DOCUMENT

RESUME

ED 028 664

FL 001 040

By-Asher, James J.
The Learning Strategy of the Total Physical Response: A Review.
National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association.
Spons Agency-Office of Naval Research, Washington, D.C. Personnel .and Training Branch.
Pub Date Feb 66

Contract-NR-154-257-12-8-64
Note-6p.
Journal Cit-The Modern Language Journal; v50 n2 p79-84 February 1966
EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$0.40
Descriptors-Behavioral Science Research, Behavior Theories, Conditioned Response, Japanese, Language
Ability, Language Instruction, *Language Research, Language Skills, *Learning Theories, *Pilot Projects,
Psycholinguistics, Retention Studies, Russian, *Second Language Learning, Stimulus Behavior, Teaching
Techniques, *Verbal Operant Conditioning

Described in this article are five pilot studies that explored the effects of the
learning strategy of the total physical response under a variety of conditions using
Japanese and Russian with adults and children. Some general conclusions suggest
that dramatic facilitation in learning listening skills for a second language is related
to acting out during retention tests. (AF)

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THIS DOCUMENT HAS SEEN REPRODUCED EXACTIY AS RECEIVED FROM THE

The Learning Strategy of the Total Physical

Response: .d Review*
JAMES J. ASHER, San Jose Stale College

one of the most complex tasks in

p ERHAPS
human learning is the problem of how to
achieve fluency in a foreign language. To illus-

trate the extraordinary stress and intricacy of

this task, an instructor in one of the more esoteric languages at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, remarked that
after 12 months of intensive language
training for 8 to 10 hours a day in small classes

of six students, only one in twenty graduates

was what one may describe as 'fluene."
What will be reported next may suggest a
partial solution to this ancient learning problem. This paper will describe a learning approach called the strategy of the total physical
response. The theory behind this learning strategy was described in an earlier paper.' Essentially, the notion developed in that theoretical
FIG. 1. The boys and the adult model jumped
article was that solutions for intricate human
when they heard the command, "Tobel"
problems require invention rather than discovery. After the invention of a solution possiThe results of pilot studies were almost perbility, a closed-system is generated which may fect retention in listening to Japanese from two
be explored successfully with discovery activi- weeks to a year when the subjects ranged from
ties such as experimental research.2

school children to adults. The procedure is illus-

In pilot studies,3 it was demonstrated that trated in figure 1 in which the adult model and
subjects had unusually long-term retention for three boys jumped in response to the Japanese
Japanese when they listened to the Japanese command "Tobe." This photograph is from the
and then were required to make a total physical sound motion picture entitled, "Demonstration
response. For example, the subjects heard tate of a New Strategy in Language Learning." The
and immediately along with the instructor,
stood up; then aruke, and they walked forward.

* Most of the studies reported in this article were sup-

Other commands were lobe (jump), maware

(turn), kagame (squat) and hashire (run). The
training began with brief one-word utterances,
but within thirty minutes, the morphological

ported by a research contract from the Personnel and

and syntactical complexity was increased as the

following utterances illustrate:

1 J J. Asher, "Toward a neo-field theory of behavior,"

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. IV, No. 2 (Fall,

Isu kara tatte, kokuban no anata no namae o kese.

(Stand up and erase your name from the blackboard.)

2 For an application of the theory to a problem having

to. do with man-computer communication in the field of
Engineering Psychology, see J. J. Asher and R. I. Post,
"The new field theory: An application to postal automation," Human Factor:, Vol. VI, No. 5 (October, 1964), pp.

Training Branch of the Office of Naval Research (NONR4817(00), NR-154-257/12-8-64). Reproduction in whole or

in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States

Government.

1964), pp. 85-94.

Kare no namae o enpitzu de konokami ni kake.

(Take the pencil and write his name on this paper.)

517-522.
* Cf. Asher, op. cit.

Sono hana o tsukue kara tori, kanojo ni watase.

