Total physical response is a teaching strategy that develops

Total Physical Response

Namespaces

Page actions

Total Physical Response (TPR) is a methodology for teaching language by involving students in physical activity. The method was developed by James Asher, a professor of psychology at San Jose State University, whose first publication on this topic appeared in 1965 (Knight, 2001, p.154).

Contents

Description [ edit | edit source ]

The first goal of a teacher using TPR is to help the students develop listening fluency (Asher: 1969, p. 5). The other language skills, speaking and writing, are supposed to be learned in a later stage as Asher believes that the ability to understand a language by listening to it would later have a positive effect on building the other skills (Asher, 1969, p. 5).

Underlying premises [ edit | edit source ]

Childlike acquisition of language [ edit | edit source ]

Another aspect of child-like acquisition of language is that children respond physically to their parents’ speech and are able to «obey» long before being able to produce their first words and sentences (Asher, 1969, p.4). In the same way TPR initially focuses only on the development of listening comprehension before starting with the production of speech. Classroom activities consist of physical responses to commands given by the teacher.

Interaction of right and left brain hemisphere [ edit | edit source ]

One of the foundations of TPR is an uncommon assumption about how language is learned on a neurological level. While most second language learning methods are only directed at the left brain hemisphere, Asher believes that both hemispheres need to play a role when a learner acquires language (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 75). Asher assumes that, parallel to a child learning its mother tongue, the learner should first undergo motor movements, which are controlled by the right brain hemisphere. Then the left brain hemisphere is supposed to process these information and go on to «produce language and to initiate other, more abstract language processes» (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 75). Thus, the movement of the students acting according to the commands of the teacher are supposed to prepare them for processing the language.

Stress-free environment [ edit | edit source ]

TPR claims to make use of on Krashen’s ‘Affective filter hypothesis’. The ‘Affective Filter’ is a “metaphorical barrier that prevents learners from acquiring language even when appropriate input is available” (Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p. 37). In a language class setting, this means that although an individual might be receiving appropriate input, he might be prevented from learning due to his emotional state, needs etc. When a learner is for example anxious, tired or hungry he will not be able to absorb input as complete as learners who are relaxed and not distracted by any kind of needs or emotions.

Asher sees TPR as a stress-free way of learning where the student is “liberated from self-conscious and stressful situations” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 75). The student is supposed to learn the second language in such a carefree way as a child encountering its mother tongue.

Connected theories [ edit | edit source ]

TPR is based on behaviourism, a theory developed by B.F. Skinner. This theory sees learning merely as a result of imitation, practice, reinforcement and habit formation (Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p.34). According to behaviourism, an individual will show a certain behaviour due to imitation. If he then receives enough positive feedback, this person will continue to show this kind of behaviour and eventually this action will develop into a habit (Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p. 10). In the same way, according to behaviourism, in order to learn a foreign language, a language student only needs to imitate the language he/she hears from the teacher and react to his feedback. Language development is seen as a result of habit formation (Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p.34). This view of language learning becomes apparent in TPR with regards to its focus on performance by the teacher and imitation by the students.

Apart from behaviourism, TPR can also be connected to the ‘trace theory’ in psychology which claims that «the more often or the more intensively a memory connection is traced, the stronger the memory association will be and the more likely it will be recalled» (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.73).

Role of teacher and student [ edit | edit source ]

The teacher’s role in TPR is to select the teaching material and plan the tasks the students are going to do (Knight, 2001, p. 154). His main role in the classroom is to give commands to the students. The teacher might for example tell the students: “Stand up!”, “Sit down!”, “Take your pencil!” etc. The instructor also serves as a model and gives feedback to the students. The feedback he/she gives is likened to the feedback children receive from their parents. The teacher is to gradually increase the amount of correction given to the learner as he progresses in his knowledge of the target language just as parents will tolerate less mistakes as a child gets older (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.76). The learner’s part is to listen and to respond physically to the commands. When the students have sufficient listening fluency and feel ready for it, they can begin to speak as well. In this later stage, TPR uses role plays and dialogues in which the students act out real life situations (Richards & Rogers 2001, p. 76).

Material [ edit | edit source ]

TPR makes frequent use of realia. As the lessons become more complex, the teacher might also use material like pictures, slides or word charts (Richards & Rogers 2001, p. 77). However, there are also special TPR kits for sentences that include objects/scenery not available in the classroom.

Application [ edit | edit source ]

Asher himself points out that TPR should be used in combination with other techniques and methods (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 79). Many teachers nowadays like to do this and TPR usually does not show any apparent conflict with other approaches (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 79). An example for including an element of TPR in a lesson is to include the game ‘Simon says’ in which the teacher gives the students commands starting with the phrase ‘Simon says’. The students then have to do what the teacher said. Whenever he/she leaves out the phrase, the command, however, is considered as not valid. Any student that reacts and performs the action in spite of this is out of the game.

Criticism [ edit | edit source ]

Although Asher stresses that his method “if applied with skill, will enable everyone, children, teens and adults, to enjoy instant understanding” (n.d.b), in reality TPR is “rarely used beyond beginner level” (Knight, 2001, p.154). Presumably this is because there is a limit to how much students can learn from being told to stand up and sit down.

In theory TPR is intended to create an atmosphere in which the students can learn without feeling self-conscious or being nervous. However, putting adult or teenage language students in a position in which they have to perform meaningless actions and obey commands like “[Put] the soap in Ramiro’s ear ”, “[P]ut the towel on your head and laugh” or “Sit down quickly and laugh” (Asher, 1977, p. 61) is unlikely to create a suitable learning environment for them.

