Zsófia E. Gacsal - Let's play! Learning styles and drama in the SL classroom

Let’s play! Learning styles and drama in the SL classroom

Zsófia E. Gacsal

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

Abstract

This essay focuses on how drama can be used as a tool for teaching a second language in the classroom to improve the second language learners’ language learning. By drama, the creating and writing of situations that resemble life-like situations are meant (either in the form of monologues or dialogues) in the L2 by the SL learners, which are then acted out in front of the class by the learners and their peers. The paper will look at the benefits of drama pedagogy for learning languages, such as drama pedagogy’s highly communicative nature, how it involves authentic communication and promotes group cohesion.

            The present paper will investigate how drama can be used as a tool for teaching a second language in the classroom to improve the second language learners’ language acquisition. By drama, I mean the creating and writing of situations that resemble real life situations (these can be either in the form of monologues or dialogues) in the L2 by the SL learners, and then acting them out in front of the class with their classmates. The paper will look at the benefits of drama in the classroom. The focus of the study will be on drama pedagogy’s highly communicative techniques, and the authentic communication it involves. Moreover, the paper will investigate how drama pedagogy promotes group cohesion.

            First of all, the use of drama is advisable in the classroom. As Byrne says (1990) SL students can freely exercise the language they have learnt up until that point with the help of fluency tasks, which are speaking tasks where the students have to participate in dialogue within either a group or a pair (p. 7). These dialogues can be created by the students themselves according to him. (1990, p. 5) During these tasks the teacher removes herself from the controlling position, and she is only there as a stimulator – to encourage interaction among the students, or as a manager and consultant – to give the task and to be there to help the students, but only if they ask for it (Byrne, 1990, p. 13). Drida (2011) efficiently summarised Maley & Duff (1992), who stated that drama requires the students to utilise their own or a made-up character’s personality in unpredictable imaginary situations. Drida quotes Wessels (1987) too, who said that drama provides learners with a glimpse of the reality of the language and its actual use. Thus, drama provides language learners with an opportunity to exercise their knowledge in unpredictable life-like situations with the help of their own or an imaginary character’s thoughts and emotions.

            Another benefit of utilising drama in the SL classroom is because the techniques of drama pedagogy are all highly communicative. These techniques, according to the academically acclaimed website of Davis – http://esldrama.weebly.com/ – recommended by Belliveau & Kim (2013, p. 9), involve improvisation – when the students do a scene without preparation; plays – when a situation and its parameters are set by the teacher, and the students have to act accordingly to their pre-determined scripts; and process drama – when drama is performed for the sake of performance and the focus is on utilising multiple perspectives to interpret a problem. In all of these techniques, the focus is on communication itself; not exclusively on grammar or on vocabulary, as in the case of, for example, a multiple-choice test. Drama pedagogy techniques require the students to communicate with each other or the teacher, depending on the nature of the task. Moreover, such techniques are situation-oriented (i.e., they introduce a real life situation among the walls of the classroom). Furthermore, these techniques demand role-play from the participants, since they try to “[look] at the narrative and characters from multiple perspectives and interpretations” (Belliveau & Kim, 2013, p. 7).

            Applying drama in the SL classroom is further advisable because of the authentic communication which can be achieved through the techniques of drama pedagogy. The authenticity of the communication may come from several sources within the communication itself. Firstly, students can bring examples of situations to the classroom from their own lives. Since these situations are already real life experiences, they can keep their authenticity and life-likeness within the classroom. Secondly, responses are generally instantaneous, so students cannot rely on pre-written responses or pre-existing thoughts. They have to think on their feet just as in a real life conversation. Thirdly, the students’ personalities (made-up or real) are involved when constructing a situation or a response. This mimes real life perfectly, since one’s thoughts and emotions are always under the influence of one’s personality and so are one’s responses. Last but not least, the genuine mistakes of the participants – may it be grammatical, intonation or stress problems – parallel everyday real life conversations, because language is never in its perfect form in speech.

            Another great advantage of the use of drama in the SL classroom is that drama pedagogy promotes group cohesion. As Szesztay (2009) states, “There is no group without group dynamics” and group cohesion can facilitate language learning (p. 7). A group where the students trust each other and are not afraid of being ridiculed helps in acquiring the language (Szesztay, 2009, p. 7) since the language learners are able to speak up in front of the others and they dare to make mistakes. Drama pedagogy is a perfect tool to reach a positive group dynamic because drama enables the students to establish deeper relationships with each other through its use of personal stories. In addition, drama allows students to present multiple perspectives via their invented personas, thus the learners may be more open to different opinions and become more understanding.
            To sum it up, this paper investigated how drama pedagogy may be utilised for teaching a SL in the classroom to improve the second language learners’ language acquisition. The essay looked at the benefits of drama in the classroom, paying special attention to drama pedagogy’s highly communicative techniques, the authentic communication it involves, and how drama pedagogy promotes group cohesion.

References

Belliveau, G. & Kim, W. (2013). Drama in L2 learning: A research synthesis. Scenario,                              2013. Retrieved from http://research.ucc.ie/scenario/02/02-BelliveauKim-2013-02-en.pdf

Byrne, D. (1990). Techniques for Classroom Interaction. Longman, USA: New York

Davis, J. (n.d.). Drama in the ESL Classroom. Retrieved from http://esldrama.weebly.com/

Drida, J. (2011). Drama pedagogy’s effect on motivation in teaching English as a foreign                            language. Budapest

Szesztay, M. (2009). Az én csoportom: csoportdinamikáról, csoportvezetésről trénereknek.                      Budapest