TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE & DRILLING

In today’s class, the teacher explained what is Total Physical Response. We had some ideas from last year. TPR is a method focus on oral competence which affirms that it is very effective to combine the spoken language with phisycal activity, therefore the students respond physically to verbal commands given by the teacher. The role of the teacher is to be like a film director.

The Benefits of TPR:

 - High-speed understanding of any target language
 - Long-term retention
 - Zero stress (Game like movements reduce stress)
 - With this method teachers emphasise meaning rather than form
 - Enjoyable for teachers as well as students

Later on, we watched a video of TPR, in which firstly the teacher gives instructions and makes gestures with the students, at the same time. Secondly, the teacher gives instructions but students have to make alone the gestures. And finally the teacher provides instructions out of order.  As we can see, each steps requires more attention due to the fact that they are becoming more complex. 

Then we watched a second video that showed the Drilling.  Drilling is a mechanical activity based on behaviourist psychology that consists of listening and repeating. The lesson showed in the video was a very highly control one (very mechanical). Children had to repeat lots of times “No, it isn’t”, and the teacher put a lot of emphasis in each word and moved her hands when saying a word:

T:  |No|  |it|  |isn’t|

So, as we can see, it wasn’t a real communicative situation.

The third video also related whit drill, showed us drill but in context; the teacher paints a drawing of a house in the blackboard in order to contextualize the story and provide new vocabulary. She make lots of gestures and sounds.

We want to share this video that demonstrate how to produce the drilling, which it is also related to "exposure" and "practice" (PEPP approach).