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http://www.tpr-world.com/brain-research.html

Breakthrough in Brain Research:
Learning Languages Without Stress

James J. Asher, Ph.D.
Originator of the Total Physical Response,
known worldwide as TPR.
Winner of the Outstanding Professor Award from San Jose State University,
founded before the Civil War in 1857 as the oldest public university in California.
SJSU has 30,000 students and a faculty of 1,800 Ph.Ds.

When I told a colleague recently that it is now possible, with our advanced understanding of the brain, to acquire a foreign language fast and without stress, he replied, “ My experience in school tells me otherwise.”

That cynicism is understandable since the track record of foreign language instruction is only about five success stories for every 100 students enrolled. Most of us recognize the features in the traditional school curriculum:

Please listen and repeat after me.
Let’s analyze this sentence to point out the grammar rule for the day.
Open your books and complete the exercise on page 25.
Memorize this list of vocabulary.
Open your books to page 63 and translate the first paragraph.
Let’s practice putting the appropriate direct object in the correct place in this sentence.

Only about five percent of all students who start the study of a second language in a traditional program continue on to achieve fluency in speaking, reading and writing. Ninety-five percent of all those students with good intentions say, “I give up.” And then they jump to the harmful conclusion: “I guess I am no good at foreign languages.” This may be the reason that thirty states have now discontinued the study of a second language in high school as a “required course.”

Parents would like to have their children acquire another language or two especially since America now seems to be competing with everyone else in the world for jobs. But, from their own experience in school, parents feel that the effort in traditional classes is a “waste of time.” Better to invest time in something useful such as small appliance repair or ballroom dancing.

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http://www.tpr-world.com/brain-research.html

Just tried v3 on my XO with build 802 and it worked perfectly:-

I'd love to see an article about your work on the activity, would you maybe be interested in writing something for us once v3 is stable?

Keep up the great work

Christoph

The method in these schools seems to involve the western teacher speaking the target sentence in Chinese, kids repeat the sentence several times, then the teacher changes the sentence into English and the kids repeat the sentence several times. Parents think this method works, and pay accordingly high fees.

If teaching is important to you then teaching in this sort of school could create self-loathing over time. Hourly rate is between 800 and 1200NT an hour though.

Here is an interesting discussion on Google Wave.

Brian Mannix:
Let's reinvent schools for the 21st and 22nd centuries.