DIRECT METHOD

Also known as Reform Method / Natural Method / Phonetical Method / Antigrammatical Method
All reformers were vehemently opposed to teaching of formal grammar and aware
that language learning was more than the learning of rules and the acquisition of
imperfect translation skills.
Vietor ('Die Sprachunterricht muss umkehren' 1882) "This study of grammar is a
useless torture. It is certainly not understood; therefore it can have no effect as far as
the moulding of the intellect is concerned and no-one could seriously believe that
children could learn their living German tongue from it."
Instead grammar should be acquired inductively by inducing the rules of how the
language behaves from the actual language itself. "Never tell the children anything
they can find out for themselves." (Jesperin 1904)
Direct Method based on belief that:
1 Knowing a language was being able to speak it! Primacy of spoken word. New
method laid great stress on correct pronunciation and target language from outset.
Advocated teaching of oral skills at expense of every traditional aim of language
teaching.
2 Second language learning must be an imitation of first language learning, as this
is the natural way humans learn any language, and so MT has no place in FL lesson.
(Baby never relies on another language to learn its first language).
3 Printed word must be kept away from second language learner for as long as
possible (same as first language learner, who doesn't use printed word until he has
good grasp of speech).
4 The written word / writing should be delayed until after the printed word has been
introduced.
5 The learning of grammar/ translating skills should be avoided because they
involve the application of the MT.
6 All above items must be avoided because they hinder the acquisition of a good
oral proficiency.

Disadvantages of Direct Method

1 Major fallacy of Direct Method was belief that second language should be learned
in way in which first language was acquired - by total immersion technique. But
obviously far less time and opportunity in schools, compared with small child learning
his mother tongue.
2 Is first language learning process really applicable to second foreign language
learning at later stage?
First language learning is essential part of child's total growth of awareness of world
around him. He starts off with blank sheet, then starts collecting/selecting organizing
the experience of a totally new world, perceived through his senses, by formulating a
variety of pre-verbal concepts.
Subsequently part of the process of learning how to live is the acquisition of skills to
verbalize his desires and aversions and to label his concepts, so as to make living
more sufficient and secure.
Effectiveness of these verbalizing skills depends on maturation level of the child / on
type of environment on intelligence.
Language is part of an intrinsic process through which child learns to recognize/ deal
with new situations.
3

Compare learning of second language

At 11 years of age, child is not interested in recognition of new living

situations, child has normally learned the basic concepts and can handle
situations for ordinary living purposes. So as far as 'learning to live' is
concerned, no similarities between two processes of learning. (not the case for
immigrant children - they need to learn English for survival purposes therefore motivating force is totally different).
Older child has already at his disposal a first language, which is securely fixed
to the universe of things; (s)he is equipped with this advantage; first language
learner does not have this.
Older child is more mature and it would seem nonsensical to imitate first
language learning processes totally for learning additional language. (think of
contact hours needed) this is argument for using MT (anti Direct Method).
What does foreign language learner wish to know first?
to know the FL equivalent of MT sentences/ words used in hitherto familiar
situations.

To learn how to handle certain known/ recurring situations through the medium
of the FL. He doesn't wish to handle completely new situations in FL terms.

4 The Direct Method rejects use of the printed word - but this objection is illogical
since second language learner has already mastered his reading skills.
Does printed word interfere with FL pronunciation? -In fact experiments show that the
printed word is of real help to consolidate the FL and actually reinforces retention leaves mental imprint, image of shape of word.
5 Later disciples of Direct Method took it to extremes and refused to speak a single
word of English in lessons. To avoid translating new words, they searched for an
association between new words and the idea it stood for: 'Voil un livre, voici une
craie'. Extreme Direct Methodists had cupboards full of realia. Explanations became
cumbersome and time-consuming. (Definition type explanations UN meunier est UN
homme qui travaille dans UN moulin' / 'court est le contraire de long'). Teachers
would be jumping over desks flapping fins, rather than say that the English for
'saumon' is 'salmon'. Concepts like cependant'/ 'nanmoins' - obviously need
immediate translation!
6 Successful teacher of the Direct Method needed competence in his language /
stamina/ energy/ imagination/ ability and time to create own materials and courses beyond capacity of all but gifted few.
"The method by its very nature presupposes a teacher of immense vitality, of robust
health, one endowed with real fluency in the modern language he teaches. He must be
resourceful in the way of gesture and tricks of facial expression, able to sketch rapidly
on the board and in the language teaching day, he must be proof against linguistic
fatigue".
7 Also Direct Methodists failed to grade and structure their materials adequately no selection, grading or controlled presentation of vocabulary and structures. Plunged
pupils into flood of living language - quite bewildering for pupils.
However, many teachers did modify the Direct Method to meet practical requirements
of own schools, implemented main principles, i.e. teaching through oral practice and
banning all translation into target language. Obviously compromise was needed.
Direct method did pave the way for more communicative, oral based approach, and as
such represented an important step forward in the history of language teaching.

If first and second-language learning processes are compared, the following pattern
emergesFirst-language learner

Second-language learner

1. He has no command of another

language before learning the target
language

1. He has command of another

language before learning the target
language

2 He is neurologically immature, thus

his mother tongue is not fixed

2. He is neurologically mature,
thus his mother tongue is fixed

3. He learns to recognize and cope

with reality through the target
language

3. He learns to recognize and cope

with reality through the mother
tongue, not the target language

4. He requires a high contactfrequency with the target language to

learn that all things have names

4. He already knows that all things

have names

5 He requires a high contactfrequency with the target language

to recognize the meaning of sounds
representing the names of things,
because he is neurologically immature
because his range of experience with
the outside world is limited and as
he has no knowledge of the equivalent
meaning of sounds from another
language for the same things
6. He requires a high contactfrequency to establish integration of
mother-tongue sounds with things

5. He has already experienced the

process, involving high contactfrequency and maturation, of
recognizing the meaning of sounds
representing the names of things in
his mother tongue. As he is now
neurologically mature, he need not
be subjected a second time to the
same process in the new target
language merely to recognize
the equivalent meaning of targetlanguage sounds for the same
things. (Recognition of the sound
representing the thing should not
be confused With the integration of
the sound with the thing, set
6 He has already established
integration of mother-tongue
sounds with things, but requires
high contact-frequency to establish
new integration of target-language
sounds with the same things

ECLECTIC METHODS
Many teachers use a mixture of both Indirect and Direct Methods.
Grammar Method - easy for the teacher, but too intellectual an approach for the
average pupil:
- may kill off his enthusiasm for language learning
- gives little chance to master spoken language which would be of greater use to him
- pupil cannot gain true insight into grammatical rule unless he has previously
mastered the spoken aspect
Some teachers therefore try to veer away from pure Indirect Method, hoping to reduce
the intellectual content of their lessons and to give pupils some opportunity of
speaking the language.
But Direct Method teaching cannot supply the number of active speaking contacts
required for pupil to begin to 'think' in the language, so that any 'eclectic' method lying
between the two poles will afford even fewer contacts.
It is also true that a second language learner needs to have some knowledge of the
grammatical blocks of language to help speed up the development of his oral
proficiency.
Dilemma Too much veering towards Indirect Method:
- increases the intellectual content of lessons (condemning those pupils whose IQ isn't
sufficiently high)
- decreases the number of active oral contacts the pupils require
Too much veering towards the Direct Method:
- denies the pupil the help which a knowledge of comparative grammar can give him
in his development towards oral proficiency
- still means the teacher is unable to provide for the pupil the required number of oral
contacts (thus leading to incomplete/inaccurate responses)
- makes it easier for the pupil but more difficult for the teacher himself.

Any eclectic method teacher therefore falls between two stools. Either way he faces
obstacles which make teaching/ learning both difficult/ unpleasant.
What is needed, therefore, is a completely different method, which lies outside the
range of Indirect/Direct methods
- which takes into account data obtained from investigations into second language
learning
- which uses old/new teaching/learning activities in such a way as to enable the
learner to learn a language more quickly and with less effort
- which gives pupil the opportunity to reach a level whereby he can 'think' in that
language.
Criteria Necessary for Effective Method in Learning / Teaching a Foreign Language

1. It must be simple for both teacher and learner, and must be within the capabilities
of all teachers.
Also, the teacher must feel that pupils are progressing satisfactorily.
2. It must bring about a balance between the spoken and written or printed word
(and must be flexible enough for the teacher to concentrate on the area (s)he wants).
3. It must overcome the conflict between fluency and accuracy.
4. It must increase the rate and amount of learning which takes place in the classroom.
5. Testing must be part of the method, and not a separate entity.
6. Constant revision must be part of the method.
7. It must enable the teacher to set defined limits and have control over oral responses.
8. It must be variable (cf. the difficulty of the Direct Method where framing the right
question to make the pupils apply various persons / tenses / cases and vocabulary is
extremely difficult without pre-arranged coding.
9. It must reflect the linguistic habits the child has already acquired by learning his/her
mother tongue and their ability to assimilate a new language.

10. It must offer a new approach to the application of translation work.

11. It must give the pupils a stimulus to say something in the first instance - and it
must find ways of supplying the pupils constantly with ideas which they can use for
their expression in the foreign language.
12. It must enable work done with modern teaching aids (e.g. audio-visual aids,
computer) to be an extension of the method used in class.
13. It must give the teacher an opportunity to speed up intercommunication between
himself/herself and individual pupils.
14. It must be sufficiently flexible to cope with various class conditions ( as far as
pupils' specific / general interests are concerned )
15. It must ensure that pupils are given the opportunity of having the greatest number
of meaningful contacts possible both with and in the foreign language - THE most
important criteria for the validity of any modern method.

Year 2000 Update for Total Physical Response

by Dr. James Asher, originator of TPR
Research into the effectiveness of TPR in second language learning was supported by grants
from The Office of Education, The Office of Naval Research, The Department of Defense, the
State of California, and San Jose State University (the historic, first public university in
California, founded in 1857). From experimental research and trials in hundreds of language
classrooms around the world in scores of languages, we know more about how TPR works than
any other idea in second language learning. (For a detailed review of this research, see my book:
Learning Another Language Through Actions, now in the 6th edition.)
Here is what we now know:
1. The dropout rate of second language students in a traditional program can be as high as 95%.
Studies at the University of Texas and elsewhere show that this stunning attrition can be reversed
when TPR is a central feature of the language program. The reason that TPR dramatically
reduces attrition is this: TPR is a confidence-builder.
Students of all ages including adults experience instant success in understanding an alien
language. They remark: "Hey, this isn't so bad! I understand what she is saying. I didn't know I
could do this. I feel great!"
2. TPR is aptitude-free. Academic aptitude is a negligible factor when TPR is applied by a
skilled and talented teacher. In a traditional language program, principals screen "low" academic
students from foreign language classes under the assumption that, "They simply can't do it!"
Everyone is surprised when disadvantaged children who experience difficulty in class after class
in a traditional school, enjoy success in a TPR class. These students experience the exhilaration
of being competitive with the all "A" students.
3. Contrary to the widely-held belief that children have a linguistic advantage over adults, studies
with Spanish, Russian, and Japanese show that when adults play the game of learning another
language on a "level playing field" with children, adults consistently outperform children, except
for pronunciation.
TPR provides that "level playing field." In a traditional class, adults endure the handicap of
sitting in rows of chairs while an instructor performs and performs and performs. In a TPR class,
the students perform and perform and perform while the instructor is the director of the play.
Note that this is exactly how children acquire another language so quickly while living in a
foreign country. Children are silent but respond to directions from caretakers and other children.
Children act in response to hundreds of directions uttered in the alien language such as "Come
here." "Put on your coat." "Throw me the ball." "Walk faster." etc. This is a linguistic luxury that
their parents living in the same country do not experience.
4. Studies with Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Russian demonstrate that TPR is "brain
compatible," meaning there is short and long-term retention that is striking and statistically

significant across studies. Retention with TPR is analogous to riding a bicycle. Even if years
have elapsed since acquiring the skill, after a few warm up trials, proficiency returns.
5. TPR seems to work effectively for children and adults. There is no age barrier. The only
caveat is that if the language training starts after puberty, the probability is almost certain that
one will have at least some accent in speaking the second language, no matter how many years
one lives in the foreign country.
6. TPR seems to work for most languages including the sign language of the deaf and the
language of mathematics. Math education is even more challenging than foreign language
education because, in the USA, we spend more on remedial mathematics than all other forms of
math education combined. Traditional programs in both math and foreign languages share a
common flaw, in my judgment.
Both specialties play to half the brain and usually it is the wrong half. (For more on this
intriguing phenomenon, see my book, The Super School of the 21st Century.)
7. TPR can be the major focus of a language program or an extremely effective supplement.
What are the three strongest features of TPR?
1. Instant understanding of the target language, regardless of academic aptitude
2. Long-term retention
3. Stress-free
Is TPR a method, an approach or a tool?
A student asked this question on my e-mail. I don't think that it matters how you classify TPR.
My answer, however, is that TPR is a powerful right-brain tool at all levels of second language
instruction.
The tool works best in the hands of a skilled and talented instructor. I think that colleges and
universities have been frankly negligent in not training future language teachers to be highly
proficient in the handling of this powerful tool. A cursory mention of TPR in a laundry list of
methods and approaches is not enough to build skill in the application of TPR. It needs a special
course along with hands-on experience monitored by a senior instructor who is also skilled in the
intricate applications of TPR.
When does TPR not work?
This is a fair question. Here is the answer: Any novelty, if carried on too long, will trigger
adaptation. No matter how exciting and productive the innovation, people will tire of it. They no
longer respond. It is important to neutralize adaptation by switching continually from one
activity to another.

TPR is magical to jump start people of all ages into the target language. Instructors are perceived
by their students as "miracle workers." This is a heady experience for any instructor. The
tendency then is to imagine that TPR is a panacea to solve all problems. The instructor continues
day after day, until the students are exhausted and mutiny with, "Please, not another direction.
Can't we do something else."
At this point the instructor concludes, "Hey, this TPR is only good at the beginning." Of course,
this is an illusion. The tool can be used at all levels to help students internalize new vocabulary
and grammatical features. But, this requires a conservative application of this powerful tool.
Sure, use it in the beginning to catapult students into the target language, then withdraw the
technique and save it for future use downstream in training. This is the skillful use of TPR. How
to do this successfully is not obvious to most instructors. (For ideas on switching activities, see
Ramiro Garcia's Instructor's Notebook: How to apply TPR for Best results.)
How does TPR compare to other methods in terms of results?
I find little, if any, hard data to support other "methods." For comparison, TPR has many, many
published studies with hard data to support the concept. (For specific citations, see my book,
Learning another Language Through Actions.) This does not mean that other approaches,
methods, or tools are without value. Quite the contrary. The techniques in ALM, for example,
such as dialog memorization, listen and repeat after me, and patterned drills are extremely
valuable, in my judgment, but not in the beginning stages of language acquisition.
Once beginning students have internalized the phonology, morphology and syntax of the alien
language through TPR, then they are ready to switch to left-brain ALM activities that you find in
traditional textbooks. They are prepared to zoom into the material with gusto because all the
elements are familiar. They are comfortable with the new language. They feel confident. They
are ready. I recommend that the instructor yo-yo back and forth from the right brain of TPR to
the left brain of ALM. Anything new is first internalized through the body with TPR, then switch
to the other side of the brain for verbal exercises of speaking, reading, and writing.
Can I use TPR as a non-beginner? If so, how?
Sure. Use TPR to internalize any new vocabulary item or grammatical feature in the target
language.
Is there some point in my language learning when I should stop using TPR?
Yes. Use it conservatively. Stop before adaptation is triggered. With experience, one becomes
aware and shifts into another activity, usually involving the other side of the brain.

Maximize Your Language Learning through TPR

by Reid Wilson, editor of the LANGUAGE LEARNING electronic newsletter
Introduction
A friend of mine recently learned to recognize and respond to over 500 words in Arabic after
only nine two-hour sessions with his tutor. He spent less than three weeks doing this. He hadn't
studied Arabic before, had no significant previous experience in language learning, and is a
successful entrepreneur, not a linguist.
He did it using Total Physical Response, usually referred to as TPR.
While usually thought of as a powerful language learning approach for beginning students, TPR
actually has great potential for learners at any level of ability. And if you have not been using it
in your language learning program, incorporating it now, at whatever stage you are at, will bring
a surge to your language learning progress--guaranteed.
The Basic Principles of TPR
The success of TPR is built upon these foundational principles of second language acquisition
theory:

Languages are best learned when the learner receives lots of comprehensible
(understandable) input. In other words, for a true beginner, listening to a radio broadcast
in the language is not nearly as effective as listening to simple "hear and now" talk
directed at the learner.
Beginning language learners can benefit greatly from a "silent period" in which they learn
to understand and respond to parts of the language without attempting to speak it. This is
also referred to as "delayed production," and of course reflects that path that children
follow when learning their first language.

The basic idea behind Total Physical Response is that a language learner learns to hear
something in the language and then physically respond to it. That is, in TPR, a beginning--or
more advanced--language learner learns to comprehend things said in the language by a teacher,
tutor, or friend. Often at first these "things" are commands such as "stand up", "sit down",
"walk", "touch your nose", and so on. However, as discussed in a section below, TPR is easily
extended to other verb tenses and more complicated sentence patterns. By using gestures and
props, the tutor is able to add enough non-linguistic context to his speech to convey meaning to
the learner.
For example, suppose that you want to begin learning Turkish, and you have a Turkish friend
who wants to trade an hour of Turkish for an hour of English a couple times a week. During your
first hour of Turkish, your Turkish friend could say "stand up" as he stands up and gestures for
you to stand up. Then he could say "sit down" as he sits and gestures for you to sit, and then he
could go through "stand up" and "sit down" a couple more times while modeling it for you.

At some point fairly soon, your friend just says "stand up" without himself standing up, but you
now know to stand up when you hear that, so you do. Congratulations! You just responded to
your first word of Turkish for which you didn't have to have help. (Of course you will have to
review it to remember it, and of course you probably can't say it, but those things will come in
the future.) After this your tutor says "sit down"; you do it and are now on a roll. Your friend has
you stand up while he stands up too, and then he says "walk" while he begins to walk. Then you
learn "stop", "turn around", and so on. Ideally your friend is able to monitor your progress and
introduce new words one at a time at a rate that is optimal for you. (A different part of this issue
of Language Learning has a list of 500 words that can easily be learned using TPR. Actually,
the possibilities are just about endless.)
By the end of your first hour, you will likely be able to respond to between 30 and 45 new words
in Turkish! You should tape record your session, and then by reviewing it several times before
your next language session and either physically responding to the commands or just imagining
doing it you should be able to fly through a review with your friend the next time you get
together. If you are dedicated to this approach and committed to not begin speaking too soon,
you will very quickly grow in their ability to understand and respond to Turkish. (Trying to
speak too quickly 1) may distract you from rapid vocabulary development, 2) will likely cause
your anxiety level to rise which could lesson the "stickiness" of the words you are learning, and
3) could harm long-term pronunciation if you develop had habits before having heard lots of
language.)
Variations of TPR: TPR-B, TPR-O, TPR-P, TPRS
So the basic idea of TPR is that a language learner hears something in the language and
physically responds to it.
However, TPR is not just limited to whole body commands such as walking, turning around, and
pointing to your nose. In fact, there are four major types of activities that can be done using the
TPR mindset. I like to refer to them as TPR-B, TPR-O, TPR-P, and TPRS. (TPRS is the only one
of these expressions that is widely known, the others are terms I've made up.)
I refer to TPR-B for "TPR with body", which includes everything that can be done with general
body movement: stand up, sit down, turn around, turn right, turn left, lift up your arm, touch your
nose, etc. This is best done in a room with some space to move around.
TPR-O stands for "TPR with objects". This is best done sitting a table that has some objects on
it. For example, one day you could raid the produce stand and then sit down with your Turkish
friend to a table of fruit. That day you could not only learn the words for "apple", "banana",
"orange", and so on, but also, "give me", "take", "put", "smell", "bite", "roll", "peel", and "show
me".
For this activity, your friend could start off with: "This is an apple. This is an orange. This is an
apple. This is an orange. Where is the apple? (You would point) Where is the orange?" Once
again new words can be fairly quickly built up one at a time.

When doing TPR-O, always remember to learn verbs that are associated with the objects you are
learning. For example, I once had a TPR-O session in Arabic using a tape player/radio jambox. I
not only learned the parts of the jambox but I also learned to respond to verbs that can be done
with a jambox: turn it on, turn it off, turn up the volume, turn down the volume, switch from
cassette to radio, change the station, rewind the tape, fast forward the tape, open up the battery
case, take out the batteries, and so on. (I learned a lot of new words that day!)
TPR-P stands for "TPR with pictures". Pictures are extremely effective language learning tools.
Let's say that you're actually living in Turkey and have gone around and taken 150 or so pictures
of people doing different things and then arranged these pictures in an album. Your Turkish
friend could go through and say "This is a man. This is a boy. This is a man. This is a boy.
Where is the man? Where is the boy?" Gradually both background and foreground objects in the
pictures could be learned, as well as verbs: "The carpenter is hitting the nail with a hammer,"
leading to requests such as "show me the man who is hitting something". Even verb tenses can
be incorporated by asking your friend (or tutor or teacher) to talk about all of the pictures as if
they happened last week, or now, or next week. The actual physical response with pictures is
fairly basic--pointing at something--but the opportunity for vocabulary acquisition is a broad as
the types of pictures you can use.
In addition to taking your own pictures, you can probably find some children's picture or story
books that are also useful for this kind of learning. Newspaper and magazine pictures work well
too.
TPRS
TPR-S was developed by Blaine Ray and is being used in classrooms throughout the United
States. It involves the teacher (and eventually the students) acting out simple stories as a means
of understanding the story and internalizing vocabulary. The last section of this article gives an
internet link for more information about this approach.
What about Speaking?
If you are just starting your language learning and are using TPR, at some point you are
(hopefully!) going to feel the urge to start speaking. Don't push it, but at some point you can
begin saying things for your friend/tutor to do, from "stand up" to "turn the volume down" to
"show me the man who ate fish yesterday". You can also speak about a table of objects: "This is
a ball. This is a key. This is a book. The pen is on the book." And finally, you can describe
pictures in any tense: "The man ate fish. The boy read a book."
For More Advanced Learners
More advanced learners can still benefit greatly from the different types of TPR. I'm an
intermediate speaker of Arabic, but I can easily walk around my house and find objects that I
don't know in Arabic as well as find pictures I would like to be able to describe. I have found it
helpful to use TPR to learn as many new words as I can for a particular domain. For example, I
could think of all of the things that I can do with a pen, and then work through them with a tutor:

"take the cap off", "write you name", "sign your name", "draw a straight line", "draw a wavy
line", "write the word 'dog'", "underline the word 'dog'", "circle the word 'dog'", draw a picture of
a horse", "put the cap back on", and so on.
Training Your Tutor To Do TPR with You
The most common mistake that tutors who are new to TPR make is to introduce new words too
quickly or to not introduce them one at a time. If you begin to feel overwhelmed while doing
TPR, just remind your tutor of the need for incredible amounts of repetition. (During a one-hour
session you may need to hear a word fifty times to get it down good. Most tutors innately think
that two or three should be enough!)
You will most likely have to stress the need for repetition several times--in fact, each day will be
different depending upon your mood, alertness, concentration, etc. Ideally your tutor will be able
to learn to continually monitor and evaluate your progress and make minor adjustments as is
needed.
If you speak a language that you tutor doesn't, modeling TPR for an hour by using it to teach
your tutor a new language can be very effective in the tutor understanding what processes are at
work.
If you are using an established tutor who is currently working or has worked in the past with
other students, I'd bet almost anything that the tutor has "a system" for teaching the language that
he is reluctant to give up. You may find it easier to train someone new to be a TPR tutor than to
try to get an established tutor to switch, but either way you'll have to have patience and
persistence. Don't give in to their appeals for a different approach, even find a new tutor if you
have to. TPR is the way to go for beginning language students.
In Conclusion
The secret of TPR is to make it a regular, ongoing part of your language study program, with
great emphasis at the beginning but continued use throughout your language learning days.
The ability to learn 30 new words any given hour is fun, but the cumulative effects of learning 30
new words each hour for many, many hours is where real language ability develops.

TPR: STILL A VERY GOOD IDEA

by Stephen Krashen, one of the world's leading experts on second language acquisition
Asher introduced the idea of teaching languages using Total Physical Response (TPR) over thirty years
ago. His first paper on TPR (Asher, 1965) showed how language can be taught using commands: The
teacher gives the command, models the movement, and the student performs the action. Students are
not asked to speak, only to try to understand and obey the command. The teacher, for example, says
"Asseyez-vous!" and sits down and the students also sit. The teacher says "Levez-vous!" and stands up
and the students also stand up. Gradually the commands get more complicated (If Susan is wearing a
red dress, go to the door and knock twice).
TPR AS COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT
TPR is an astoundingly successful beginning language teaching method (or technique). TPR students
have outperformed comparison students convincingly in method comparison studies, both in those
done by Asher and his associates as well as those done by other scholars (e.g. Wolfe & Jones, 1982). It
has been shown to be effective for both children and adults, and has been used for a variety of
languages.
Here are just a few of Asher's results: In Asher (1972), adult TPR students of German who had had only
32 hours of instruction outperformed two control groups who had traditional instruction, one that had
40 hours and another that had 80 hours. Baretta (1986) noted that in Asher (1972), the same activity
was used as a class activity as well as a post-test, which, he suggests, explains why TPR students of
German did better than controls. Baretta also noted that TPR and control students performed equally on
a reading comprehension test. First, TPR students in Asher (1972) also did better than controls on a
listening test that did not include the repeated activity. In addition, controls had 35% more class hours
exposure to German and had much more emphasis on reading and writing.
Baretta also points out a reporting error in Krashen (1982). I had claimed that in Asher (1972) TPR
students with 32 hours of exposure did as well as controls who had 150 hours of exposure to German.
Baretta points out that this was "quite simply not the case" (p. 433). Baretta is correct. As noted in the
text, however, TPR students still did spectacularly well in this study and in other studies.
In Asher (1977), TPR Spanish students with 20 hours exposure did better than comparisons with 100
hours on tests of listening and reading, and in Asher, Kusudo and de la Torre (1974), TPR students after
90 hours exceeded the 50th percentile on a standardized Spanish test designed for students who had
had 150 hours of instruction.
According to current theory, TPR works because it is an excellent way of providing students with
comprehensible input; the teacher's movement provides the background knowledge that makes the
command more comprehensible. Evidence that this is so is the finding that those who observe TPR
activities do about as well on tests involving physical movement as those who actually do the physical
movements (Asher & Price, 1967).

