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Physical Response (TPR) is a strategy of linking language or vocabulary concepts
to physical movement to assist with recall and internalizing meaning. Developed by Dr. James Asher in the 1960’s, the process mimics the way that infants learn their first
language. TPR allows a teacher to introduce a vast amount of vocabulary quickly. With repeated TPR sessions, students will be ready to work with the language in reading, writing, and speaking.
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How Does it work?
In TPR, instructors give commands to
students in the target language with body movements, and students respond with
whole-body actions. TPR is NOT American Sign Language. Some teachers have chosen to borrow
signs from ASL and use them in their language classes for certain words.
Some teachers have created their own libraries of TPR gestures. Truly, as long as
the teacher and the students agree on a gesture, it will have the
desired effect.
TPR in action
Featured video:
Watch as Jeenna Canche uses TPR to introduce vocabulary used later during a Picture Talk at the HALT Summer Summit.
AIM Language Learning is a teaching methodology from Canada that incorporates TPR extensively, including various gestures for verb stems, plurals, and noun genders.
If you are using TPR in conjunction with another strategy like Picture Talk or Clip Chat, work backwards to choose a handful of words that you want to introduce before the story to help your students link those words to a gesture. This will help them recall the words later when you gesture them in the middle of the next strategy. Otherwise, if you're doing TPR for an entire lesson, check out Martina Bex's sequence as a place to start!
How do you think up gestures for various words?
This does not have to be complicated - go with your gut! If a gesture feels natural for you, it will be easy to remember and therefore introduce to your students. Can't think up a gesture on the spot? Ask your students to think of something! Leverage the creativity of the room. If you want a more comprehensive library of gestures to choose from, check out James Asher's website, AIM's gesture database, or read Contee Seely's TPR book.
How long do you spend on TPR?
Go slow to go fast! Introduce new gestures & words slowly. See how much you can vary with 3-4 words before you add another. After you introduce a word and model the gesture, begin to delay the gesture to watch and see if your students are able to model it back without your help. Eventually try to stop modeling all together. This is not a repeat-after-me strategy. This requires no speaking from your students, allowing them a "silent period" to help them internalize the sounds and language chunks they hear.
How do you keep this interesting?
As with every strategy, follow the energy of the room! One way to increase engagement and provide variety is by splitting the room into two groups (each named after a city of the target culture, perhaps?) to differentiate who does the gesture. Then name the entire class after a country to call out when everyone is to gesture or perform a command together. Another way is to call on individual students to do certain gestures/commands. Or play "Simon Says" with commands & gestures (again, students aren't required to speak, just to gesture or perform an action).
TPR can be used with so many other strategies. Because the
purpose is to link gestures and body movements to words, TPR gestures
can be used before any of the "Talks" (Picture Talk, Card Talk, Calendar
Talk, Movie Talk, etc) to solidify a chunk of language that comes up
again and again. It can be used during a Special Person Interview or
when co-creating a story (TPRS) or character for a One Word Image to help
students really ground a chunk of language with a meaning through that
physical response.
Brain break
TPR can be used in the middle of another strategy to provide a "brain break" movement activity. In the middle of a literacy strategy and need to refocus your students? Take a handful of words and spend 5 minutes doing TPR for those terms. Put the class into two groups and give them different commands. Play a version of "Simon Says", calling on one group or the other to perform a command, then the whole group to perform the command. Those who miss the gesture/command take a seat until there is a winner or handful of winners.
Assess comprehension
TPR can be a form of assessment all on it's own! You as the teacher can gesture and students can write down the word on paper as a formal assessment. This can be an exit ticket or quick quiz, something relatively fast and easy to determine student's comprehension of the lesson.
There are so many ideas for assessment! For a better, more comprehensive deep dive into assessments for standards-based and proficiency-oriented language teaching, read Martina Bex's article on assessments for language classes and standards-based grading. Also Scott Benedict's articles on assessments and standards-based grading.
TPR in your classroom
Have you used TPR in your classroom? Do you have tips, resources, a story or video demonstration to share? Drop me a line!