TPR is also very teacher-centred (Knight, 2001, p. 154). Although it might in consequence reduce the stress for the learners (Knight, 2001, p. 154), it puts them in a very passive role in which they cannot make their own choices or develop creativity.

Another reason for questioning the effectiveness of the method is that TPR entirely excludes any focus on grammar or students’ output (Cameron, 2001, p. 107).

References [ edit | edit source ]

Bibliography [ edit | edit source ]

Approach

Asher does not directly discuss the nature of language or how languages are organized. However, the labeling and ordering of TPR classroom drills seem to be built on assumptions that owe much to structuralist or grammar-based views of language. Asher states that «most of the gram­matical structure of the target language and hundreds of vocabulary items can be learned from the skillful use of the imperative by the instructor» (1977: 4). He views the verb, and particularly the verb in the imperative, as the central linguistic motif around which language use and learning are organized.

Asher sees language as being composed of abstractions and non-abstractions, with non-abstractions being most specifically represented by concrete nouns and imperative verbs. He believes that learners can ac­quire a «detailed cognitive map» as well as «the grammatical structure of a language» without recourse to abstractions.

Abstractions should be delayed until students have internalized a detailed cognitive map of the target language. Abstractions are not necessary for people to decode the grammatical structure of a language. Once students have internalized the code, abstractions can be introduced and explained in the target language.

This is an interesting claim about language but one that is insufficiently detailed to test. For example, are tense, aspect, articles, and so forth, abstractions, and if so, what sort of «detailed cognitive map» could be constructed without them?

Despite Asher’s belief in the central role of comprehension in language learning, he does not elaborate on the relation between comprehension, production, and communication (he has no theory of speech acts or their equivalents, for example), although in advanced TPR lessons imperatives are used to initiate different speech acts, such as requests («John, ask Mary to walk to the door»), and apologies («Ned, tell Jack you’re sorry»).

Asher also refers in passing to the fact that language can be internalized as wholes or chunks, rather than as single lexical items, and, as such, links are possible to more theoretical proposals of this kind, as well as to work on the role of prefab­ricated patterns in language learning and language use Asher does not elaborate on his view of chunking, however, nor on other aspects of the theory of language underlying Total Physical Response. We have only clues to what a more fully developed language theory might resemble when spelled out by Asher and his supporters.

In Jensen’s notation, Sv refers to a verbal stimulus—a syllable, a word, a phrase, and so on. R refers to the physical movements the child makes in response to the verbal stimulus (or Sv). The movement may involve touching, grasping, or otherwise manipulating some object. For example, mother may tell Percival (age 1) to get the ball, and Percival, distinguishing the sound «ball» from the clatter of other household noises, responds by fetching the ball and bringing it to his mother. Ball is the Sv (verbal stimulus), and Percival’s action is the response. At Percival’s age, children respond to words about four times faster than they respond to other sounds in their environ­ment. It is not clear why this is so, but it is possible that the reinforcing ef­fects of making proper responses to verbal stimuli are sufficiently strong to cause a rapid development of this behavior. Sv-R learning represents, then, the simplest form of verbal behavior.

This is a very similar position to Asher’s view of child language acqui­sition. Although learning psychologists such as Jensen have since aban­doned such simple stimulus-response models of language acquisition and development, and although linguists have rejected them as incapable of accounting for the fundamental features of language learning and use, Asher still sees a stimulus-response view as providing the learning theory underlying language teaching pedagogy. In addition, Asher has elaborated an account of what he feels facilitates or inhibits foreign language learning. For this dimension of his learning theory he draws on three rather influential learning hypotheses :

1. There exists a specific innate bio-program for language learning, which defines an optimal path for first and second language development.

2. Brain lateralization defines different learning functions in the left- and right-brain hemispheres.

3. Stress (an affective filter) intervenes between the act of learning and what is to be learned; the lower the stress, the greater the learning.

Let us consider how Asher views each of these in turn.

Asher’s Total Physical Response is a «Natural Method» inasmuch as Asher sees first and second language learning as parallel processes. Second language teaching and learning should reflect the na­turalistic processes of first language learning. Asher sees three processes as central,

(a) Children develop listening competence before they develop the ability to speak. At the early stages of first language acquisition they can understand complex utterances that they cannot spontaneously pro­duce or imitate. Asher speculates that during this period of listening, the learner may be making a mental «blueprint» of the language that will make it possible to produce spoken language later,

(b) Children’s ability in listening comprehension is acquired because children are re­quired to respond physically to spoken language in the form of parental commands,

(c) Once a foundation in listening comprehension has been established, speech evolves naturally and effortlessly out of it. As we noted earlier, these principles are held by proponents of a number of other method proposals and are referred to collectively as a Comprehension Approach.

Parallel to the processes of first language learning, the foreign language learner should first internalize a «cognitive map» of the target language through listening exercises. Listening should be accompanied by physical movement. Speech and other productive skills should come later. The speech-production mechanisms will begin to function spontaneously when the basic foundations of language are established through listening train­ing. Asher bases these assumptions on his belief in the existence in the human brain of a bio-program for language, which defines an optimal order for first and second language learning.

An important condition for successful language learning is the absence of stress. First language acquisition takes place in a stress-free environ­ment, according to Asher, whereas the adult language learning environ­ment often causes considerable stress and anxiety. The key to stress-free learning is to tap into the natural bio-program for language development and thus to recapture the relaxed and pleasurable experiences that ac­company first language learning. By focusing on meaning interpreted through movement, rather than on language forms studied in the ab­stract, the learner is said to be liberated from self-conscious and stressful situations and is able to devote full energy to learning.

