全身反应教学法在小学英语教学中的应用

论文总字数：34086字

摘 要

随着教学改革的不断发展，教学逐渐转变为以学为中心，教学方法呈现多样化。英语教学法经历了数次变革，全身反应教学法就在这时产生，它提倡把语言和动作联系起来，以肢体语言教授英语。全身反应教学法倡导无压力式学习，在学生感兴趣的基础上主动、有效率地学习。本文将介绍它的起源、原理以及特点，并从心理学、学习方法和二语习得等角度分析其原则。本文将结合小学英语教学实例探讨如何在小学英语课堂有效地使用该方法。

关键词：全身反应教学；小学英语教学；二语习得

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………1

2.1 The background of TPR…………………………………………………...2

2.2 The reasons why TPR works……………………………………………....2

2.3 The characteristics of TPR………………………………………………...3

1. Research Methods ………………………………………………………...7

3.1 An overview of the teaching experiment……………………………………7

3.2 Research subjects and instrument ……………………………………........7

3.3 Research design…………………………………………………………...9

1. Analysis of the Teaching Experiment Results…………………………11

4.1 Evaluation…………………………………………………………………11

4.2 Data and analysis………………………………………………………...12

4.3 Reflection…………………………………………………………………15

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..16

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...18

1. Introduction

With the concept of the new curriculum reform, English teaching in primary schools pays more attention to students’ interest in learning, practical process and learning feedback. Teachers can implement the total physical response under the premise of “student-centered” teaching principles, combining students’ cognition, interests, characteristics and the law of cognitive development to carry out scientific and reasonable instructional action. The total physical response was proposed by American experiment psychologist Asher. It is more suitable for children’s English teaching. The total physical response supports understanding first and expression later, using action instructions to learn language, emphasizing the coordination of language learning, and teaching second language through body language.

2. Literature Review

The Total Physical Response (TPR) was founded in the 1960s by James Asher who was a psychology professor at San Jose State University in California. Asher believes that adult acquisition of foreign languages should be similar to the procedure of infants learning their parent language. He pointed out that the language for infants or children is mostly command sentences, and children generally use body reactions before learning language response. The total physical response emphasizes listening before talking and teaching in a pleasant way through the game. Therefore, the total physical response is also called the method of “let the language move”.

However, in an article entitled “Some Reflections on TPR” published by Professor Ma Junming in 2002, he completely rejected the total physical response and believe that “This teaching method runs counter to the communication of the new era. It is unscientific to transplant the method of babies’ acquisition of mother tongue to young people or adults to learn foreign languages. It is not worthy of introduction and promotion. It will become a historical term to be left in the progress of second language acquisition teaching methods.”

2.1 The background of TPR

Foreign language teaching methods have been constantly changing for centuries. Before the 1870s, teachers used traditional teaching methods, such as translation. After entering the 20th century, different teaching methods come out one after another, and the total physical response is produced under such historical conditions. The total physical response, proposed by a psychology professor named James Asher in California, USA, aims at teaching language through the combination of language and behavior. From the perspective of developmental psychology, Asher believes that adult acquisition of foreign languages is similar to that of infants acquiring native language. He points out that the language for infants or children is mostly a command sentence, and children usually use the body to react first, and then learn to use language response. Therefore, TPR is aimed at adolescent language learners at the starting level.

2.2 The reasons why TPR works

2.2.1 Theory of learning

The core of total physical response teaching method is to teach through natural or comprehensible methods, and advocate understanding before speaking. The total physical response sustains different language teaching forms: Firstly, in language learning, understand first and then output. Secondly, master the ability to speak on the basis of understanding. Thirdly, in the process of language input, other related skills can be obtained by continuously listening. Fourthly, in the teaching process, try to reduce the psychological burden of students, less accusations against students, and create a relaxing learning environment for them. Strengthen the correct movement instructions constantly to help students acquire another language more pleasantly through the total physical response.

2.2.2 Theory of language

According to the main characteristics of second language learning, James J. Asher promotes the following three criterions: First, language learners have the ability to generalize the basic structure of language at the beginning of language acquisition; second, language acquisition follows the principle “here and now”; third, the rational use of verses in classroom instruction and learning will help students increase their language input. He believes that through language demonstration and output with imperative sentences as classroom instruction in large numbers, students can easily master the semantics of verbs which are represented by specific actions, and in the immersive classroom environment, use what you have learned to build a mind map and grammatical structure of knowledge. In this case, the acquisition of language is no longer a fragmented knowledge, but is internalized by the students as a whole, which in turn encourages students to form a systematic language knowledge system.

2.2.3 Theory of psychology

The principle of “memory traces” in psychology holds that deep and strong memory makes it easier for people to associate and reproduce memories; memories can be accomplished not only by verbal form, but also by physical activity. By joining in the activities, the possibility of successful recall can be improved. In addition, in combination with the mutuality between learning effects and emotional factors, James J. Asher further explains the principles of humanistic psychology: a pleasant learning environment, the design of the game’s nature, and the teacher’s tolerance for the student’s language output errors can greatly reduce the psychological burden of students in the language learning process, so that they can learn English better. Without resistance, students can absorb a large amount of language knowledge as soon as possible and promote a virtuous circle of linguistic knowledge, and thus obtaining good language output.

