TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE

According to teachers who use the Total Physical Response, the fundamental purpose of using this method is to reduce the stress students feel when studying foreign languages and encourage students to learn and communicate in foreign language, so students will feel enjoy when learning to communicate in the foreign language.

The role of teacher in classroom is as the director of all students’ behavior. Teacher controls and ask all students to imitate what teacher’s doing and speaking.

The common interaction in classroom is between teacher and students. Teacher interacts with student individually and with the whole group of students.

The areas of language which are emphasized are grammatical structure and vocabulary. Speaking skill is more emphasized than writing and the other skills in language, particularly reading. Reading skill is not used in learning foreign language with this method in classroom.

Students’ native language is usually used in classroom only to introduce this method to students. After the introduction then the native language is rarely used in classroom. The meaning of words is made clear by body movements.

Teacher evaluates students’ comprehension by observing students’ actions. By observing their action, teacher will immediately know whether students understand the target language which is learned by students or not.

Teacher responds to students’ errors by only correct major errors. Teacher should be tolerant of the errors which are made by students during the learning of the target language. Moreover, students’ errors are expected when they first begin speaking.

Some techniques of the total Physical Response method:

a) Using commands
Commands are given to get students to perform an action, and then the action makes the meaning of the command clear.

b) Action sequence
Teacher gives series commands to students. By giving series commands, students can learn more and more of the target language, especially vocabulary.

c) Role reversal
Teacher gives chance to students to command him / her and also ask their classmates to perform some actions.