The general objectives of Total Physical Response are to teach oral proficiency at a beginning level. Comprehension is a means to an end, and the ultimate aim is to teach basic speaking skills. A TPR course aims to produce learners who are capable of an uninhibited commu­nication that is intelligible to a native speaker. Specific instructional objectives are not elaborated, for these will depend on the particular needs of the learners. Whatever goals are set, however, must be attainable through the use of action-based drills in the imperative form.

The type of syllabus Asher uses can be inferred from an analysis of the exercise types employed in TPR classes. This analysis reveals the use of a sentence-based syllabus, with grammatical and lexical criteria being primary in selecting teaching items. Unlike methods that operate from a grammar-based or structural view of the core elements of language, Total Physical Response requires initial attention to meaning rather than to the form of items. Grammar is thus taught inductively. Gram­matical features and vocabulary items are selected not according to their frequency of need or use in target language situations, but according to the situations in which they can be used in the classroom and the ease with which they can be learned.

The criterion for including a vocabulary item or grammatical feature at a particular point in training is ease of assimilation by students. If an item is not learned rapidly, this means that the students are not ready for that item. Withdraw it and try again at a future time in the training program.

Asher also suggests that a fixed number of items be introduced at a time, to facilitate ease of differentiation and assimilation. «In an hour, it is possible for students to assimilate 12 to 36 new lexical items depending upon the size of the group and the stage of training». Asher sees a need for attention to both the global meaning of language as well as to the finer details of its organization.

The movement of the body seems to be a powerful mediator for the under­standing, organization and storage of macro-details of linguistic input. Lan­guage can be internalized in chunks, but alternative strategies must be developed for fine-tuning to macro-details.

A course designed around Total Physical Response principles, however, would not be expected to follow a TPR syllabus exclusively.

We are not advocating only one strategy of learning. Even if the imperative is the major or minor format of training, variety is critical for maintaining con­tinued student interest. The imperative is a powerful facilitator of learning, but it should be used in combination with many other techniques. The opti­mal combination will vary from instructor to instructor and class to class.

Imperative drills are the major classroom activity in Total Physical Re­sponse. They are typically used to elicit physical actions and activity on the part of the learners. Conversational dialogues are delayed until after about 120 hours of instruction. Asher’s rationale for this is that «every­day conversations are highly abstract and disconnected; therefore to understand them requires a rather advanced internalization of the target language». Other class activities include role plays and slide presentations. Role plays center on everyday situations, such as at the restaurant, supermarket, or gas station. The slide presentations are used to provide a visual center for teacher narration, which is followed by commands, and for questions to students, such as «Which person in the picture is the salesperson?». Reading and writing activities may also be employed to further consolidate structures and vocabulary, and as follow-ups to oral imperative drills.

Learners in Total Physical Response have the primary roles of listener and performer. They listen attentively and respond physically to com­mands given by the teacher. Learners are required to respond both individually and collectively. Learners have little influence over the con­tent of learning, since content is determined by the teacher, who must follow the imperative-based format for lessons. Learners are also ex­pected to recognize and respond to novel combinations of previously taught items:

Novel utterances are recombinations of constituents you have used directly in training. For instance, you directed students with ‘Walk to the table!’ and ‘Sit on the chair!’. These are familiar to students since they have practiced re­sponding to them. Now, will a student understand if you surprise the individ­ual with an unfamiliar utterance that you created by recombining familiar elements (e.g. ‘Sit on the table!’).

The teacher plays an active and direct role in Total Physical Response. «The instructor is the director of a stage play in which the students are the actors». It is the teacher who decides what to teach, who models and presents the new materials, and who selects supporting materials for classroom use. The teacher is encouraged to be well pre­pared and well organized so that the lesson flows smoothly and predictably. Asher recommends detailed lesson plans: “It is wise to write out the exact utterances you will be using and especially the novel com­mands because the action is so fast-moving there is usually not time for you to create spontaneously». Classroom interaction and turn taking is teacher rather than learner directed. Even when learners interact with other learners it is usually the teacher who initiates the interaction:

Teacher: Maria, pick up the box of rice and hand it to Miguel and ask Miguel to read the price.

Asher stresses, however, that the teacher’s role is not so much to teach as to provide opportunities for learning. The teacher has the responsi­bility of providing the best kind of exposure to language so that the learner can internalize the basic rules of the target language. Thus the teacher controls the language input the learners receive, providing the raw material for the «cognitive map» that the learners will construct in their own minds. The teacher should also allow speaking abilities to develop in learners at the learners’ own natural pace.

In giving feedback to learners, the teacher should follow the example of parents giving feedback to their children. At first, parents correct very little, but as the child grows older, parents are said to tolerate fewer mistakes in speech. Similarly teachers should refrain from too much correction in the early stages and should not interrupt to correct errors, since this will inhibit learners. As time goes on, however, more teacher intervention is expected, as the learners’ speech becomes «fine tuned.»

Asher cautions teachers about preconceptions that he feels could hinder the successful implementation of TPR principles. First, he cautions against the «illusion of simplicity,» where the teacher underestimates the diffi­culties involved in learning a foreign language. This results in progressing at too fast a pace and failing to provide a gradual transition from one teaching stage to another. The teacher should also avoid having too narrow a tolerance for errors in speaking.

You begin with a wide tolerance for student speech errors, but as training progresses, the tolerance narrows. Remember that as students progress in their training, more and more attention units are freed to process feedback from the instructor. In the beginning, almost no attention units are available to hear the instructor’s attempts to correct distortions in speech. All attention is directed to producing utterances. Therefore the student cannot attend effi­ciently to the instructor’s corrections.