TAKING MORE ADVANTAGE OF TPR

Some earlier versions of TPR focused each TPR activity on a particular point of grammar. For example, to
"practice" definite and indefinite articles in English, one might have an activity such as:
Go to the bookshelf.
Take a book.
Open the book.
Look at the book.
Close the book.
Put the book back on the bookshelf.
Because these activities are constrained by the perceived need to focus on "the grammar rule of day," it
is very hard to make them interesting. The good news is that this is not necessary, nor is it helpful for
the acquisition of grammar. According to the Input Hypothesis, if enough comprehensible input is
available, all the grammar rules that the acquirer is "ready" to acquire will be present in the input (in
technical terms, "i+1" will always be there; Krashen, 1982). This takes enormous pressure off the
materials developer and gives the teacher much more flexibility: Activities do not have to be done in a
certain sequence and not all activities in a collection need to be done. The only requirement is that they
provide interesting, comprehensible input. This liberates TPR from the grammatical syllabus. If the Input
Hypothesis is correct, all activities that utilize body movement to make input comprehensible and
interesting count as TPR.
Thus, any of the following are TPR activities: Learning a dance step or martial arts technique, cooking
instruction (put three teaspoons of salt in the pot), learning magic tricks (take the dollar and fold it in
half ...).
A constraint on all activities that we might consider is that they be interesting for both the teacher and
the students; it is difficult to fake enthusiasm. Someone with little interest in teaching students magic
tricks should try something else.
TPR is not a complete method. It cannot do the entire job of language teaching, nor was it designed to
do this. For beginners, there are several other powerful means of supplying comprehensible input,
means that utilize other ways of making input comprehensible (e.g. the use of background knowledge
and pictures, as in story telling). At the intermediate level, extensive pleasure reading (Krashen, 1993)
and sheltered subject matter teaching, a form of content-based language teaching (Krashen, 1991) have
produced very good results.
TPR is, however, a breakthrough of enormous importance; Asher was the first in second/foreign
language pedagogy to recognize the primacy of comprehension in language development and his insight
is applicable on many levels. While of obvious value for beginning language teaching, aspects of TPR can
be used for more advanced students (teaching auto or computer repair, complex games), and now that
it is free of the constraint of focusing each activity on a particular point of grammar, its use can be
expanded.

The ABC's of The Total Physical Response

By Francisco J Cabello, Ph.D.
Introduction
Use the lessons in my book as a dramatic script in which you are the director of the play and your
students are the actors. The important difference between your production and a Broadway play is that
you are the only one who has read the script.
You will be uttering directions in the target language and acting with the students for the first part of the
lesson so that they instantly understand the meaning of what you are saying. I will guide you step by
step in how to do this.
Later in Act 2 of the play, students will be ready to reverse roles with you and utter directions in the
target language to produce actions from you and other students in the class. As you move from lesson
to lesson, I will cue you when it is time for role reversal. You will be amazed with the ease that your
students understand what you are saying in the target language. This is a heady experience for
instructors and often encourages an ambitious attempt to race ahead. Resist the temptation! Relax.
Take your time. Enjoy the experience along with your students.
Remember Ramiro Garcias advice: Introduce only three lexical items at a time. Do not proceed with
new items until your students are responding with confidence to the previous set of three.
About Exhibits
In the first act of the play, students should not see any of the directions you are uttering in the target
language. As you make a smooth transition from lesson to lesson, I will cue you when to show students
the directions in print.
Props
You will need a variety of props for certain lessons. I have listed at the beginning of each lesson the
props you will need to have on hand that day.
Reviewing
It is always a good idea to start every class with a review of the previous lesson as a warm up before
introducing new material.
After listening comprehension, then what?
As you move step by step through my book, you will be delighted that your students understand
everything you are saying in the target language. You will be surprised that they are internalizing the
target language rapidly in chunks rather than word-by-word.
As understanding of the spoken language expands and expands, your students will be able to read

without being aware that they are reading. The magic of TPR is that when the target language is
internalized through body movements, students not only comprehend what you are saying but they
comprehend what they see in print. This positive transfer from listening comprehension to reading is a
huge saving in instructional time. Throughout my book, I guide your students into a smooth transition
from listening fluency to reading without awareness.
Yes, this transfer from understanding the spoken words to reading works for languages that have a good
phonetic fit-- that is, the language appears in print just like it sounds in speech such as, for example,
Spanish or French. But, it also works for languages without a phonetic fit as when English speakers
acquire Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew or Arabic. (For a complete discussion of this intriguing issue
of transfer, please see the Most Often Asked Questions Chapter in Ashers Learning Another Language
Through Actions.)
The secret of reading without awareness is not to mention that the students are reading. They glide
into reading by seeing messages in print and understanding what it says. For example, I use another
trick I learned from Ramiro Garcias book: Ask each student to reach into a hat, select a strip of paper
on which I have written ten commands in the target language. My directions are: Look at the paper and
do what it says to do. I do not mention the word reading. There is no such thing as reading. They
are only looking at symbols on paper and doing what it says to do.
How about speaking?
After about ten to twenty hours of understanding the target language through physical movements,
students spontaneously begin to speak in the new language. Speaking cannot be forced, but will appear
naturally as a playful activity. And when speaking appears, it will not be perfect. There will be many
errors. But if we are as tolerant of student errors as we are of infants acquiring their first language,
gradually speech will shape itself in the direction of the native speaker.
Throughout my book, I will help your students shape their speaking skills with role reversals, scenarios in
which students play different parts, and skits that students create, stage, and act out.
How about writing?
As your students evolve from lesson to lesson, they will be writing without knowing that they are
writing. In other words, we do not announce that, Now you will be writing! because this triggers
resistance from the left brain which whispers sabotaging messages to the student such as, Oh, oh, this
is something new! This will probably be difficult. You dont know how to write in this strange language.
You will have trouble with this! (For a more sophisticated understanding of the right and left brain,
read James J. Ashers book, Brainswitching: Learning on the Right Side of the Brain and The Super
School: Teaching on the Right Side of the Brain.)
Testing Listening Comprehension
Heres how testing works so that the experience not only demonstrates comprehension, but is enjoyable
for both the students and the instructor: I put several versions of each quiz on a strip of paper which I
place in a hat. Then three or four students come into the room and each gets to reach in the hat for a
slip of paper. Students enjoy having some control over the testing process.

Each student hands their strip of paper to me. I then read the commands and record the accuracy of
each students performance. I note on paper any mistakes that have been made and grade it with points
decided in advance. This saves time because the quiz is graded immediately before the student leaves
the room. Another powerful advantage of this procedure is that each student gets immediate feedback.
You will be surprised how few mistakes are made.
Testing Reading Comprehension
As you probably guessed, the testing procedure for reading is the same as I use for listening
comprehension. That is, three or four students come into the room, select a strip of paper from the hat,
look at what is written and follow each direction on the paper. I will be noting errors, if any, on the strip
of paper.
Testing the entire class as a group
Realizing that many teachers have limited time for testing, I provide in my book, exams designed for
administration to the entire class as a single group.
Your students are on their way to fluency, now what?
You have enjoyed a successful experience with your students using Total Physical Response in the First
Year. How do you follow that act? I have discovered an exciting way that my students can continue to
develop the three skills of speaking, reading, and writing which is Blaine Rays student books, Look, I Can
Talk! for high school, college and adults, and Todd McKays TPR Storytelling for students in elementary
and middle school.
As you work with classic TPR, you will discover that your students have instant understanding of
everything you are saying in the target language. As a result, students of all ages experience remarkable
self-confidence as revealed in comments such as: I can do this! I was afraid that I would not
understand, but I get it! I am actually enjoying this language class!
Once your students have internalized a batch of vocabulary and grammar in the target language with
TPR, those items can be used to tell them a very short story. Follow up by coaching them to try telling
the story to a classmate. Gestures are used to prompt the student step by step. As one young instructor
told me recently on the telephone, I was an average teacher, but these techniques of TPR followed by
storytelling made me an outstanding instructor because my students are achieving fluency---not just ten
percent of the class who will achieve no matter what the instructional strategy isbut 95% percent. It is
extraordinary.

TPR: After forty years, still a very good idea

BY JAMES J. ASHER

Way back in 1965, I demonstrated a powerful linguistic tool in a pioneer experiment using the
Japanese language with my research associate, Dr. Shirou Kunihira. That tool is the Total
Physical Response, now known worldwide as simply, TPR. Since that time, scores of language
classes using TPR in countries around the world have enjoyed successful results for students
acquiring European, Asian, Indian and Semitic languages.
Why comprehension is important
TPR research opened up the concept that for children and adults acquiring another language in
school, success can be assured if comprehension is developed before speaking. One important
reason: Everywhere on earth in all languages throughout history, there is no instance of infants
acquiring speaking before comprehension. Comprehension always comes first with speaking
following perhaps a year later.
A second reason is that talking and comprehension are located in different parts of the brain.
Talking comes from Brocas area located in the frontal lobe of the left brain. If there is damage
in Brocas area, one may understand what people are saying but the person is unable to speak.
Understanding or comprehension takes place in Wernickes area located in the temporal lobe. If
there is damage to Wernickes area, one can speak but has difficulty understanding what others
are saying. This has significance for language instruction, which I will explain next.
Beware of brain overload
When the instructor in traditional classes asks students to Listen and repeat after me! this may
be brain overload because both the frontal lobe and the temporal lobe in the brain light up at the
same time resulting in slow-motion learning with short-term retention. (Noted educator, Leslie
Hart, calls brain overload a type of brain antagonistic instruction.)
Well then, if comprehension is important, how about using translation to help students
comprehend?
Unfortunately, translation does not help most students because there is no long-term
understanding. When students translate, there is short-term comprehension which is erased the
moment the student leaves the classroom, if not sooner. The problem with translation is that the
instructor has made an assertion, which the critical left-brain of the student perceives as a lie.
For example, to claim that this is a desk and this is a chair and this is a window is absurd
in the students brain. The student, along with all other students in the classroom, have thousands
of life experiences that validate this as tsukue and this as isu and this as mado. Students
simply do not believe the assertions by the instructor.

What is the alternative to translation?

TPR is a powerful alternative to translation because we create experiences in the classroom that
are believable. If we ask students to be silent, listen to a direction and do exactly what the
instructor does, we have created a fact which cannot be dismissed by the critical side of the
students brain.
Here is an example of how the students brain is processing information at lightning speed: If
stand does not mean to rise up from my chair, why did my body actually go from sitting to
standing when I heard the instructor say, Stand? If walk does not mean to move forward,
why did my body walk forward when the instructor said, Walk? These strange utterances must
be valid.
TPR creates facts, which make for long-term comprehension. At lightning velocity, the students
brain processes information like this: I actually stood up when the instructor uttered the alien
direction: Stand. It is a fact. It is true. It actually happened; therefore, I can store this in longterm memory. The result is TPR can achieve long-term retention in a few trials, often in onetrial.
How to present a believable sample of the target language
Now I must refer you to these books: My first book: Learning Another Language Through
Actions (in the 6th edition) and Ramiro Garcias Instructors Notebook: How to apply TPR for
best results (in the 4th edition). I recommend that you follow the advice of Jim Martinez who
successfully taught English in a private school in Argentina: Read each book six times and each
time you will discover something you did not know before about TPR.
Once students actually understand, then what?
Once they understand, you can then use this skill to move over into Brocas area of the left brain
with traditional exercises in speaking, reading, and writing. Then return to the right brain with
more TPR to understand another sample. Then use that understanding to switch to speaking,
reading, and writing.
The first order of business
The first objective in any excellent language program is enabling students to be comfortable and
confident with the sounds, the grammatical patterns, and semantics of the new language. That
can be accomplished with students of all ages including adults using concrete nouns, adjectives,
verbs, prepositions, and adverbs.
Do not underestimate the power of the concrete in acquiring another language. Every one of us
did it with our native language. One can acquire true fluency at a concrete level.

How about abstractions

Abstractions will come later, not necessarily by direct instruction but in the context of discourse.
Traditional textbooks, in my opinion, are notorious for trying unsuccessfully to force
understanding of abstractions before students are ready.
Notice that when children acquire their first language, they become fluent native speakers at a
concrete level of discourse; then gradually acquire abstractions in context or by asking direct
questions such as: Mother, what does government mean? Mother then explains using simple
language that the child understands.
To break language apart into artificial categories such as phonology, vocabulary, grammar and
semantics is of keen interest to teachers, but of no concern to students because in the process
of achieving fluency with TPR, they internalize everything simultaneously with no analysis, in
the same way that children acquire their first language. Analysis into artificial categories is fine
to polish the target language for advanced students who are already fluent, but not for
beginners or even intermediate students.
I do recommend, however, that five or ten minutes at the end of a session be open to curious
students who prefer to ask questions about pronunciation or grammar.
Does TPR really help students with grammar?
It does. Eric Schesslers English Grammar through Actions is a fine little book showing how to
TPR 50 grammatical features in English. We recommend that you use this as a supplement as
you go along for pinpoint instruction of specific grammatical features.
With TPR, students understand grammar in the right brain but cannot tell you how grammar
works. If your intent is getting specific points of grammar into the left brain for analysis, then
Schesslers book can help.
Remember, the right brain internalizes without analysis for high-speed learning. The critical leftbrain must analyze everything, which makes for agonizingly slow-motion learning. Excellent
guidelines to keep in mind for teaching any subject come from Leslie Hart who calls left brain
learning brain antagonistic instruction while right brain learning is brain compatible
instruction. (For more on right-left brain research discoveries in more than 4,000 studies, read
my books: Brainswitching: Learning on the Right Side of the Brain and The Super School:
Teaching on the Right Side of the Brain.)
How to make the transition to speaking, reading, and writing
After ten to twenty hours of TPR instruction, role reversal is one way to make the transition
(students assume the role of instructor to direct you and other students). Student-created skits,
which they write and act out, are another way. Storytelling is a third option along with traditional
pattern drills, and dialogues.

The books I mentioned will show you step-by-step how to be successful with role reversal and
skit creation. Some new books by Blaine Ray (for high school and adults) and Todd McKay (for
elementary and middle school) (see references below) show how to make the transition from
classical TPR to TPR Storytelling (TPRS).
How to get started with TPR
Once you have read the books I recommend and you find TPR an attractive option, how should
you begin? First, make no dramatic changes in what you are now doing. Sample a lesson or two
from my book or Garcias book with your own children or your neighbors children. If neither is
available, then try a lesson or two with your students. This will accomplish three things:
1. You become convinced that the approach really works;
2. You build your self-confidence because you can do it successfully; and
3. You smooth out your delivery.
Remember, the more you play with TPR yes, I said play, the more insight you will gain
about how this phenomenon really works.
Try TPR with your students for only five or ten minutes to introduce new material. If you and
your students are pleased with the result, try again in the next class meeting with another five or
ten minutes.
Here are two more tips on using TPR:
1. To escape cerebral overload, students should be silent when they experience TPR. Dont
ruin the experience by demanding that they repeat every direction you have uttered.
2. Use TPR only for new material that students have never experienced before. Of course,
keep the sample at a concrete level rather than abstractions, which should be delayed
until students are further along in the program.
Student Pronunciation
Most studies converge on this conclusion: If you start a second language program before
puberty, children have a high probability of achieving a near-native or even native accent. After
puberty, students can still acquire another language but most all will have some accent even if
they live for fifty years in another country where the language is spoken.
There is another intriguing fact about the right side of the brain: The right brain can process
information coming in on parallel tracks while the left brain is limited to one track. This has
profound implications for acquiring other languages in school. If we use the powerful tool of
TPR for understanding on the right side of the brain, then it makes sense to start students in
elementary school with several languages, which the right brain can easily handle without
interference.

If elementary school teachers apply TPR skillfully, students can graduate from the 8th grade
understanding with two, three, or four languages, which can be further polished in high school
bringing students to fluency. Remember, the earlier we start internalizing other languages, the
higher the chances of acquiring a near native or even a native accent in each of those languages.
Working with mandated textbooks
You are directed to use a particular textbook in your class. Now what?
You and your students can still benefit from TPR. The following suggestion comes from Dr.
David Wolfe who was successful as supervisor of Foreign Language Instruction in the
Philadelphia School System and professor of Languages at Temple University. Dr. Wolfe
recommends: Comb the book to list all adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and nouns that students can
internalize with TPR. Do this before your students even open the book. Then when students open
the book for the first time, they encounter only friendly creatures. This strategy transforms a
fearful textbook into an attractive book that is an exciting challenge to students.

How to TPR Abstractions:

The critical role of imagination
Yes, TPR works for concrete words but how about abstractions?
First, I believe the linguists are on the right track when they affirm that the 4 or 5 year-old child
is a fluent speaker of the native language, even though the child's vocabulary is not rich in
abstractions. One can achieve "fluency" at a concrete level of communication.
However, as the student progresses, one needs more abstractions to communicate. So how do we
accomplish this with TPR? We will demonstrate next that with imagination, almost any
abstraction can be communicated without "translating."
Some examples from Stephen M. Silvers
After twenty-five years of successfully teaching English with TPR to children and adults in the
Amazon, Professor Silvers has written: The Command Book: How to TPR 2,000 vocabulary
items. I asked him to TPR some abstractions to illustrate how the creative process works:
How to TPR the abstraction "later"
Abstract terms always present a small problem. It is one thing to say "Touch your nose" and
demonstrate this and another thing to try to put the meaning across for a term like "later". The
first is readily understandable, or at least not so likely to cause confusion. But a term like "later"
is much more difficult to present. So, in the first place I would probably not use it until the
students have internalized a lot of the "easily presentable vocabulary."I might want to use a little
more verbal context, to make sure that the students really get the concept of "later" like this:
Teacher: ER is on TV tonight. What time?
Student: 9 p.m.
Teacher: What time is it now?
Student: 3 p.m.
Teacher: Is ER on TV now?
Student: No.
Teacher: So, it's on TV later tonight, not now. If you are going to watch TV later, raise your
hand.
In this case my suggestion used a little more teacher talking time before putting the term in a
TPR command.
Another suggestion:
Teacher: Everybody, stand up. Wait don't do it now. Do it later. Wait a few seconds. (pause) OK,
Now do it.
I would then ask the students in English: "How do you say LATER in Portuguese? "

I used to be totally against any translation, but now I view it as an excellent tool when used
properly. In my example, I asked the question in English (How do you say?) Even though the
students used a translation, they did it within an English-speaking context, and it involved just a
single word.
More options
The abstraction can then be used in different TPR commands such as: If you are going to go to a
movie later, raise your hand. Shake hands with the student who says that he is going to go
bowling later today.
How to TPR the abstraction: "from time to time"
I presume that the students are not beginners. So I will explain in the target language of English
like this:
Teacher: There are some things I do regularly. For example, I take a shower every day. I go to
class every day. There are some things I do not do regularly. I do them "from time to time". I do
them occasionally. For example: I go to the movies from time to time.
Notice that not only have I explained the new vocabulary item "from time to time" but, as an
instructional bonus, I have included the synonym of "occasionally."
Now let's practice the new vocabulary using classic TPR
Teacher: During this class from time to time I am going to stop and clap three times. Now I want
you all to work in pairs for five minutes and choose an action that you will do from time to time
during this class.
Another option
Ask each student to write on a card something that he or she does from time to time. The
students hold up their cards and the teacher can utter directions in English such as this:
Teacher: Juan, Shake hands with the student who plays tennis from time to time.
Teacher: Maria, pinch the student who goes to a disco from time to time.
Still another option
Instead of asking students to write on a card, ask a number of students to state in English what
they do from time to time. Then say in English:
Eduardo, wave at the person who likes to go dancing from time to time.
Elaine, pass a note to the person who likes to cook from time to time. Notice that we are not
using TPR to convey meaning of the new vocabulary. Rather, we are using TPR to add
excitement to the class with a change of pace that doesnt take up much time, and encourages a

group interaction that breaks down inhibitions that students often experience in their fear of
speaking in front of their classmates.
How to TPR the abstractions "likes," "loves" and "hates"
The first step is to convey the meaning of the words. This can be done quite easily using a
combination of simple drawings, symbols, gestures and facial expressions.
1. First divide the board into three sections.
2. In the first section, draw some carrots; in the middle section, some bananas; and in the
third section, some apples.
3. Under the bananas, draw a happy face, and label it "Tom." Then smile, face the class,
say: "Tom likes bananas," and write the sentence on the board under the drawing. (As
another option, you can ask your students to repeat the sentence.)
4. Under the carrots, draw a sad face with a conversational balloon from its mouth saying
"Ugh!" Label the drawing "Bill," make a facial gesture showing disgust, say: "Bill hates
carrots," and write the sentence on the board.
5. Under the apples, draw a face in the shape of a heart with curly hair and label it "Mary."
Face the class with a wide smile, say: "Mary loves apples," and write the sentence on the
board.
Next, practice new vocabulary with classic TPR
Put up a wall chart with pictures or drawings of different fruits and vegetables. Call two students
to the front of the class and ask them "to point to" or "touch" the pictures by following the
sequence of the chart. Do it again except in random order to be sure that they have made the
connection between the spoken forms and the visual representations. Here are some examples:
Rosa, point to the onions.
Marcos, touch the beans.
Ideally the students at their seats would also perform these actions on worksheets with pictures.
Further TPR commands:
Everyone who likes carrots, stand up.
Everyone who hates onions, walk to the door.
If you love apples, raise your hand.
Go to the chalkboard and draw a vegetable you hate.
If Anita hates beans, you (either an individual or the whole class) will point to the ceiling. If not,
you will touch the floor.
Personalize the exercise for your students
Each student completes in writing the following sentence stems with fruits or vegetables, which
can be from those taught or any other words they know or would like to learn.

I hate
I like
I love
The students then read their sentences to the class. After several students have read their
sentence, ask the class (or individuals) questions such as the following about what the students
heard.
Who likes apples? Who loves oranges? Who hates spinach?
What (fruit) does Carla love?
What (vegetable) does Roberto hate?
Does Anita like cabbage?
Does Carlos hate strawberries?
You are not limited to simple questions. Since comprehension precedes production, you can and
should use more complex structures which the students will easily understand, but will not be
able to produce immediately. This exposure to linguistic forms is important as it helps the
students internalize a cognitive map of the language which will trigger future production when
each student is ready. Here are some examples of more complex forms:
Can anyone tell me who likes apples?
Can anyone tell me who said that she likes apples?
Does anyone remember the name of the person who likes apples?
Does anyone remember if Susana hates grapes or mushrooms?
Does anyone remember what Ricardo hates?
Encourage your students to have fun socializing in the target language with a "TPR mixer"
The object of this activity is for the students to form pairs by finding someone who loves the
same fruit or vegetable. Each student writes on a slip of paper the name of a fruit or vegetable
that he or she loves. The students then stand up and walk around the room trying to find another
person who loves the same fruit or vegetable, using the following simple interchange.
A: I love bananas. What about you?
B: Me too. I love bananas, too. or Not me, I love strawberries.
When most of the students have found a partner and are seated, the teacher stops the activity and
brings the class together. The pairs then tell the class what they love, for example:
Pedro and Jorge: "We both love peaches."
Roberto and Maria: "We both love grapes."
Summary
Understanding abstractions (without translating) is a fascinating challenge. We recommend
several strategies that will work to help your students internalize abstractions for long-term

retention using TPR. First, delay the introduction of the abstraction (and idioms, too) until your
students are further downstream in their language training. The advantage: You can explain the
abstraction in the target language using words students already know. We do this all the time
with children who are acquiring their native language. Examples:
Student: "What does it mean, 'He hit the roof?'"
Instructor: "It means, he was angry."
Student: "What does it mean when someone asks a hotel clerk, 'What are the rooms running
for?'"
Instructor: "It means, What do the rooms cost?"
Another strategy is to use your imagination to TPR the abstractions which we illustrated in this
article. There are also books available with ready-made TPR exercises for abstractions (The
Command Book: How to TPR 2,000 vocabulary items in any language by Stephen M.
Silvers.). For grammar, you will find ready-made TPR exercises in English Grammar Through
Actions: How to TPR 50 grammatical features by Eric Schessler (also available in Spanish or
French).Almost any abstraction (including idioms), can be presented to students using TPR. It
does, however, require creative thinking from the instructor, but there are huge rewards: Student
understanding is internalized for long-term retention which prepares your students for selfconfident speaking, reading and writing.

Organizing Your Classroom for Successful Second Language Acquisition

Everyone recognizes these features in a traditional second language learning program:
Please listen and repeat after me.
Lets analyze this sentence to point out the grammar rule for the day.
Open your books and complete the exercise on page 25.
Memorize this list of vocabulary.
Memorize this verb conjugation.
Open your books to page 63 and translate the first paragraph.
Lets practice putting the appropriate direct object in the correct place in this sentence.
A few students do benefit
The evidence (Asher, 2003a) suggests that only about five percent of all the students who start
the study of a second language in a traditional program continue on to achieve fluency in
speaking, reading and writing. Ninety five percent of all those students with good intentions say,
I give up. And then they jump to the harmful conclusion: I guess I am no good at foreign
languages. This may be the reason that thirty states have now discontinued the study of a
second language as a required course. Parents would like to have their children acquire another
language or two, but from their own experience in school, they feel that the effort in traditional
classes is a waste of time. Better to invest time in something useful.
Learning compared with acquiring a new language
There is a difference between learning a second language and acquiring a second language.
Learning involves the left brain and acquiring involves the right brain. Left brain learning puts
the emphasis on correctness such as using the appropriate form of the verb and speaking with a
near-native pronunciation. This means that speakers must interrupt the flow of their thinking in
the middle of sentences to mentally conjugate a verb or rehearse the pronunciation of a word.
One harmful byproduct of this is to produce a kind of mental stuttering that discourages the
students willingness to play with the new language as a toy.
The left brain encourages students not to take risks
The left brain does not want the student to take risks because the person may make a mistake.
The right brain, for comparison, encourages playfulness without fear. The right brain tells the
student: Take a chance!. You wont go to jail! Enjoy it! Just start doodling in this new
language.
Translating into ones native language
Translation from one language into another language is a harmful left brain approach because it
slows down communication. If you think about it, translation is abnormal in high-speed
communication between fluent speakers. To memorize the pronunciation of a new language and

decipher the meaning in another language are extra steps that are totally unnecessary when one
acquires the second language without reference to ones native language.
The research shows that these left brain procedures do not work for most students:
Listen and repeat after me!
Analyze this sentence.
Translate this paragraph, and
Memorize this dialogue.
By most students we mean most students in the introductory and even intermediate levels.
Advanced students may very well find many of these left brain techniques to be useful to finetune their skills in the second language.
Well, thenwhat does work for most students in the beginning and intermediate levels?
Brain organization and language acquisition
Since Roger Sperrys Nobel prize winning experiment showing that each hemisphere of the brain
can think independently, more than 4,000 studies of brain lateralization have been conducted
worldwide. In the past 30 years, we learned more about how the brain is organized than we knew
in the prior 3,000 years. Here is what we now know:
Comprehension comes before speaking
Asher (2003) has demonstrated in decades of experiments that the optimal language acquisition
experience is: comprehension before speaking. You can observe this yourself with babies. For
months before even babbling appears, there is a silent period in which the infant seems to be
listening to directions from caretakers: Look at me! Smile for Daddy! Raise your hand!
Walk to Mommy! These are unique conversations in which someone speaks and the child
responds with a physical action. I call this the total physical response which is known
worldwide as TPR.
Notice that the child is silent, but acknowledging understanding with a physical movement which
often shows a complex comprehension of the target language (i.e., Pick up your toy and put it on
the chair in your bedroom.)
No parent would expect or demand that infants will begin speaking immediately. There is a
preparation period of months before the child utters anything intelligible such as Mommy or
Daddy.
The evidence suggests that the neural wiring for acquiring a language is comprehension before
production. This means that the circuitry of the right brain in Wernickes area must light up for a
long period of time before the circuitry of the left brain in Brocas area flickers on.

