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Maximize Your Language Learning through
TPR
by Reid Wilson, editor of the LANGUAGE
LEARNING electronic newsletter
First appeared: Language Learning #21
Acknowledgements
Any time I speak or write about language
learning my indebtedness to Greg Thomson, Stephen Krashen, and James Asher
shines through. While the following article contains my words from my
thoughts, my thoughts have been enthralled by these "greats", and
now I'm not always sure where their thoughts end and mine begin. Those of
you familiar with their work with see it throughout this article, but
processed by me, filtered and developed through my own experiences and
training.
Introduction
A friend of mine recently learned to
recognize and respond to over 500 words in Arabic after only nine two-hour
sessions with his tutor. He spent less than three weeks doing this. He
hadn't studied Arabic before, had no significant previous experience in
language learning, and is a successful entrepreneur, not a linguist.
He did it using Total Physical Response,
usually referred to as TPR.
While usually thought of as a powerful
language learning approach for beginning students, TPR actually has great
potential for learners at any level of ability. And if you have not been
using it in your language learning program, incorporating it now, at
whatever stage you are at, will bring a surge to your language learning
progress--guaranteed.
The Basic Principles of TPR
The success of TPR is built upon these
foundational principles of second language acquisition theory:
-
Languages are best learned when the
learner receives lots of comprehensible (understandable) input. In other
words, for a true beginner, listening to a radio broadcast in the
language is not nearly as effective as listening to simple "hear
and now" talk directed at the learner.
-
Beginning language learners can benefit
greatly from a "silent period" in which they learn to
understand and respond to parts of the language without attempting to
speak it. This is also referred to as "delayed production,"
and of course reflects that path that children follow when learning
their first language.
The basic idea behind Total Physical Response
is that a language learner learns to hear something in the language and then
physically respond to it. That is, in TPR, a beginning--or more
advanced--language learner learns to comprehend things said in the language
by a teacher, tutor, or friend. Often at first these "things" are
commands such as "stand up", "sit down",
"walk", "touch your nose", and so on. However, as
discussed in a section below, TPR is easily extended to other verb tenses
and more complicated sentence patterns. By using gestures and props, the
tutor is able to add enough non-linguistic context to his speech to convey
meaning to the learner.
For example, suppose that you want to begin
learning Turkish, and you have a Turkish friend who wants to trade an hour
of Turkish for an hour of English a couple times a week. During your first
hour of Turkish, your Turkish friend could say "stand up" as he
stands up and gestures for you to stand up. Then he could say "sit
down" as he sits and gestures for you to sit, and then he could go
through "stand up" and "sit down" a couple more times
while modeling it for you.
At some point fairly soon, your friend just
says "stand up" without himself standing up, but you now know to
stand up when you hear that, so you do. Congratulations! You just responded
to your first word of Turkish for which you didn't have to have help. (Of
course you will have to review it to remember it, and of course you probably
can't say it, but those things will come in the future.) After this your
tutor says "sit down"; you do it and are now on a roll. Your
friend has you stand up while he stands up too, and then he says
"walk" while he begins to walk. Then you learn "stop",
"turn around", and so on. Ideally your friend is able to monitor
your progress and introduce new words one at a time at a rate that is
optimal for you. (A different part of this issue of Language Learning
has a list of 500 words that can easily be learned using TPR. Actually, the
possibilities are just about endless.)
By the end of your first hour, you will
likely be able to respond to between 30 and 45 new words in Turkish! You
should tape record your session, and then by reviewing it several times
before your next language session and either physically responding to the
commands or just imagining doing it you should be able to fly through a
review with your friend the next time you get together. If you are dedicated
to this approach and committed to not begin speaking too soon, you will very
quickly grow in their ability to understand and respond to Turkish. (Trying
to speak too quickly 1) may distract you from rapid vocabulary development,
2) will likely cause your anxiety level to rise which could lesson the
"stickiness" of the words you are learning, and 3) could harm
long-term pronunciation if you develop had habits before having heard lots
of language.)
Variations of TPR: TPR-B, TPR-O, TPR-P,
TPRS
So the basic idea of TPR is that a language
learner hears something in the language and physically responds to it.
However, TPR is not just limited to whole
body commands such as walking, turning around, and pointing to your nose. In
fact, there are four major types of activities that can be done using the
TPR mindset. I like to refer to them as TPR-B, TPR-O, TPR-P, and TPRS. (TPRS
is the only one of these expressions that is widely known, the others are
terms I've made up.)
I refer to TPR-B for "TPR with
body", which includes everything that can be done with general body
movement: stand up, sit down, turn around, turn right, turn left, lift up
your arm, touch your nose, etc. This is best done in a room with some space
to move around.
TPR-O stands for "TPR with
objects". This is best done sitting a table that has some objects on
it. For example, one day you could raid the produce stand and then sit down
with your Turkish friend to a table of fruit. That day you could not only
learn the words for "apple", "banana",
"orange", and so on, but also, "give me",
"take", "put", "smell", "bite",
"roll", "peel", and "show me".
