Some History

3 thoughts on “Some History”

1. Michael Coxon

   January 22, 2016 at 8:11 am

   Overall, I think this is a pretty good account. The one thing to note is that Blaine was first introduced to Asher’s work in 1980 and started using TPR in his classroom in the early 80’s.

   In 1987 was about the time that Blaine took TPR actions into stories.

   Also somewhere in the early 80’s, I’m not sure on the dates, Blaine reached out to Krashen and asked him about how to make the Natural Approach part of classroom teaching. That was the start of that connection.

   TPR+Natural Approach=TPRS of today

   You mentioned some sort of split with Asher and Blaine… I have asked around about this because I’m into the history and gossip of TPRS. I have been told that Asher was very difficult to work with due to ego type of stuff. It is too bad that he has never even been to a NTPRS 🙁

   Log in to Reply
   1. Ben Slavic

      January 22, 2016 at 2:17 pm

      I’ll add those points into the article Michael and thank you. It’s now a Primer article.

      Log in to Reply
2. Nathaniel

   January 22, 2016 at 5:42 pm

   Thanks Ben.
   One finer point. I understand that although Asher and Krashen overlap, Asher is the earlier of the two. ‘In The Great Fiction/Nonfiction Debate,’ SK mentions his process for comprehending Chomsky’s “Aspects of the Theory Syntax.” This was published in 1965. SK complete his PhD in 1972 at UCLA.

   Asher complete his PhD in psychology in 1957 (UHouston) and taught at San Jose from 1957 -96. On page 1-1 of “Learning Another Language through Actions,” Asher indicates that his 15 minute film, ‘Demonstration of a New Strategy in Language Learning’ was produced in 1963 (it was copyrighted in 1964). The strategy was the total physical response.

   http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/2015_krashen_the_great_fiction_nonfiction_debate_pdf.pdf

   Log in to Reply