Risk of a speaking-on-demand approach

The traditional teach-from-the-textbook instruction is a speaking-on-demand approach which
plays to the left brain. It is a brain antagonistic approach. Except those with an unusual ability to
mimic anything they hear immediately, most children and adults are not ready to begin speaking
a new and alien language. They need a long preparation period of silence in which the instructor
speaks a direction and students respond with an appropriate action: (Stand up and walk to the
table.)
Most people need time to decipherto map out on the right brainhow the language works.
This includes structure such as grammar, but also semantics, and the melody of the new
language.
For more on the left and right brain, see Ashers Brainswitching: Learning on the right side of
the brain and The Super School: Teaching on the right side of the brain.
Going from a traditional left brain classroom to a right brain classroom
Students who transfer from a traditional class with left brain instruction into one of our classes
rich in right brain experiences will be shocked. Our students will not be conjugating verbs,
translating, or memorizing vocabulary. Yet they will be conversing rapidly and clearly with a
native speaker. For example, as Joan Christopherson explains: An all A student in a first year
traditional French class transferred into my second year class expecting to excel, but was stunned
to discover that the other students were all speaking and understanding the French language.
She begged to drop out until I persuaded her to give me one month to make her feel
comfortable. I assured her that she knew things my students had not yet learned, but were going
to be studying, and that she could apply what she had learned the previous year by using our
approach. By the end of that year, she was successful at both. She continued in the language for
two more years.
If you switch to a right brain approach, this could happen to you
Joan continues: Dont be surprised if your classroom draws visitors from all over the nation. It
happened to me and my colleague, Laura Zink de Diaz, who teaches Spanish.
Here is what happened when a teacher from France came to observe my class: I wanted to
demonstrate the achievement of my first year students, so I selected a cartoon drawing of a busy
restaurant the students had never seen before. Using an overhead projector, I flashed the picture
on a huge screen in front of the room and invited individual students to explain in French to our
visitor what was happening in the restaurant. For more than thirty minutes and without repeating
one another, they talked and talked. The French sentences ranged in complexity from There are
ten people in the restaurant to The waiter is bringing a tray with plates, cups, silverware, and
napkins to the old man at the table in front of the window.

Our visitor was so stunned, she walked around the room looking on top and under the tables for
hidden vocabulary lists. When I told her that there were no lists, she was astonished because it
was difficult for her to believe that beginning students were spontaneously creating those
sentences in French. My students were originating novel sentences which is the essence of
fluency rather than reciting memorized canned sentences from a textbook.
How, our visitor wanted to know, did you get that level of skill from first year students?
What I revealed to my visitor you will find detailed step-by-step in my new book: Organizing A
Classroom That Works to be published by the Prolinguistica Corporation.
How to work with colleagues who are dedicated to a traditional approach
The wisest dictum here is, Live and let live. You can coexist peacefully by focusing on your
own students. Be gracious and accepting of colleagues who have confidence in a different
approach. Always make them feel welcome to visit your class, at any time. Move slowly with
any innovation so that you do not appear to be threatening the status quo.
How is the TPR method being used in the field right now?
First, let me comment on the notion of a method. In my opinion, there are no methods because
method implies a formula and there is no formula for teaching anything. Teaching, like
therapy, is a fine art, not a science. Science can give us some marvelous tools, but how we apply
those tools depends upon the talent and training of the instructor.
I have demonstrated in laboratory studies and by language teachers in thousands of classrooms
around the world in European, Asian, Semitic, and Indian languages that TPR is perhaps the
most powerful tool in a teachers linguistic tool box. It is powerful for three reasons: First, TPR
has the unique feature of being aptitude-free (meaning it works for almost all students of any
age). Second, it is high-speed language acquisition (meaning that students comprehend the target
language in chunks rather than word-by-word). Third, study after study demonstrates that the
skillful application of TPR results in long- term retention lasting weeks, monthseven years.
But keep in mind that this powerful tool of TPR does require sophisticated training, not only in
techniques of application but also in understanding the underlying brain mechanisms, all of
which, in my opinion, is missing in most language methods classes. For example, by reading
only one chapter about TPR in a typical methods textbook, students go into the field with only a
rudimentary understanding of how and when to use TPR. Many believe, for example, that TPR is
limited to beginning students or it is limited to selected vocabulary items only or they believe
that TPR cannot help students internalize grammar.
The myth that TPR is limited to beginning students, is dispelled in Seelys and Romijns
prizewinning book, TPR Is More Than CommandsAt All Levels. The myth that TPR is
limited to selected vocabulary is blown away in Stephen Mark Silvers book showing how to
TPR 2,000 vocabulary items in any language (items typically found in Level 1 and Level 2
textbooks). As to grammar, Eric Schesslers books demonstrate how to TPR grammar for
beginning, intermediate and advanced students of all ages.

Withdrawal from Grammar - Transition to TPR: A Personal Testimony

TPR, the Total Physical Response teaching strategy, has been mentioned in language learning
circles enough for instructors to know that is not a mind-altering drug; however, it is mind
altering. It has caused a radical change in how I teach beginning Spanish.
I started experimenting with TPR in my high school beginning Spanish classes in the spring of
'86, after attending a workshop that inspired me. At times I am overwhelmed by the enthusiasm
and motivation that it has ignited in my students, but I'm having difficulty in shedding all those
years of grammar-translation training. I can't help but wonder if students are really learning
enough when we're having so much fun. Letting go of some of the grammar-translation
techniques has been difficult because, for example, present tense regular verbs have always been
conjugated before Christmas, and I wonder if I'm lagging behind if I don't. Should the concerns
of meeting the curriculum come before presenting meaningful, more productive instruction? Our
first year curriculum has been rewritten because of the success of TPR in the classroom, and
because of the feedback I get from students.
They understand before speaking, reading or writing
TPR is a teaching-learning strategy developed by Dr. James Asher, a professor of psychology at
San Jose State University, where the students understand the new language first before they have
to speak it, or write it, or read it - just as a child learns language the first time. As an example,
instead of using a flashcard with apple written in English on one side with la manzana on the
other to get the student to remember, you would hold up the real thing and say la manzana. At
this point the students are watching only; their books, notes, papers, and pencils are under their
desks to focus their attention on the instructor. This also inhibits writing out phonetic English
spelling for Spanish.
Next, the instructor says a command using the object demonstrating what should be done to
fulfill the request. A volunteer is asked to do the action as instructed. Other students are called
upon to act to the command. Soon students volunteer to give the commands as if they were the
instructor.
Motivation is high as students watch and listen, knowing that they will have to perform some
action soon. Many students claim they are subconsciously repeating the commands as they are
being said.
As time goes on, the teacher models increasingly more complicated actions: using prepositions to
put objects different places, using new verbs to do other actions with the objects, etc. Some
students want to become the teacher right away to direct their classmates' behavior. Others do so
only when called upon. Everyone understands that they have to participate in order to pass the
class. The crazier the command, the more students seem to pay attention. Students listen intently
to each other, and we always applaud actions even if they are incorrect. A lot of camaraderie
builds as everyone is in the same boat - trying.

Laughing at mistakes is not allowed. Laughing at ridiculous commands is. Sometimes that's a
fine line, and I haven't figured out how to avoid it except by giving the "Everyone Makes
Bloopers In A FL" speech (where you divulge your language bloopers) to prepare students that it
will happen. I do not correct errors at this point. If the student, acting as teacher or doer of
commands, forgets something, he or she has the option of turning to the class for help by
shrugging and saying Clase? Somehow having the class help is less intimidating than having a
teacher do it.
It's fun to sit back, watch, enjoy...
Once a practice session gets started, the teacher does very little. It's fun to sit back, watch, enjoy,
and keep record of who has participated. Checking papers during this time, however, is
impossible because high school minds work in strange and mischievous ways.
Last fall, about the third week into the school year, a male student commanded another male
student to walk over to a female's desk and put his hand in her shirt. You do have to draw the
line sometimes. No, I don't encourage lewd commands, and they aren't in this textbook, but we
all roared in laughter after he said his creative command. There was evidence of learning taking
place.
The book stays under the desk most of the class time.
Granted the eye-appeal of this text leaves something to be desired. Its usefulness and practically,
however, make up for its dull image. The text is used as a resource for the students, as I see this
as its intended purpose. The book stays under their desks for most of the class time. Usually it's
only after I demonstrate an item from a lesson, and they act it out, that I let them look at the
lesson and repeat it as they read it. At the beginning some students are extremely uncomfortable
without the text in front of them. As if relieved to get them open, they want to write English in
them or jot down notes. It is especially for those students that I wrote up a vocabulary list to be
handed out after the lesson has been taught. I don't use it as a memorize or die assignment. By
the time the students get this list, they should know most all the words. If something has not been
given enough attention in class, I will be able to tell as I walk around as they're filling them in.
More often they will just tell me out loud that we haven't gone over such and such.
We discuss grammar points after they have been learned as part of the language. In other words,
the students understand the content of the language first. Then I might set up a situation where
the students try to find the rhyme or reason to it all. The personal "a" in Toca a una mujer can
easily be demonstrated in contrast to Toca una Cosa by providing plenty of action examples. If
the class doesn't catch on, the teacher can stress the "a" when it is said out loud or a list could be
written on the chalkboard until students come to some rationalization as to why it's there. It's
always a challenge to me to figure out these presentations.
Grammar means NADA if...
Grammar means NADA if it is taught first. If students discover that they can figure things out by
themselves or with their classmates, the learning will become more meaningful. Current research

suggests that teachers should resist being authoritative. Leading students to discover the
intricacies of learning a language on their own should be one of our goals.
Some kind of pronunciation guide needs to be given as soon as students start looking at the
printed word. As with other texts, I stress the vowels first, then work into the consonants during
the first few weeks of school.
Reading and writing activities are up to the teacher. I start written assignments by asking
students to write down ridiculous commands using what they know so far. Question and answer
techniques soon evolve so that students can follow assignments from non-TPR resources.
However ... whenever I make that switch, the spark and the motivation fall flat unless it is some
sort of realistic activity.
To combat that fall, this year I'm trying a Spanish journal. Students will be assigned to ask me
any (decent) question in Spanish. I won't check their grammar or spelling, but will respond in
correct Spanish and ask them a question. I guess it's more or less a system of writing notes, but
it's a real language situation. In second year Spanish I can start this right away, but in first year
I'll probably wait until the second semester. Yes, it sounds like work, but it could take the place
of those horrible worksheets that I hate to check. It would certainly make for more interesting
reading. It is language in action; students are trying to communicate.
The dialogues in this book are a left over, as I see it, from the audio-language method. I set the
scene by drawing on the board or using props. Then I act out all of the parts by myself.
(Sometimes students remark about my sanity.) Yes, in the future I'd love to have upper level
students videotape the skits for me. By asking questions in English I find that the students
usually have the gist of the skit. We go over them ALM style: choral repetition, row repetition,
one student works through it with me in front of the class, students do it themselves with and
without the books.
Dialogues with a twist
It's argued that memorized dialogue is not an efficient method of teaching, but I argue that any
method that has the students speaking Spanish while doing actions that explain the Spanish will
help the student remember. Maybe it places some stress on the students, but I think some
students thrive on the attention they receive when presenting and acting out a dialogue. When
things get more complicated spring quarter of first year, it seems that I always have students that
give up on the reading and writing component, but go "whole hog" for the dialogues. They can
do them in front of the class well, get applause, and appear just as smart as everyone else. It's
after witnessing such an event that I wonder about the reading and writing, and wonder how
much I should be using it in first years.
Should I be teaching a basic conversation course instead?
Should I teach a separate course for those people that want all the rigors of grammar, but no
functional ability?

If I threw myself completely into TPR, would my students do better?

If I don't teach them to conjugate in the old way, won't they fail upper levels and college
placement exams?
I decided I needed a way to measure the learning taking place in my class. For lack of any other
easily accessible standardized exam, I elected to give the previous year's National Spanish Exam
(NSE) at the end of the year. Keeping in mind that I gave every student this exam on the last or
next-to-last day of school, and that I teach in a school where 40 to 50 percent are college bound,
the results aren't too bad.
First, let me explain a little about the difficulty of the NSE. The exam consists of 80 multiple
guess questions: 30 oral comprehension and 50 reading. The style in which the vocabulary,
grammar, and reading passages are presented is dissimilar to anything I emphasize in class. In
1987, when the tests were given nationally, only two students in the United States got a perfect
score of 80. Iowa's top score by students with no previous experience was 69.
The top score in my class last spring was 59. The average score was 38. The Bell curve would
have put the middle point at 42. Maybe so far this doesn't sound impressive, but what got me
excited was the bottom score. All 81 students that took the test scored 25 or better. That means
even my D and F students learned something. They were able to use their limited Spanish to a
certain degree of success.
85% signed up for 2nd year Spanish
Maybe that degree of success accounts for the 85 percent of last year's students that signed up for
2nd year Spanish this year.
I was somewhat relieved when I read in Scott Foresman's "Foreign Language News Notes" that
Dr. Valdman, a French and Italian professor at Indiana University thought that spending more
time on "communicative activities to practice oral language . .. may mean postponing some
grammar topics to a later level and cutting down on non-functional grammar. We [need to] look
at grammar content from a new perspective as we seek to increase students' communicative
ability while not neglecting accurate and fluent use of language."
A drawback to TPR
A drawback in using TPR, I find, is that currently our second year program which uses Spanish
for Mastery II from D. C. Heath almost totally ignores the real language that the TPR students
have learned to use. Many of Spanish for Mastery's activities are more passive than active, and
the command forms they've learned aren't introduced until late in the book. Each year I'm trying
to incorporate more and more TPR activities into the second year class because the students
respond to them so well. They know they need the book stuff for college, but the vast majority
want to learn to communicate in Spanish. Once they've had a taste of using the language, many
want more.... It's like the difference between learning Spanish from a family in Mexico compared
with learning Spanish from a Berlitz tape. Which would you rather do?

It's student feedback that has given me the impression that something is lacking in my second
year class. Students have told me point blank that they liked first year better. When I first heard
this, the little teacher voice inside me said, "They 're just saying that because they don't like the
book work in second year." So last year I added more written work to the first year curriculum. I
thought to myself, maybe it was because they were having so much fun in first year that they
hadn't learned enough about being a language student.
Au contraire!
They had learned enough about being a language student to tell me what worked better for them.
I could not dismiss their attitude and opinions anymore. It finally hit home this spring on the last
day of second year Spanish. A high IQ senior, who I respected greatly for his ability to
synthesize material in a very short time, shuffled his papers and belongings long enough to be
the last person to leave the room. "Mrs. Harris," he began, "I really learned a lot in your class,
both years. (hesitant pause) But I think I liked the way you taught first year better. I don't know
why that is, but I did." I thanked him and mumbled something about different teaching methods
employed, elated from the praise but embarrassed from his insight. His honest opinion opened
my eyes.
Dr. Asher tells how experiments have proven that TPR students will rate their teacher's
effectiveness much higher than teachers using traditional methods [in his book Learning Another
Language Through Actions: The Complete Teacher's Guidebook.] Another benefit, he claims, is
that students will show more interest in the target language. Perhaps this is another reason why
the percentage of students continuing on to second year was so high.
Why should I allow what students tell me to determine how I teach?
On the other hand, why should I refuse to teach students in a way they've told me they can learn?
When stated like that, I have to reply, "If they WANT to LEARN, by all means GIVE IT TO
THEM because how often do we hear students ask to learn?
Those little teacher voices are still inside me, though, saying things like:
This isn't the way it's done.
It doesn't follow the rules.
It doesn't give them enough college prep grammar. They aren't learning in the traditional
accepted ways.
How come the major publishing companies don't stock this stuff?
They have problems adjusting to the upper levels.

They can use the structure, but they can't explain it. The textbook doesn't have written
exercises, tapes, or workbooks.
It's too much work to change.
It's un-teachable.
I find it very teachable. Enjoyable even! If I stuck with the TPR format more, I'd probably have
less work to do.
It's not new. It's radical, but it's not new. It's been around for 25 years.
TPR in the future
Maybe in the future TPR will be more of an accepted method, and it will be implemented in
classrooms K - 16 with complete teaching guides if that's possible. As for now, I will continue
with the TPR text Espaol con Impacto, and I will strive to put more TPR into Spanish for
Mastery II because my students have told me they learn more that way.
I will continue using TPR because of the good "press" I get from students, parents, and the town.
I will continue because of the motivation I see on the students' faces trying to anticipate, analyze,
or mimic language habits.
I will continue because it gives all students a chance to take the risk of using a foreign language
and still receive applause just for trying.
I will continue because my administration evaluates time on task in my classroom, and TPR
helps keep it at a high level even with 32 students in a classroom.
I will continue because I like to watch the students have fun, and I like laughter in the classroom.
I will continue because I like using the realia "junk" and watching the role playing that we do.
BUT MOST OF ALL....
I will continue because I can see something in front of me that works; that lights a fire. I want to
keep it kindled.
Mary J. G. Harris
Spanish-English Instructor at Fairfield High School
E. Broadway, Fairfield, IA 52556

Future Directions for fast, stress-free learning on the right side of the brain
Traditional left-brain approaches which we all have experienced in thousands of foreign
language classes (including English as a Second Language) simply do not work. Perhaps a more
charitable way to express it is to say that production-driven approaches which attempt directly to
teach talking in a target language do not work well enough to continue the effort. The evidence:
96% of students who voluntarily enroll in foreign language classes "give up" after three years.
Only 4% continue to achieve at least minimal levels of fluency. More damaging: Not only do our
students "give up" but they are now convinced that they "cannot learn another language." After
all, they tried but the results were high-voltage stress and the humiliating experience of failure.
What happened? The approaches seemed to be sound and rooted in common sense. For example,
we know from our high school geometry that the shortest distance between two points is a
straight line. So, let's proceed from A to B directly in a straight line. If you want to acquire
another language, then "listen and repeat after me!" "Memorize this dialogue" and "Let me
explain the grammar rule for the day." What could be more transparent as an instructional
strategy?
But it did not work. The laboratory research and practical experience in thousands of foreign
language classrooms indicated that one human being cannot directly teach another human being
to talk. Apparently we are not biologically wired up to acquire a language in that fashion. Leslie
A. Hart would say that the traditional approach of "teaching" children and adults to speak
another language is simply brain antagonistic. The approach does not fit our knowledge of how
the brain functions.
It sounds like pedagogical heresy. Of course one person can directly teach another person to talk.
It seems obvious, but this belief turns out to be an illusion, a myth that has persisted generation
after generation with the fallout being a massive experience of failure not only for students but
also for instructors. If teaching students to talk was successful then we would not have this
situation in the USA: Of the 500,000 young Americans stationed in the military throughout the
world, only 418 were judged to be linguistically competent to communicate in the language of
the host country. Japan and other Asian countries, where learning English is a national craze,
schools carry children through six years of English as a foreign language. Still, only a few
students break the fluency barrier to achieve communication skills in English.
Recently, on a trip to Europe we met a colleague, Dr. Francisco Cabello, who has lived most of
his life in Seville, Spain and is a Professor of Spanish at famous Concordia College's Language
Villages in Minnesota. He authored the successful series of books The Total Physical Response
in First Year English, Spanish and French. I asked him, "How successful do you think second
language learning is in Spain?"
Dr. Cabello: "Not very. Parents are frenetic to find a way for their children to acquire English.
They spend a fortune on private lessons after school. You see full page ads in the paper and
expensive television commercials for private language courses, especially for learning English.
This is probably true in the surrounding countries, as well."

Asher: "And the result?"

Dr. Cabello: "Well, you don't hear people speaking English anywhere do you?"
Asher: "How do you explain this?'
Dr. Cabello: "They use traditional instructional strategies such as grammar-translation and listen
and repeat after me.
Asher: "All brain antagonistic approaches, especially in the initial and even intermediate stages
of language learning."
Dr. Cabello: "Yes. These programs try to ram the skill into the student through the left brain. It
doesn't work but they don't know what else to do. A few students can tolerate the stress and
eventually acquire enough skill to function in the target language but most do not."
Asher: "Why do you think that grammar-translation has held on so long ?
Dr. Cabello: "I think it is more comfortable for instructors who are not native speakers of the
target language. They are off the hook. When they speak in the target language, they are anxious
that their pronunciation may not be perfect. So, to escape any criticism, the safe approach is to
ask the students to take out pencil and paper and start translating. I don't think it is more
complicated than that."

A Brain Compatible Instructional Strategy

...that works for most students who are acquiring second languages, mathematics, and science.
Historically, school has played to the left side of the brain almost exclusively from the third
grade through the university. In classrooms, the arrangement of chairs is in a pattern that is
comfortable for left brain instruction. Students sitting in rows and columns face one direction to
receive information that will be delivered in serial order through verbal media either in speech or
in print. Input is to half of the brain-the left side. Students who are "academically gifted" can, on
their own, switch the information coming into the left brain over to the right brain for complete
processing to achieve meaning.
A classic example is a study by Jacques Hadamard of how eminent mathematicians think. The
stereotype is that these professionals think in sharp symbols and equations in other words, they
are processing information exclusively on the left side of the brain. But Hadamard discovered
that outstanding mathematicians think in visual and kinetic images. One of the people in the
study was Einstein who confided that he visualized events in motion and he added that he felt
that imagination was more important in mathematics and physics than intelligence. Of course,
visualization and motion is processing information through the right brain. But school is
organized, unintentionally to be sure, to shut down the right brain.
For example, notice that as instructors we give ourselves the advantage of using the right brain
when we move about the classroom in our delivery of information. Movement of our body

makes information flow from left to right and back again at lightning velocity. But we do not
accord our students the same privilege. They must sit and "pay attention" to us as we move about
the scene. We allow only limited movement from students as when they move their arms to
scribble a note or raise their hands occasionally to ask a question. If you think back on all the
classes you have attended, can you recall any instructor in any grade from the first through the
university who sat with hands folded for 75 minutes and talked?
With the realization that the student's body and the student's body movements are my best allies
in helping students internalize information, I always encourage my students in statistics courses
to move about the room frequently. "If it helps" I tell them, "please feel free to get up anytime
and walk out for a drink of water or to go to the restroom or simply walk around the back of the
room or move from one side of the room to the other for a different perspective of the scene."
Also, I reverse roles continually to permit students the movement privilege bestowed upon
teachers. For instance, at the start of each class meeting, I will invite students to present their
work on the board so that everyone is continually moving to the chalkboard to reverse roles with
me. Incidentally, I usually invite students to present their work in pairs rather than alone. This
strategy neutralizes the fear generated by the critical left brain that, "Oh, no. You have to go up
to the front of the room and speak in public!" Remember that the worst fear people have is
speaking in public.

The Power of Movement in Acquiring Another Language

By now most language teachers in the United States and Canada have heard about my Total
Physical Response (TPR) approach. In 25 years of laboratory research and thousands of
classrooms, we have demonstrated that TPR can be applied as the major focus of language
instruction or as an effective supplement. However, few language instructors outside North
America are aware of the dramatic differences that can be achieved in their instructional program
with TPR.
The benefits of TPR are (a) rapid understanding of the target language, (b) long-term retention
lasting weeks, months, even years, and (c) zero stress for both students and the instructor. The
principle of TPR is deceptively simple-it is simple to understand, but does require skillful
application to be effective.
The principle of TPR may be seen in the interaction of adults and infants in intimate caretaking
transactions. If you observe carefully, you will witness in the caretaking experience a continual
conversation between adults and the infant. It is, of course, not the usual conversation in which
talk is uttered back and forth between two or more people. It is a unique conversation in which
the adult talks to the infant and the infant answers with a physical response that is meaningful to
the adult. For example, the baby can be only days old and an adult will say, "Look at me. Look at
me." The baby turns its head in the direction of the voice and the adult exclaims with delight,
"She is looking at me!" Another person says, "Now look at Daddy! Look at Daddy!" The infant
turns in the direction of the voice and smiles. I call these unique conversations in caretaking,
"language-body conversations." The adult speaks and the infant answers with a physical response
such as turning the head, smiling, crying, reaching, grasping, walking, etc. Caretaking is a rich
networking of language-body conversations that continues 16 hours a day for years.

During the period of birth to about two years of age, there will be continual language-body
conversations between caretakers and the neonate, but the infant's talk will be limited to a few
single utterances that are distortions of such words as mother, father, water, go, swing, drink,
bottle, etc. However, the stunning feature of a language-body conversation is that before even
"mommy" or "daddy" becomes clearly articulated, the infant demonstrates perfect understanding
by physically responding to complex directions from the adult such as, "Pick up your toys from
the sofa, and put them on the bed in your room." The infant demonstrates perfect understanding
of complex sentences even though the baby is barely able to utter a single word.
The first achievement in language acquisition is exquisite skill in understanding the target
language. I call this understanding comprehension literacy. Observations of infants show that
most babies internalize, through body movements, an intricate linguistic map of how the
language works before the infant is ready to talk. And when talk appears, it will be fragmented,
distorted, and primitive compared with a fluent understanding of the target language.
Furthermore, throughout the child's development, production will lag far behind comprehension.
Language acquisition is clearly a linear progression with comprehension first, then production.
Never do we observe infants in any culture or in any historical period showing language
acquisition starting with production followed by comprehension.
The phenomenon of comprehension followed by production is so striking that it suggests a
design in the brain and nervous system with "biological wiring" programmed like this: Talk will
not be triggered until the infant has internalized enough details in the linguistic map. Clearly, the
triggering mechanism for production is comprehension literacy. Biological wiring is not a
metaphor, but has definite reference points in the brain as suggested by Broca's Area (located in
the frontal region of the left hemisphere) which, if damaged, disturbs speech and Wernicke's
Area (located in the posterior region of the first temporal gyrus) which, if injured, produces
impaired comprehension of speech.
It is significant that the location in the brain for speech and comprehension is distinctly different.
For example, the clinical literature has many case histories of brain injured patients who can
speak but cannot comprehend sentences uttered by others, and other patients who can
comprehend what is said to them but cannot speak. Future research with high-technology brain
scanning equipment will probably show that the infant's brain first lights the circuitry in
Wernicke's Area with intense neuro-electrical activity that continues for many months before the
circuitry in Broca's Area becomes busy.
Incidentally, there is no evidence that the "biological wiring" for language acquisition changes as
the infant develops into childhood and then adulthood. And, indeed, our experiments (Asher,
2000) together with classroom observations of children and adults (Garcia, 2001) suggest that a
linear progression from comprehension to production is imperative for most students (perhaps
95%) if they are to achieve multi-skill fluency in a second language. The evidence is clear,
however, that a "progression" starting with production (teaching children and adults to talk, read
or write) is an illusion since it results in a success rate of only 4% (Asher, 2000).