2.3 The characteristics of TPR

2.3.1 Listening before speaking

In the teaching, the role of students’ “listening” is emphasized, and the meaning of the contents of “hearing” is visualized through specific physical activities, so that students can guess the meaning of vocabulary. With the teacher’s verbal instructions and body language, the students respond correctly with physical movements based on the correct understanding of the meaning of the words, which reflects the cultivation of students’ language output in the specific context based on a large number of comprehensible “listening”. The specific teaching procedure is as follows: The first step, the teacher gives specific instructions and immediately displays the action; meanwhile, the students concentrate on listening and observing. The second step, the teacher repeats the instructions and demonstrates the behavior, requiring the students to simulate them immediately. The third step, the teacher only said the instructions without doing action demonstration, but the students imitated the movements. The fourth step, the teacher only said the instructions, did not demonstrate the action, asked the students to duplicate the orders and make the action. The last step, invite a student to the front of the classroom and ask them to speak the instructions, and then, teacher and other students demonstrate action together.

2.3.2 Learning language through action

In language learning, students can express themselves only if they have enough knowledge and understanding. In the teaching, the teacher must first develop the students’ listening ability. When the students have a certain level of listening processing, they should ask the students to express their spoken language. When the teacher stands on the podium, he gives instructions for class, such as: stand up, and assists in demonstrating with his own actions, and then asks the students to perform the same according to the teacher’s demonstration. Within 5 minutes, students can flexibly respond correctly according to the instructions issued by the teacher. By the same token, teachers can also demonstrate guidance based on the structure of the body, such as: “hand”, “face”, “hair”, “nose”, “mouth” and other words.

2.3.3 Creating learning atmosphere

When the teacher introduces the new words to the student, he can guide the student to show his understanding of the new word through the body language. It will be much more interesting to the student. For teachers are teaching language, they should reduce the learning pressure of students and let students learn in a relaxing language environment. This kind of teaching is the best. On the contrary, nervous and irritable emotions are very adverse for students to learn English. In the classroom teaching, teachers must create more opportunities for students to listen to English tapes, help students to further clarify the purpose of learning, inspire students’ self-consciousness, and fully mobilize students’ initiative in English learning.

In the class teaching, English teachers need to improve students’ interests in learning according to the characteristics of students’ physical and psychological development. Students like imitating others to listen, speak, read and perform. In addition to the role of teachers in teaching, they should completely arouse the role of the five senses. It is also necessary to mobilize the physical movements of the learners so that they can fully integrate into the classroom and improve their learning efficiency.

3. Research Methods

3.1 An overview of the teaching experiment

My experiment was carried out at Shu yang Foreign language Experiment School. The teaching experiment lasted for one month and was divided into four stages: a gradual transition from first simple teaching to fourth complex teaching. There are three tests at the end of each teaching in order to make sure whether students have understood the knowledge. I choose two classes 5 and 7 with the same level in Grade 3. Class 5 will be taught with the total physical response as the experiment group, and class 7 will be taught with traditional teaching method as the control group. Through this study, the author hopes to replace the old teaching method by using the total physical response teaching method to fundamentally strengthen the students’ ability of daily oral communication, reduce their learning pressure, and improve the success rate of teaching.

Two classes of Shu yang Foreign language Experiment School were divided into two groups, and the corresponding comparison was made between the experiment group and the control group and then the test was carried out. The aim is to prove that the rate of fast memory and recall in the total physical response teaching method is significantly higher than that in other teaching methods.

3.2 Research subjects and instrument

3.2.1 Research subjects

According to Rosegrant (1998), children between the ages of three and four cannot understand the language itself or even abuse it. There is no doubt that children will be confused about languages that most people do not use. Krashen (1982) believes that age has many effects on foreign language learning, one of which is the emotional condition of learners. As we grow older, there are more and more emotional filters. In addition, he argues that learners’ dependence on what they have learned can also lead to differences in academic achievement. Posansky (1975) argues that cognitive level is the reason why young people learn language more easily, on the contrary, they will have stress for language.

So, the subjects of this experiment are 77 students in Class 5 and 78 in Class 7 of Shu yang Experiment School of Foreign languages. They are all in Grade 3. They are between nine and ten years old, and their English learning level is almost the same. These two classes are divided into two groups, one is the control group, the other is the experiment group. These two groups of students did not attend any extra-curricular English classes except for the English classes offered in the school. In addition, in order to guarantee the precision of the experiment, the teaching contents for the two groups must be confirmed by the teacher in advance to ensure that all the words or sentences are not previously learned, since the two groups of students have mastered the basic knowledge of the relevant words and sentences through the teacher’s instruction.

Before the experiment, I took a quiz on the two classes to examine their English proficiency. The results are as follows:

Table 3.2-1

Independent Sample T-Test

According to the independent sample t-test in table 3.2-1, the Sig. (2-tailed) is 0.990 gt; 0.05, and there is no marked difference in two groups’ English level. It ensures the rigor of the experiment.

