Recurrent Action Grammar Paperback – August 1, 2009

The Recurrent Action Grammar book is an easy-to-read guide on how to make Total Physical Response a useful and comprehensive tool in the Beginning ESL classroom. It includes entire lesson plans for each TPR and detailed instructions on what to do during the exercises and why. To quote from the book, "it is particularly well suited for the 'open-enrollment' types of classes which many adult and community classes offer. These classes, designed for busy adults with responsibilities of jobs and families, allow students to stop attending and to start again whenever they are able to make it back to class." The reason for this is that the same skills are practiced each class, but with different vocabulary and context taught each time. The book also says, "Using a language skill requires a lot of practice and not much description and explanation. While you the teacher may begin to feel that you are giving the same lessons over and over, the students will feel that the class is very different each time because of the different contexts. Meanwhile their brains are quickly responding to the repetition of skills needed for true language acquisition." I have found this to be very true in my class and it has provided a fun and ritualized way of learning tenses, prepositions of place, adverbs of time, etc. I highly recommend this book for helping you to use TPR in an effective way in your ESL classroom.

I'm still in the process of reading the book, however I find that some I can use for my language teaching and will need to adapt more in the process.