Comprehension Literacy: How to help second language learners achieve it

If comprehension is a critical first step in the language acquisition process to give students a
"head start," then how to proceed? Fortunately, several dozen books together with video
demonstrations are now available to guide language instructors step-by-step. I have listed many
of them in the references at the end of this article. If you choose to apply the Total Physical
Response to help your students achieve comprehension literacy, then I recommend that you start
with my book, Learning Another Language Through Actions which explains the theory,
summarizes the research, answers the most often-asked-questions about TPR, and then presents
practical day-to-day lessons for 150 hours of classroom instruction.
For additional practical lessons and hundreds of valuable tips for a successful TPR experience
with your students, I recommend Ramiro Garcia's book, Instructor's Notebook: How To Apply
TPR For Best Results. In the second edition of my book, Brainswitching: Learning on the
Right Side of the Brain, you will find hundreds of practical examples that demonstrate how to
use movement (and other high-powered techniques to transfer information from the left to the
right brain. This switching from one side of the brain to the other helps students achieve stressfree internalization of "complex" concepts in mathematics and science. For more suggestions on
how to implement successful right brain teaching, see my book: The Super School of the 21st
Century*.

Classroom Applications
Infants acquire language during language-body conversations with their parents. When students
in the classroom have language-body conversations with their instructor, they achieve
comprehension significantly faster than infants. Here is the reason: infants are limited in their
range of physical responses. School children and adults, by comparison, enjoy a vast network of
physical movements such as writing, cooking, drawing pictures, driving vehicles, playing games,
operating computers, riding bicycles, and so on. Fluent understanding that takes years for infants
to acquire can be achieved by students in a fraction of the time using TPR.
Here is a sample of a language-body conversation in the classroom: We begin with what Dr.
David Wolfe, a master TPR instructor of French and Spanish working in the Philadelphia
schools, calls the "big eight"-that is single commands of stand, sit, walk, turn, run, stop, squat,
and jump.
Typically, the instructor will invite a student to sit on either side and listen carefully to what the
instructor will utter in the target language (with no translation) and do exactly what they see the
instructor doing. (To further relax students, they are briefed that they are to be silent and not
attempt to pronounce any of the utterances they will be hearing.) The instructions are, "Relax, be
comfortable, listen, watch what I do and do exactly the same thing. I will not ask you to
pronounce any of the utterances you will be hearing."
The instructor then says in the target language, "Stand," and stands up motioning for the students
sitting on either side to rise. Then, "Sit" and the instructor with the students sits down. Next,
"Stand, Walk, Stop, Turn,..." etc. After hearing the commands several times and acting along

with the students, the instructor sits down and invites individual students (including those
observing in the audience) to perform alone in response to the commands. The intent is to
demonstrate to each of the students that they have indeed internalized the strange utterances and
understand them perfectly.
From the "big eight," unending combinations are possible to help students rapidly and gracefully
internalize an intricate linguistic map of how the target language works. Examples of
combinations that number in thousands of sentences starting with the "big eight" would be:
"Stand, walk to the chalkboard and touch the eraser."
"Walk to the door, open it, and ask, "Who is there?"
"Run to the chalkboard, write your name, and under your name, write my name."
"If I walk to the table, and pick up a piece of paper, you run to the closet and get the broom."

Once understanding is achieved and students begin to talk, then what?

Internalizing understanding of the phonology, morphology, and semantics of a target language is
not a trivial achievement. It cannot be rushed. It will take time and patience. However, I can
promise that if you use the language-body conversations of TPR, students will internalize the
target language rapidly in huge chunks rather than word-by-word. The success of this procedure
is a heady experience for both the instructor and the students. The instructor will feel enormous
power and the students will feel that something magical is happening to them.
I can also promise that as the process of understanding through the body continues, at some
point, each student will be ready to talk. This readiness to talk varies from student to student. A
few will be ready almost immediately, others will not be ready for many weeks, but most seem
to be eager to talk after 10 to 20 hours of TPR instruction. It is important to respect each
student's decision as to when that person is ready to talk.
Again, this readiness cannot be forced by the instructor; it will appear spontaneously and when
students begin to talk, it will not be perfect. There will be many distortions, but gradually,
production will shape itself in the direction of the native speaker. Whether production will be
accent-free is a function of age. Before puberty, the probability is extremely high that the student
will be accent-free, but after puberty, the probability is almost certain that the individual will
have some accent no matter how many years the person lives in the foreign country. (For more
on this important issue, see Asher, 2000, and Garcia, 2001).

What can be done to accelerate the development of production

As language-body conversations continue, the student internalizes more and more details about
the phonology, morphology and semantic structure of the target language. This internalization
process proceeds in a kind of linguistic zero-gravity because the student seems to float in a
weightlessness state. Each move seems effortless. The language code imprints at a rapid rate
with an ease that gives the illusion that nothing has happened. When the internal linguistic map

is imprinted with enough detail, talk is released analogous to the spontaneous appearance of
speech in infants. As with the infant, speech is distorted, fragmented, and develops in slowmotion compared with the flashing speed the student has been internalizing comprehension.
Speech appears in "role reversal" after about 10 to 20 hours of TPR instruction. At this point, the
instructor invites students who are ready, to assume the role of the instructor and utter commands
to direct the behavior of fellow students and the instructor. In a search to accelerate the develop
of production- that is, talking, reading, and writing, an experienced TPR instructor of Spanish,
Blaine Ray, has successfully tested with his level 1 high school and college students a
storytelling technique which he calls, Look, I Can Talk. This is a student textbook, now
available in English, Spanish, French, and German, in which students listen and watch as the
instructor tells an illustrated story in the target language using familiar vocabulary. Gestures are
used to cue different words in the story such as a whistle and a slap on the thigh for dog and
rubbing of the thumb and forefinger to represent money. Then, using gestures, each student is
invited to retell the story in their own words to another student.
After that, each student writes the story using their own words. Rapidly, story by story, students
are amazed to discover that they can express themselves in speech, reading and writing. You can
order for your level 2 students, Look, I Can Talk More! in English, Spanish, French, and
German and for level 3 students, Look, I'm Still Talking. Todd McKay has written and
pretested for eight years a series of student books entitled, TPR Storytelling: especially for
students in elementary and middle school. (For more details on these books, see the pages in
the back of this book.)

Why most students experience success with TPR

As a hypothesis, it may be that most students are more right-brained in processing information. If
so, then "school" as it is usually conducted, would not foster successful learning experiences.
Hence, any instructional strategy that has built-in brainswitching should be successful with most
students for first trial learning, long-term retention, and zero stress. Of course, that is exactly
what TPR offers.
We have observed in the typical school population that students with a painful history of
difficulties coping with academic content presented through the left brain, excel in language
classes that apply TPR. For the first time in their school experience, these students achieve at the
same level as the "A" students-the "smart kids." Ironically, these students who have "difficulty"
learning are often "written off" by school administrators as "un-teachable with low academic
aptitude," and hence unprepared for the demands of foreign language classes. After all, they can't
cope with classes in their native language, so how can we expect them to manage classes in a
foreign language?
There is another powerful advantage to brainswitching instructional strategies especially in
school where confinement restricts movement both physically and psychologically. Space is
diminished to the territory around one's desk and left brain instruction draws the circle of space
even tighter around the individual with the constraint of sitting in a chair, focusing attention and
minimal body motion.

With TPR, space expands rather than contracts. Students are in motion using their bodies to
respond to directions in the target language. There is instant success followed by nonstop
assimilation of the target language. The interaction among students can continue for hours after
the TPR class is over. Students can play with the target language using utterances to direct each
other:
"Pass the ball to me."
"Come here!"
"Throw the ball to her!"
Stand over here!"
Walk forward three steps!"
Another exciting application of TPR is using the target language in coaching sport's activities.
For example, all coaching for soccer could be in Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, or any other target
language-because there is instant understanding with directions such as, "Pass the ball to Luke."
"Stretch your arms like this to block the pass." "Jump higher!" Students not only improve their
skill in a sport but as an additional bonus, acquire another language in the process.
Of course, this strategy of coaching in another language applies to instruction in any vocational
skill. A cooking class, for instance, can be done in French as easily as English or Japanese,
because directions are transparent to the trainees.

The Future of TPR

The most exciting application of TPR may be in Europe rather than America. The concept of a
"United States of Europe" suggests that it may not be necessary for people in different European
countries to "speak each other's language." It may be more realistic for each person trained with
TPR instruction to only understand six or more other languages. Speaking those other languages
is not necessary because, for instance, a person from England speaks English to someone from
Italy and that individual responds in Italian. Everyone speaks in their native language which is
most comfortable.

How to Apply TPRS for Best Results

by Carol Gaab
Introduction
TPRS, once referred to as Total Physical Response Storytelling, has evolved into a
methodology that is now more appropriately called Teaching Proficiency through Reading and
Storytelling. TPRS collaborators around the globe have honed a highly effective methodology
and transformed it into a tremendously successful method that promotes unrivaled fluency,
listening and reading comprehension skills, and writing fluency.
A common-sense approach to learning and teaching language, TPRS facilitates a natural order
of acquisition. While many methods focus prematurely on activities, which require output
(production in the form of writing or speaking), TPRS focuses on input by providing a myriad of
input-based activities before students are required or expected to speak and/or write.
Successful TPRS practitioners focus on providing an inordinate amount of Contextualized
Comprehensible Input (CCI) through auditory and written means. In other words, the learner is
exposed to planned, sequential and repetitive language structures through listening to and
reading interesting and engaging stories. Students focus on listening to and reading memorable,
entertaining stories, rather than on consciously learning or memorizing language.
TPRS offers other advantages as well. Because it is a multi-sensory methodology, it meets the
needs of various learning styles. Gestures and acting, for example, meet the needs of
kinesthetic learners; visual images (illustrations, props, puppets, live actors, etc.) satisfy the
needs of visual learners; the tremendous amount of contextualized, comprehensible input
appeals to visual and auditory learners. Students develop a real ear for the language, learning
to listen and respond to what sounds right. TPRS promotes skills and activities that appeal to
the both hemispheres of the brain. Since it is the right hemisphere that processes body
language, intonation, speech melody, visual imagery, etc., and the left that controls
speech/language, it is important to offer a multi-sensory approach to teaching language.
TPRS delays (not eliminates) the introduction of discrete grammar instruction, which is a leftbrain function. This is essential for a number of reasons:
1.) It conflicts with the way the brain naturally processes language. Thus, very few students can
learn language via grammar lessons.
2.) Discrete grammar instruction tends to create an atmosphere of correctness as opposed to
an atmosphere of communication.
3.) Focusing on form creates a hypersensitive speech monitor. In general, teaching the rules of
language bogs down the acquisition process and stifles communication.
The following pages provide step-by-step instructions for successfully and easily implementing
the NEW steps to TPRS. Although is important to complete each step, it is not necessary to do
each and every activity listed within each step (with the exception of READING!). Numerous
suggestions are given to provide variety and avoid monotony in the classroom.

The Steps to TPRS

There are three basic steps to TPRS: Show, Tell and Read. As these three steps are repeated,
they lead into three phases. The following graphic organizer illustrates the sequence and
organization of a TPRS unit.

PHASE 1
Teach new vocabulary structures
Step One: SHOW
Begin by selecting three vocabulary items from the (new) vocabulary list. (If you are using TPRS
Publishing, Inc. materials, there is no need to select vocabulary groups, as this has already
been done for you.) New vocabulary structures may consist of an individual word or an entire
phrase and should be introduced and practiced in a state that is a natural to speech. For
example, nouns are introduced with the appropriate article, expressions and idiomatic phrases
are introduced in their entirety, and verbs are introduced in a conjugated state, one verb form at
a time. Keep in mind that structures will vary in complexity depending on the level you teach.
For example, the level one structure he is hungry might be he was as hungry as a... in level two,
while in level three it might be if I were hungry, I would eat...
Practice generally focuses on one verb form at a time, regardless of the tense that is being
taught. Traditionally, teachers tend to teach according to the grammar syllabus, rather than
according to what is naturally used most frequently in speech. In other words, it is much more
common to communicate in the past tense rather than the present. Nevertheless, most teachers
begin instruction with the present tense, and a select few begin telling stories in the present
tense, while reading them in the present tense. Whatever tense you choose, be sure to begin
formal instruction with just one verb form at a time.
Each of the three new vocabulary structures should be introduced one at a time and then
practiced in groups of three at a time. (3 items per a minimum. 45-minute learning period.) To
begin, say each of the three new vocabulary items (in isolation) and convey meaning through
translation, gestures, props, pictures and/or mini-scenarios. At times a simple illustration will
suffice, but confusion and miscommunication can be avoided by giving a direct translation (if
and when it is possible). The brain can recall visual images much more efficiently than an
isolated, non-contextualized vocabulary item, so always follow up a translation with a
visual representation of the new vocabulary structure.
Once students understand the meaning of the new vocabulary structure, begin teaching the
associated gesture. First, say the new word or phrase and then model the appropriate gesture
for your students. Say the new structure and observe your students as they do the gesture
without you. Observe and assess to ensure that students know the meaning of the structure and
the corresponding gesture. Then, introduce the next two vocabulary items with the same
process: teach the meaning of each structure and the corresponding gesture. Assess students,
and when students are ready, move on to contextualized practice.

Gestures
The introduction phase lends itself to practice via gestures. Using the new vocabulary
structures, give students a variety of commands to which they will respond with the specified
gesture. Keep in mind that the older the student and the higher the level, the less time will be
spent on gestures. High school students will spend only two to five minutes practicing via
gestures, and level 3/4 students may spend even less time on gestures. The following
commands will help you while you are in the introduction or gesture phase:
Novel commands are commands/narrations that include new words or new combinations of
words which students have not heard before. Any new or unknown word can be used for TPR
practice as long as it is made comprehensible. If (s)he eats is one of the new vocabulary items,
then typical commands might include: Eat a taco. Eat a big taco. Eat fast. Eat slowly.

 Play commands are silly commands, which should be used to practice vocabulary and/or to
liven up a dragging class. Play commands might include: Eat your big toe. Eat your nose. Eat
your pencil. Eat your homework. Etc.
Chain commands include two to three new vocabulary items at one time. They enhance longterm retention by facilitating the use of mental imagery, as students find it necessary to visualize
each portion of the command in order to successfully complete it. Using (s)he is hungry, (s)he
eats, the wolf, chain commands might include: he is hungry, he eats; he is hungry, he eats, the
wolf; the wolf, (he) eats, (he) is hungry; the wolf, is hungry, he eats.

Step Two: TELL

PQA
Once the meaning of the vocabulary item is conveyed and gestured, provide contextualized
repetitions of vocabulary via Personalized Questions and Answers (PQA) and Personalized
Mini-Situations (henceforth referred to as Class Stories). Focusing on the new vocabulary
items, ask students questions that pertain to their personal experiences, likes and dislikes, and
individual personalities. The idea is to fish for interesting and entertaining topics and ideas
that engage students and make them laugh. For example, using the three new vocabulary items
(s)he is hungry, (s)he eats, the wolf, the following questions will help students to personally
relate to the new vocabulary: Are you hungry? Do you eat liver? What do you like to eat? Do
you eat wolf? What do wolves eat? Do wolves eat students? Do wolves eat Spanish students or
French students?
As the teacher asks questions, referred to as fishing, the goal is to first identify a question in
which students are highly engaged and interested. Once a winning question has been
presented, the goal is to get students to respond with the best answer possible. The teacher is
not looking for a correct answer; rather, he or she is searching for an answer that students find
humorous, interesting and engaging. The teacher fishes for the best answer, which then
becomes the hook that catches student attention and participation, and which lays the
foundation for the class story. The teacher does not continue fishing until each best answer
has been repeated through a system of questioning called Circling.
Circling is a systematic way of getting needed repetitions (reps) out of Target Vocabulary
Structures. For example, if students favorably and actively responded to the questions: What do
wolves eat? (Spanish students? French students?), the teacher would continue asking the
question until a student gave the right answer: Wolves eat French TEACHERS! This statement
would then be circled as follows:
So, wolves eat French teachers?! YES, wolves eat French teachers.
Do wolves eat SPANISH teachers? No! Wolves eat FRENCH teachers.
Wolves dont eat Spanish teachers.
Wolves eat FRENCH teachers!
Do wolves eat Spanish teachers or do wolves eat FRENCH teachers?
Wolves eat FRENCH teachers!
Wolves eat FRENCH teachers?! Yes, wolves eat French teachers.
What do wolves eat? Wolves eat French teachers?
Who / what eat French teachers? Wolves eat French teachers.
Now that fact #1 (wolves eat French teachers) has been established, the teacher fishes for fact
#2 by asking related questions to the topic and vocabulary at hand. Continue asking questions

until student participation and interest indicate that it is time to stop fishing and start circling.
Do wolves eat French students too or do wolves just eat French teachers? What else do
wolves eat? WHEN do wolves eat French teachers? Do wolves eat French teachers every day?
Do they eat them in the morning? WHY do wolves eat French teachers? From fishing, fact #2
would be established: Wolves eat French teachers only after they eat croissants.
So, wolves eat French teachers after the teachers eat (have eaten) croissants?!
YES, wolves eat French teachers after they eat croissants?
Do wolves eat them after they eat cheese?
No! Wolves eat French teachers after they eat croissants!
Wolves dont eat them after they eat cheese.
Wolves eat them after they eat croissants!
Do wolves eat French teachers after they eat croissants or do wolves eat them after they
eat cheese?
Wolves eat them after they eat croissants.
So wolves eat them after they eat CROISSANTS?
YES, wolves eat them after they eat croissants. A French teacher eats a croissant,
and the wolf eats the French teacher! Wow!
When do wolves eat French teachers?
Wolves eat French teachers after they eat croissants.
What do wolves eat?
Wolves eat French teachers, but only after they eat croissants.
PQA and circling engage students and provide an avenue for them to participate in natural
conversation and in the creation of a class story. Although the method is referred to as
storytelling, it really should be referred to as storyASKING! The key is to ASK the story in lieu
of telling a story. Each answer provides the next building block for the class story.

Class Story
The purpose of the CLASS STORY is to provide more CCI in a contextualized format. (CCI:
Contextualized Comprehensible Input) The average language learner must hear a vocabulary
structure scores of times (varying from 25 to 50 to 150 times) before it will be internalized. Thus,
the goal is to cooperatively create a class story, and in so doing, provide as many reps as is
necessary for acquisition to take place. A class story should contain no more than one to three
new vocabulary items and three to four basic events/ideas. The following is an example of a
mini-scenario based on the following new vocabulary items: (s)he is hungry, (s)he eats, the wolf.
There is a wolf. His name is Walter Wolf. Do you know what Walter Wolf eats? Walter Wolf eats
FRENCH TEACHERS! Yes, this wolf eats French teachers; all wolves eat French teachers.
Wolves eat French teachers after they eat croissants. Why? Because wolves LOVE croissants.
Walter Wolf loves butter croissants. Where does Walter Wolf live? He lives behind our school.
Really?! Yes, Walter Wolf lives behind the school. Why? Walter Wolf lives behind the school so
that when he wants to eat, there is a French teacher nearby. One day, Walter Wolf wants to eat,
but he has a PROBLEM! Do you know what his problem is?

Embellish the class story

The class story must be told and retold (or asked and re-asked) a number of times to ensure
that students are truly internalizing the vocabulary items and can eventually verbalize ideas and

facts about the story. Each time it is retold/re-asked or the facts in the story reviewed, small
details should be ascertained from students through PQA (fishing). Each detail or fact is circled
and then added to the story.
The wolfs problem is that the French teachers at this school dont eat croissants, because
they are on low-carb diets. Walter Wolf only eats French teachers after they eat croissants, so
what is he going to do?!The story-asking process is continued until the problem is solved. It is
a cycle or spiral of Fish, catch, circle, fish, catch, circle, etc. until a complete class story has
been created. The general rule for creating a class story is to always have a problem to be
solved or an issue that has to be resolved. The solution is always a three-step process; in other
words, the characters in the story must travel to three different locations and try three different
possible solutions in order to solve the problem/finish the story.

Step Three: READ

Read a Story
Once the class story is complete, with every detail added, students will step away from the class
version of the story in order to READ a written version. The storylines of each story will not
match, but the vocabulary structures will. This is completely acceptable, because the focus is
on teaching language, not on teaching a specific story. Each version contains numerous
repetitions of the new vocabulary structures.

Add Variety to your Practice

In addition to PQA and class stories, you may choose to incorporate other input-based activities
into the lesson. (i.e.: cooperative activities and games, music and songs, chants, rhymes, etc.)
The process of Show, Tell and Read is repeated until all new vocabulary items necessary for
the story or lesson have been introduced/practiced (a minimum. of 50-75 repetitions). Once
vocabulary is internalized, it is helpful to have learners engage in partner practice. Partner
practice is a quick and easy way for students to practice identifying and verbalizing the new
vocabulary. One partner says the word while the other gives the corresponding gesture. Or, one
partner gives the gesture, and the other says the corresponding vocabulary structure. Observe
and assess, and if students are ready, move on to the mini-story.

Successful Class stories:

Contain a controlled number of vocabulary structures. (3 structures per class story)
Are personalized! (In other words, contain ideas and humor as given by your students.)
Are interesting.
Incorporate culture whenever possible.
Include familiar characters and events: (student personalities, current or local events,
responses
from PQA, teachers, principals, or celebrities, professional athletes, etc.)
Include a necessary and frequently-used grammatical structure.
Contain something memorable: humor and/or exaggerated details; a silly or bizarre word.

PHASE 2:
Use the vocabulary in a story.
Like class stories, mini-stories give vocabulary meaning and context; They are a vehicle to
recycle the vocabulary structures, which were pre-taught during Phase 1 (Show, Tell, Read).

Mini-stories serve as a safety net of sorts, providing more meaningful and contextualized reps of
the target vocabulary. Introduce the story using visuals to accurately depict the storyline. Props,
puppets, live actors, large illustrations, overhead transparencies will appeal to visual learners, in
addition to keeping your students attention. If live actors are used to depict the story, make sure
explicit instructions are given about the emotions to be displayed, dialogue within the script,
exact locations of people and places in the story, specific movements, and so on. Coach
melodramatic acting!

Tell the Mini-story

Begin by telling the story as simply as possible. Tell and retell the story several times, adding a
few minor details each time you tell it. For example, add color, size and other adjectives,
adverbs, location, names, etc. Students must hear the story numerous times until they are able
to retell it and/or able to communicate naturally using the newly acquired language structures.

Use the following techniques to perpetuate (retell) the story:

1. Shift from storytelling to story-questioning: Ask yes/no and either/or questions. Tell a
portion of the story and wait for students to fill in the blanks with the appropriate word or phrase.
Ask short-answer questions. Make mistakes and wait for students to verbally make corrections.
Ask detail-oriented questions to make the story more interesting to students. Although the ministory is pre-created, it is still important for students to feel like they have some ownership in the
story.
2. READ the story!: Partners, groups or class read the story. Complete written extension
activities. Create extension activities.
3. Co-op Retells: Point to an illustration and have students tell that part of the story; Tell the
story one segment at a time with no details and have students add as many details as possible.
As you retell the story, assess constantly. Susan Gross encourages constant assessment by
teaching to the eyes. Students eyes will tell you if they understand, (dis)agree, are interested,
confused, bored, etc. Another easy evaluation technique is to focus on a Barometer Student, a
term invented by Blaine Ray. The Barometer Student refers to a student who is slightly below
average, roughly in the fortieth percentile. The acquisition rate of a Barometer Student is often
an ideal indicator of how to pace your class, as the rate is slow enough to keep the majority of
your lower students engaged and fast enough to avoid boring the top half of the class.

Partner Practice
Once students appear comfortable with the vocabulary/the story, initiate a partner practice. At
this stage, the purpose of partner practice is to encourage students to practice telling the ministory in a low-stress environment. Encourage student-partners to help each other, observe as
they tell the story, and be available to model vocabulary structure. Assess constantly as you
walk around the room and eavesdrop on their retells. Encourage students to self assess and
ask for partner assessments as well. Simply ask students to rate each other or themselves on a
scale of one to five. The goal is to achieve 80-80 in your classroom 80% of your students
should be able to retell the story with 80% accuracy. Once this is accomplished, an optional
activity may be to have students write the story (in their own words.)

OPTIONAL: Write the Mini-story

Writing the mini-story helps students prove just how much they have accomplished and
provides an outlet to use language creatively. However, it does little to enhance language

acquisition, because it is an output activity. Nevertheless, writing is an important skill that can
easily be developed through TPRS. The transition to writing is greatly simplified by doing a few
of the following activities with your students first: Read, read, read! Read the mini-stories
together. Read level-appropriate books together. Have students copy the story. Read the story
sentences out of sequence and have students rewrite them in the correct order. Read and
complete a variety of extension activities with the class. In addition to preparing students to
write, these input activities will also enhance students ability to retell the story and create
revisions.

PHASE 3:
Revise the mini-story and intensify acquisition.
Encourage Creative Use of Language
Creating story revisions and intensifying acquisition is the last step to TPRS. Revising stories
requires the language learner to transfer newly acquired language to other situations and/or
creatively use it in a different context. A revision may consist of a prequel to a story (what
happened before the story), a sequel (what happened after the story), an original story, a
flashcard story (created from a mixture of newly acquired vocabulary and recycled vocabulary),
a poem, a song, or an introduction to new grammar.
Beginning language learners typically need some direction and assistance when creating
revisions, but after hearing a few teacher-generated revisions, students will soon create and
retell on their own. Although beginners may not be able to tell a complete revision, they will
provide creative ideas and details to create an entertaining revision.
The following are other activities that will promote creative use of newly-acquired
language structures:
Create an episode to an ongoing soap opera after each new group of vocabulary items is
mastered.
Present a related cultural lesson or a thematic unit.
Incorporate technology with Internet research projects and Power Point story presentations.
And most importantly, read, read, READ!

