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Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:18 pm
by romeo.alpha
Cainntear wrote:Except that that is situationally very weird, because you're not actually modelling any real world language use, meaning the purpose of the grammatical structures is not clear.


I guess that depends on the language. For English it's the exact construct for telling a story. "So I'm at work, right? [past temporal aspect] This guy walks in. I ask him "What can I do for you?". He looks at me. ... Etc." French and German I don't think that would fly though.

It then becomes a vocabulary lesson, because the vocab is the only thing that is presented alongside the concept it genuinely represents.


That's barely different from an imperative, and if it comes across as rude, you're not getting much else out of it.

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:38 pm
by Cainntear
romeo.alpha wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Except that that is situationally very weird, because you're not actually modelling any real world language use, meaning the purpose of the grammatical structures is not clear.


I guess that depends on the language. For English it's the exact construct for telling a story. "So I'm at work, right? [past temporal aspect] This guy walks in. I ask him "What can I do for you?". He looks at me. ... Etc." French and German I don't think that would fly though.

Yes, but the way you described it, it's far too immediate. It doesn't have the feel of the so-called "present historic", because it's... well, it's present, and it's not historic.

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:55 pm
by romeo.alpha
Cainntear wrote:Yes, but the way you described it, it's far too immediate. It doesn't have the feel of the so-called "present historic", because it's... well, it's present, and it's not historic.


Described what specifically? My example of past temporal aspect with present tense isn't too immediate at all. If you want to give an "in media res" feeling, that's exactly how you tell the story.

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:15 pm
by zenmonkey
romeo.alpha wrote:I guess that depends on the language. For English it's the exact construct for telling a story. "So I'm at work, right? [past temporal aspect] This guy walks in. I ask him "What can I do for you?". He looks at me. ... Etc." French and German I don't think that would fly though.


It's might be used literary style used, by for example by Pennac, to represent an informal spoken story, an imaginary present.

Donc je suis au travail, n'est pas ?
Quand ce type entre. Je lui demande : « Que puis-je faire pour vous ? »

(the site needs unbreakable spaces)

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:20 pm
by romeo.alpha
zenmonkey wrote:
romeo.alpha wrote:I guess that depends on the language. For English it's the exact construct for telling a story. "So I'm at work, right? [past temporal aspect] This guy walks in. I ask him "What can I do for you?". He looks at me. ... Etc." French and German I don't think that would fly though.


It's might be used literary style used, by for example by Pennac, to represent an informal spoken story, an imaginary present.

Donc je suis au travail, n'est pas ?
Quand ce type entre. Je lui demande : « Que puis-je faire pour vous ? »

(the site needs unbreakable spaces)


Never heard that in French before, but the way you presented it does look like it works. Is that Daniel Pennac you mean?

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:55 pm
by zenmonkey
romeo.alpha wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:
romeo.alpha wrote:I guess that depends on the language. For English it's the exact construct for telling a story. "So I'm at work, right? [past temporal aspect] This guy walks in. I ask him "What can I do for you?". He looks at me. ... Etc." French and German I don't think that would fly though.


It's might be used literary style used, by for example by Pennac, to represent an informal spoken story, an imaginary present.

Donc je suis au travail, n'est pas ?
Quand ce type entre. Je lui demande : « Que puis-je faire pour vous ? »

(the site needs unbreakable spaces)


Never heard that in French before, but the way you presented it does look like it works. Is that Daniel Pennac you mean?


Yes. And it isn't particularly correct French and this type of register might tell you something about the character / social standing of the speaker who doesn't know to use the passé composé. It is definitely informal and definitely not in your Becherelle.

I don't remember if the dubbed version of Reservoir Dogs used this type of construction but I remember having a few discussions about it in the early 90's ... I think it was that movie. (Ok, my ex and I had strange language discussions... It was a syntactic calque she absolutely forbade me from using.)

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 4:28 pm
by Cainntear
romeo.alpha wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Yes, but the way you described it, it's far too immediate. It doesn't have the feel of the so-called "present historic", because it's... well, it's present, and it's not historic.


Described what specifically? My example of past temporal aspect with present tense isn't too immediate at all. If you want to give an "in media res" feeling, that's exactly how you tell the story.

It seemed to me like you were using the present historic as a justification for the “I stand up” “we stand up” of your previous message.
I was pointing out that this doesn’t work because the first situation you had described was immediate past, which isn’t appropriate for the historic past — they’re two different things.
(Neither is which, incidentally, are TPR, because the core philosophy of TPR is learning by naturally reaction in a physical way to language, hence why it leans so heavily on the imperative.)

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 6:15 pm
by reineke
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Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:26 pm
by romeo.alpha
Cainntear wrote:I was pointing out that this doesn’t work because the first situation you had described was immediate past,


No it's not. It could be, but there's absolutely nothing about the situation I described that necessitates it be in the immediate past.

Re: Total Physical Response (TPR)

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:00 am
by Cainntear
romeo.alpha wrote:
Cainntear wrote:I was pointing out that this doesn’t work because the first situation you had described was immediate past,


No it's not. It could be, but there's absolutely nothing about the situation I described that necessitates it be in the immediate past.

I was referring to your previous post, but I misremembered it. Regardless, nothing you’ve said is TPR, and what you were replying to was my comment on why TPR doesn’t work. You responded by suggesting how to “moderate”... by not doing TPR, which only supports my point that TPR is a poor methodology to build an entire course on.