There is generally no basic text in a Total Physical Response course. Materials and realia play an increasing role, however, in later learning stages. For absolute beginners, lessons may not require the use of materials, since the teacher’s voice, actions, and gestures may be a sufficient basis for classroom activities. Later the teacher may use common class­room objects, such as books, pens, cups, furniture. As the course de­velops, the teacher will need to make or collect supporting materials to support teaching points. These may include pictures, realia, slides, and word charts. Asher has developed TPR student kits that focus on specific situations, such as the home, the supermarket, the beach. Students may use the kits to construct scenes (e.g., «Put the stove in the kitchen»).

Asher provides a lesson-by-lesson account of a course taught according to TPR principles, which serves as a source of information on the procedures used in the TPR classroom. The course was for adult immigrants and consisted of 159 hours of classroom instruction. The sixth class in the course proceeded in the following way:

Review. This was a fast-moving warm-up in which individual students were moved with commands such as: Pablo, drive your car around Miako and honk your horn.

Jeffe, throw the red flower to Maria.

Rita, pick up the knife and spoon and put them in the cup.

Eduardo, take a drink of water and give the cup to Elaine.

New commands. These verbs were introduced.

your face,

Next, the instructor asked simple questions which the student could answer with a gesture such as pointing. Examples would be:

Where is the towel? [Eduardo, point to the towel!]

Where is the toothbrush? [Miako, point to the toothbrush!]

Where is Dolores?

Role reversal. Students readily volunteered to utter commands that manipu­lated the behavior of the instructor and other students.

Reading and writing. The instructor wrote on the chalkboard each new vo­cabulary item and a sentence to illustrate the item. Then she spoke each item and acted out the sentence. The students listened as she read the material. Some copied the information in their notebooks.

Conclusion

Total Physical Response is in a sense a revival and extension of Palmer and Palmer’s English Through Actions, updated with references to more recent psychological theories. It has enjoyed some popularity because of its support by those who emphasize the role of comprehension in second language acquisition. Krashen (1981), for example, regards provision of comprehensible input and reduction of stress as keys to successful lan­guage acquisition, and he sees performing physical actions in the target language as a means of making input comprehensible and minimizing stress (see Chapter 9). The experimental support for the effectiveness of Total Physical Response is sketchy (as it is for most methods) and typ­ically deals with only the very beginning stages of learning. Proponents of Communicative Language Teaching would question the relevance to real-world learner needs of the TPR syllabus and the utterances and sentences used within it. Asher himself, however, has stressed that Total Physical Response should be used in association with other methods and techniques. Indeed, practitioners of TPR typically follow this recom­mendation, suggesting that for many teachers TPR represents a useful set of techniques and is compatible with other approaches to teaching. TPR practices therefore may be effective for reasons other than those proposed by Asher and do not necessarily demand commitment to the learning theories used to justify them.

9 Total Physical Response Activities for Language Learning

How many times did you almost fall asleep in class as a student? Be honest, everyone’s been there at least once. Between PowerPoints and droning teachers, there are a lot of things that can go wrong in a classroom. Teachers who can keep things lively will see students who are more involved and engaged with the material, even if it’s difficult. Many language teachers use Total Physical Response, or TPR for short, to keep their student’s energy up.

What is Total Physical Response?

Total Physical Response is a method developed by James Asher in the 1960s. It was created with the goal of helping students learn a second language. TPR helps students learn by associating a physical action with new vocabulary.

Some benefits of TPR:

TPR isn’t only for the teachers though, students who are trying to learn a language on their own can benefit as well. Associating a movement with new vocabulary can help you remember it next time. TPR works by helping students understand the meaning of new words quickly. Teachers can develop TPR centered activities, or add TPR into any classroom activity they already do.

How to use Total Physical Response?

Ready to get moving? Here’s a quick step by step guide for teachers using TPR for the first time.

Prepare: Decide on the vocabulary you will be teaching and think about the most effective movements to use. You can also take some time to gather any props or extra materials you will need.

Teacher Modelling: Show the students the movement and say the vocabulary word. Be sure to do this a few times so everyone understands what you’re doing.

Student Modelling: Now it’s time to get your students involved. Choose a few and have them mimic the action and say the vocabulary word. This will help the rest of the class understand what you need them to do in the next step.

Student Participation: To ensure everyone understands, have the entire class model the movement and say the word together. This will get everyone on the same page. It will also help relieve some of the self-consciousness your students may feel saying a new word or doing a funny action.

Write it Down: Write the word down on the board, or whatever you are using to show your students new vocabulary. Not doing this earlier helps students focus on the sounds in the word and your actions, rather than the spelling of it. Writing it down for them at this point in the process helps students connect the sound with a written word.

Repetition and Practice: Continue teaching the rest of your vocabulary in a similar manner. At the end, be sure to review all the new words and movements with the class.

Total Physical Response Activities

Group Singing

Everyone loves a good song right? This is an especially great tool for younger learners, as singing together is a fun and exciting activity for them. Adult learners may not get as much of a kick out of this.

A great example of group singing with total physical response is the grade school classic, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”. This song is not only fun to sing but incorporates movements that students can remember even if they can’t quite get all the words. This helps them remember the words more accurately after practice, and reinforces their meaning.

Simple Simon Says

This is a great game because your students likely already know it in some capacity. Simon says to do something, you do it. Teachers in large classrooms typically have all of the students stand up to start. Throughout the game, students sit down if they miss a question, answer incorrectly, or answer when they are not supposed to. This is useful for reviewing vocabulary from previous lessons or at the end of a complicated lesson.