Teach new Grammatical Structures

Revisions provide a perfect solution for introducing new verb forms and tenses. For example, if
the original vocabulary list included the verbs he is hungry and he eats, the revised vocabulary
list for the revision could be converted to introduce first person singular or past tense: I am
hungry, I eat or he was hungry, he ate. All grammar is treated as new vocabulary, and the entire
TPRS process is repeated from the beginning. Only one verb form/tense is introduced at a time,
and only mastered verbs are re-taught in a new form or tense. Practice the new vocabulary
(which in this case is a new form or tense), tell and retell the revision. Perpetuate (or milk) the
revision until 80% of students are able to retell with 80% accuracy, using the new grammatical
structures.
When each of the three steps to the method is incorporated into the language classroom, TPRS
aligns itself with the proven pedagogical principles supported by many respected experts,
including Asher, Krashen, Gardner, and Hunter. It is also compatible with Blooms Taxonomy:

 Knowledge: Knowing the literate translation of a word.

Comprehension: Understanding meaning and how/when vocabulary is used.
Application: Being able to use vocabulary appropriately in a story.
Analysis: The ability to determine appropriate social setting and context.
Synthesis: Creative use of vocabulary; circumlocution.
Evaluation: Revising, editing, paraphrasing, re-wording.
Each step follows a logical and pedagogically sound sequence. By following each one, you will
ensure that essential conditions are met for successful, rapid, and lasting language acquisition.

The 3 Steps of TPR Storytelling

Step 1 Establish Meaning
Write the English meaning on the board.
Gesture (younger students require gestures)
Personalize the vocabulary:
Ask questions using the new words.
Ex: If the word is a noun, ask if a student likes it. If the word is a verb, ask if he does it.
Show interest by asking follow-up questions.
Ask the entire group about the first student.
Invite reactions by entire group.
Ask similar questions of another student.
Compare and contrast students.
Always look for confusion (hesitation or no response) and use translation to clear it up.
Make sure that every student understands everything.
Show interest and enthusiasm.
Capitalize on the comparison between students to make a little story about them.

Step 2 Story
Get actors to dramatize the story. The actor performs after each statement.
Spend plenty of time on the story (do NOT hurry.)
Follow each statement with many questions. Use a variety of questions:
translation, low-level, open-ended, and creative.
Use translation to clarify grammar and structure. (Pop-up frequently throughout the story.)
Creative questions (that have no answer yet) invite unexpected or personalized
details.
Students must answer all questions. They respond to statements with Oh!
Use the information that you learned about students (in step 1) to personalize the story.
Recycle parts of the story.
Retell the story (without actors, or everyone acting with a partner, or illustrating) if you
need/want to.
Teach to the eyes! Look at the audience, not at the actors.
Enjoy the sparkle students.

Step 3 Literacy
Give students a printed story.
Students translate the story, (either as a group or one at a time.)
Make sure that students understand each paragraph.
Use translation to explain grammar so that grammar is tied to meaning, not to a grammar rule.
Discuss the paragraph in the language.
Relate the situation, characters, and plot to students.
Ask if they have ever been in such a situation.
Capitalize on the cultural information in the story.
Use the story to teach life lessons.
Give a short quiz on the reading.
Act out a scene from a novel.
Discuss character development, choices and values.
Repeat step 3 for as many readings as you have. Extended readings and novels
should be translated in this manner.
It is the teachers job to show enthusiasm and to be supportive at every step of every lesson.

Using TPR-Storytelling to Develop Fluency and Literacy in

Native American Languages
Gina P. Cantoni
This paper describes the Total Physical Response Storytelling (TPR-S) approach to teaching second
languages. TPR-S is an extension of James Asher's Total Physical Response (TPR) immersion approach to
teaching second languages that has been very popular with indigenous language teachers as it allows
students to be active learners, produces quick results, and does not involve the use of textbooks or
writing. TPR-S strategies utilize vocabulary first taught using TPR by incorporating it into stories that
students hear, watch, act out, retell, revise, read, write, and rewrite. Subsequent stories introduce
additional vocabulary in meaningful contexts.

This paper discusses TPR-Storytelling (TPR-S) as a promising approach to teaching a Native

American language to Native students who have not learned it at home. I am grateful to my
former student Valeri Marsh for the opportunity to examine TPR-S training materials and
strategies and for her input into this article.
An interest in exploring methodologies suitable for teaching indigenous languages and in having
teachers receive training was expressed by the Native educators who met in Flagstaff, Arizona, at
the First and Second Symposia on Stabilizing Indigenous Languages (Cantoni, 1996). Some of
the participants gave demonstrations of the Total Physical Response (TPR) in their small-group
meetings, and several teachers mentioned that TPR was used in their schools as an introductory
approach to Native language instruction.
What is TPR?
Popularized in the 1960s and 70s by James Asher (1977), TPR represented a revolutionary
departure from the audiolingual practice of having students repeat the teacher's utterances from
the very beginning of their first lesson and whenever new material was introduced later on.
Asher recommended that beginners be allowed a silent period in which they learn to recognize a
large number of words without being expected to say them. The vocabulary presented at this
level usually consists of action verbs and phrases such as "walk," "run," "touch," "point to,"
"give me," "go back," and the names of concrete items such as "floor," "window," "door,"
"mouth," "desk," "teddy bear," and "banana." About 150 words are presented in the first five or
six weeks, and at least three new terms per lesson can be expected to become part of a learner's
active vocabulary during any lesson, even though they may not say them until later.
The teacher begins by uttering a simple command such as "walk to the window," demonstrating
or having a helper act out the expected action, and inviting the class to join in. Commands are
usually addressed first to the entire class, then to small groups, and finally to individuals. When a
few basic verbs and nouns have become familiar, variety is obtained by adding qualifiers such as
"fast," "slowly," "big," "little," "red," "white," "my," and "your." Since the students are not
required to speak, they are spared the stress of trying to produce unfamiliar sounds and the
consequent fear of making mistakes. Stephen Krashen (1981) considers lowering the "affective

filter" an important factor in the language acquisition process. Although the teacher is
continuously assessing individual progress in order to control the pace of introducing new
material, this assessment is unobtrusive and nonthreatening. A learner who does not understand a
particular command can look at others for clues and will be ready to respond appropriately the
next time or the one after.
TPR is a continuous application of the "scaffolding" strategy (Vygotsky, 1986) with the teacher,
and then the class, supporting the learning of a new word by demonstrating its meaning and then
withdrawing assistance when it is no longer needed. For example, to teach the word "gato" for
"cat" the Spanish teacher may use a toy or a picture; later, the word "gato" becomes part of the
scaffolding for teaching modifiers such as "big," "little," "black," or "white."
During TPR, the teacher is always providing comprehensible input, the cornerstone of Stephen
Krashen's (1985) theory. New items are introduced within the framework of items taught in
previous lessons or available from the learners' preexisting knowledge. In teaching the word
"gato," the teacher is introducing a new label (an alternative to the label already available, i.e.,
"cat") but not a new concept--the learners are already able to identify the toy or the picture as
representing a certain familiar creature.
TPR has been proven very effective for the initial stages of second language instruction, but it
has limited usefulness for more advanced learning. It emphasizes commands, leaving out the
forms used in narratives, descriptions, or conversations, and it is predominantly teacher-initiated
and directed, with little opportunity for student creativity and little attention to individual
interests. More importantly, TPR promotes only the learners' receptive language skills and
ignores the productive ones, which are essential to real communication.
After a few weeks, some students spontaneously begin to give commands to each other. This
indicates readiness for a gradual evolution from the receptive to the productive mode. At this
point, TPR-Storytelling (Ray & Seely, 1997) provides easy-to-follow guidelines for further
progress towards more complex levels of language proficiency.
What is TPR-S?
The storytelling strategies of TPR-S utilize the vocabulary taught in the earlier stage by
incorporating it into stories that the learners hear, watch, act out, retell, revise, read, write, and
rewrite. Subsequent stories introduce additional vocabulary in meaningful contexts. The children
are already familiar with stories from other school and preschool experiences, and now they are
exposed to this familiar genre as the teacher presents it in a new language with an abundance of
gestures, pictures, and other props to facilitate comprehension. After hearing a story, various
students act it out together or assume different roles while their peers watch. The teacher may
retell the story with slight variations, replacing one character with another, and engaging
different students in the acting. Another technique introduces some conversational skills, as the
teacher asks short-answer and open-ended questions such as "Is the cat hungry?", "Is the dog big
or little?", and "Where does the girl live?" (Marsh, 1996).

Students are not required to memorize the stories; on the contrary, they are encouraged to
construct their own variations as they retell them to a partner, a small group, or the entire class,
using props such as illustrations, toys, and labels. The ultimate goal is to have students develop
original stories and share them with others. A whole range of activities may be included, such as
videotaping, drama, creating booklets for children in the lower grades, designing bulletin boards,
and so forth. At this point TPR-S has much in common with other effective approaches to
reading and writing instruction.
Both TPR and TPR-S are examples of language teaching as an interactive learner-centered
process that guides students in understanding and applying information and in conveying
messages to others. TPR as well as TPR-S apply Cummins' (1989) interactive pedagogy
principle. At first the children interact silently with the teacher and indicate comprehension by
executing commands and then by acting out stories. They are active participants long before they
are able to verbally communicate with the teacher and with each other.
TPR as well as TPR-S also apply some of Krashen's (1985) most valuable pedagogical
principles. The learners' affective filter is kept at a low level by a relaxed classroom atmosphere,
where the stress of performing and being judged is kept to a minimum. At the beginning of the
storytelling stage, the students' initial response is not oral, but kinesthetic: When they begin to
speak, the teacher responds to the content of their messages rather than to their grammatical
accuracy. In TPR as well as in TPR-S the teacher provides comprehensible input without using
L1; she relies on the learners' preexisting knowledge of the world and uses gestures, actions,
pictures, and objects to demonstrate how one can talk about it in another language.
TPR and TPR-S also make abundant use of the pedagogical strategy of scaffolding (Vygotsky,
1986). The teacher or a peer assists the learner during tasks that could not yet be performed
without help. The scaffold is removed as soon as it becomes unnecessary; new support is then
made available for the next challenge. Cooperative learning can be seen as a particular kind of
scaffolding provided within a group where students help each other (Steward, 1995; Tharp &
Gallimore, 1988).
How can TPR-S promote Native language learning?
Materials and guides for TPR-S are available for teaching Spanish, French, German, and English
as a Second Language. The procedures outlined in these sources could be adapted to the teaching
of any language, including Native American ones, if educators, school districts, and community
members wanted to engage in such a project.
Several Native American teachers and teacher-trainers have created TPR lessons to introduce
their tribal language to the children who have not learned it at home, and these efforts are usually
very successful; they allow the learners to indicate comprehension non-verbally, keeping the
affective filter low. However, these TPR strategies develop receptive language skills and ignore
the productive ones.
Many Native children can understand their tribal language because they hear it spoken at home.
These children can be very useful during TPR lessons, acting as assistants, demonstrators, and

group leaders. There is reason to rejoice over the fact that they can understand their elders and
appreciate their teachings and stories, but what will happen a few years from now when the old
people are gone and these children are grown up and should carry on the task of culture
transmission? If they can understand but not speak the tribal language, how are they going to
teach it to the next generation?
This situation is especially serious in the case of languages such as Hopi or Zuni that are spoken
only in a particular community, whose members cannot import speakers from other parts of the
world, a choice which is available to Hispanics, Slovenes, Chinese, and other groups. It is
essential that Native children learn to use their tribal language instead of just understanding it. In
some cases, their reluctance to speak may be owing not only to the pressures of an Englishspeaking society but also to unreasonable expectations of correctness and accuracy. Children
who have suffered ridicule or embarrassment because they mispronounced or misused a word are
likely to avoid the risk of further unpleasantness and take refuge in silence. This problem was
brought up repeatedly during the First and Second Symposia on Stabilizing Indigenous
Languages (Cantoni, 1996), and it was recommended that all attempts to use the home language
be encouraged and rewarded but never criticized.
The increasing scarcity of Native-language speakers has assigned the responsibility of Native
language instruction to the school, instead of the home or community. When the Native language
teacher is almost the only source of Native language input, and the instruction time allocated to
Native language teaching is limited, the learners are not to blame for their limited progress in
fluency and accuracy.
In addition, Native children face a more severe challenge than English-speaking children who are
learning French or Spanish. Research indicates that the extent to which comprehensible input
results in grammatical accuracy depends not only on the quantity, quality, and frequency of
available input, but on the "linguistic distance" between the learners' L1 and the target L2
(Ringbom, 1987). There is evidence that students learning Spanish through TPR-S made high
scores on national grammar tests, but Spanish is an Indo-European language, just like English,
whereas Native American languages have grammatical systems unrelated to those of English.
Consequently, Native language teachers who expect their students, or at least some of them, to
master the tribal language at a level of correctness that will satisfy the most exacting local
standards should provide them appropriate guidance, not just input. As Rivers (1994) has pointed
out, there is a crucial difference between comprehension and production. The meaning that a
learner constructs from input is drawn from semantic clues and is not stored in memory in its full
syntactic complexity. It is possible to comprehend and remember input with little attention to
syntax by relying on preexisting knowledge, context, and vocabulary (Van Dijk & Kirtsch,
1983). This phenomenon is known as "selective listening" and often occurs even when the
teacher responds to an ungrammatical utterance with one that models the correct form (Van
Patten, 1985). This kind of polite error correction, which is recommended for interactive
journals, does not necessarily work all the time for all learners; teachers might need to resort to
other forms of intervention, such as those described in the literature on the writing process.

In conclusion, educators interested in developing a Native language program or modifying their

existing one could explore what TPR-S has to offer for their particular situation. TPR-S
consultants could be hired by a school district to work with Native language speakers in
developing materials and lesson plans similar to those used for teaching Spanish or ESL.
TPR-S evolved from the grassroots efforts of interested and creative teachers rather than from
the application of theoretical models. Its reputation has spread by word-of-mouth, from one
satisfied practitioner to another, from one school to the next (Marsh, 1997). Training new
personnel to use this methodology is not difficult or excessively time-consuming.
TPR-S emphasizes a positive, collaborative, and supportive classroom climate in which Native
American children could develop increasingly complex skills in speaking, reading, and writing
their tribal language. The stories, illustrations, and recordings they could produce would be a
valuable addition to the scarce pool of Native-language materials available today.

Communicative Language Teaching: An Introduction And

Sample Activities
Ann Galloway, Center for Applied Linguistics
This digest will take a look at the communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages.
It is intended as an introduction to the communicative approach for teachers and teachers-intraining who want to provide opportunities in the classroom for their students to engage in reallife communication in the target language. Questions to be dealt with include what the
communicative approach is, where it came from, and how teachers' and students' roles differ
from the roles they play in other teaching approaches. Examples of exercises that can be used
with a communicative approach are described, and sources of appropriate materials are provided.

Where does communicative language teaching come from?

Its origins are many, insofar as one teaching methodology tends to influence the next. The
communicative approach could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had
grown dissatisfied with the audiolingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language
instruction. They felt that students were not learning enough realistic, whole language. They did
not know how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures, or expressions; in
brief, they were at a loss to communicate in the culture of the language studied. Interest in and
development of communicative-style teaching mushroomed in the 1970s; authentic language use
and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another
became quite popular.
In the intervening years, the communicative approach has been adapted to the elementary,
middle, secondary, and post-secondary levels, and the underlying philosophy has spawned
different teaching methods known under a variety of names, including notional-functional,
teaching for proficiency, proficiency-based instruction, and communicative language teaching.

What is communicative language teaching?

Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that necessitate
communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life.
Unlike the audiolingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the
communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise,
which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from
day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful
ways about meaningful topics.
Margie S. Berns, an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes in explaining
Firth's view that "language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship
with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context,
both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its

social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come
together to speak)" (Berns, 1984, p. 5).

What are some examples of communicative exercises?

In a communicative classroom for beginners, the teacher might begin by passing out cards, each
with a different name printed on it. The teacher then proceeds to model an exchange of
introductions in the target language: "Guten Tag. Wie heissen Sie?" Reply: "Ich heisse Wolfie,"
for example. Using a combination of the target language and gestures, the teacher conveys the
task at hand, and gets the students to introduce themselves and ask their classmates for
information. They are responding in German to a question in German. They do not know the
answers beforehand, as they are each holding cards with their new identities written on them;
hence, there is an authentic exchange of information.
Later during the class, as a reinforcement listening exercise, the students might hear a recorded
exchange between two German freshmen meeting each other for the first time at the Gymnasium
doors. Then the teacher might explain, in English, the differences among German greetings in
various social situations. Finally, the teacher will explain some of the grammar points and
structures used.
The following exercise is taken from a 1987 workshop on communicative foreign language
teaching, given for Delaware language teachers by Karen Willetts and Lynn Thompson of the
Center for Applied Linguistics. The exercise, called "Eavesdropping," is aimed at advanced
students.
Instructions to students: Listen to a conversation somewhere in a public place and be prepared
to answer, in the target language, some general questions about what was said.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Who was talking?

About how old were they?
Where were they when you eavesdropped?
What were they talking about?
What did they say?
Did they become aware that you were listening to them?

The exercise puts students in a real-world listening situation where they must report information
overheard. Most likely they have an opinion of the topic, and a class discussion could follow, in
the target language, about their experiences and viewpoints.
Communicative exercises such as this motivate the students by treating topics of their choice, at
an appropriately challenging level.
Another exercise taken from the same source is for beginning students of Spanish. In "Listening
for the Gist," students are placed in an everyday situation where they must listen to an authentic
text.

Objective: Students listen to a passage to get general understanding of the topic or message.
Directions: Have students listen to the following announcement to decide what the speaker is
promoting.
Passage: Situacion ideal . . . Servicio de transporte al Aeropuerto Internacional . . . Cuarenta y
dos habitaciones de lujo, con aire acondicionado . . . Elegante restaurante . . . de fama
internacional.
(The announcement can be read by the teacher or played on tape.) Then ask students to circle the
letter of the most appropriate answer on their copy, which consists of the following multiplechoice options:
a. a taxi service

b. a hotel

c. an airport

d. a restaurant

Gunter Gerngross, an English teacher in Austria, gives an example of how he makes his lessons
more communicative. He cites a widely used textbook that shows English children having a pet
show. "Even when learners act out this scene creatively and enthusiastically, they do not reach
the depth of involvement that is almost tangible when they act out a short text that presents a
family conflict revolving round the question of whether the children should be allowed to have a
pet or not" (Gerngross & Puchta, 1984, p. 92). He continues to say that the communicative
approach "puts great emphasis on listening, which implies an active will to try to understand
others. [This is] one of the hardest tasks to achieve because the children are used to listening to
the teacher but not to their peers. There are no quick, set recipes. That the teacher be a patient
listener is the basic requirement" (p.98).
The observation by Gerngross on the role of the teacher as one of listener rather than speaker
brings up several points to be discussed in the next portion of this digest.

How do the roles of the teacher and student change in communicative

language teaching?
Teachers in communicative classrooms will find themselves talking less and listening more;
becoming active facilitators of their students' learning (Larsen-Freeman, 1986). The teacher sets
up the exercise, but because the students' performance is the goal, the teacher must step back and
observe, sometimes acting as referee or monitor. A classroom during a communicative activity is
far from quiet, however. The students do most of the speaking, and frequently the scene of a
classroom during a communicative exercise is active, with students leaving their seats to
complete a task. Because of the increased responsibility to participate, students may find they
gain confidence in using the target language in general. Students are more responsible managers
of their own learning (Larsen-Freeman, 1986).

Communicative Language Teaching Features at Length

Finnochiaro and Brumfit (1983:91-93) compiled this list of CLT features way back in 1983 as a
means of comparing it to the Audiolingual Method. Below each feature in ]italics is the feature
of ALM to which it was being compared.
(1) CLT: Meaning is paramount.
ALM: Attends to structure and form more than meaning.
(2) CLT: Dialogues, if used, center around communicative functions and are not normally
memorized.
ALM: Demands more memorization of structure-based dialogs.
(3) CLT: Contextualization is a basic premise.
ALM: Language items are not necessarily contextualized.
(4) CLT: Language learning is learning to communicate.
ALM: Language Learning is learning structures, sounds or words.
(5) CLT: Effective communication is sought.
ALM: Mastery or "overlearning" is sought.
(6) CLT: Drilling may occur, but peripherally.
ALM: Drilling is a central technique.
(7) CLT: Comprehensible pronunciation is sought.
ALM: Native-speaker-like pronunciation is sought.
(8) CLT: Any device which helps the learners is accepted - varying according to their age,
interest, etc.
ALM: Grammatical explanation is avoided.
(9) CLT: Attempts to communicate may be encouraged from the very beginning.
ALM: Communicative activities only come after a long process of rigid drills and exercises.
(10) CLT: Judicious use of native language is accepted where feasible.
ALM: The use of the students' native language is forbidden.
(11) CLT: Translation may be used where students need or benefit from it.
ALM: Translation is forbidden at early levels.
(12) CLT: Reading and writing can start from the first day, if desired.
ALM: Reading and writing are deferred until speech is mastered.
(13) CLT: The target linguistic system will be learned best through the process of struggling to
communicate.
ALM: The target linguistic system will be learned through the overt teaching of the patterns
of the system.
(14) CLT: Communicative competence is the desired goal.
ALM: Linguistic competence is the desired goal.

(15) CLT: Linguistic variation is a central concept in materials and methods.

ALM: Varieties of language are recognized but not emphasized.
(16) CLT: Sequencing is determined by any consideration of content function, or meaning
which maintains interest.
ALM: The sequence of units is determined solely on principles of linguistic complexity.
(17) CLT: Teachers help learners in any way that motivates them to work with the language.
ALM: The teacher controls the learners and prevents them from doing anything that
conflicts with the theory.
(18) CLT: Language is created by the individual often through trial and error.
ALM: "Language is habit" so error must be prevented at all costs.
(19) CLT: Fluency and acceptable language is the primary goal: accuracy is judged not in the
abstract but in context.
ALM: Accuracy, in terms of formal correctness, is a primary goal.
(20) CLT: Students are expected to interact with other people, either in the flesh, through pair
and group work, or in their writings.
ALM: Students are expected to interact with the language system, embodied in machines
or controlled materials.
(21) CLT: The teacher cannot know exactly what language the students will use.
ALM: The teacher is expected to specify the language that students are to use.
(22) CLT: Intrinsic motivation will spring from an interest in what is being communicated by the
language.
ALM: Intrinsic motivation will spring from an interest in the structure of the language.

The Advantages of Communicative Language Teaching

Rebecca Belchamber

Introduction
As a teacher trainer working with international groups, I am frequently asked to include an overview of
communicative language teaching (CLT), and discuss ways of adapting materials to make lessons more
communicative or interactive.
Most groups are enthusiastic about the lesson opportunities which CLT offers. However, some also
indicated they felt constrained by the system under which they operated, especially those teaching in
settings which are particularly exam-focused. In addition, they queried the relevance of CLT to their
situation, where many of the students never used English outside the classroom. In contrast, I had
shifted across a spectrum of learners, enthusiastically taking CLT along with me as universally
appropriate.
Taking my colleagues' concerns on board, I began to question the appropriateness of CLT for some of
these diverse learner groups. This was supported by current reading on the topic; the titles of some
articles (see the Reference list) made me think I should give up the support for CLT then and there.
However, the more I read on the topic, the more I defended the continued suitability of CLT. It really
does benefit the students in a variety of ways.

Elements of CLT
Communication According to Ability
Whether CLT should be considered an approach or a methodology is a more abstract debate and here I
want to deal with its more practical aspects. In fact, it is those very elements, and the name itself, which
have been used to challenge the future relevance of CLT. Firstly, the label implies a focus on
communication and some might argue that this method can't be employed genuinely with low levels as
there is no authentic communication, due to a limited vocabulary and restricted range of functions.
Initially, many of a learner's utterances are very formulaic. As an aside, consider just what percentage of
our own English expressions are unique, and how often we rely on a set phrase; just because it is
delivered unselfconsciously and with natural intonation does not make it original. The aim is that the
length and complexity of exchanges, and confident delivery, will grow with the student's language
ability.
With the emphasis on communication, there is also the implication that spoken exchanges should be
authentic and meaningful; detractors claim that the artificial nature of classroombased (i.e. teacher created) interactions makes CLT an oxymoron. Nevertheless, a proficient teacher will provide a context
so that class interactions are realistic and meaningful but with the support needed to assist students to
generate the target language. We need to consider that producing language is a skill and when we learn

a skill we practice in improvised settings. For example, before a nurse gives a real injection, they have
punctured many a piece of fruit to hone their technique.

Accuracy as Well as Fluency

It might also be argued that the extent of some of the structures or functions may never be used in real
life. One example is adjective order; I have given students an exercise where they have to produce a
phrase with a string of adjectives, such as "a strong, orange, Norwegian, canvas tent." This is very
unnatural, as most times we only combine two or three adjectives. The other example is directions we
have students follow a map and negotiate exhaustive directions which suggest maze-like complexity. In
reality, most of us probably are only involved in a three-phase set of directions. In fact, what we are
doing with these exercises is exposing students to patterns which they can later activate.
This focus on accuracy versus fluency is one of the issues not often considered in a discussion of CLT.
The teacher decides to pay attention to one or other end of this band, depending on the type of lesson,
or the stage of a particular lesson, and accuracy is their choice if they want to deal with students getting
things right, take an opportunity for correction, or gauge the success of their teaching, for example.
Freer speaking involves more choice, therefore more ambiguity, and less teacher intervention. While
CLT implies the lessons are more student-centered, this does not mean they are un-structured. The
teacher does have a very important role in the process, and that is setting up activities so that
communication actually happens. There is a lot of preparation; accuracy practice is the bridge to a
fluency activity. By implication, CLT involves equipping students with vocabulary, structures and
functions, as well as strategies, to enable them to interact successfully.
The reference to strategies introduces the matter of grammatical versus communicative competence. If
we view the two as mutually exclusive, then we are likely to champion one over the other, in terms of
approach, curriculum or whatever else determines and defines our classroom teaching. In fact, Canale
and Swain's model of communicative competence, referred to by Guangwei Hu, includes four subcategories, namely grammatical, sociolinguistic discourse and strategic. They consider someone
competent in English should demonstrate both rules of grammar and use.

Promoting Learning
This returns us to the consideration of who we are teaching, and why. Are our students aiming to learn
or acquire English? Do they need to know lexical items and linguistic rules as a means of passing an
exam, or do they want to be able to interact in English? For those inclined to maintain the dichotomy
between learning and acquisition, and who argue that our primary focus is learners, CLT still has
relevance. It is timely to review an early definition of CLT. According to Richards and Rodgers, in
Guangwei Hu, CLT is basically about promoting learning.
Then again, Mark Lowe suggests that we follow Halliday's lead and drop the distinction between
learning and acquisition, and refer to language mastery instead. After all, if the students master the
language, they will certainly be able to perform better in exams, if that is their goal. In addition, those

who do see a purpose beyond classroom-related English will be better equipped for using the language
socially.

