Honors Theses (Germanic Languages and Literatures)

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Browsing Honors Theses (Germanic Languages and Literatures) by Subject "Languages, Modern--Study and teaching"

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    TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE STORYTELLING: AN ANALYSIS AND APPLICATION
    (University of Oregon, 2004-06) Brune, Michael K.
    The world is becoming an ever more interconnected community. Within this global village, there is a growing need for people to communicate with people in completely different parts of the world. A vital tool needed for this communication is the knowledge of foreign languages. Over the last century, there has been a great deal of debate over what methods present the most effective and appropriate means of aiding students in the acquisition of second language skills. This debate has led to the development of a surprisingly large and diverse array of teaching methods. This thesis examines one of the latest of this long series of methods that attempts to address the issue of second language teaching and learning. Created in the early 1990’s by a High School Spanish teacher named Blaine Ray, “Total Physical Response Storytelling” incorporates aspects from a wide variety of foreign language teaching methods to create an innovative and effective means of training students in a second language, which, if employed exclusively, presents an important departure from the way languages are generally taught currently. However, like all other methods developed thus far, TPRS is not without flaws and these are also examined. This thesis analyzes TPRS by creating a dialogue between theories from the fields of linguistics, language pedagogy and folklore, which is then discussed in light of insight gained through a practical application of the method.