Today I went across the street and visited a neighbor who was stacking firewood. I realized that I didn’t know how to describe what she was doing. So I set up a TPR drill to learn new vocabulary. In a matter of 15 minutes I learned 7 new words to describe what she was doing (see photo).
TPR stands for Total Physical Response, which is a language learning technique that I use to master words, sentence patterns and paragraphs. It involves a series of steps in which the learner goes from listening and pointing (while the speaker says the word repeatedly), to doing (if verbs are used), to mimicry and then to creative production. It is a proven method that helps in memory retention as well as developing relationships with native speakers in a live language setting.