(Take that flower from the desk and give it to her.)
79

JAMES J. ASHER

80

film, which is 15 minutes in length, shows the

complexity of Japanese which three 12 year old
boys were able to assimilate in twenty minutes
of training. Also shown in retention after a time
interval of one year.
With the preliminary data from these pilot

third control group (N=18) read the English

translations in a booklet after they heard a
Japanese utterance. They also did not observe

studies as a guide, Kunihira for his master's

The retention tests were given immediately

thesis decided to test the hypothesis of the total

physical response under controlled conditions.4

after training, 24 hours later, and then following

a two week interval. These retention tests were
scored in behavioral units as, for example, if an S

STUDY I

Eighty-eight volunteer college students, who

the performance of a model.

Scoring of the Retention Tests

in the experimental group heard "Isu ni hashitte itte hon o oke" (Run to the chair and put

had no prior contact with the Japanese lan- down the book), he received one point for runguage, were randomly divided into an experimental and three control groups. The groups of
subjects (Ss) who finished the experiment were
shown to be homogeneous as measured by the
Modern Language Aptitude Test and the American College Testing Program.
Procedure

An experimental and three control groups

learned a sample of Japanese which began with
simple commands as "tate" (stand) and
"aruke" (walk), but within twenty minutes the
complexity of the utterances was increased to
this for example: "Mado ni hashitte itte hon o
motte tsukue ni oite isu ni suware" (Run to the
window, pick up the book, put it down on the
desk, and sit down on the chair).

The experimental group (N=16) listened to

the Japanese commands played on a tape recorder, and after each utterance, acted with the
instructor as their model. If the utterance was
"To ni aruite ike" (Walk to the door), the Ss
and model walked to the door. If the command

was "Kami to hon to enpitsu o motte isu ni

suware" (Pick up the paper, book and pencil
and sit down on the chair), the Ss and the model
picked up a paper, book, and pencil, returned to
their chairs and sat down. Ss, who were run in

groups of four or five, were instructed to be

silent, listen to the Japanese, and do exactly
what the instructor does.
The first control group (N= 15) was treated
the same as the experimental group except that
these Ss sat and observed the model perform

during training. The second control group

(N= 18) listened to the English translation from

the tape after each Japanese command, but

they did not observe the model perform. The

ning, another point if he ran to a chair, another

point if he put an object on the chair, and a

point if the object was a book. Therefore, for the

utterance "Isu ni hashitte itte hon o oke," the

total possible score was four points. The same
scoring procedure was used for Ss in the control
groups except that these people wrote down the
English translation for the Japanese.
As to scoring categories, a single word was for
example "aruke" (walk); a short utterance was a
thought unit as "To ni aruite ike" (Walk to the

door); a long utterance was more than one

thought unit as "Tsukue ni aruite itte enpitsu
to hon o oke" (Walk to the desk, and put down
the pencil and book); and a novel utterance was a
recombination of utterances used in training so
that, in this sense, novel commands were heard

for the first time in the retention tests.

Results

The experimental group, who used the strategy of the total physical response, had si.gnificandy better retention than each control group.
Generally, the t tests were highly significant
beyond the .005 level for (a) long or novel Japanese utterances, and (b) when the time interval

after training increased to 24 hours or two

weeks. The control groups did not show significant differences in retention among themselves
as measured by F tests.

Encouraged by these findings, a study was

designed5 to test whether the power of a total
4 S. Kunihira and J. J. Asher, "The strategy of the total
physical response: An application to learning Japanese,"
Internationd Review of Applied Linguistks (in press).
15 J. J. Asher, "The strategy of the total physical response: An application to learning Russian," International
Review of Applied Linguistics (in press).