3.2.2 Instrument

The teaching material used in this experiment is Oxford English 3A, which is also used by students in the school curriculum. This book is recognized as a classic textbook in English classes for young students. It is the best choice for Jiangsu examinees. The most vital reason is that this is in line with Asher’s suggestion of the meaning of the first syllabus. At the same time, the literature on second language acquisition shows that learners may follow invariant order when acquiring formal grammatical features. Krashen’s hypothesis of natural order (1982) is based on this hypothesis, which confirms that learners acquire grammatical structures in predictable order. Although the total physical response is more focused on the training of students’ language ability, this teaching material has matching exercises after each class hour, which can make up for the deficiency of the total physical response in writing. Enable young English learners to develop their various English abilities.

3.3 Research design

The experiment lasted four weeks from April 1, 2019 to April 30, 2019. According to the experiment of Japanese and Russian carried out by James Asher in college students, the teaching experiment and test of Grade 3 students in primary school were carried out. Considering the school’s curriculum plan, I reduced the time of the long-term memory test to a week, and adjusted the content of the test according to the cognitive ability of the primary school students. Before the experiment, the teacher should lay stress on the importance of listening to the learners. For example, babies learn their mother tongue from listening comprehension. When their listening comprehension accumulates to a certain extent, they speak. Furthermore, students are required to listen, but not to speak with the teacher, or to repeat the teacher’s words.

With regard to seat, the experiment group and the control group should be consistent. Students in each class are divided into two groups, sitting face-to-face on both sides with a 1-2 m wide space in the middle. Put three stools in front of the group (one teacher and two students). Finally, four different teaching experiments were in progress for 45 minutes each time.

There are four teaching times in the experiment group. The first time, the teaching time is about 45 minutes, mainly a single word instruction including a total of nine words: stand up, sit down, walk, run, jump, stop, turn, squat and nod. The teacher starts with stand up, sit down and asks the two students to come to her side. When she says “stand up”, she quickly stands up and calls on the students to stand up. When says “sit down”, the teacher soon sits down, and the students sit down with them. Repeat it several times and let the students do it together. And then, check if they understand the instructions one by one, meanwhile ask the students, sitting in the auditorium, to do their actions in seat. When it was found that all the students understood the two instructions, the teacher began to train the three actions of “walk”, “stop”, “turn”, the same procedure as the previous step. The difference is that every time you invite another two students to do the action with the teacher, so that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the study personally; When the teacher finds that the students have basically mastered this set of actions, they teach the rest of the movements successively. However, it is important to note that when different groups of students do the actions together with the teacher, the teacher should deliberately disrupt the order of the instructions. In this way, the student will pay more attention to the meaning of each action than to the order of the action.

In the first teaching, the teacher immediately tests each student’s memory retention rate alone after the teaching procedure above. The teacher speaks the order in English and the student only implement the corresponding action.

In the second teaching, the teacher tested the students’ memory retention rate and conducted a second teaching about a day later, imitating the first teaching’s steps, training a total of 15 directives. This time, the teacher added new actions and nouns. For example, “point to”, “touch”, “walk to”, “book”, “desk” and so on. The instructions are more complex than the first, such as: “point to the book”, “point to the desk”, “touch the book”, “touch the desk”.

After the teaching, the students were tested on the spot. However, teachers found that due to the sudden rise in content, students’ memory of these instructions is restricted. So about 24 hours later, the 15 instructions were taught for about 45 minutes again and then tested. A week later, the teacher tested the memory retention rate of the content of the first teaching.

In the third teaching, the author carries on the third test to the second teaching in the third week, namely the long-term memory test. Then the students were taught a third time, the teacher added new actions and nouns, and tested a total of 23 instructions. More than half of the sentences were more complex than the second in length, such as: “put down the pencil”, “put down the paper”, “pick up the paper and the pencil”. Similar to the previous two sessions, the teaching was tested immediately, a day later and a week later.

In the fourth teaching, there is no new language material in the fourth teaching, but the sentence is reassembled. The instruction is much longer than the previous three times. Such as: “walk to the book and touch the book”, “jump to the paper and sit on the paper”, “ran to the paper”, “pick up the paper and put own the paper on the book”. The teaching was then tested immediately, a day later and a week later.

As to control group, the seating arrangement in it is exactly the same as the experiment group. The difference is that the students just sit and listen to the teacher’s instructions and watch the teacher do the corresponding actions. However, they do not follow the demonstrations, nor required to repeat the teacher’s words. When teaching the group, the teacher makes instructions over and over so that the students can observe the repeated movements unwittingly. In teaching, the teacher deliberately does wrong actions to detect whether students understand these actions. The teacher also asks them what they mean in Chinese.

The teaching of the control group was also divided into four times. After each class of the experiment group, the teaching of the control group began. The time and content of the class are the same. As in the experiment group, students in the control group were tested immediately after each teaching, but the students in the control group needed to speak the meaning of the instructions in Chinese.

1. Analysis of the Teaching Experiment Results
   1. Evaluation

Evaluation is an important link in the teaching process and the hinge to the realization of quality education. It is used to test the effect of teaching and to promote it.

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