THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENTS’ LEARNING ENGLISH APPLYING TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (TPR)

Abstrak

The research aims to describe the visually impaired students’ learning
English using Total Physical Response (TPR). The research may contribute to the
development of English learning model for the visually impaired students who
need attention in their right to get better education and improvement in learning
English using Total Physical Response (TPR). The research method was
descriptive qualitative method. The study was conducted at Yaketunis
Yogyakarta. There were fifteen visually impaired students who became
participants in this research. The sources of the data were (1) visually impaired
students as the participants of the study, (2) recorded actions (video-taped), (3)
recorded interviews (audio-taped), and (4) field note.
The result showed that visually impaired students had new experience in
learning English effectively, actively, stress-free and joyful. Total Physical
Responses handled that students’ limitation in visualization to get information
through voice by their senses of hearing. The students practiced giving responses
of some instructions, pronunced some words and repeated the words many times
by maximizing their sense of hearing to activate their psychomotor competence.
This process of learning activities supported them in developing their skill in
mastering vocabulary, expression, and language command.