For this activitiy, your friend could start
off with: "This is an apple. This is an orange. This is an apple. This
is an orange. Where is the apple? (You would point) Where is the
orange?" Once again new words can be fairly quickly built up one at a
time.
When doing TPR-O, always remember to learn
verbs that are associated with the objects you are learning. For example, I
once had a TPR-O session in Arabic using a tape player/radio jambox. I not
only learned the parts of the jambox but I also learned to respond to verbs
that can be done with a jambox: turn it on, turn it off, turn up the volume,
turn down the volume, switch from cassette to radio, change the station,
rewind the tape, fast forward the tape, open up the battery case, take out
the batteries, and so on. (I learned a lot of new words that day!)
TPR-P stands for "TPR with
pictures". Pictures are extremely effective language learning tools.
Let's say that you're actually living in Turkey and have gone around and
taken 150 or so pictures of people doing different things and then arranged
these pictures in an album. Your Turkish friend could go through and say
"This is a man. This is a boy. This is a man. This is a boy. Where is
the man? Where is the boy?" Gradually both background and foreground
objects in the pictures could be learned, as well as verbs: "The
carpenter is hitting the nail with a hammer," leading to requests such
as "show me the man who is hitting something". Even verb tenses
can be incorporated by asking your friend (or tutor or teacher) to talk
about all of the pictures as if they happened last week, or now, or next
week. The actual physical response with pictures is faily basic--pointing at
something--but the opportunity for vocabulary acquisition is a broad as the
types of pictures you can use.
In addition to taking your own pictures, you
can probably find some children's picture or story books that are also
useful for this kinof learning. Newspaper and magazine pictures work well
too.
TPRS
TPR-S was developed by Blaine Ray and is
being used in classrooms thoughout the United States. It involves the
teacher (and eventually the students) acting out simple stories as a means
of understanding the story and internalizing vocabulary. The last section of
this article gives an internet link for more information about this
approach.
What about Speaking?
If you are just starting your language
learning and are using TPR, at some point you are (hopefully!) going to feel
the urge to start speaking. Don't push it, but at some point you can begin
saying things for your friend/tutor to do, from "stand up" to
"turn the volume down" to "show me the man who ate fish
yesterday". You can also speak about a table of objects: "This is
a ball. This is a key. This is a book. The pen is on the book." And
finally, you can describe pictures in any tense: "The man ate fish. The
boy read a book."
For More Advanced Learners
More advanced learners can still benefit
greatly from the different types of TPR. I'm an intermediate speaker of
Arabic, but I can easily walk around my house and find objects that I don't
know in Arabic as well as find pictures I would like to be able to describe.
I have found it helpful to use TPR to learn as many new words as I can for a
particular domain. For example, I could think of all of the things that I
can do with a pen, and then work through them with a tutor: "take the
cap off", "write you name", "sign your name",
"draw a straight line", "draw a wavy line","write
the word 'dog'", "underline the word 'dog'", "circle the
word 'dog'", draw a picture of a horse", "put the cap back
on", and so on.
Training Your Tutor To Do TPR with You
The most common mistake that tutors who are
new to TPR make is to introduce new words new quickly or to not introduce
them one at a time. If you begin to feel overwhelmed while doing TPR, just
remind your tutor of the need for incredible amounts of repetition. (During
a one-hour session you may need to hear a word fifty times to get it down
good. Most tutors innately think that two or three should be enough!)
You will most likely have to stress the need
for repetition several times--in fact, each day will be different depending
upon your mood, alertness, concentration, etc. Ideally your tutor will be
able to learn to continually monitor and evaluate your progress and make
minor adjustments as is needed.
If you speak a language that you tutor
doesn't, modeling TPR for an hour by using it to teach your tutor a new
language can be very effective in the tutor understanding what processes are
at work.
If you are using an established tutor who is
currently working or has worked in the past with other students, I'd bet
almost anything that the tutor has "a system" for teaching the
language that he is reluctant to give up. You may find it easier to train
someone new to be a TPR tutor than to try to get an established tutor to
switch, but either way you'll have to have patience and persistance. Don't
give in to their appeals for a different approach, even find a new tutor if
you have to. TPR is the way to go for beginning language students.
In Conclusion
The secret of TPR is to make it a regular,
ongoing part of your language study program, with great emphasis at the
beginning but continued use throughout your language learning days.
The ability to learn 30 new words any given
hour is fun, but the commulative effects of learning 30 new words each hour
for many, many hours is where real language ability develops.
Where To Find More Info about TPR on the
Internet
From Language Impact's web site: "Kick-Starting
Your Language Learning: Fun and Games Inside a Secure Nest" by Greg
Thomson.
The
FLTEACH TPR FAQ
TPR World
TPR
Storytelling
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