Motivation
One of the constant discussions in all my teacher training groups was how to motivate students. This
suggests that the focus on passing the exam was not always enough. Motivation relates to engaging
students but also includes confidence building. If there is a climate of trust and support in the classroom,
then students are more likely to contribute. One way of developing this is to allow pair-checking of
answers before open-class checking occurs. Another way is to include an opportunity for students to
discuss a topic in small groups before there is any expectation that they speak in front of the whole
class. Evelyn Doman suggests that "The need for ongoing negotiation during interaction increases the
learners' overt participation..." It is this involvement we need to harness and build on.
Sometimes the participation is hardly what we would define as 'negotiation', but merely a contribution.
For a few students, just uttering a word or a phrase can be an achievement. Indeed, some of the
teachers in the training sessions said this was the goal they set for their more reticent pupils. And I have
had students who, after writing their first note or e-mail in English, expressed their pride at being able to
do so.
If teachers consider an activity to be irrelevant or not engaging enough, there are many other tasks
which may be more appropriate, such as surveys, using a stimulus picture and prompt questions (Who...
Where... When...What...), or a series of pictures which need to be sequenced before a story is discussed.
In this respect, CLT addresses another area which constantly challenges teachers, the mixed-ability class.
When the lesson progresses to a freer-speaking activity, students can contribute according to their
ability and confidence, although I acknowledge both need to be stretched. So there is a challenge for the
more capable students, while those with an average ability still feel their effort is valid. This compares
with the less creative opportunities offered by some textbooks, where students read a dialogue,
perhaps doing a substitution activity, for example.
A basic responsibility is considering and responding to the needs of our students, so if the course book is
inadequate we need to employ the following steps: select, adapt, reject and supplement. Moreover,
because each class we teach has its own characteristics and needs, CLT will vary each time we employ it.

Conclusion
Too often, a 'new' approach appears to completely dismiss the previous one. This is not always the
intention, but probably more a result of the enthusiasm of practitioners exploring and implementing
fresh activities or opportunities. Also, throughout the CLT debate, there seem to be dichotomies which
are employed to argue for its irrelevance. It is evident that CLT has gathered a range of characteristics,
perhaps more through misunderstanding or by association, but it is actually not as incompatible with
other valued practices as it is sometimes made to appear. In practical terms, whether assisting mixedability classes, aiding motivation, leading from a focus on form to one of fluency, or supporting learning,
it has a lot to offer the EFL teacher.

Integrating corrective feedback into communicative language teaching

Abstract
The history of second language teaching has witnessed changing perceptions of corrective
feedback. Under the extreme view of communicative language teaching, which appears to be
prevailing in some communicatively-oriented classrooms, learning can only come about through
learner-learner interactive output practice. Form-focused instruction is deemed detrimental and
corrective feedback is consequently accorded low status in classroom processes. In this paper, I
examine the `equation' drawn between communicative language teaching and the exclusion of
form-focused instruction and error correction. Through a review and discussion of two recent
studies, I will show that it is both necessary and possible to integrate corrective feedback into
communicative language teaching.
Introduction
The history of second language teaching has witnessed changing perceptions of corrective
feedback (Celce-Murcia, 1991). As a matter of fact, views on the role of corrective feedback can
be highly diverse, even polarized. The Audiolingual Approach, for example, advocates minimal
or no tolerance of learner errors and suggests that every effort be made to prevent them. On the
other hand, the Natural Approach considers error correction unnecessary and counterproductive.
The latter view is also shared notably by the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
approach that has come to dominate L2 classrooms since the early 1970s.
CLT stemmed from an effort to shift away from an exclusive focus on forms manifest in the
previous structure-oriented approaches towards a focus on meaning and use. Its primary concern
is development of fluency. Over the years, in their pursuit of CLT, second language teachers in
general have not only transformed their way of teaching but more profoundly, altered their
conceptualization of teaching/learning. Springing out of the movement is also an extreme
conception that learning can only come about through learner-learner interactive output practice
and that teachers' responsibility lies in providing interesting activities which will get students
involved in using the target language. Form-focused instruction is deemed detrimental.
Corrective feedback consequently is accorded low status in classroom processes (cf. Horner,
1988).
The implicit `equation' that is drawn between communicative language teaching and the
exclusion of form-focused instruction and error correction can be, and has been, challenged.
Researchers (e.g. Lightbown, 1991; Harley, 1993; Lightbown & Spada, 1990) note that as a
result of an exclusive concern with meaning-based activities, teaching makes available to L2
learners input that lacks in quality. The extensive student-student interaction generates a lot of
output, which then turns into input for the students themselves. This kind of input is not a sample
of the authentic target language, but typically of other learners' interlanguage. The errors and
inaccuracies students hear are likely to reinforce their own misanalysis of the target language,
thus creating a vicious circle.

Second language acquisition research over the past three decades has equipped us with the
understanding that in learning an L2, learners develop, through intake, a language system called
interlanguage based on their experience with input, and this system enables them to produce
linguistic output. Input here refers to primary linguistic data, i.e., natural language data. In
second language classes that solely feature meaning-based learner-learner interaction, the role of
learner output supersedes the role of natural authentic input and pedagogical input (typically
comprising of form-focused instruction and error correction). This heavy reliance on learnergenerated output as classroom input appears to violate conditions that favor L2 acquisition and
may deprive learners of the opportunity to develop their language system in the direction of the
target.
The need to redress the imbalance is pressing and should be met, in my view, by making two
important `additions' to the teaching format referred to above. First, more natural authentic data
should be introduced to the classroom to improve L2 learners' exposure to the target language.
Second, provision of pedagogical input including form-focused instruction and error correction
should be integrated into classroom processes to facilitate L2 learners' knowledge construction
and enhance knowledge use. The focus of this paper is on incorporating corrective feedback into
communicative language teaching.
Integrating corrective feedback into communicative language teaching
Recent classroom SLA research (e.g., Spada, 1987; Lightbown & Spada, 1990; Lightbown,
1991; Kowal & Swain, 1997; Leeman, et al., 1995; Doughty & Varela, 1998; Long, Inagaki &
Ortega, 1998) has suggested that it is not only possible to integrate a focus on form with a focus
on meaning but that "accuracy, fluency, and overall communicative skills are probably best
developed through instruction that is primarily meaning-based but in which guidance is provided
through timely form-focus activities and correction in context" (Lightbown & Spada, 1990:443;
see also Long, 1991).
It is important to note that the `focus on form' in the communicative teaching context is to be
distinguished from the metalinguistic focus manifested in the traditional structural approach to
teaching. To characterize the difference, Long (1991) posits a distinction between focus on form
and focus on forms, according to which the traditional structural approach has a focus on forms,
whereas CLT, with its overriding concern with meaning, may have a focus on form, which is
incidental in nature. Two questions arise: 1) Why is such a focus on form necessary in CLT? 2)
How is it to be realized?
In CLT, communicative activities alone have been found to be insufficient for second language
acquisition (e.g. Harley, 1993; Swain & Lapkin, 1989; Leeman, et al. 1995). L2 learners trained
in the meaning-only environment are reported to suffer a low level of accuracy. This
environment generally has two noticeable inadequacies: deficient input and abundant learner
output. In many a CLT situation, as mentioned earlier, the pedagogical mission is typically
reduced to setting up student-student interactive activities which engage students mostly in
generating output. While learners under such learning conditions do not get adequate exposure to
natural authentic input, they are forced to concentrate on producing output using a linguistic
system that is underdeveloped, with little external assistance from the instructor. It is beyond the

scope of this paper to consider the consequences of lack of natural authentic input for learning,
but it falls within its concern to go into some of the theoretical ramifications that an emphasis on
learner-generated output has.
A natural focal point of any current theoretical discussion of learner output is Merrill Swain's
Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1993; Swain, 1995). Swain proposes four functions of output in SLA.
The first is that output in the sense of `practicing' enhances fluency. The second is that output
promotes `noticing'. Swain (1995) argues that:
In producing the target language (vocally or subvocally), learners may
notice a gap between what they want to say and what they can say, leading
them to recognize what they do not know, or know only partially .... This
may trigger cognitive processes which might generate linguistic knowledge
that is new for learners, or which consolidate their existing knowledge.
(p. 126; emphasis original)

The third function that Swain suggested is that output itself is a process of hypothesis testing.
The fourth is that metalinguistically it may provide a point of learner reflection that potentially
leads learners "to control and internalize linguistic knowledge" (ibid.).
It is clear that Swain, while recognizing that output as a process of practice contributes to the
development of fluency in SLA, associates its value also with the development of accuracy (see
functions 2, 3 & 4). Output is mostly deemed a potential means to raise metalinguistic
consciousness. What is more important to note in the latter connection is the implication that
output does not necessarily, in and of itself, improve accuracy. Considering her remarks such as
"under some circumstances, the activity of producing the target language may prompt second
language learners to consciously recognize some of their linguistic problems; it may bring to
their attention something they need to discover about their L2" and "sometimes this output
invokes feedback which can lead learners to modify or `reprocess' their output" (Swain,
1995:126; emphasis added). In a nutshell, the role of output in promoting L2 knowledge
development is not unconditional.
Swain has argued that output as a process forces learners to analyze language, over which
learners are in control. Of interest to the present discussion, however, is the question of how
much control a learner has over the process. It is true that in outputting, a learner would have to
create meaning and linguistic form, but is it equally true that he is simultaneously
metalinguistically aware of what he is producing? Research (e.g. VanPatten, 1990) reveals that
L2 learners, in particular early-stage learners, find it difficult to attend to form while attending to
meaning. Though findings like this come mainly from research on input processing, one would
naturally assume that they hold true of output processing, where the cognitive load is even
greater. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that when the focal attention is on meaning,
voluntary attention to form is highly limited.
Of the three accuracy-promoting functions, the `noticing/triggering' function, for Swain, is
inherent in the output process itself. My contention is, however, that while focusing on meaning,
there is a limit to how much an L2 learner can introspect the sufficiency of his own linguistic
resources. Also, even if the learner consciously recognizes at that point what he lacks, there is no

guarantee, for various reasons, that he will subsequently be able to tune himself in for a solution
in the future input, or even if he will, he may not be able to tell whether what he sees as a
potential solution is actually the correct solution. Instead, external feedback, I shall argue, may
significantly facilitate the fulfillment of the `noticing' function (see also Han, 1994; 1999; 2001).
It would seem necessary then that the Output Hypothesis be predicated on the condition that
some form of pedagogical intervention is in place. In a communicatively-oriented classroom that
heavily utilizes learner output as a source of input, it seems desirable to employ a pedagogical
technique, which can be called `output enhancement', parallel to the `input enhancement'
technique advocated by Sharwood Smith (1993) for instructed SLA. Output enhancement
requires that form-focused instruction and corrective feedback be integrated with meaning-based
activities such, to invoke Swain's words, to "stimulate learners to move from the semantic, openended, non-deterministic, strategic processing equivalent in comprehension to the complete
grammatical processing needed for accurate production" (Swain, 1995:128).
In the last decade, empirical evidence began to accrue from SLA studies of communicativelyoriented classrooms that shows benefits from combining focus on meaning with focus on form.
In the remaining part of this paper, we briefly examine two studies from an output enhancement
point of view.
The Kowal & Swain study
Kowal and Swain (1997) experimented, in a French immersion classroom, with two tasks that
were intended to assist learners in moving from semantic processing to syntactic processing. The
study had the underlying belief that in meaning-based context, through externalizing
metalinguistic knowledge followed up by negotiation of form among members of a group, L2
learners may develop their syntactic processing skills. The tasks the researchers attempted were
dictogloss (Wajnryb, 1990), and a cloze task. It is worth noting that both targeted linguistic
features that students had shown through their output that they had trouble with. The activities
were set up such that students worked in groups, engaging in negotiation of form and in
associating form with function. Analyses of the transcripts of the audio recordings, made while
the group work was in progress, showed that the activities on the whole did promote students'
syntactic processing. Working in groups forced students to pool their linguistic resources, and in
their effort to co-obtain the best answer, they had to convince each other by articulating a
justification for their choice of form. Kowal and Swain argued that this process characterized by
peer feedback helped to refine and develop students' linguistic knowledge. Importantly, it was
also admitted that both tasks would be incomplete if they were not complimented by teacher
feedback, because, as the researchers noted, the students were "not always successful in their
final choice" (Kowal & Swain, 1997:305; emphasis added). Output enhancement in this study is
therefore realized through peer feedback and, importantly, teacher feedback.
The Doughty & Varela study
Doughty and Varela (1998) experimented with corrective recast (i.e., repetition and recast) in an
ESL content-based classroom. Through a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest control group design,
they were able to establish correlations between corrective recasts and the students' subsequent

interlanguage development. The informants for the study were thirty-four intermediate ESL
middle school students from two different science classes, with twenty-one of them forming the
experimental group and thirteen the control group. The researchers targeted past tense reference
in the informants' oral and written versions of science reports, which typically summarized the
scientific problem, experimental procedures, hypothesis, results and conclusion. Focus on form
is realized through corrective recasts provided to the experimental group, in addition to science
content instruction, during three pedagogical lab sessions in four weeks between the pretest and
posttest, while the control group received the science content instruction only. An example of the
teacher's use of corrective recast is given below:
Corrective recast:
Jose: I think that the worm will go under the soil.
Teacher: I think that the worm will go under the soil?
Jose: (no response)
Teacher: I thought that the worm would go under the soil.
Jose: I thought that the worm would go under the soil.
(cited in Doughty & Varela, 1998:124)
Data collected included transcribed oral and written lab reports. A careful analysis of the data
from the pretest and the immediate posttest shows that the experimental group manifested
"significant and large gains" in terms of their past time use on both oral and written measures (p.
129). Moreover, a comparison of the results from the immediate posttest and the delayed-posttest
administered two months later indicates that the experimental group were able to retain the
linguistic gains exhibited on the first posttest.
During the study, Doughty and Varela made a number of important observations:
1. Focus on form should be brief and immediate and should be provided when more than one
student is involved in speaking;
2. some students are not comfortable with receiving more than one or two instances of correction
within one exchange;
3. teachers should be aware of their students' desire for comments on the meaning of the message
as well as on the correctness of the language; and
4. it is possible to incorporate a focus on form with no risk to the content curriculum as long as
the tasks are carefully created and incorporated into authentic content lessons already in place.
(pp. 136-137)

Taken together, these insights shed light on several critical issues pertaining to output
enhancement in a meaning-based context, such as feasibility, procedure, and timing of focus on
form.
Conclusion
In a context where there is a heavy use of learner-learner interactive activities, it is necessary to
enhance learner output with teacher corrective feedback. The studies discussed above show that
it is possible as well as beneficial to combine focus on form with focus on meaning. While SLA
researchers continue to search for strategies and techniques for achieving a maximum efficacy of
such a combination, L2 teachers who are operating in meaning-based classrooms should actively
embark on a trial-error approach, namely, "to take risks in their classrooms and to refine their
pedagogy based on the outcome of these risks" (Kowal & Swain, 1997:286).

Teaching Speaking: Suggestions for the Classroom

This article will assert that in speaking classes students must be exposed to three key items: (1)
form-focused instruction, that is, attention to details of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and
so forth; (2) meaning-focused instruction, that is, opportunities to produce meaningful spoken
messages with real communicative purposes; and (3) opportunities to improve fluency. Elements
of all of the above should be present throughout a speaking program, with emphasis on formfocused instruction at the elementary levels and, as the learners progress, on meaning-focused
instruction at the higher levels. This paper will also discuss different types of errors and how to
work with them to help learners.

Form-Focused Speaking
When learners first begin to speak in another language their speaking will need to be based on
some form-focused learning. An effective way to begin is to base speaking on some useful,
simple memorized phrases and sentences. These may be greetings, simple personal descriptions,
and simple questions and answers. These can be practiced in Repetition drills. The teacher says a
phrase or sentence several times and then asks the learners to repeat. Some learners can be called
on to repeat individually, and then the class may repeat together. Because it is helpful to give
learners quite a lot of repetition practice in beginning level courses, the teacher needs to find
ways of varying repetition activities to keep the learners interested. Here is a list of possible
ways to vary repetition. As an example, use the sentence "Where is the train station?"
1. The teacher varies the speed. The teacher says the sentence slowly and the learners repeat.
Then the teacher says the phrase a little faster until the phrase is being said at normal speaking
speed.
2. The teacher varies the way of choosing who is to repeat the sentence. The teacher says the
sentence and points to the first person in the first row to repeat it. The teacher says it again and
points to the second person in the first row. Then the teacher starts pointing at people at random
so that the learners cannot predict who will be the next person called on. This variation can also
include choosing individuals or choosing the whole class to repeat the sentence. Another
variation of this kind is to get the learner who just repeated the sentence to call the name of the
next person to repeat the sentence.
3. The teacher can vary the content of the sentence. That is, the teacher can substitute a word for
one of the words in a sentence. So instead of only saying "Where is the train station?" the
learners might also be called on to repeat "Where is the Post Office?" This is called a
Substitution drill.
4. The teacher varies the way the substitution is signaled to the learners, for example, on the
board there may be a substitution table like this:
Where is
the station?
the post office?
your house?
the bank?
the hospital?

At first the teacher points to the words "the station" on the board and says "Where is the station?"
The learners repeat. The teacher points to the next substitution, "the post office," and says that
and the learners repeat. After doing this for a while, the teacher just points to the substitution and
does not say it, but the learners have to say the whole sentence. After doing that for a while the
teacher does not point but just says the substitution.
5. The teacher may vary the way of choosing the substitution. At first, the teacher chooses the
substitutions in the same order as they are written on the board. Then the teacher may choose
them in random order so that the learners cannot predict what the next substitution will be.

The Role of Drills

The skill of a teacher in carrying out a drill lies in learning when to vary the activity so that the learners
do not become bored by it. Skilled teachers make continual, small variations so that the activity is always
challenging, smooth, and interesting. The activity can be taken a step towards a more meaning-focused
activity by getting the learners to choose their own words to substitute for words in the model sentence.

The 1970s saw the first steps away from (among other teacher-centered approaches)
audiolingualism, a method of teaching that sees the role of the teacher as "central and active . . .
[who] provides models, controls direction and pace" (Nunan, 1992, p. 195). In this methodology,
teacher-centered drill activities play a large role in the curriculum. With the rise recently of more
student-centered approaches -- ''which are characterized by the involvement of the learner, and
the utilization of information about the learner in all aspects of the curriculum" (Nunan, 1992, p.
144) -- repetition and substitution drills have come to be considered old-fashioned and (worse
still) not useful for language learning. While acknowledging the contribution that
audiolingualism has made, Stern (1991) essentially argues against its use: "It's theoretical base
was found to be weak. But also in practical terms its hopes had not been fulfilled. Empirical
research did not conclusively establish its superiority, and teachers using audiolingual materials .
. . complained about the lack of effectiveness of the techniques in the long run and the boredom
they engendered among the students" (p. 465). Moreover, on the role of the teacher in the
classroom, Widdowson (1992) writes: "It is widely accepted that is undesirable to force learning
into conformity with the teacher's preconceived ideas, and it is preferable for the teacher to adapt
to the learner rather than the reverse" (p. 261).
The use of drills, however, should be seen as merely one kind of form-focused activity that needs
to be balanced with other types of form-focused activities, as well as with meaning-focused and
fluency development activities. Drills play a useful part in a language course in helping learners
to be formally accurate in their speech and in helping them to quickly learn a useful collection of
phrases and sentences that allow them to start using the language as soon as possible. As their
proficiency and experience in the language develop, most of these sentences and phrases may be
re-analyzed and incorporated into the learners' system of knowledge of the language. Language
use based on memorization can be the starting point for more creative use of the language.

Meaning-Focused Speaking
In addition to form-focused speaking, language learners should also be exposed to and given
opportunities to practice and use meaning-focused communication, in which they must both produce and

listen to meaningful oral communication. An example of a meaning-focused activity for beginning

students is Speaking by numbers. Each learner is given a number and a topic. The topics could include
family, money, coming to school, a color, future goals, travel, work, and so forth. The learners can think
about their topics for a minute or two and then the teacher calls a number. The learner with that number
then says two or three sentences about his or her particular topic. The speaker then calls a number and the
learner with that number has to ask the speaker a question or two related to the topic just spoken about.
When the question is answered, the questioner calls a number and the person with that number asks
another question. This continues three or four times and then the speaker calls the number of a new
person who will speak about the topic that she or he was given.

This is a meaning-focused speaking activity because both the speaker's and the listeners'
attention is on the message being communicated.

Developing the Learner's Knowledge of Language Items

A problem in meaning-focused speaking activities is making sure that the activity is actually developing
the learner's knowledge of language items. There are several ways of using speaking to increase the
speaker's control of the language items.

1. The meaning-focused speaking activity follows some form-focused instruction. That is, the
teacher presents some new vocabulary or grammatical features, gives the learners some practice,
and then uses a meaning-focused activity to help the learners use and remember these items.
2. Before the learners speak on a topic or take part in an activity, they work in pairs or groups of
three of four to prepare. This gives the learners the chance to learn new items from each other.
Here is an example using a Same or different information gap activity. In this kind of activity the
learners work in pairs. Learner A has a set of small numbered pictures. Learner B has a similar
set except that while some of B's are exactly the same as A's, some are different. They should sit
facing each other so that they cannot see each other's picture(s). Learner A describes the first
picture and B listens and then says if her picture is the same or different. If it is the same they
both write S next to their picture; if it is different they both write D. Then Learner B describes
picture number 2 and they decide if the pictures are the same or different. After they have done
five or ten pictures, they can change partners so that Learner A works with a new Learner B.
Before the activity begins, all the Learner As can get together in groups and help each other
describe their pictures. All the Learner Bs do the same. When they have had enough preparation
and practice they form Learner A and B pairs and do the activity.
3. The learners are given topics to talk about. They prepare at home, using dictionaries, reference
texts, reading sources, and so forth. Here is an example called Newspaper talks. Each learner has
to choose a short and interesting article from an English language newspaper to present to the
class. The learner must not read the article aloud to the class but must describe the main points of
the article. The class should then ask the presenter questions.
4. Many speaking activities involve some kind of written or picture input in the form of a
worksheet. In the Same or different activity this is two sheets of pictures. In a Ranking activity or
a Problem Solving activity, the worksheet contains written data about the situation, what to do,
and possible choices. In a "Who Gets the Heart" activity, for example, a group of three or four
students must decide from a list of several possible candidates who is to receive the only

available heart for transplantation. None of the patients will survive without the new heart. They
are a Nobel Prize winner in medical research (a 59 year old male with no family), a homemaker
of three (32 year old female), an Olympic athlete (24 year old female, married with no children),
an Academy award winning film director (female, 37 years old, two children), and a 45 year old
homeless male. The students must rank in order which of these people is most deserving of the
heart. Then, each student presents his/her case to the group. Based on these presentations, and
the ensuing discussion, the group must choose one candidate for the transplant. Then, each group
must present its conclusion to the class as a whole.
The worksheets contain vocabulary and phrases that may be new to the learners and which will
be necessary or useful in the speaking activity. For example, in the Ranking activity, the
vocabulary in the list of items to rank will need to be used by the learners. Those items which
generate the most disagreement over the ranking will likely result in the greatest amount of
vocabulary learning. According to Joe, Nation and Newton (1996): "Negotiation of word
meaning indicates that an item is noticed and that the learner has a gap in his or her knowledge.
Items which [are] negotiated [have] a much greater chance of being learned than items which
were not negotiated" (p. 3). If the teacher gives careful thought to the placement of new
vocabulary in worksheets for speaking activities, there is a very good chance that the vocabulary
will be learned during the speaking activity. If the worksheet uses pictures, some of the pictures
or parts of pictures can be given labels that can be used in describing the pictures.
5. Some speaking activities encourage learners to ask each other about the meaning of unfamiliar
words or constructions. This seeking and giving of explanations is called negotiation. There are
similarities between this type of activity and the Same or Different activity in that each learner in
a pair or group has different pieces of information for completing the activity. These kinds of
activities are given lots of different names including jigsaw tasks, two-way tasks, information
gap, and so forth.
We have looked at five different ways of making meaning-focused speaking tasks contribute to a
learner's knowledge of language items. Language can be learned through production (speaking
and writing) as well as through reception (listening and reading), but this learning needs to be
planned.

Development of Speaking Fluency

Fluency in speaking is the aim of many language learners. Signs of fluency include a reasonably fast
speed of speaking and only a small number of pauses and "ums" and "ers." These signs indicate that the
speaker does not have to spend a lot of time searching for the language items needed to express the
message.

4/3/2 is a useful technique for developing fluency and includes the features that are needed in
fluency development activities. First the learners choose a topic or are given a topic with which
they are very familiar. The first time that learners use this technique it may be best if the topic
involves recounting something that happened to them. This is because the chronological order of
the events will make it easier to recall and repeat because the time sequence provides a clear
structure for the talk. The learners work in pairs. Learner A tells a story to Learner B and has a
time limit of four minutes to do this. B just listens and does not interrupt or question Learner A.

When the four minutes are up, the teacher says, "Change partners"; learner A then moves to a
new Learner B. The teacher says "Begin" and Learner A tells exactly the same story to the new
partner but this time has only three minutes to tell it. When the three minutes are up, the teacher
says "Stop. Change partners." With a new partner, Learner A now has two minutes to tell the
story. During the three deliveries of the same story, the B learners do not talk and each listens to
three different people. When the A learners have given their talk three times, the B learners can
now go through the same sequence, this time as speakers.
Research on this activity shows that the learners' speed of speaking increased during the talks (as
measured by the number of words per minute), the hesitations they make decrease (as measured
by hesitations per 100 words), and surprisingly their grammatical errors in the repeated parts of
the talk decrease and they tend to use several, more complex grammatical constructions in the
last of the three talks than they did in the first talk (Nation, 1989, p. 381).
The features in 4/3/2 that help the development of fluency are the same features that occur in
activities to develop listening fluency.
1. The activity involves known vocabulary, grammar, and discourse.
2. The learners have a high chance of performing successfully at a higher than normal speed.
3. There are repeated opportunities to do the same thing.