For example, you’ve just taught a lesson on the face (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc.) and you want to make sure your students understand. You can stand at the front of the class and play “Simon says…” “touch your eyes”, “touch your ears”, “touch your mouth”.

This game is perfect for all levels, as even students who do not initially understand the game can catch on quickly. It can also be used for more advanced vocabulary and can be done at any pace to test quick understanding.

Charades

Charades is a helpful game for any learner, not just for language learning. Charades involves a student getting up and performing for the rest of the class. They are told a vocabulary word or action that the rest of the class needs to say, and then it’s their job to get that answer from the class. This helps test the student performers ability as well as the ability of the class.

You can also let your students get a little competitive by dividing them into teams. Teams alternate turns, so they can’t guess off of the other performer’s actions. This helps get your students more involved in the game, as everyone likes a little competition.

You can do this game with or without preparation, making it a great cool down activity or quick review game. If you want to prepare, write down your vocabulary (this works best with verbs) and put them on pieces of paper in a jar for your students to pull from. If you’re winging it, tell only the student that is performing which action they need to do.

Pantomime Actions

Have some extra props lying around? Get your students interacting with them by using this pantomiming activity. Here’s how it works- think of a series of actions you can do with your props, then get your students to mimic the actions. Use simple sentences for each action, so your students can practice extended speaking.

For our example, we’ll use a grocery store scenario-

“Pick up an apple”

“Look at the apple”

“Put the apple in the basket”

This can be extended indefinitely depending on your props and subject matter. This is a great way to get students practicing speaking and performing TPR at the same time. For large classes, you may want to set up a few different stations so no one gets bored watching or doing the same thing.

Storytelling sessions

Stories are a great way to put vocabulary in context and get your students to have a better understanding of what goes on in class. Adding TPR to your story makes it easy for students who may not have understood the vocabulary the first time around. Plus, it makes it more engaging.

Choose a story about something that can involve your vocabulary words more than once. For example: If your class has just learned about the five senses, you can tell a story about Sally’s first time in the park. Talk about what she hears, sees, and smells and use your TPR for each vocabulary word multiple times.

At the end of the story, ask a few students to summarize what happened. They can use the TPR for smells, sees, and hears to help them remember what happened in the story and practice speaking in full sentences.

Have a drama session

Do you sometimes feel like your students are a little dramatic? This is the perfect activity for them! A great way to test their language and TPR skills is to have them do a little improv. You’ll play the role of the narrator and decide how the story goes. Choose something light and easy to follow, like a hero’s journey.

For this kind of story, you’ll need a hero, a princess, and a villain. For a larger class, feel free to add more characters but don’t make the story too long or too complicated. You also can’t forget to leave some of the class in the audience to watch the chaos unfold!

Use some target language you’ve covered in class- ex. “Run away!”, “Wave Hello”, etc. and have the students in the play act using the TPR you covered in class. Don’t be afraid to stop the story if someone is confused or doesn’t understand. This activity is all about putting the vocabulary they learn in class to good use, so make sure they know what they’re doing.

Mime activities

This one’s all about total physical response. Your poor student has completely lost their voice! They’ll be assigned a partner who has to determine what they need, but they can’t say a word. You’ll give them a task or phrase they need to make their partner say. For example, “You’re looking for your dog.” The mime student must convey this entirely through their actions, and the partner must guess the target sentence.

This is a great way to test your student’s understanding, as they will have to remember the vocabulary off the top of their heads. This is also a great activity for large classrooms, as you can pair off students and have them race for first place.

Role Play

A simple way to get your students talking and using TPR is to have them roleplay easy scenarios. This is better for more advanced students that have a little more confidence speaking. All you have to do is give them a scenario or a few pieces of target vocabulary and watch them go.

You can do this two ways- you can have two students get in front of the class and perform, or you can pair them off and have them work more independently. Many students can be shy or reluctant to speak when learning a new language, so pairing them off and listening in on a few conversations works well for small classes. No matter what you do though, make sure they’re up and moving around!

If your students are reluctant to talk, some teachers find it helpful to set a timer for how long the scenario has to go on. 30 seconds is a good starting point for most classes, and you can give them time to prepare before they start.

Treasure Hunt with a Twist

This is perfect for classes that love to compete. Group your students into four or five groups and send them on the scavenger hunt of their lives! Or at least of their day. Instead of giving your student’s paper clues, give them verbally. Whichever team completes the activity first wins for that round.

For example, after teaching action verbs, you can ask your students to “go to the back of the class”, “run to the front of the class”, “find something yellow”, or “jump in place”. Be sure to keep track of each teams points, and award the winner with bragging rights (or candy).

This activity is great for getting everyone practicing total physical response, as teams cannot earn points unless all members are participating.

We hope this list of fun activities gets you and your class moving. total physical response is a great language tool for any age or level and can help your students more quickly remember vocabulary and phrases.

Check out these articles to up your language learning game:

What is TPR (Total Physical Response)?

Updated April 9, 2019

What is TPR? Total Physical Response (TPR) is a language teaching method using actions to create a mind and body connection to words making them easier for the student to remember.

ALO7 tutor using TPR to teach the word ‘nose’

When I was a university student studying to be a middle school math teacher, I learned all kinds of handy techniques for teaching complicated math concepts. And, I also learned how to create a dynamic classroom. Twenty years later, I began my adventure in online ESL teaching with ALO7 and my extraordinary Chinese students. I thought the complicated part would be dealing with technology and the distance between my students and me. Instead, I found that it was more intimidating to learn and change my methodology, not the technology. The main change for me was to learn to use TPR, which stands for Total Physical Response.