LEARNING STR.4TEGY OF THE TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE

81

physical response would hold when a different

language was used such as Russian.

for adults may be quite independent of physical

action. Adults tend to be rather stationary and

STUDY II

inert when they transmit or receive language

(i.e., "Hello, jOhn. Anything new today? A
baby girl, eh? Well, congratulations."). With

This study was similar to the Japanese experiment except that the experimental group
(N= 18) learned a sample of Russian6 using the
strategy of the total physical response while the

the strategy of the total physical response,

adults seemed to understand complex foreign

utterances in an incredibly short amount of

control group (N= 18) observed the model training.

perform in training and wrote English during
In the research just reported, the task was
the retention tests. The Ss were college under- listening but not speaking the Japanese or
graduates who volunteered to participate in Russian. The usual audio-lingual approach is to
response to the incentive of extra course credit.

Although an attempt was made to assign Ss

randomly to each group, an Otis Intelligence
Test administered after the experiment was

make the task one of learning both listening and

speaking together. To force speaking from the
beginning of training may be somewhat analogous to the electroshock experiments with rats.
These animal studies have suggested that if rats
are shocked immediately after they have
learned to navigate a maze, the effect seems to

significantly better at the .05 level for the control group. All Ss had no background or training
in Russian.
The results were quite similar to the findings be the "erasure of memory traces." It may be
with Japanese. The retention scores using t tests that a technique of language learning in which
were significantly better for the experimental the student is compelled to utter alien sounds
group, especially as the complexity of Russian from the start of training may act like shock.
increased fr om single or short utterances to long For example, when one tries to learn listening
or novel Russian commands. Also, when the fluency and speaking simultaneously, the forced
time interval between training and retention noise-making may function as a stressful stimuincreased to two weeks, the experimental group lus which tends to erase, prematurely, memory
was significantly better beyond the .005 level on traces for understanding. The ideal, as hinted
by our data, may be for the student to achieve
almost every retention measure.
At least with adults from a college population listening fluency before he attempts to utter the
the strategy of the total physical response alien sounds. However, this is only speculation.
seemed to be vastly more effective as a learning
Before the relationship of speaking to listenformat than merely a sedentary kind of obser- ing can be determined, it would be helpful to
vation during training. This generalization know more about listening, especially as this
appeared to hold for Japanese and Russian.
intersects with the variable of physical action.
At this point the data suggested some provo- The purpose of the next study was to further
cative theoretical implications. For example, expand the generality for the strategy of the
could the strategy of the total physical response total physical response.

account for the puzzling fact that children

living in a foreign country achieve in a short
time the fluency of native speakers while the
parents of these children may' struggle unsuccessfully for years to be fluent? Some theories

STUDY III

Studies I and II indicated that the strategy of

the total physical response seemed to facilitate
the learning of listening skill for complex foreign

suggest that an explanation may be imprinting7

or neurological differences!' However, still anI Professor Taras Lukach from the Foreign Language
other possibility is that children tend to use the Repartment of San Jose State College recorded the Russian
technique of a total physical response while their utterances on tape.
7 E. H. Hess, "Imprinting in animals," Scientific Amerparents do not. Much of children's play is lanican, Vol. 198, No. 3 (March, 1958), pp. 81-90.
guage synchronized with physical locomotion of
$ W. Penfield and L. Roberts, Speech and Brain Mechathe entire body (i.e., "Come on, Tommy, let's nisms, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
ride our bikes1"). By contrast, most language 1959.

JAMES J. ASHER

82

utterances. This generalization may hold for

TABLE 1

adults, but how about children? Study III

ACTING VERSUS WRITING DURING RETENTION TESTS GIVEN

replicated Study II except that 6th grade chil-

TO 8TH GRADERS Two MONTHS AFTER TRAINING

dren rather than college students were the

Ya

subjects.9

The experimental and control groups were Total

composed of children (N= 32) matched on the Single
California Test of Mental Maturity, the Cali- Short
fornia Achievement Test, and teacher ranking on

classroom performance. None of the children

were bilingual and none had prior exposure to
the Russian language.
The children in the experimental group listened to the Russian and acted along with an
adult model; the control children listened to the
Russian and observed the adult model perform.