Here are other techniques to develop speaking fluency that involve the same features.
In the Headlines activity, students create newspaper "headlines" that will serve as the basis for
the speaking activity. The learners all think of an interesting or exciting thing that has happened
to them. Using a felt-tipped pen -- so that the writing is easily seen -- each learner writes a
newspaper headline referring to that event. The teacher should give some examples to help the
learners, such as "Burning Bed Brings Joy" and "Forgotten Shoes Never Return." Half of the
learners hold their headlines up for the rest of the class to see. Those not holding up a headline
go to hear a story behind the headline that interests them. Each story can be told to no more than
two people at a time. When the story is done, the listeners should circulate to a second headline
that interests them. The tellers will thus have to repeat their story several times. After there has
been plenty of opportunity to tell the stories, the other half of the class hold up their headlines
and, in similar fashion, tell their stories.
4/3/2 and Headlines rely on repetition of the same story to develop fluency. This kind of fluency
is useful for predictable topics that learners may need to speak about. For example, when
meeting other people learners may need to talk about themselves, about their country, about the
kind of food they eat, about their travels, about their interests and hobbies, and about their
experiences. Speaking fluency also needs to be developed for less predictable topics and the Say
it! activity is a useful way of doing this.
In Say it!, learners work in groups of about four people. First they read a Say it! text carefully
until they have reached a good understanding of it. They discuss their understanding of the text
to make sure everything is fairly clear. Then they do the tasks in the Say it! grid, which is a
collection of simple verbal tasks related to the reading (see the following example). One learner
chooses a square for the next learner to perform, for example square B2. The learner does this
task while the others observe and, when the student has finished, s/he calls a square, for example,
A3, for the next learner. This continues with some learners doing the same task several times and

with some tasks being done several times by different learners. Often the tasks are like role plays
and require the learners to use the vocabulary that was in the reading text, but to use it in a
different way. This helps the development of fluency by providing lots of associations with the
vocabulary used in the task, that is the associations from the reading text and its discussion, and
the associations from the Say it! role play. Although the Say it! activity does not involve large
amounts of repetition, it involves preparation by the learners. That is, the learners prepare for the
spoken task by studying the written text. This preparation should increase the fluency with which
learners do the spoken task.
The following is an example of a Say It! activity (Joe, Nation, & Newton, 1996, p. 6). The story
is called "Castaways Survived on Sharks Blood."
Three fishermen who drifted on the Pacific for four months told how they drank shark's blood to survive.
The fishermen from Kiribati told their story through an interpreter in the American Samoa capital of Pago
Pago after being rescued by the ship Sakaria. Kautea Teatoa, Veaieta Toanuea, and Tebwai Aretana
drifted 400 kilometers from home after their outboard motor failed on February 8. They said four ships
had refused to help during their ordeal. When they were picked up on June 4 they had eaten the last of a
one meter shark four days before and drunk all of its blood. "I have not prayed so much in all my life,"
Mr. Aretana said.
A
1.

You are Kautea. Say what helped

you survive.

You are Tebwai. Explain why you

2. were in the boat and what
happened after it broke down.
3.

You are Veaieta. Explain what

caused the problem.

You are Tebwai Aretana. How

did you feel when the ships
refused to help you?

You are a sailor on the

Sakaria. What did you do to
help the fishermen?

You are Kautea. How did you

feel when you caught the shark?

You are the captain. Explain

why you stopped.

You are the interpreter. Describe The journey was called an

the appearance of the three men. ordeal. Why?

Error Correction
Some learners may experience difficulty in pronouncing certain sounds and groups of sounds in another
language. Some Chinese and Japanese speakers of English, for example, have trouble with /l/ and /r/.
Some learners have trouble with the beginning sounds in the words "three" and "they." Giving too much
attention to the correction of pronunciation in the early stages of language learning can make learners
worried and reluctant to speak because of fear of making errors.

It is worth thinking about why errors occur, because this can help teachers decide what to do
about them. The study of errors and their causes is called error analysis.
For each cause listed below, suggestions for the teacher are given in square brackets.

1. The learner makes an error because the learner has not had sufficient chance to observe the
correct form or to develop sufficient knowledge of the language system. [Don't correct the
learner but give more models and opportunities to observe.]
2. The learner makes an error because the learner has not observed the form correctly. [Give a
little correction by showing the learner the difference between the correct form and the learner's
error.]
3. The learner makes an error because of nervousness. [Don't correct. Use less threatening
activities -- or, if and when appropriate, joke with the person/class/yourself to lighten the mood.]
4. The learner makes an error because the activity is difficult, that is, there are many things the
learner has to think about during the activity. This is sometimes called cognitive overload. [Don't
correct. Make the activity easier or give several chances to repeat the activity.]
5. The learner makes an error because the activity is confusing. Use of tongue twisters, for
instance, for pronunciation can be confusing. [Don't correct. Improve the activity.]
6. The learner makes an error because the learner is using patterns from the first language instead
of the patterns from the second language. [Give some correction. If there has been plenty of
opportunity to develop knowledge of the second language, then some time should be spent on
correction to help the learner break out of making errors that are unlikely to change. Errors
which are resistant to change are sometimes called fossilized errors and imaginative correction is
often needed to break the fossilization. If there has not been a lot of opportunity to develop
knowledge of the second language, correct by telling the learner what to look for when observing
people using the second language. This is called consciousness raising. It does not actually teach
the correct form but makes the learner more aware of what to look for to learn it.]
7. The learner makes an error because the learner has been copying incorrect models. [Correct
the learner and provide better models.]
This range of causes shows that the teacher should not rush into error correction, but should
consider whether the error is worth the interruption and, if it is, the teacher should consider
possible causes and then think of appropriate ways of dealing with the error.

Pronunciation Correction
The teaching and correcting of pronunciation to learners who are past the age of puberty is often a
difficult task. The audiolingualism method argues that native-like pronunciation is one of the most
important aspects of language proficiency. However, as Ueno reports: "The research on this issue
[whether specific instruction can improve students' pronunciation] is inconclusive. In a recent survey . . .
almost half of the recent experiments on this subject show no improvement in students' production of
target-language sounds" (Ueno, 1994, p. 1). There is some hope that specific pronunciation instruction
may be effective in improving students' perception or overall comprehension of the target-language.
Moreover, to use a sports metaphor, a beginning tennis player must "develop and automatize basic muscle
skills necessary to perform the new physical tasks. Similarly, a language learner must practice the new
motor skills involved in producing the sounds of the target language" (Ueno, 1994, p. 2).

The following are simple suggestions for correcting pronunciation.

1. Say "What?" and see if the learner is capable of self-correction.
2. Give the correct form for the learner to copy. If the learner cannot copy it after two or three
attempts, then some explanation and guidance may be needed.
3. Explain how to make the correct form and, if necessary, what is wrong with the error. For
example, to make the /th/ sound as in "then," say "Put your tongue between your teeth and make
a long sound." A variation on this is to tell the learner to look at what you are doing and say, "Put
your tongue like this."

Conclusion
In this paper it has been asserted that in speaking classes there must be (1) some attention to the formal
aspects of speaking such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and the appropriate use of the spoken
language; (2) opportunity and encouragement for learners to produce meaningful spoken messages where
the messages have real communicative goals; (3) opportunity for the learners to gain truly fluent use of
what is already known. There must be an appropriate balance of these three elements in a speaking
program. At elementary levels, emphasis should be placed on form-focused activities; at higher levels, a
correspondingly greater emphasis should be placed on fluency activities. All of these parts, however,
should be present at each stage of an effective speaking program.

HOW TO TEACH SPEAKING

Outside the context of any classroom, all children who are repeatedly exposed to language,
in normal circumstances will learn it unconsciously. Most adults can learn a language
without studying it. Though they may have more trouble with pronunciation and grammar
than younger learners, they may still be able to communicate fluently. Children and adults
who learn language successfully outside a classroom context seem to share certain
similarities. First of all, they are usually exposed to language which they more or less
understand even if, sometimes, they can't produce the same language spontaneously
themselves. Secondly, they are motivated to learn the language in order to be able to
communicate. And communication is mainly an oral business. And finally they have
opportunities to use the language they are learning, thus checking their own progress and
abilities.
All these features of natural language acquisition can be difficult to replicate in the
classroom, but there are elements which are no doubt worth imitating. Obviously enough
within the classroom environment students don't get the same kind of exposure as those
who are "picking up" the language. But we should try to work on motivation, language
exposure, maximized talking time and we should offer chances to use the language.
This module will deal with communicative (or conversational) skills, that is those skills a
speaker must possess when he or she wants to communicate something orally.
Communicative (conversational) skills
When we think about speaking, we mean when the students use any and all the language at
their command to perform some kind of oral task. The important thing is that there should
be a task to complete and that the students should want to complete it.
The reasons why it is a good idea to give students speaking tasks which provoke them to
use all and any language at their command are mainly three:
1) Rehearsal: when students have free discussions or conversations inside the classroom
they have a chance to rehearse having discussions or conversations outside the classroom.
Simply enough, when they meet a new friend from abroad the first conversation will be
about introducing oneself, one's own family etc. Having them take part in a role-play at the
lost property office allows them to rehearse such a real-life event in the safety of the
classroom. It is a way for students to "get the feel" of what communicating in the foreign
language really feels like.
2) Feedback: engagement in a speaking task which demands for the use of all and any
language at the students' command provides feedback for both teacher and students.
3) Engagement: completing a speaking task can be really motivating and give real
satisfaction. Many speaking tasks (role-play, discussions, debate, problem-solving etc.) are
intrinsically enjoyable in themselves and if planned carefully (by the teacher) and
completed successfully (by the students) contribute to increasing their self-esteem.
What is conversation?
Teachers often tend to assume that conversation in the language classroom involves
nothing more than putting into practice the grammar and vocabulary skills taught elsewhere
in the course. But if we want to teach conversation well, we need to know something about

what native speakers do when they have conversations. We have chosen to deal with
conversation here, because conversation is what normally occurs in everyday life, in the
contacts students will have with foreign friends or foreign people in general. With the term
"conversation" we refer to a spoken interaction between two or more people who don't
follow a fixed schedule. The purposes of conversation include the exchange of information,
the creation and maintenance of social relationships, the negotiation of status and social
roles as well as deciding on joint actions.
The basic unit of a conversation is an exchange. An exchange consists of two moves (an
initiating move and a response):
A. Would you like a cup of coffee?
B. Yes, please.
We can give a function to each move. In the case above we have offering (A) and accepting
(B). To do so we need to take account of factors such as who the speakers are and where
and when the conversation occurs.
An exchange or a series of exchanges are not necessarily the same thing as a conversation:
A. Excuse me?
B. Yes?
A. How do I get to the railway station from here?
B. Go straight on, then take the first turning on the right. The railway station is at the end
of the street.
Can you think of other examples of this kind?
The one above is not a conversation because the two speakers want to finish their business
as quickly as possible; on the other hand, conversation is open-ended and has the potential
to develop in any way. It is possible that the example above could contain a conversation if
B enquired about A's nationality and A told him the reason why he wanted to reach the
station. The potential is always there in real life. Unfortunately, many students never have
the confidence or opportunity to go beyond simple exchanges like the one above, so one of
the main aim when teaching speaking skills is to propose exercises and activities which
allow students to develop the ability to initiate and sustain conversation.
Conversation is such a natural part of our lives that many people are not conscious of what
happens within it. However, conversation follows certain rules which can be described.
During a conversation:
- usually one person speaks at a time;
- the speakers change;
- the length of any contribution varies;
- there are techniques for allowing the other party or parties to speak;
- neither the content nor the amount of what we say is specified in advance.
The two moves in an exchange are related to each other when the second utterance can be
identified as related to the first. These are called adjacency pairs. Some examples are:
A. Hello!
B. Hi! (greeting-greeting)
A. Are you OK?
B. Yes.
In some cases we can predict the second part of a pair from the first as in the first example.
In other cases there might be a variety of options.
Let's take a complaint. What are the different parts which might follow a complaint?

Here are some adjacency pairs where the second part is missing. Can you complete them?
What nationality are you?

Would you like something to drink?

Remember to record the film on Channel 5 for me this evening.

..
My head aches.
.
We need to think about ways of developing appropriate second parts to adjacency pairs
from the start. For example many drills require students to reply to yes/no questions with
"yes" or "no" plus a repetition of the auxiliary. We therefore get exchanges like this one:
A. Has Sandra arrived?
B. No, she hasn't.
What students do not often get are opportunities to practice other options, such as:
A. Has Sandra arrived?
B. There has been an accident on the motorway. She has just called to say she's stuck.
Another reason why students usually appear flat and unresponsive in conversation is the
tendency to encourage them to produce isolated sentences containing a target structure,
e.g. If I won the lottery I'd travel around the world.
We all should keep in mind that a minimal answer does nothing to drive the conversation
forward.
Many students have great difficulty in getting into a conversation, in knowing when to give
up their turn to others, and in bringing a conversation to a close. In order for conversation
to work smoothly, all participants have to be alert to signals that a speaker is about to finish
his or her turn and be able to come in with a contribution which fits the direction in which
the conversation is moving. We need to train students to sense when someone is about to
finish. Falling intonation is often a signal for this.
Besides, students often lose their turn because they hesitate in order to find the right word.
Teaching them expressions like Wait, there's more or That's not all as well as fillers or hesitation
devices such as Erm, Well, etc will help them to keep going.
As regards topics, we must keep in mind that different cultures talk about different things in
their everyday lives. Native speakers are very aware of what they should and should not
talk about with specific categories of people in their own language. That is why both
teachers and students need to develop a sense of taboo subjects if they are to avoid
offense.
Can you think of any taboo subject for English people?
Simplification in informal speech
Have you ever met a person who pronounces the individual sounds and words of English beautifully
but who still sounds very foreign? What's the reason, in your opinion?
In English the sound quality of a word, particularly the vowels and certain consonants,
changes depending on whether the word is said in isolation or as a part of a continuous
stream of words. Some of this is a result of simplification of informal speech owing to the

fact that English is a stress-timed language. This means that between two stressed syllables
there is the same interval of time.
Let's take two sentences:
1. I caught a bus.
2. It's a bus I caught.
Do they contain the same number of words or syllables?
What do they have in common?
The two sentences are the same length when spoken because they contain the same
number of stressed syllables (two each). This means that the unstressed syllables have to
be squeezed in. The vowels belonging to unstressed syllables very often become the weak
vowel represented by the symbol []. The weak vowel or "schwa" is the most common sound
in spoken English. Another peculiarity of spoken English is elision, that is the "missing out"
of a consonant or vowel or even both.
If you give each part of a word the same value (as it normally happens in Italian), this can
have a wearying effect on the native speaker listener. This was particularly true with Trinity
Exams last year. Students who were very accurate and whose vocabulary was rich but who
spoke, I would say, flatly, got lower marks than students who were far less accurate but
were able to reproduce the stress-timed pattern typical of the English language. This shows
that it is worth pointing out weak forms from the start for recognition and production.
Planning communicative activities
Many students repeatedly say that their main purpose in learning English is to be able to
speak. Nevertheless, most of them don't talk readily in class and the "discussion lessons" in
which the teacher does most of the talking are still too prevalent.
Pause and consider: when you were a student, did you take part in any lesson which dealt with
discussing a specific issue? Did you talk a lot? Who talked the most?
As a teacher, have you ever favored discussion in class (obviously using L2)? Were your lessons
successful or were you not satisfied with them? In either case which were the issues you discussed?
If you find that lessons where discussion took place were not successful as the teacher did
most of the talking, consider if the students were prepared for the discussion or fluency
activity. Preparation is a vital ingredient for success. Students need to be oriented to the
topic. You just can't enter the classroom and say: Today we are going to talk about ethnic
cleansing through the centuries (the issue may be relevant to a fifth-year class, though).
Empathize with your students: if you were one of them, how would you feel? Why would you rather sit
quietly in the back row hoping your teacher takes no notice of you than engage in a passionate attack
against ethnic cleansing?
Some simple techniques which can be used to prepare students to discuss a particular topic
are the following:
- the use of audio/visual aids to arouse interest;
- a general orientation to the topic: a short text, questionnaire, a video extract. (This prespeaking task must never be too long but it is recommended);
- exercises focusing on key words needed for a task.
Students may need to be oriented to the task. The general rule is to formulate tasks in
terms students can understand and make sure that the instructions are clear.

Record yourself while you are giving instructions for a speaking activity. Listen. Were the instructions
clear? How would you modify them?
One possible paradigm for instruction-giving is as follows:
- Think through instructions from the point of view of the student.
- Include only the essential information in simple, clear language.
- Insist on silence and make sure you can be seen. Make eye-contact.
- Use demonstration and gestures where possible to go with your explanation.
- Make sure the students have understood what to do. Do this by asking for a
demonstration or for an answer to a question which proves understanding. A yes/no answer
to a question like Do you understand? Are you with me? is not particularly revealing.
Gower and Walters state that "the way you give instructions indicates the way you exercise
control and your attitude to the group Generally students () would not appreciate you
trying to be more polite. It would be time-wasting and slow things down and would involve
you in more complicated language than they can readily understand".
What is your view?
What has been said so far as regards instructions concerns all the other skills we are going
to deal with in the following modules.
Last but not least is the choice of the topic to discuss. Students are sometimes not
motivated to talk because they lack involvement in the topic. However, even where
students admit interest, they may be unwilling to talk about it in English because they lack
the linguistic resources. It is a good idea to talk about things which are within the students'
experience or which they think they might influence their future lives or attitudes. I am
thinking of the terrorist attacks to the U.S. last year: the students were motivated and
involved to speak about what had happened because they felt it was something that was
linked to their hopes and fears for the future.
One idea to help students go is finding the topic to discuss but instead of discussing it under
a general perspective, you could try setting a specific related problem. Let's take, for
example, the new war the American President would willingly wage against Iraq. You could
divide the class into two groups, one in favor of a military response to overthrow Iraqi
dictator, Saddam Hussein, the other more careful and prone to turn to diplomacy and
intelligence instead. Give them some articles with different viewpoints and the results of the
poll conducted among Americans and tell them they must decide (and agree) on how to
cope with this crucial issue: going to war or relying on intelligence and diplomacy?
When dealing with speaking activities, it is important to ensure that the students develop a
sense that they are making progress. Often students do not realize just how much more
confident and fluent they are becoming. One reason may be that they may rarely get the
opportunity to take a leading role in conversation; it is well worth trying, then, to program
activities and pair work in which brilliant students have to sustain a conversation with those
at lower level, in order to give them the experience of being the driving force in a
conversation. This is particularly important in view of the consolidation of self-esteem,
which we must never forget when dealing with teenagers.
Getting students to compare their current efforts with recordings made in the earliest stages
of the course is another way of boosting confidence.
In many cases students will have external objectives such as the oral examinations run by

organizations such as Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate and Trinity College. It is

therefore useful to show the extent to which students are making progress towards their
examination objective by including an element of exam practice in the program. This is a
possible approach to how this can be set up:
- make your students fully aware of what a satisfactory performance in the examination
involves. For example, show them a film of a Trinity exam interview, commenting on the
mastery of language but also on fluency and on the examiner's gestures and fillers;
- an identification of areas which are critical for a good performance in the exam might then
be followed by controlled practice of exam-type tasks;
- you should also give your students practice in exam conditions. Feedback from these tasks
is particularly valuable in that it fosters self-evaluation and improvement.
Towards communicative competence
According to William Littlewood there is a continuum of classroom activities to promote
communicative competence:
Control Performing memorized dialogues
Contextualized drills
Cued dialogues
Discourse Chains
Role play
Improvisation
Creativity
Step 1: Controlled activities
Although conversational competence can only come from fluency activities or natural
language interaction outside the classroom, there is an argument for the use of controlled
activities which help students develop confidence as well as the ability to participate in and
maintain simple conversations.
Remember your first English lessons. What kind of student were you? Were you always ready to raise
your hand to be invited to speak in the foreign language or did you hope the teacher didn't see you?
Many students have to overcome a psychological barrier before they are prepared to speak
in the foreign language. Some students feel uneasy when they have to speak in the
classroom situation because there is always an audience, others contribute in the sheltered
environment of the classroom but are at a loss when they have to use the language outside.
A few prefer not to speak at all and are then denied opportunities for practice.
Within the classroom a major source of threat against speaking is the individual's perception
of himself/herself and the other students. Threat reduction is possible by building up
personal security through the use of getting-to-know-you activities which promote trust as
well as articulation activities3 which give the opportunity to use English sounds in a safe
environment.
Getting-to-know-you activities
They are meant to build a positive atmosphere of trust within a group.
CHAIN NAMES
LEVEL Any level (including beginners) (from A1)
TIME 5-10 minutes

AIM Introducing students to each other

PREPARATION None
PROCEDURE
1. Ask the students to sit in a semi-circle and nominate one student to introduce
himself/herself.
2. The person next to him/her must then repeat his/her name, and then introduce
himself/herself.
3. Ask your students to repeat this procedure around the semi-circle, each one repeating
the name of the person before them and then saying their own name. For example:
A. I'm Roberto.
B. Roberto, I'm Paola.
C. Roberto, Paola., I'm Francesco.
D. Roberto, Paola, Francesco, I'm Giulia.
More advanced students might tackle the following:
A. I'm Francesco. I'm from Mestre.
B. He's Francesco. He's from Mestre. I'm Bianca, and I'm from Marcon.
C. He's Francesco. He's from Mestre. She's Bianca. She's from Marcon. I'm Piero, and I'm
from Mirano.
REMARKS 1. Twelve represents a maximum number for this activity. (Split the class into
two semicircles if the students are more.)
2. You should always take a turn to show you are learning too.
GUESS WHO
LEVEL Elementary to intermediate (A2 to B2)
TIME 15-20 minutes
AIM Students are given statements of personal information about other students and they
have to ask questions in order to establish the person's identity.
PREPARATION Have available enough small pieces of paper for the whole class.
PROCEDURE 1. Give each of your students a piece of paper and ask them to write four facts
about themselves. These can be anything they choose, e.g. I was born in February, I
own a bicycle, I like Limp Bizkit etc. as long as the statement is true.
2. Tell the students to fold their pieces of paper and pass them anonymously to the front of
the class.
3. Collect them together and then redistribute them so that each student has personal
information about another student.
4. Once the students have had a chance to look at the personal information, tell them that
they will have to find out whose information they have by turning the statements into
questions, and then asking other students those questions. You can exercise control over
the activity in a variety of ways:
- by deciding on the form of the question which is allowable, such as Who was born in
February?;
- by deciding whether to nominate students to speak or to allow them free choice;
- by deciding whether or not to allow students to move about.
5. Once you have decided on the rules for the activity you can set it in motion. The activity
ends when everybody has found out whose personal information they have.
REMARKS If the initial statements were collected in the previous lesson, or copied out two
or three times, you could distribute more than one set of information to each student. This
would be needed to make a mingling activity more successful.
Focus on the "Guess who?" activity. What kind of practical problems may arise? How would you cope
with them?

Articulation activities
When students come to speak in a foreign language they often find themselves inhibited by
the prospects of having to make what to them are strange and even comic sounds. One way
to tackle this problem is to give students the opportunity to experiment with sounds.
LISTEN AND RECORD
LEVEL Elementary and above (from A2)
TIME 15-20 minutes
AIM For students: making a recording after listening carefully to a taped model.
PREPARATION Select a natural model for students to imitate.
PROCEDURE Ask the students to listen to the tape and to repeat any of the utterances they
have heard, until they are ready to be recorded. The activity is self-directed, but you should
be available for consultation. The finished product can be a subject of feedback and
evaluation.
REMARKS The activity is self-regulatory. This is important if students are not to be
threatened by having to repeat something they feel uncertain about. This activity also
fosters the notion of rehearsing what we are about to say, something many people do in
their own language, anyway.
Dialogue building
The use of cues or prompts to build up dialogues is a commonly-used technique. The cues
or prompts determine the content of what is said, and dialogue building activities can range
from being highly controlled to very free. Dialogue building is not a substitute for fluency
work, but used sparingly it allows the possibility of giving weaker students a chance to say
something.
Go through a course-book and find an activity of this kind. Send it to our forum saying whether it is a
highly controlled one or a free one. Use a ranking scale where 1 stands for highly controlled, 5 very free.
Gambits
In the early stages of conversational development students can be taught to take the part
of the person who responds to what somebody else has said, by producing an appropriate
response or "gambit".
Here's a list of what we might teach:
1. Language to indicate the speaker's agreement with what has been said:
- Yes, it is.
- Yes, that's right.
- Of course, it is.
- Quite, absolutely true.
- Yes, I do / Yes, he was / Yes, they were.
2. Language which indicates polite disagreement:
- Well, not really.
- Not quite, no.
- Perhaps not quite as bad/good/difficult as that.
- Em, I don't know.
3. Language to indicate possible doubt:
- I'm not quite sure.
- Really?
- Is that right?
- Is that so?

- Are you sure?

4. Language to provide positive and negative feedback:
- Great!
- That's nice.
- Very nice indeed (good, clear, pretty)
- Really nice.
- Sounds lovely! (informal)
- Not very nice.
- No at all nice/clear
- Very nasty indeed (disagreeable, bad, noisy)
- Sounds awful. (informal)
5. Language to encourage confirmation and more information:
- Is that right?
- Really?
- No kidding? (informal)
- You're not!
One way of getting students used to the function of short responses is to build them into
drills. Although such practice is semi-mechanical students enjoy the challenge of getting the
stress and intonation of the short response right. The important thing is not to use drills too
extensively.
Step 2: Awareness activities
Students need to become aware of what native speakers do in conversation if they are
themselves to achieve communicative competence in the target language. The focus of the
awareness activities will be then on promoting the following issues:
- the ability to "sound" English by drawing attention to critical elements which can be
usefully imitated (weak forms);
- development of the ability to interpret what is being said;
- a feeling for what is appropriate in conversation;
- awareness of strategies used to further conversation;
- awareness of the target culture.
Awareness activities can be used from the earliest stages of learning.
Observation tasks
They are used to encourage students to become sensitive to particular features of
conversation. Observation should always be directed through the use of task sheets and
these can be used to focus on:
- audio recordings of people talking;
- video recordings of people talking;
- conversations as they occur in real time.
The simplest observation tasks require the observer to mark the presence or absence of a
particular feature.
ENCOURAGING NOISES
LEVEL Elementary and above (from A2)
TIME 15-20 minutes
AIM Making students sensitive to expressions which encourage the other speaker to
continue.

PREPARATION Select an audio or video tape that contains examples of this type of
expression. Hand out the task sheet below to the students.
TASK SHEET
Listen to the extract of people talking. Make a tick () next to each of the expressions in the
list whenever you hear one of the speakers using it.
Really? Uh huh.
Does He? Is it?
Is that right? Yes.
That's nice. I see.
How interesting. Mmmm.
PROCEDURE 1. Introduce the task so that the students get some idea of what they are
looking for.
2. Give out a copy of the task sheet to each student.
3. Play the tape two or three times before focusing on the specific expressions in context.
Sensitivity to the sound system
How often do you notice, focus on and/or correct the following in what your students say?
- Phonetic confusion (pin vs. bin)
- Problems with consonant clusters (str or nch)
- Interference from the written form (half)
- Failure to use the weak form
- Incorrect word stress
- Incorrect intonation
If students are to make themselves easily comprehensible, there is a need to work on their
pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation from the start. Remember that lengthy but
infrequent attention to stress and intonation is less effective than short tasks that are built
into the overall teaching program and often as introductory "warming up" activities, end of
lesson relaxers, or simply as and when the need arises in response to errors.
Cross-cultural awareness
If we accept the fact that language is embedded in culture, then some elements of crosscultural training are inevitable and the inclusion of some cross-cultural work in the teaching
of communicative skills would seem to offer the following advantages:
- cross-cultural issue can generate discussion in their own right;
- knowledge of why people in the English culture behave in certain ways should make native
speakers easier to interpret;
- a sensitivity to the ways social norms operate in other languages should make the learning
of certain areas of language (such as politeness formulae) easier;
- If students become aware of issues such as social taboos, they are less likely to cause
offense by breaking them. Besides, they would begin to fall into the category of foreigner
that native speakers find easy to talk to.
CULTURE SHOCK!
LEVEL Pre-intermediate and above (from A2/B1)
TIME 25-30 minutes
AIM For students: discussing the problems people encounter when they have to live in a new
country for a period of time.
PREPARATION Make photocopies of the task sheet below.
PROCEDURE 1. Introduce the topic and give out a task sheet to each student.
2. Divide the students into small groups after they have had the chance to complete the
task individually.