What is TPR?

According to The Teacher Toolkit, “Total Physical Response (TPR) is a method of teaching language or vocabulary concepts by using physical movement to react to verbal input. The process mimics the way that infants learn their first language, and it reduces student inhibitions and lowers stress. The purpose of TPR is to create a brain link between speech and action to boost language and vocabulary learning.”¹

TPR was developed by Dr. James Asher, of San Jose State University, in the late 1960’s. It is based on the theory that infants don’t learn language by memorizing lists, so why should adults who are learning a second language? Babies learn languages as they watch the physical responses to their words. If they say “mama” and mama gets excited, smiles and exclaims, “She’s looking at me! She’s saying my name!”, the baby sees the reaction, and her brain connects the word with the actions.

As a person is learning a second language, their brain will continue to work the same way and connect visuals with the language skills. Dr. Asher believes that TPR engages both hemispheres of the brain, which is useful for language learning. He also believes that TPR helps a student to learn with less stress, in a more fun and engaging manner without the burden of memorization.

TPR, in layman’s terms, is the use of physical actions, such as motions and body language, to accompany verbal expression. As ESL or EFL teachers, we use it to show the definition of the word, to help the student associate meaning to words or phrases, and to help them have a better comprehension of what is being expressed. The use of Total Physical Response is not a stand-alone method of teaching a second language but combined with other techniques it can be extremely useful. Also, it is important to remember that it was created to especially help beginner language learners. It engages a learner in conjunction with other techniques to effectively maximize classroom time.
Considering the three main types of learning: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, we can see how the use of TPR can meet the needs of kinesthetic learners through motion if the students are encouraged to mimic the actions. As the words are spoken, read and acted out, all three types of learning styles are accommodated, and the usually short class sessions are filled with fun and engaging content for all.

Advantages to using TPR in an ESL classroom

“An important condition for successful language learning is the absence of stress. First language acquisition takes place in a stress-free environ­ment, according to Asher, whereas the adult language learning environ­ment often causes considerable stress and anxiety. The key to stress-free learning is to tap into the natural bio-program for language development and thus to recapture the relaxed and pleasurable experiences that ac­company first language learning. By focusing on meaning interpreted through movement, rather than on language forms studied in the ab­stract, the learner is said to be liberated from self-conscious and stressful situations and is able to devote full energy to learning.”

How to use TPR in the online ESL classroom

Once we understand the answer to the question ‘What is TPR?,” the next question for us as online educators is “How do we apply this to teaching English through the internet?” Here are some ideas to get your TPR creativity flowing:

Have fun and feel free to use TPR in your online ESL classroom, knowing that you are creating a stress-free learning environment for students. At the same time, you are helping them to understand English in a practical way as they connect their memory with real-life actions.

5 Total Physical Response (TPR) Activities That Every Language Teacher Should Know

Want a teaching technique that’ll make your students jump for joy, dance with delight and finish off with high fives?

Sounds like you’re looking for a language teaching approach called total physical response or TPR for short.

Instead of asking your students to be quiet and sit still, you’ll be requiring them to stand up, move around the classroom and get physical!

Let’s find out more about TPR, and then I’ll show you five engaging TPR activities to use in your own classroom.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

What Is Total Physical Response?

Total physical response is an approach to teaching second language that was developed in the 1970s by James Asher, professor of Psychology at the San Jose State University in California.

Asher observed that traditional second language programs had a dropout rate of almost 95%. He thought this could be due to flawed and ineffective methods used in the programs. The professor still had another observation: While adults were dropping like flies in their second language courses, children were easily acquiring first languages like sponges on a wet countertop!

So he decided to create a method of teaching second language that mimics the process children use when picking up their first.

Asher saw that children’s early language repertoire consisted mainly of listening to adults telling them what to do: “Pick up the ball.” “Sit down.” “Open your mouth.” “Look at me.”

The child would look to the parents for instructions, and then perform the movements required. The child didn’t need to be able to say the words, only to listen and understand. Comprehension was the first step to language acquisition, not word production.

Asher adopted this practice and the simple listen and respond technique now sits at the heart of TPR. It’s been proven effective for teaching beginners of foreign languages. For example, you could teach “¡Siéntense!” (sit down) in a Spanish class by repeatedly sitting down and saying “Siéntense.” You can ask the class to join you in sitting down, even making a game out of it, or commenting on the manner that some students sit.

The act of moving is memory-friendly. By virtue of seeing you sit down, or experiencing the act themselves, your students will easily associate sitting down with siéntense. There’s something about the pairing of movement and language that’s so innate that children—without the help of textbooks—easily acquire language.

With TPR, not only do you have an approach that engages the energies of your students, you have a tool that creates memorable meaning through movement.

Just as TPR borrowed plenty of techniques and insights from psychologists and linguists like Dr. Krashen, it has also bequeathed a lot to approaches like TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling).

Of course, TPR should not be used in isolation, but as one of many teaching tools in a language teacher’s bag.

The Philosophies Behind Total Physical Response

Listening Comes Before Production

TPR applies the learning processes of first language acquisition into teaching adults a second language. And if you observe very carefully, babies don’t start off saying “Ball! Ball!” while pointing to their toy. They started off all silent, their innocent eyes listening and observing when adults say, “Get the ball, Robbie! C’mon, get the ball. Veeery good!”

