The Application of Total Physical Response in Primary English.doc

毕业论文（设计）AcknowledgementsI wish to express my thanks and appreciation to my tutor, Mrs. Zhong Xiao, without whose useful and valuable suggestions the writing of this thesis would have been a very tedious task. Her careful reading and suggestions have been invaluable to me throughout my thesis writing. My thanks should also be given to all the teachers who have taught me during my college life. I am much appreciative of their kind support.I am also grateful to some of my classmates who offered me some statistic help and active in the research. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my deep thanks to all the teachers and pupils from Ailian Primary School. They had provided me with chances of carrying out the investigation.AbstractWith the development of our society, we are living in an information society. With the increasing globalization, theres an urgent demand for foreign language teaching, especially for English. English is becoming a necessary tool for communicate between countries. In China, learning English is very popular. The English education in primary school is developing day by day. The Chinese English language researchers are looking for the best teaching method to teach English well. Among those foreign language teaching methods, Total Physical Response is very useful for childrens English learning. Many primary English teachers use TPR in English classroom.Over the past decades, there has been nothing more popular than English learning in China. When the new economic system in China is currently calling for thousands and thousands of specialists who know English well, knowing English is becoming so important for a successful career. More and more people are trying to learn this language for different purposes. Pre-school children are learning English for fun; primary school students are learning for fun and preparing for the future study; middle school and high school students are crazy about the quality of their English learning, they hope to get high scores in the exams; university students are struggling with Band 4 and Band 6 tests to get an advantages of getting a good job.Teaching and Textbook Writing Syllabuses for Primary School English points out: “Interest is a good teacher for pupils to learn a foreign language. Primary English teaching should improve the traditional teaching method. And its an important task for primary school English teachers to arouse students interest at present.” This thesis aims to illustrate the importance of using Total Physical Response in primary school. The writer proposes some suggestions on primary school students interest activation and lists some important guidelines on classroom activities. In the mean time, it aims at drawing peoples attention to the significance of interest activation in primary English classroom.The research presents the situation of primary English teaching in China and introduction of Total Physical Response. It shows the history of foreign language teaching, English language teaching in China and some studies of TPR. In this paper, it also consists of psychological features of primary school pupils. It shows the application of body language in TPR, teaching method of TPR, and the reasons why TPR so successful. Finally, this research will presents the designs of the teaching experiment, some findings and analysis. The article may prove that TPR is very useful in primary English classroom. Key Words: Total physical Response body language teaching experiment 摘 要随着社会的发展，我们逐渐进入了信息化社会。随着全球化的不断加速，迫切要求发展外语教学，尤其是英语。英语已经成为了国际交流中必不可少的工具。在中国，学校英语十分流行。小学英语教育在不断的发展。中国英语语言的研究者们在不断的寻找可行的教学方法来促 进英语教学的发展。在众多的外语教学流派当中，“全身反应法”对儿童英语的学习是非常重要的。小学教师都会在英语课堂中使用“全身反应法”。中国在过去几十年里，英语学习非常盛行。中国新型的经济体系需要千千万万个英语水平高超的人才，掌握英语成为成就事业不可缺少的一部分。不同的人对学习外语有不同的目的。幼儿园的孩子学习英语为了乐趣，小学生为了乐趣和为日后的学习打下基础，中学生们疯狂的追求学习英语的效率，他们希望考试取得高分，大学生则为了通过大学英语四、六级的考试，为找到好工作做好准备。小学英语教学与教材编写纲要指出：“兴趣是学好语言的老师。小学英语教学应发展传统教学模式，要以激发学生学习兴趣为出发点，探索一套适合小学生生理，心理特点及认知发展水平的模式。”本文旨在通过对“全身反应法”理论和实践的研究，阐明其在小学英语课堂教学中的地位和作用，探讨激发和提高小学生英语学习兴趣的方法，提高小学英语课堂教学的效率。本文主要陈述了中国小学英语教学的现状和“全身反应法”的相关介绍，外语教学的历史，中国的英语语言教学和“全身反应法”的相关研究,包括小学生的心理特征,还描述了使用“全身反应法”进行英语教学，具体分为肢体语言的应用，“全身反应法”的教学方法，课堂流程图和该方法成功的原因。本文还讲述了自身的小学英语教学实践，包括教学实践的设计，结果和分析，还有问卷调查的结果统计。希望通过这篇文章来证实“全身反应法”在小学英语课堂中是非常有用的。关键词：“全身反应法” 肢体语言 教学实践ContentsAcknowledgements.iAbstract (English).iiAbstract (Chinese).ivContents.vi1. Introduction.1 1.1 Purpose and significance of the study.1 1.2 Research questions.12. Literature review.2 2.1 History of foreign language teaching .2 2.2 English language teaching in China.32.3 Studies of Total Physical Response.33. Related theories of Total Physical Response.53.1 Researches abroad.53.2 Researches at home.73.3 Psychological features of primary students.73.4 Characteristic of young English language learners.83.4.1 Young childrens first language isnt fully developed.83.4.2 Children need to develop their native languages along with English.84. English teaching through Total Physical Response.94.1 The application of body language in Total Physical Response.94.2 Teaching method of Total Physical Response.10 4.2.1 Acting.10 4.2.2 Playing games.11 4.2.3 Role-playing.11 4.2.4 Instructions.134.3 What makes TPR so successful? .145. Experiment of using TPR in primary English class.155.1 Overview.155.2 The designs of the teaching experiment.16 5.2.1 TPR approach and traditional training.16 5.2.2 Testing.165.3 Findings and analysis.17 5.3.1 Data.17 5.3.2 Analysis of the questionnaire for students on TPR.185.4 Discussions.206. Conclusion.20 6.1 Summary of the study20 6.2 Limitation of the