The Impact of Using Total Physical Response Method on Motivation among Iranian EFL Bilingual Learners with Intellectual Disability

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of using Total Physical Response Method onmotivation of Iranian bilingual EFL learners with intellectual disabilities. To conduct the research, 20elementary pupils at Neshat exceptional school, Ahvaz, Iran were chosen, based on conveniencesampling from a pool of 50 learners with mild intellectual disabilities. The pupils were randomlydivided into two equal groups of 10, i.e. experimental and control groups. The experimental group wastaught through Total Physical Response Method, while the control group was run throughconventional-based teaching. All the scoring processes in this study were done orally (i.e., interview).The scoring procedure was run by two raters due to the subjectivity of test-raters. The inter-raterreliability turned out to 0.96 which depicted a substantial agreement. The participants’ scoresdemonstrated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in term of motivation. Theanalysis of the data was done through Leven’s test and independent sample t-test techniques.Finally, it was concluded that using Total Physical Response Method can bolster the motivationamong Iranian EFL bilingual learners with intellectual disabilities. The findings of this study canprovide teachers, learners, and material designers with implications for applying the same method inEFL setting.

Keywords:

Total Physical Response Method , EFL , Mild Intellectual Disability , Motivation