TPR starts with the “silent phase.” Here, the job of your students is to listen (and understand) what the command is and respond accordingly. No pressures are placed on properly enunciating vocabulary.

In the early phase of TPR, you don’t see the teacher leading the class in pronouncing the words loudly and urging the students to repeat after her.

TPR considers comprehension as the highway to language acquisition. So the first goal of TPR is making the students understand what the word, phrase, command or expression is all about. There’s no push to produce the correct sounds, but there’s an invitation for students to listen and observe. Mouths are not opened, but eyes and ears are—just like how it happens with children.

And this is one of the prime benefits of using TPR in the classroom. Listening is given its due. Instead of being seen as a passive activity, TPR rightly identifies listening as a vital first step in any linguistic endeavor. Because the normal human reaction to listening is, “Not much is happening—when do we get started with the real stuff?” But if first language acquisition is any guide, we’ll understand that we learned just as much (probably even more) when we were silent than when we fumble words without comprehension.

That means that listening is a crucial first step to learning any language, whether listening to the teacher, a song or the audio from a video from a language learning program such as FluentU.

FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language lessons.

“Acquisition” over “Learning”

Another benefit of TPR is that it favors the methods, techniques, resources and processes of language acquisition over language learning.

Language learning is often concerned with the form—the correct grammatical structures and correct pronunciation of the target language. A grammar textbook, flashcards and vocabulary lists are examples of learning materials. (Something that babies never had when they were learning their first language.)

Language acquisition on the other hand is concerned with substance: the immersive experience of using language in one’s everyday affairs. If you move to Korea and have to speak Korean phrases in order to buy items at a store, you’re not really learning the language. You’re acquiring it.

Or if you’re just crazy about Mexican telenovelas and watch them so frequently that you actually know what “¡Ay! ¡Dios mío!” means, then you’re acquiring the language without obviously trying to learn it.

Language learning is often conscious and formal. Language acquisition is more personal and natural–almost an afterthought.

The benefit of TPR is that it provides language acquisition experiences for your students in the classroom setting. TPR concerns itself with meaning, so your students will have communicative use of the language, instead of just knowing rules of grammar.

Acquisition Should Be Stress-free

No toddler was sent to the principal’s office for bungling their first language grammar, right? Adults just laughed it off and corrected it gently and made the kid feel that everything would be all right.

Why should second language acquisition be any different?

When Professor Asher developed TPR, he made sure that the approach to teaching the language was stress-free for both teacher and students. He posited that another reason why students don’t learn is that they get emotionally overwhelmed by the language. It can be a frightening experience that lowers self-esteem. Who would learn in that kind of environment?

Stress kills motivation. And you know how important motivation is for language acquisition. Without it, it’s basically game over. That’s why many students drop out; it makes the target language out of reach. “I’ll never be able to memorize these conjugation rules,” they think.

TPR on the other hand, is judgment-free. It just wants the students to have fun. So that while their mouths are open from laughing, their minds are unconsciously open for acquiring the language. There are no affective filters, and no fear that they’ll fail.

As far as the students are concerned, they’re just playing a game, listening for the next instructions–goofing around. But we know better than that. We know, as teachers, that there’s something else going on behind the scenes. We know vocabulary words are understood, appreciated and stored for the long haul.

We teachers often are looking for ways to make the lessons fun, engaging and memorable. With TPR, you’ve got an approach where “stress-free” is philosophically embedded into the whole thing.

So what actual TPR activities can you use in your own classroom? Here are five activities that’ll set language acquisition into overdrive!

5 Total Physical Response (TPR) Activities That Every Language Teacher Should Know

1. TPR Storytelling Session

Tell a story to the whole class. It can be about anything: fairytale, adventure, even horror and comedy. Tell it with plenty of gestures and actions, which you repeat often. (That’s the TPR way!)

A TPR story shares all the elements of a great tale: a relatable main character, a captivating plot and an ending that rewards the listeners.

But in addition to these, a foreign language teacher employing TPR must remember that the story is used to teach meaning. So a TPR story would use a good mix of the students’ native language and the target language. Especially for beginners, a healthy dose of the students’ native language might be used, with a peppering of the target language.

And because the story is a vehicle for teaching meaning, repetition of key phrases and their attending movements are the order of the day. You should really focus on key phrases you want to teach the class, not the story itself. The plot, the twists and turns of the story come second to the meaningful and memorable words and phrases you want your wards to integrate into their long-term memory.

So for example, in teaching the Spanish words for the different parts of the body, you might employ the tale of a young Billy who goes to the city for the very first time. And each time about you talk about the many wonderful things he sees with his eyes (i.e. buses, buildings and airplanes), you emphasize the word ojos (eyes) while at the same time pointing to your eyes. It’s also important that you widen your eyes as you point to them.

Keep repeating “ojos” and pointing to your eyes as you go through the awesome things Billy sees in the city. He sees a fleet of cars, “ojos.” He sees a dog walker, “ojos.”

There are ways you can employ repetition in the story without being repetitive. For example, with ojos, you can do the following:

(And as a comprehension check, you can point to your tummy and see if your students try to correct you.)

This technique also works for all the other parts of the body. The nariz (nose) for everything he smells: freshly baked bread, flowers at the park and the smoke from cars. Orejas (ears) for everything that catches his attention: the sound of cars honking, the tumult at the market and the powerful blasts of a plane taking off.

You can actually set your story so little Billy, the main character, can interact and visit places that will give you maximum opportunity to repeat the meaningful words and phrases. The plot is but a vehicle, so don’t worry so much about it.

