Report from Greater Tokyo

So the most renowned theory in EFL today is TPR. Total Physical Response. The basic idea is the teacher says and does the vocabulary point ("Stand Up") at the same time, and then the students repeat the action and words. Its a grand idea, and it works too. There are of course variations on this you can do with students, and it works best with younger learners, up to, say, twelve years old or so. Teenagers get all angsty and stuff when you try to baby them.

But why the fancy term? It is, to be sure, nothing but a fancy term given to a classic playground game - Simon Says. The rules of that game are simple. Simon (the game leader, analogous to the teacher in TPR) tells the group to do something. If he says "Simon says blah blah blah", they do it, and if he misses out the "Simon says" bit, they stand still and do nothing.

Small aside - there are fun things you can do with Simon Says - the so called impossible actions. For example...

"Simon Says raise your left leg."
"Simon says raise your right leg."

or even...

"Simon says jump up."
"Come down."

But don't try that with your EFL students.

So anyway, TPR is essentially Simon Says, simplified and repackaged for the EFL market. But even Simon Says is just a fancy term for something even more basic. Let's talk a walk over to Africa and the anthropologists, especially the ones that study how monkeys learn. Monkeys, of course, have no language, yet they demonstrate an impressive ability to learn despite this obvious handicap. How on Earth do they manage this amazing feat with neither words, classrooms, or even pocket calculators? Monkey See Monkey Do. The most classic method of learning of them all. I hope I'm allowed to use this term in the halls of academia. No one likes being compared to our so-called lesser cousins after all.

Whether it is TPR/Simon Says and the associated simultaneous gesture and speak, or the listen and repeat for teaching how new words are pronounced, or teaching penmanship, almost every effective language teaching technique is, at a fundamental level, monkey see monkey do. Never forget that. If your students don't see it being done, they will usually find it difficult to do. In some cases, this will be because the thing (vague word I know, but nothing else encompasses the breadth of what I want to express) being taught has no equivalent in their language, in some cases because the thing doesn't even exist in their concept-space of how the universe works. But knowing something can be done is the first part of doing it.

My old computer melted. Literally. The power supply cracked and released the blue smoke that makes it work, and I was left effectively without a computer for about a month. The new box is sweet though.