study.21 6.3 Suggestion for further research.22References.23Appendixs.24viiiThe Application of Total Physical Response in Primary English1. Introduction1.1 Purpose and significance of the studyThe Chinese English Language Teaching (ELT) researchers have been looking for the best method for ELT in China for many years. Different methods have been introduced, tried out and found unsatisfactory. More recently, accompanied with the rapid development of Chinese society, such as the developments in the economical, political, cultural fields and so on, as well as the increasing globalization, there is an urgent demand for foreign language teaching. And it is believed that learning a foreign language from the childhood can facilitate the learning and is more effective. Therefore, learning English from the childhood has become the hot trend in China, which has attracted the attention of many educators.The Total Physical Response, which is developed by James Asher, a professor of psychology at San Jose State University, California, is a language teaching method, which attempts to teach language through physical activities. Enlightened by James Asher and the Total Physical Response, I try to adjust to Chinese childrens English teaching and learning. I intend to find out that the Total Physical Response is appropriate for primary children English learning.1.2 Research questionsThis paper will review the history of the Total Physical Response, its theories and the related theories, and then come to the teaching experiment. The teaching experiment aims to find out whether the Total Physical Response is suitable to childrens English language teaching. Since TPR method is very useful in primary English class, teachers should know how to teach the children in a proper way. In this paper, the following questions are to be answered:What are the features of primary students?What kinds of TPR methods are effective enough to improve pupils interest?How to teach with TPR method in primary English classroom?What makes TPR so successful?The aim of this thesis is to inspect whether TPR teaching method can improve primary school students interest in English and improve teaching efficiency.2. Literature review2. 1 History of foreign language teachingThe history of foreign language teaching is more than one hundred years. According to the main trends, events and important figures, we can divide the history into four periods: the reform movement, modern language teaching and research, structural language teaching and the communicative language teaching. “With the development of our society, a lot of methods and theories have introduced from other countries. Such as, the grammar-translation method (GTM), the direct method (DM), the audio-lingual method, the situational method, the cognitive approach and the communicative approach and so on. Foreign language teaching has been playing a dominant role in Chinas curriculum reform, especially in the present globalization of Chinese society and economy. Chinese foreign language teaching cannot blindly adopt western theory. It should develop its own experience and also develop western foreign language teaching theories.” (Shu Dingfang, 1996: 21).2.2 English teaching in ChinaThe Chinese nation is huge and hungry for the English language. English Language Teaching in large part of China seems to merely involve a low level of cognitive skills in grammar and exam-oriented teaching. “With the rapid development of global economy and technology, there is a growing realization that the success of individuals and of societies depends more on education. Education should not merely focus on pupils acquisition of factual information, and rather, it is demanded with more effective school and better outcomes of its product.” (Hu Chundong, 1990: 30). English language teaching in China is so important that we should know the best way to learn it well. Especially for the primary school students, the teachers should use a good teaching method. Then the students will have interest to learn English.2.3 Studies of Total Physical ResponseTPR was developed by James Asher, a professor of psychology at San Jose State University, California in the 1960s. “The Total Physical Response Method incorporated theories of developmental psychology, humanistic pedagogy, and theatrical nature of language learning. The main idea behind TPR was based upon the principle of establishing psychomotor associations to facilitate language learning. The teacher presents the language in the form of commands which are demonstrated and modeled by the teacher and fulfilled by the students, individually or in groups. The meaning is made clear through demonstration. The emphasis is on developing comprehension skills before the learner is required to produce in the target language.” Though the language is presented and taught in the form of imperatives, Asher claimed that “most of the grammatical structures of the target language and hundreds of vocabulary items can be learned from the skillful use of the imperative by the instructor.” (1982:58). The idea of employing the imperative drill in language teaching and developing comprehension skills can be traced back to 1925 to the teaching procedures proposed by Harold and Dorothy Palmer in their textbook of English Through Action, a comprehensive collection of oral drills and exercises for the classroom. Palmer used the term incubation period which is a necessary prerequisite for the learner to absorb and cognize. Therefore he suggested that language teaching should be based on the natural basis, and active production (speaking and writing) should never be encouraged or expected until the pupil has had many opportunities of cognizing the language passively.TPR was most effective in the early stages of language learning and Asher himself has stressed TPR should be used in association with other methods and techniques. And indeed TPR represents a useful set of techniques which are compatible with other approaches to teaching.The method was designed primarily for students in the early stages of language acquisition. Since commands can be made comprehensible to students with very limited language, Asher used commands as the basis for TPR. The teacher or a more proficient student gives a command, demonstrates the command, and then students respond physically to the command. After an introduction to key vocabulary, students watch a demonstration of the command and then follow the command. For example, “paper (teacher shows a stack of paper), a piece of paper (teacher holds up one piece), take out (teacher does action with different objects), take out a piece of paper.” New vocabularies are introduced and previous vocabularies are reviewed in a series of related commands. New commands are added until students can respond to variations of several. There are some teaching steps as follows:1. Students watch demonstration of key words and then the teacher performs the action.2. Students listen again and watch as the teacher performs the action.3. The teacher gives the command and models the action again. This time, ask the students to perform the actions simultaneously.4. The teacher gives the command to the group without modeling the action.5. The teacher gives the command to an individual without modeling the action.6. The teacher models variations and combinations for the groups.7. Ask the students to perform the action variations and combinations.8. Ask the students who are ready to give commands to classmates.3. Related theories of TPR3.1 Researches abroadIn fact, early in the nineteenth century, Frenchman F. Gouin (1813-1896), who was perhaps the best known of those mid-nineteenth century reformers, had developed an approach to teach a foreign language based on his observations of childrens use of language. He believed that language learning was facilitated through using language to accomplish events of a sequence of related actions. Gouin emphasized on “the need to present new teaching items in a context that makes their meaning clear, and the use of gestures and actions to convey the meanings of utterances.” (1894: 55). And then, his teaching idea became part of such approaches and methods as Situational Language Teaching and Total Physical Response.Another proponent was Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the famous Swiss psychologist, whose focus of research was on the reasoning abilities of children. An important element in Piagets theory was schema theory. The schema theory was the expression coined to describe “an active organization of past action.” It referred to the mental framework of past experiences. According to Piaget, “thought or thinking has its origin in actions physically performed and then internalized. In other works, thought is internalized actions.” (1926: 42). He also advocated that children learn language through actions.And H. Palmer and D. Palmer were anther proponents of action-based language learning strategy. They experimented with an action-based teaching strategy in their book English Through Action (first published in Tokyo in 1925 and ultimately reissued as Palmer and Palmer in 1959), which claimed that “no method of teaching foreign speech is likely to be economical or successful which does not include in the first period a very considerable proportion of that type of classroom work which consists of the carrying out by the pupil of orders issued by the teacher” (Palmer and Palmer 1959:39).3.2 Researches at homeIn China, there are many English education researchers work hard to study TPR teaching method, because TPR method is very useful in primary English class. Professor Zhang Shiyi was the first draftsman of Standards of English Curriculum. He pointed out that “teachers should say the commands and perform the actions, and then students should listen carefully and perform the action.” (1930: 33). Another professor Zhang Jianzhong had mentioned that “TPR was one of the main schools of foreign languages teaching approaches of foreign countries, and it was widely used in English teaching of China.” (1983: 42). Many experts believe that TPR is suitable for our countrys English teaching. 3.3 Psychological features of primary school pupilsAccording to Jean Piagets theory of cognitive development, primary school is one of the crucial stages for second language acquisition. He outlined that the course of intellectual development in a child occurs through various stages:a. The sensorimotor stage - from 0 to 2 years old.b. The preoperational stage - from 2 to 7 years old.c. The concrete operational stag - from 7 to 12 years old.d. The formal operational stage - from 12 years old to adulthood.Children around 7-10 years of age are beginning to see themselves as members of large communities and enjoy investigating environments and phenomena in the wider world. Play, interaction and communication continue to contribute to ideas, creativity and imagination. Many children in these age groups can understand and appreciate different points of view and are developing respect for others. It has been assumed that the younger learners are the more holistic learners. Philips argues, “Younger learners respond to language ac