The Application Of TPR Teaching Method In Primary Chinese Spoken English Teaching

Total Physical Response (TPR) as an important branch of SecondLanguage Pedagogy has been widely used in teaching of second languageoutside China. TPR is also widely applied in teaching of English assecond language in China, especially among children learners. Regardingthe teaching of Chinese as second language, though TPR has been largelyapproved and supported by the academic field, its application should befurther extended and deepened, because of the limitations such as theactual situation of teaching.TPR is a branch of Second Language Pedagogy proposed in1960sby James Asher (a famous psychologist from US San Jose StateUniversity) after long-term research. TPR proposes to learn a secondlanguage like infants and young children learning their mother languageand thus the students’ initiatives and emotional actions will promote themto learn cheerfully through physical activities. Usually games,performances, music, and pictures are used in TPR teaching. TPR focuseson the coordination between body movements and language and theinteraction between teacher and students. The most outstandingcharacteristic of TPR is "teach through lively activities". TPR caneffectively stimulate the students’ interest and motivation in learning asecond language, arouse their desire to learn, and efficiently alleviate thetension and anxiety during learning, thus achieving the effects of rapidunderstanding and remembering.This paper focuses on summarization and investigation of thedevelopment and applications of TPR from multiple perspectives.Numerous works have been conducted on TPR inside and outside China.Based on these achievements, we studied the practical application of TPRin teaching of primary oral Chinese. We further investigated the principles,mode and characteristics of TPR from both theoretical and practicalaspects. With teaching experiment and surveys, we discussed the effectsof TPR applied in teaching of primary oral Chinese. This study providessome references and inspirations for teaching of other levels of Chineseand other types of courses.