2. Simon Says with a Twist

A vocabulary-oriented game like Simon Says is analogous to the process that takes place as children acquire their first language. Adults often give instructions to kids, like “throw the ball” “come here” or “eat your chicken.” (By virtue of repetition and validation—and gesturing—children are able to figure out what mommy wanted done.)

In this activity, you organize the class into two groups. You can go boys vs. girls (always a hit!) or any grouping you want. Each group sends a representative for every round. They stand at the back of the class, near the wall, with their eyes fixed on you.

You will play “Simon” and come up with creative commands and actions with which your students would then have to perform. So in a French class you might say, “Sautez trois fois!” (Jump three times) or “Pleurez!” (cry). The student who gives the correct response gets to take a step forward towards the “Finish Line.” Reaching the finish line first wins 1 point for the team. The team who gets 5 points first wins the game.

Not everyone gets to play each time, but spectators will not only get to cheer their team, they’ll also learn the target language in the process.

Play this game often and you will have natural rivalries arise. And that’s also when the learning really heats up.

3. The Amazing Race

I’m sure you’ve seen “The Amazing Race” on TV. But with this activity, you don’t have to send the class on a thrilling trip around the world. You only have to send them off to do some task or demonstrate comprehension by performing prescribed motions. (With TPR, you can always check for comprehension because you can just look at their actions.)

Group the class into four or five teams. Each team would ideally be composed of three to four players. The tasks that you choose to give your students are only limited by your imagination—but instead of writing out the tasks, give them verbally.

For example, one task can be a “bring me” scenario and you can tell the teams in your Spanish class to bring you an amarillo (yellow) object. Or you can ask the class to griten (shout) their favorite color.

You can go outside the classroom for this activity and have it in the schoolyard. You can tell your students to bring in the garbage bins (two birds with one stone, if you ask me), pick up twenty dried leaves, arrange flower pots in a line, etc. You can ask the groups to dance the cha-cha, move to the “Macarena” or sing “Happy Birthday.”

With “The Amazing Race” as one of your activities, your class will be racing to language acquisition.

4. TPR Theater

This one’s for those a little bit advanced in the target language since “TPR Theater” has some improv added into the mix. It is, for all intents and purposes, an impromptu play. Your role as the teacher is to narrate and move the story forward by telling the characters in front of the class what they need to do.

Think of yourself as a benevolent narrator and puppet master where the bit players are to do your every bidding.

Okay, first things first. Determine what your play will be. Is it a love story? An epic adventure? A contemporary comedy? Knowing this will dictate the number of characters, the nature of events in the story and their reactions to it.

Let’s say you have a love story. You should then have at least two students to play the role of lovers, and perhaps another one to function as a foil and complete the love triangle.

Or, if you want to have more students in the play, you can create characters like the evil mother-in-law, the jealous friend and the nervous aunt. (But don’t involve everybody in the play, otherwise there’ll be no audience. Those who don’t play parts in the drama today will get their chance to strut out their acting chops the next time.)

So for example, say there’s one particular scene where the lovers are bonding at the park. In a German class you might bark some funny instructions to your bit players, like “kneife sie in die Wange!” (pinch her nose) or “kitzle sie…” (tickle her…)

Again, in this case, where the plot takes you or how it ends doesn’t really matter. These are not the most important things so don’t obsess over them. The whole affair is really just an excuse to practice the target language. So keep it light. Help the students if they have comprehension difficulties. Don’t be afraid to drop everything midway if it means explaining something about the target language.

5. Action Songs for the Whole Class

Action songs are actually TPR–but with music. Children love them. They add melody and cadence that the brain can latch on to. They are the perfect memory aids that can effectively embed language and movement into the long-term memory.

Singing together as a class is a great memory-enhancing tool. Did you notice that even as adults, we find it hard to jettison the nursery rhymes and songs of our childhood? It may have been 40 years ago, but they are as fresh as the morning we learned it in class.

So lead the class in action songs (here’s a great listing of children’s songs and rhymes by language, by the way). But you don’t have to rely on the nursery classics for action songs. The classics all began with a creative teacher, alone her room, coming up with gestures to accompany the lines. You can create actions for any song that you want, including pop music in the target language.

First, determine the important words in the song. That is, the words you want to embed into your students’ memories. (Don’t gesture out each word in the song, that’ll be too overwhelming.)

Second, pick the appropriate accompanying gestures for your words. The action may seem obvious for words like”jump,” “look,” “laugh,” etc. But how about when the song has words like “hope” or “integrity”? These will force you to be creative and think outside the box.

You’ll have to think of situations in which “hope” or “integrity” is displayed or practiced. “Hope” is displayed during prayer, for example, by people hoping to get prayers answered. So your action can perhaps be interlacing fingers, just like a prayer position. “Integrity” is often displayed by someone giving a persuasive speech. Your action can then be a pounding fist.

Remember, the gestures need not be spot on. They only need to be a semblance of the thing they signify.

When coming up with actions to go with your song, aside from creativity, go for a little bit of exaggeration. Take the word “see” for example. Instead of simply pointing to your eyes, mimic a telescoping gesture or place a horizontal palm above your eyebrow and swing your neck from left to right, looking out into the distance.

It makes the lyrics of the song more vivid and more engaging for your students. And speaking of lyrics, don’t teach the songs line-by-line or distribute lyrics (if possible). Instead, teach the song as a whole—with music and the accompanying gestures. The goal here is not to make the students memorize the lyrics. It’s to let them understand what they are singing about: comprehension.

So those are your five classroom TPR activities. Try them in your language class and set language acquisition on fire. Because nothing is as rewarding as seeing your students pick up a beautiful language.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)