3. Chair a feedback session to see what generalizations emerge. Remain as neutral as

possible throughout.
4. If students have not had experience of living in a foreign country, you can ask them
to imagine how strangers might feel.
REMARKS If students going to an English-speaking country to study English realize that
settling-in problems occur anywhere, learning should be promoted.
TASK SHEET Here are some difficulties people encounter when living in a new country.
Please indicate with a tick () how important each one has been or would be for you.
Of very great importance
Of great importance
Of some importance
Of no importance
1. Differences in the weather
2. Being away from the family
3. Differences in the food
4. Differences in the way people make friends
5. Transportation problems
6. Getting used to new ways of learning
7. Adjusting to new ways of doing things, e.g. shopping
8. Difficulties in communicating one's own ideas
9. Different living conditions
10. Different social customs
11. Getting newspapers and magazines from home
12. Meeting people from the same country
13 Knowing what to do in everyday situations
14. Other (please specify)
Step 3: Fluency activities
The communicative needs of the average foreign student fall within a limited range of
purposes, the most important of which are:
- the maintenance and development of social relationships;
- information exchange;
- co-operative problem-solving in English;
- expressing ideas and opinions.
If students are to achieve communicative competence the practice tasks they are given
must:
- provide the experience of using English in real time (in real life the interlocutor does not
wait for the right or appropriate answer);
- offer them the chance to express their own feelings and points of view;
- provide the opportunity of using the language for a specific purpose.
It is also important that the tasks are culturally appropriate and perceived as relevant by
the students.
The successful introduction of fluency activities to a class which has not encountered them
before usually requires an element of learner training. This is because the students may
perceive that the burden is placed on them as it is the students who initiate and determine
what they want to say (even if within a set of guidelines) and feedback can be delayed as
the teacher keeps a low profile throughout the activity to allow the students to express
themselves freely. Then it is important, especially with adolescent learners, that learner
training covers the why and the how of what the students are being asked to do. The teacher
can simply point out the ways in which fluency activities help to promote the objective of
oral competence by forcing the learners to use the English they have in their heads. The how

refers to the fact that students may not know what is expected of them during the activity.
It is a good idea, then, that they perceive elements in common with what they have been
used to doing, for example the way of giving instructions for an activity.
In class students very often revert to using L1 in the execution of fluency activities if they
are not under scrutiny by the teacher. Some of the reasons for this problem include:
- social unease at using a foreign language with their peers;
- perceiving the task as being difficult to complete in any language;
- becoming affectively involved, that is perceiving a genuine need to use the easiest way
of communicating about the solution to the task.
How would you cope with this problem?
First you must give a reason for using English in the completion of a task, not simply telling
them to do it in English, but making it purposeful. Then at an early stage tasks must be
short and relatively easy. The activity should never appear stressful to the students. You
should praise the students who make the effort to use English and make clear that for this
particular type of exercise errors are not so important.
Sharing
A great deal of motivating language practice can be generated by asking students to talk
about themselves, to share their private store of experience with one another, providing
they have a framework in which to do so. The framework, especially in the early stages,
should limit the exchanges to quite simple factual information. Such exchanges constitute a
natural information gap activity in which all students are able to participate. The activity
that follows is a very simple one aimed at introducing students to fluency activities.
I HATED MATHS - DID YOU?
LEVEL Elementary and above (from A1)
TIME 25-30 minutes
AIM Introducing students to fluency activities
PREPARATION Prepare a task sheet along the following lines, and make photocopies.
TASK SHEET
Look at this list of subjects we study in school:
English
Geography
Physical Education
Chemistry
Italian literature
Mathematics
Physics
History
Art
Work individually for five minutes. Choose one of the subjects you particularly like and list
three reasons for liking it. Choose one of the subjects you particularly dislike and list three
reasons for disliking it. Now go round the class and find out if anyone likes or dislikes the
same subjects as you. Find out the reasons people gave for liking or disliking a subject and
make a list under the headings below:
Reasons for liking a subject Reasons for disliking a subject
PROCEDURE
1. Warm your students up for the task by getting them to list the subjects they did in
school. This will check that they know the name of the subjects in English.

2. Give each student a task sheet and explain that they have a maximum of 15 minutes to
go around the class. When they have finished, run a feedback session for the whole class
and ask questions such as:
- Who likes/dislikes the same subjects?
- What are the most common reasons for liking/disliking particular subjects?
3. Get the students to expand and comment on the reasons given.
Ranking activities
In ranking activities students are required to put the items from a given list into an order of
importance or preference. This rearranging phase is usually followed by a period of
discussion when students explain or defend their choice. One of the best known of these
activities is "Castaway" in which students have to choose the most essential items to
survive on a desert island for three months. A standard procedure for ranking activities is as
follows:
1. Familiarize the students with the task through oral presentation. Arouse their interest and
go through key words.
2. The students work individually and write down their solutions. Set a time limit.
3. The lists are compared and discussed in small groups.
EUREKA!
LEVEL Pre-intermediate and above (from A2)
TIME 30-35 minutes
AIM Promoting discussion about inventions
PREPARATION Put the following list of inventions in random order on a handout or OHT. Do
not include the dates.
Gunpowder 1000
Atomic bomb 1945
Wheel 3000 BC
Screw 200 BC
Paper 105
Printing 1440
Microscope 1608
Telephone 1876
Motor car 1885
Airplane 1903
PROCEDURE
1. Ask the students to work in pairs to decide on the approximate date for each of the
inventions. When they have done this, ask them to put the inventions in the order of their
appearance, with the earliest invention first. Allow them to check the
answers with you.
2. Now ask each pair to choose from the list three inventions that have had the most
positive effect on civilization, as well as the three that had the most negative effect.
They should discuss their choice with another pair and agree on a joint list.
3. Finally, chair a feedback session in which each group presents its list. See if the
class can come to a consensus.
REMARKS Students are likely to have different interpretations of the words "positive" and
"negative". This is worth exploiting, so allow them to settle the argument themselves.
Role plays
Role plays can range from highly controlled activities - in which all the content is supplied to
student - to full-scale simulations in which participants determine what they will say on the
basis of background information and the role they are given.

Feedback
Evaluation of the success or failure of conversational performance is not an easy job. In
conversation a variety of factors, including the speaker's accent, control of grammar and
vocabulary, as well as overall fluency, all contribute to any impression of the performance.
The objective of feedback is to give students the information they need to improve on their
performance. Areas for feedback in activities aiming at the development of communicative
skills include:
- grammar;
- appropriateness of vocabulary and expressions;
- fluency;
- pronunciation;
- non-linguistic factors affecting communication.
Feedback needs to be staged and selective if it is to avoid demoralizing the students. To
achieve this teachers need to decide on the areas of communicative performance most
relevant to their students. Once the decision is made, it is a question of focusing on the
chosen areas in turn until the students reach the required performance level. To assist this
process, teachers need to be continually aware of student performance and progress. One
way of doing this might be to keep a record card for each student similar to the one below:
Name Date Nature of task
(short talk etc.)
Grammatical correctness
Appropriateness of vocabulary
Fluency and pronunciation
Overall performance
Another way might be to use a tape recorder during speaking activities. This way it gets
easier for the teacher to identify areas of weakness which can form the basis of subsequent
lessons focusing on accuracy, the presentation of new language, etc. Other advantages of
using tape recordings of students at work include:
- the opportunity for students to hear again their own performance;
- the opportunity to look objectively at how students develop over a period of time.
It is important for teachers to correct mistakes made during speaking activities in a different
way from the mistakes made during a study exercise. When students are repeating
sentences trying to get their pronunciation right, then the teacher will often correct
(appropriately) every time there is a problem. But if students are involved in a passionate
discussion about whether smoking should be banned anywhere, the effect of constant
interruption from the teacher will destroy the conversational flow, thus mining the purpose
of the speaking activity.
It is a good idea to watch and listen while speaking activities are taking place, noting down
things that seemed to go well and times when students couldn't make themselves
understood or made important mistakes. At the end of the speaking activity the teacher can
write the mistakes on the board or on a transparency asking students to correct them. As
with any kind of correction, it is important not to single students out for particular criticism.

Q: What activities have been most useful in teaching a foreign language?

Make sure that all the students feel that the classroom is a risk-free environment where they can
express themselves in the foreign language without feeling embarrassed -Praise their efforts constantly
and make a big deal about it (give a star, make a check on a visible board with all the students names,
call the parents and let them know how well the students is using the language and how proud you are
of his /her accomplishments). Tell them that any time you hear them using a word you will give them a
star and that is going to give them a reward that they want. 2- Explain to them that everybody sounds
"funny" when they start to learn a new language, even little children, and everybody is there to learn
and practice the new language. Have an agenda or a set of activities that they do everyday so they know
what is expected from them. when they know what is next they feel less anxious and therefore learn
better. 3-Set up a simple dialogue at the beginning of the class where students ask each other a simple
question and you MUST start first Teacher to student A: What did you have for breakfast ? Student A: I
had an egg and orange juice Teacher to student A: I want you to ask STUDENT B ( any student) What did
she/he have for breakfast this morning? Go around until everybody has asked and answered one time

I've been teaching French to Australian primary school kids for a few years. My aim is to get them to
speak and enjoy the process. It takes years to become accurate in a foreign language and I don't think it
is our role as language teachers to aim for perfection. I use a lot of games and songs to get the kids
hooked. For instance "Simon says" for the parts of the body, playing hide and seek with a group of kids
counting and one hiding, for counting.... I tell stories with puppets for introducing new vocabulary. I use
the same story for a few weeks. As it becomes familiar to the kids, I get them to repeat some lines as a
chorus. It is too overwhelming to speak in a foreign language alone at first. Stories which the kids all
know in English can be good as well. I also use puppets to make the kids talk. They each have a puppet
and work in little groups on practicing sentences. Again it diffuses their anxiety because it is their
puppets that 'talks'. When we learn names of food we usually cook and eat during classes. The kids
obviously love this. I hope this will be helpful. Isabelle

First, I encouraged the students to have a go. Some are capable of performing but are just shy. Those
who do err, I've asked their peers to identify the mistake, and how they would have answered. At upper
primary level, I find that getting the students to move around the classroom and asking/answering their
peers the lesson's target question(s) can be uninhibiting, and thus, the students are more willing to
engage in the language. It is uninhibiting because they don't feel directly under the watchful eye of the
teacher to perform with 100% accuracy. Also, the interaction of the language is with someone of whom
they perceive to be on a similar language level as they are, and prone to making mistakes like
themselves. The idea of moving them around is to keep them mentally active, by being physically active.
If they have been sitting down for a while, this activity will keep them from getting bored and have fun
while learning at the same time. Classroom management can be tricky in this case, and it has to be
established beforehand that the students MUST speak in the foreign language. However, when executed
well, the results can be fun both for the students, as well as yourself.

Hi there, Although I have been teaching high school French for the past 35 years, I must admit that I still
have a lot to learn. There are many activities that have worked well over the years for me that I'd be
willing to share, but I feel it is the overall approach that needs close examination. I learned French in
Quebec the "traditional" way...lots of writing and the emphasis always on being correct. I guess it
worked for me...eventually. I have always told my own students that the message is more important
than the grammar. We can, and do, continually make mistakes. Some are more important than others.
Mistakes can be corrected. A reluctance to talk for fear of making mistakes is more difficult to remedy.
In my particular case, I battle with "Teflon" French. It just doesn't stick from one semester to the next.
Sometimes my students go more than a year between French classes. As a result I'm always reviewing.
My advice would be to start with the topics that interest your students; use music, games, and a lot of
pictures. Insist on an effort to speak French in class. Give them time to talk to one another in the target
language. Reward a decent effort with marks and/or bonus marks. I allot 10% of the students final mark
to this effort. As well, students can earn bonus tickets for participating orally in the class. They exchange
20 tickets at the end of the year for 1% bonus added to their final mark. Check out TPRS on-line. I
dabbled with it a few years back with success. I just couldn't work it in to my situation and wish I could
attend their annual National Conference. That's all for now (probably too much). I'd love to hear what
the rest of you think or to continue to share successes and burdens. Keep smiling! Dave

More than any other subject, learning a foreign language requires kids to make mistakes in class, in front
of the whole class. As a teacher of a second language, you probably see students hesitate to speak out
loud, fearful of making mistakes or embarrassing themselves. How have you addressed this? What
classroom activities and experiences have best inspired your students to speak a foreign language more
freely and eagerly?

So, as I read over the homework thread (and I've had two cups of
coffee this morning) an idea came to me about homework. It seems that
many of us like the idea of homework, but want something that's
meaningful/not too time-consuming/easy-to-manage, and possibly
personal. I think many of us are also trying to incorporate technology
as well. Here's something that just came to me:
I'm thinking about doing an email dialogue with students, and just
progress with the "conversation" throughout the year, but let it run
it's own course for each student. For example, using Gmail, I could
start the year by (individually) sending an email to all my students.
Maybe I'd just copy and paste the same set of questions (what's your
name, when is your birthday, what do you like to do, etc.) from the
first unit of study. I would probably just do one slightly bigger
assignment, and only one for the week (so that students will less
Internet access would just have to make it to a computer once per
week). Then, my students could reply with their answers and we could
take it from there. Maybe each week I try to keep the conversation
going on a more personal level, and if it doesn't seem to be working
that way then I just have a set of new questions ready to paste right
into my reply (or both).
I don't know, as I write this out it kind of sounds like using
Blackboard or something, and maybe it would be a bit much for me. I
think it would be neat for them to converse with each other as well,
but that might be too hard to keep track of. In my mind, though, I'm
picturing my Gmail inbox with an individual email thread per student,
and I would just have to quickly read their work and then reply with a
few comments/questions per student. I can certainly type faster than I
can write, and it would help me stay organized (no papers!). I think I
would be able to learn a lot from my students, and I could take the
time to check about 25 per night, and that shouldn't take too long. If
a student replies in Gmail, it will show up in bold with his/her name,
so I will always be able to tell who has replied to the new week's
assignment.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
~Alex Parker :)
Spanish Teacher
Olympia, WA

Dear Alex and others,

I am not very familiar with Google mail, but I have used e-mail dialogue as
homework. I have had success by posting a prompt on my wiki, and having the
students reply as "comments" on the wiki. In this way, they are able to see
each other's posts and comment on them. I am sure there are lots of ways to
do this type of assignment, but as someone who is not especially savvy in
terms of technology, this has worked well for me.
Bonne Chance!
Lisa Shepard

> I have had success by posting a prompt on my wiki, and having the students
reply as "comments" on the wiki.
Sorry to jump in on this late (didn't see the beginning of the thread).
A wiki is a great idea. One thing that worries me about email is
one of privacy. Forcing students to communicate their email address
would be a real invasion of privacy IMHO. Also email is extremely
easy to forge so it would be trivial for a student to make it appear
as though a teacher sent them inappropriate email. It's just not
safe.
Anyway, a friend of mine has actually
mobile phone texting. However, there
more obvious since the student's cell
Still, my friend reported that it was

done this in class with

the privacy issue is even
number becomes known.
a great success.

Mike C.
Thanks for the ideas about starting a wiki- I may have to do that. To
answer the question about Gmail, it does conversation threads (I'm not
sure if other email programs/sites do this). So, when a student
replies to you, it shows up with your original email and their reply
(even if they deleted your message). I think that would help because
it keeps track of all the back and forth emails in one email to click
on, instead of having all these separate replies.
~Alex :)

Alex et al., I did dialogue journals with my level 2 class 3 years ago. It
was the single most meaningful assignment that I did with any of my classes.
Ever. I gave each student a spiral bound notebook ( you know, the 10 cent
versions from Target). Their assignment was simply write--due on Friday.
Each weekend I would bring their box of notebooks home and drink a cup of
coffee and write back to each student. I wouldn't do anything but show that
I comprehended what they had said and I would mention something personal
about my life and then ask them a follow up question. It was 25 points a
week and a huge part of their grade. Students were taking risks because the
environment was totally safe. They would write and sometimes look up a word
and say did I say that right? or cmo se dice... The surprising part was
that they were very good. I had them first period so I had their journals
sitting on their desks when they walked in and they (seemingly) loved the
personal note that I wrote to them. Their rubric-graded writing assignments
were very well done (back when I graded risk-taking on a rubric).
That was my first year of real teaching that I did that. Why did I stop? It
is time consuming. Very. It was manageable with one section of level 2. It
was a special bond that we shared that I didn't have with my level 1s. Each
year I started taking one more, one more, and one more Spanish 2 class until
I started teaching all level 2 (my favorite level). I can't possibly manage
3 sections of--this is California, so lets say--38 students. I really really
want to do this again but need to find a way to manage 3 sections of Spanish
along with my yearbook and editorial leadership classes.
Thanks,
Drew

Andrew, this is fascinating.

got me thinking, too.

I loved reading your account, and you guys have

So, how about collecting on a rotating basis ? Collect only one class a
week, and read what they have written for a 2- or 3-week period ? That means
longer sessions with each book, and responding less frequently, but given the
time you have to work with... ? Would that work ?
I like this idea.
Mary

I do dialogue journals with my students in all levels. This

discussion has given me food for thought. Some years I have had the
journals done all on the same day and sometimes on a rotating basis.
I have always had the students write in their journals in class. I
don't want them looking up words or verb endings--I just want them to
get used to putting down ideas in French. The idea of doing this by
email is interesting. I've also been considering a class blog. I
think that I will keep the dialogue journals as handwritten journals,
though. I like the fact that they can use the journal from year to
year and keep it and look back and see their progress. I may do the
blog in addition as another opportunity to write.
Jo

In my first year classes I don't speak English until Friday. Day one we do
Bonjour/Aurevoir, numbers 1-10, alphabet and between 5-7 TPR words (danse
chante, vomit, court, frappe, mange) I write cognates on the board like
volontaire intelligent and in general make a fool out of myself. We count
about a bazillion times. They do comment tu t'appelles and I ask everyone.
The second day we continue and I add more words for TPRS, Wednesday, Ca va
and all it's parts and more essentials--ecrivez, effacez and then Thurs the
stuff in the sac a dos Friday I do the paperwork. It's exhausting, but I
like that they learn a whole bunch but I don't speak English. And I tell
them to remember that they don't need me to speak English for them to learn
French.
In the upper level classes I do the paperwork (boring!) and day two we start
in on the review.
Bethany Thompson

I tried saving the beginning of year handouts until a few days in one year,
and then I felt like it kind of killed our momentum. I have it down to a
science so it doesn't take long. I start with French, squeeze it in, finish
with French. Now it's out of the way.
My classroom expectations are simple and hanging on signs. It's more the
parent piece that we need to cover but I don't think it much matters anyway.
I still get some parents asking about extra credit or other things that have
been clearly laid out in handouts that they sign that they have read.
TPR, cognates, simple songs, the basic greetings, all good things!
Ellen Poquette

... I greet each student at the door and give them an envelope.
The
envelope has their name on it and a question in Spanish. I ask them to
find the answer to the question .... which is how they find their seat
assignment. ...
With beginners, instead of a question, I put a word in English on the
envelope, and the word in Spanish on their desk - these are cognates.
After
students introduce themselves, this leads into a discussion about how we
learn languages.
Beth

Typically our first day is about 35 minutes (a half day to help the
administration take care of scheduling glitches).
My goal is to show them that we will be speaking Spanish to each other and
that they already probably know some Spanish.
I make sure that I call the roll and they have to say Presente.
I introduce them to Hello, Goodbye, How Are You?, I'm fine, including
shaking hands and talking to a partner. If there is enough time: What is
your name? My name is... and Mucho gusto. More time: Numbers 1-10 and
colors red, blue, white, green, yellow.
Vowel sounds are fun. So are the
first few letters of the alphabet.
Often they know some of these phrases and words from elementary Spanish
and Dora the Explorer.
I ask them to try to use the words with friends and family.
After they've spent about an hour and a half being talked to in homeroom,
they are ready to have activities to do, so the time goes very quickly for
them and for me.
Thanks to all of you who are still so dedicated to our profession and who
are as nutty as I am about "stuff" and about planning throughout the summer.
Susan Neese

I start out by making them say Je m'appelle, bonjour and au revoir and then
tell them did they know that they already knew a bunch of French? I write
cognates on the overhead and then tell them the only difference is the
pronunciation. After I ask them to explain what attention and alliance etc.
mean, I pronounce it. We talk about endings on words and how you can
recognize what came from French. We then talk about why there are so many
French words in English and we look at the map in terms of proximity.
I go over the guidelines and stuff later. I figure that they'll pay more
attention to mine if it isn't bundled with the 6 other ones they get on day
one. I've decided that there is no good way to go over the guidelines etc.
however. The students don't remember what is in there (I have some special
late pass/extra credit rules that they don't even realize are included even
though it is the same every year). I will have to think about how to do that
this year. Maybe have them come up with behavioral guidelines? It would be
cool to do it in French, but mine are too limited in their capabilities.
Nicola

I always start with language the first two days, and then get into the
syllabus/rules/etc. on the third day. I usually do "what's your name?/my
name is..." and greetings/farewells. I have students practice with a
partner, and then usually have the students stand up (which they NEVER do in
other classes the first day) and form two lines on either side of the class.
Students have to walk up, meet/greet/say farewell, and the go to the back of
the lines.
Or, one year I did a colors semi-musical chairs game. Either I do this in my
room, or I walk them to the commons. Students stand in a circle and for
about ten minutes I point to various students' articles of clothing and have
them repeat the colors with me (sometimes I even give a cheat sheet with the
colors in English and Spanish, but I usually don't need to). Students all
sit in chairs in a big circle, except for one student in the middle. That
student calls out a color and everyone has to get up and move at least three
chairs away. Last student left standing has to call out the next color. So,
everyone plays at the same time and no one is eliminated. If they want to
get competitive, I do allow for there to be elimination, but they can get
kind of rowdy attacking each other for seats!
Those both work well for level I students. For level II's or above, I try to
have some information sheets and students have to mingle and ask each other
questions like name, age, favorite color/food/movie/etc. Simple stuff. I
usually put the question on the page, as well as how to phrase the answer
(i.e. What's your name? My name is...) so all they have to do is fill in the
blanks with each other. This can be a short two-partner activity, or maybe
leave spaces for them to get information from up to ten people. One
variation on this is to have them interview each other in 1st/2nd person,
and then change it to 3rd person and introduce their new "friend" to the
class.
Hope these help!
~Alex

:)

During first semester this year, for the first time ever I think, all of my
students were in my class last year - so I know all of them, and they all
know me! WOW! I'll actually be able to do a quick "you know what I expect
- here are a few reminders (5 minutes)" and then we're off!
One of the things that I do with all of my classes the first day to get
them into the language is the following (I think I've probably posted this
before, and it's an idea adapted from Wong's "First Days of School" - but I
love it!): I greet each student at the door and give them an envelope.
The
envelope has their name on it and a question in Spanish. I ask them to
find the answer to the question .... which is how they find their seat
assignment. (This kills three birds with one stone: a) I already have
taken
attendance by the time class begins b) students already know where to sit
c) students are already using the language - they help each other out if
they don't understand a question or know the answer to a question). I begin
class with my usual ramblings in Spanish - introduction, how was your

summer, etc., etc. Then I ask each student to stand, introduce herself in
Spanish, read the question and read the answer. Sometimes the questions are
about myself (if I have a class of students who don't know me) - and I
follow
this all up with a little quiz - not for real points - sometimes I give a
prizes(s) to the student with the most correct answers. Sometimes the
questions review cultural information... I then ask students about any
experiences they've had using the language.
With beginners, instead of a question, I put a word in English on the
envelope, and the word in Spanish on their desk - these are cognates.
After
students introduce themselves, this leads into a discussion about how we
learn languages.
Inside the envelope I put the prayer that we say (I'm in Catholic school),
"passes", a little 'cheat sheet' for including diacritic marks when using
the computer to write in Spanish, and a 'cheat sheet' with online sources
such as my email, website, etc.
Personally I do feel that it's important to establish the rules on the
first day... which I do.... while trying to incorporate some of the language
as
described above. I know that the students are bombarded by all of their
teachers, but we're on a 4x4 block, so my students only have to listen to 4
of us!
I've often thought about breaking up this process of explaining
the rules (I've come across some creative ideas on this listserve), but
somehow it just doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps I'm not able to break
old
habits/think outside of the box after teaching for so long!
Beth

Dear colleagues,
If you haven't seen Johnny Lee's YouTube on how to make a Not-so-smart
whiteboard, give it a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ
I took a look at it and decided to give it a try. It works. There's
also a site that sells infrared pens and I bought a few of those, but
since my equipment is not ceiling mounted I found it all a bit clumsy
and touchy. Dancing around the Wiimote camera's line of sight and
trying to get the kids not to kick the cart with the LCD projector in
a classroom where space is tight made it problematic. I was always
having to recalibrate. So, I've been working with the Welcome
software (that which controls the Smartboard) and am liking it solo.
I don't have to calibrate anything. With just my LCD projector, my
computer, and a nice long cable to connect them, I can do a great
many of the good things that can be done with a genuine Smartboard at
a fraction of the cost. I already had an LCD projector and the
district downloaded Welcome for me. I can use my computer to pull up
things like Google Earth as I want. I can create examples with
blanks, shine it on the whiteboard and instead of the kids using a
"magic" pen, a regular dry erase marker does the trick and is easily
erased for the next example or class. I can vary the size, color,
design on fonts and graphics on the examples I use thru Welcome. I
can create slideshows, use the screen feature, typewriter and more
that I haven't even begun to explore. I am using it these days
instead of Powerpoint. I like it! In most respects, I have come to
prefer it over Ppt.
I have attended a couple short sharing sessions with colleagues and am
able to do many of the things they do with their Smartboards with
either the Wiimote set-up that Johnny Lee describes in his video clip
or with just my LCD-computer-Welcome combo.
If money is tight in your district, give this a try!