During the retention tests, children in the E

group acted individually while those in the C
group wrote English translations.

The results were spectacular differences in

retention favoring the children who applied the
strategy of the total physical response. The ts
were significant beyond the .01 level no matter

Long
Novel

7,0

Sa

S.

69.29 62.07 26.50 23.34

1.56
11.21 11.86 2.91
6.86 8.13
18.43 17.93
39.64 31.57 18.63 15.43
19.36 15.71 10.10 8.13

1*

.05
NS
0.30 NS
2.89 .01
2.51 .025
1.91

-0.84

*One-tailed t tests for fourteen matched pairs

Apparently, whether Ss acted or observed the

model act during training was not relevant as a
variable for children of these ages. At this point,
the generalization seemed to be that spectacUlar
differences in retention were somehow a func-

tion of whether subjects acted or wrote their

responses during the retention tests. As a further check on the conclusion that acting facilitated a greater retrieval of information than
writing, a follow-tip study was conducted on the

8th graders. Approximately two months after

what the complexity of the Russian. For long or the 8th graders had completed their training in
novel Russian utterances, most of the ts were Russian, another tetention test was admnissignificant beyond the .0005 level of cortadence. tered. Experimental and control children were
Next, it was decided to try the strategy of matched on their overall performance in the
the total physical response with other grade training and half of the 8th graders in the exlevels.
perimental and control groups acted during the
two-month retention test while the other half
STUDY IV

wrote English.

For a master's thesis, Price"' collected data

The results, in Table 1, showed that for comfrom samples of children in the 2nd, 4th, and plex Russian utterances, the children who acted
8th grades." In each of these grade levels, six- out their responses in the retention test had
teen pairs of children were matched on the significantly better recall than the children who
California Test of Mental Maturity, the Cali- wrote English translations.
fornia Achievement Test, and teacher ranking on
At least three explanations seemed possible.
classroom performance.
One we have called the translation hypothesis,
This was a replication of studies II and III
using Russian and with the experimental group
9 Data for this study were collected by Mrs. Mary
applying the technique of the total physical Hamilton at the Portal School in Cupertino, California.
response while the controls observed the model

perform. During the retention tests, however,

the children in both the experimental and control groups individually listened to each Russian utterance, then acted out their response.
Always in previous studies, the controls wrote
English translations in the retention tests.
Unexpectedly, the results yielded no significant, differences between the experimental
versus the control group for the 2nd, 4th, or 8th
grad ers.n

19 B. Price, Developmental factors in the learning strategy

of the total physical response. Unpublished master's thesis,
San Josc. State College, 1966.

11 These data were drawn from the Blackford School in

San Jose, California. Appreciation is expressed to Mr.

William M. Phelps for coordinating the scheduling of the
students.
12 An intriguing secondary finding was that age was related to the retention of the Russian. College adults as a

group had near maximum retention, the 8th and 4th

graders had significantly less retention than the adults,
and the 2nd graders had significantly lower retention
scores in comparison with the older children.

LEARNING STRATEGY OF THE TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE

83

another the position-cue hypothesis, and a third

sis. Since significant differences seem to be

the concurrency hypothesis.

related to writing rather than speaking English,

the general cognitive process involved in trans-

The translation hypothesis assumes that

lating may not be disruptive. Also, when Ss

the cognitive process of translation has a disrup- verbalized in English rather than acted out,
tive or impeding effect. Another explanation, position-cues suggesting the next response may
when one writes the English during retention,
the position-cue hypothesis, was that acting out
a response gives cues as to what the following

response will probably be. For example, if a

command in Russian is to pick up a book, and S

does this, he knows that there is a high probability that the next command will have something to do with the book. When one writes
"pick up the book," cues suggesting the next
response may not be as clear.

