220 likes | 252 Views
Explore the benefits of drama in the language classroom to enhance reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills. Foster critical thinking, creativity, and motivation through student-centered, group work activities. From improvisations to role plays, discover fun and interactive ways to engage students in learning a new language.
E N D
Drama Activities in the Language Classroom James Whiting Ph.D
Four Skills • Develop improved skills in • reading • listening • speaking • writing
Critical & Independent Thinking • Develop skills in thinking analytically
Minimal Resources • With very little teacher input and teacher- directed language • Students can produce highly imaginative and rich situations and scenarios
Student Initiated • Student-generated language • Ownership • Student centered • Student initiated • Promotes creativity
Group work • Strengthen self-concept by • Cooperative interaction with others • Student negotiation of • roles • dialogue/words • situation/events
Motivation • Increase motivation to learn and use the target language
Creativity • Develop individual and group creativity, trust, and spontaneity
Fun • Students like it • It’s good for them • It doesn’t seem like ‘real work’
Real World, Real Life • Drama serves an integrating function • Students integrate life experiences into a dramatic context
Advantages Summarized • Student-directed, -initiated, -generated, - centered • Negotiation, communication • Builds Community and Trust • Real world and authentic • Four Skills
Advantages Summarized • Students out of their seats • Breaks confining nature of classrooms • Sequential—multi-day—product-driven • Fun • Lively, interesting, motivating
Options • Miming • Trust-building activities • Role plays • Improvisations • Skits—small to large • Plays • TV and Films
Improvisation • Three People • (jobs, age, gender, family status) • One Place • One time • Weather • One thing
Improvisation • These don’t have to be related or in anyway connected • Example: • A lawyer, a young girl and bus driver, a beach, early morning, a cup of coffee
Improvisation • From the bags • Choose Three people • One Place, one time, one weather and one object • With your partners, construct a scene which includes your three people, place, weather and object.
Improvisation • Perform your scene for one other group continue performing until the other group correctly guesses the three people, place, time, object and weather. • The groups cannot say who they are, where they are, what item they have, the time or the weather.
Improvisation • As a group you have to perform actions and use dialog which convey your character, the time, the weather, your object and your place. • You must also come up for a creative reason why the three people are together and in this place at this time with this object.
Resources • Maley and Duff, Drama Techniques in the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press. • Mary Hines, Skits in English
Websites • http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek4/drama.htm • http://www.childdrama.com/lessons.html • http://www.genericradio.com