Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Budai, László: Some Basic Assumptions Underlying Foreign Language Teaching Strategies

- 100 to verify our approaches to foreign language taching. Ihe use of techniques sush as James J. Asher's Total Physical Respons

e (Aslier 1966, 1969, 1977), which is fairly consistent with Krashen's Input Hypothesis, may provide useful amounts of intake in the classroom. In Asher's approach, the teaching material consists of series of actions in the imperative. The idea of such series was originated by Francois Gouin (1800) more than a century ago. Subseguently

, in the 1920s, it was Harold E. Palmer (1925), who introduced action series into the foreign language classroom. Unfortunately, they eventually fell into disuse. It is to Asher that we owe thanks for the rediscovery of action series in the 1960s. The key ideas in Total Physical Response are the following: 1. Listening comprehension should be developed in advance of speaking. (According to Krashen (1901: 107) Total Physical Response "does indeed work: foreign language students, after 32 hours of 1PR, had significantly better listening comprehension scores than students in 'ordinary' classes after 160 hours, and scores on other tests were about the same

. 2. Listening comprehension should be developed through movements of the student's body. Students are required to respond to teacher commands psysically and to give comriands to evoke physical response by other students (or even the teacher). 3. Students may remain silent in early stages, they should not be forced to speak. After internalizing some portion of the foreign language, they will spontaneously begin to talk, which usually happens after ten hours of comprehensible input. A condensed description of the basic procedures of Total Physical Response follows (cf. Seely 1901): 1. Setting up the situation

, with props, before the students' eyes. While setting up the situation, students are asked to name objects. 2. Initial demonstratio

n o

f series

. The teacher dramatically reads the series aloud while someone responds physically and emotionally to his reading. Pantomime may also be used by the performer. The demostration may be repeated once or twice.