinking beer, when Alice hit her with the ice statue.

The teacher gives another sentence not related to the story:

When the teacher came into the classroom, Ahmet and Hatice were playing cards.

 

Stage 5

The teacher divides the class into groups of three or four students and asks the students to write similar sentences related to the study and beyond. Such sentences could read:

When the police arrived, Alice was crying.

While Alice was carrying the ice statue, Henry was drinking beer.

The baby was sleeping upstairs, when Henry came home.

While the groups are working, the teacher will monitor. 

 

Stage 6

Groups read their sentences and invite other students to act them out.

 

Conclusion

Many teachers may think that TPR is for young learners. However, TPR can be done with teenagers and adults as well with texts that contain ‘heavy’ content as an appetiser. In this way, students can produce infinite sentences, use them as scripts to be acted out by other learners. This way, they internalise the rules of a target grammar structure in an enjoyable way.

 

References

Cole, H. P. (1980). Piaget’s theory of cognitive representation and brain hemisphere functioning. Educational Technology, 20(12), 38-40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44421595

Hargraves, V. (2021, January 18). Dewey’s educational philosophy. The Education Hub. https://theeducationhub.org.nz/deweys-educational-philosophy/

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching (4th ed.). Pearson.

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2011). Techniques & principles in language teaching. (3rd ed.), Oxford University Press.

Mahoney, D. (2006). Drama in the classroom. In P. Falvey & P. Kennedy (Eds.), Learning language through literature (pp. 117-133). Hong Kong University Press.

Soars, J. & Soars, L. (2001). New Headway English course. Pre-intermediate. Student’s book. Oxford University Press.

Thornbury, S. (1999). How to teach grammar. Cambridge University Press.

Thornbury, S (2001). Uncovering grammar. Macmillan.

Thornbury, S. (2017). Scott Thornbury's 30 language teaching methods. Cambridge University Press.

 

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