A third explanation was the concurrency

hypothesis. When one acts in the retention test,
he may move before the voice on the tape has
completed the utterance. One may act out part
of the command and simultaneously be listening
to the next phrase. This would greatly simplify

lengthy commands as "Walk to the window,

pick up the book and pencil, then return to the
table." When one writes the English, it may be
more difficult, for some unknown reason, to
write and listen simultaneously. Therefore, one
may have to wait until the entire command has
been uttered in Russian before one writes.
In the next study the intent was to test simultaneously the translation hypothesis, positioncue hypothesis, and the concurrency hypothesis.
STUDY V

not have been as distinct as when Ss wrote. The

reason is that when one writes the English translation, one has rather easy visual access to prior
responses written on the paper.
The remaining explanation, the concurrency
hypothesis, was tested by counting the number

of times during a retention test that a child

began acting if he was in the E group or verbalizing in English if he was in the C group before
the voice on the tape had finished speaking the
Russian utterance.

Almost all the concurrent responses were

made by the group that acted during retention
and almost no concurrent responses were observed for the group that verbalized in English.
As expected, concurrent responses were associated with complex Russian utterances. Of all
concurrent responses, in Unit IV, there were
none for single words, 3% for short utterances,
58% for long utterances, and 39% for novel
ut ter ances.

Since concurrent responses were almost exclusively found only in the experimental group
and the latter group did not differ significantly
in retention from the control group, the concurrency hypothesis will probably not explain the
differences between acting and writing in retention.
An interesting side finding with the concur-

From 8th grade classes at the John F. Kennedy Junior High School in Cupertino, Cali-

rent responses was that the more concurrent

fornia, fifteen pairs of children were matched as

responses a child made, the better his retention

in previous studies on IQ, achievement, and

teachers' ratings. Approximately half of the

score, especially for complex Russian. The

pairs were boys and the other half girls."

correlations in Unit IV between concurrent

responses and each retention score were as

In this study both the experimental and follows:

control children learned a sample of Russian by
observing a model perform during training. The

difference between the groups was that in the

retention tests, the experimental children acted
in response to the Russian commands and the
controls spoke the English.
The results showed no significant differences
between the two groups in their retention
scores. This finding does not support either an
explanation based on the translation hypothesis, nor one based on the position-cue hypothe-

Total score
Long utterances
Novel utterances
Short utterances
Single utterances

.7

.1$
.81
.45
.36

It was also curious that although concurrent

responses correlated highly with understanding
of complex Russian, these responses had low to
" Data for this study were collected by Mrs. Natasha
Wist, Miss Sue Hartley and Mrs. Berdeen E. Coven.

JAMES J. ASHER

84

moderate correlations with general ability

measures as shown below:
.41

CONCLUSION

.40

The learning strategy of the total physical

California Achievement Test

Total Score
Verbal

explore how acting, speaking, and writing

differentially operate on retention.

California Test of Mental Maturity

Total Score
Verbal

who wrote. Experiments are now in progress to

.30
.02

THE PHENOMENON OF WRITING

response was studied under a variety of conditions using Japanese and Russian with adults
and children. The results suggest that dramatic
facilitation in learning listening skill for a sec-

ond language is related to acting out during

able is that when Ss are asked to act out re- retention tests. Although acting out during
sponses to commands in retention tests rather training for children in certain age groups did
than Write the English, performance is signifi- not seem to be relevant in these experiments,
cantly better. Why this should be is not yet pilot studiesu strongly indicate that this conclear. It has been suggested that for children, clusion may be limited to short-term training
writing is a more difficult task than acting or which is typically characteristic of experiments.
speaking. This explanation seems plausible When the training is extended for many weeks,
except that one would not expect college stu- acting-out in training seems to have intense
dents to havesiifficulty writing common English motivational power which sustains student
sentences as "Walk to the door." Yet, for col- interest and effort.
lege adults who acted, retention Was signifi14 Cf. Asher, op. cit.: "Toward a neo-field theory of becantly greater in comparison with the adults havior."
The generalization which appears to be reli-

THE MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL

V01. L, No. 2, February, 1966