Drama and improv have been at the centre of research regarding their efficacy for the past 40 years. Time and time again, various studies have concluded that not only is it a great and engaging form of communicative language teaching, it directly links to improved fluency, lowered English foreign-language speaking anxiety and shifts the view from a “deficient learner” to a “competent speaker”, as all students are able to participate at their individual level when given adequate time and support.
This form of engaging with English in a meaningful way has “communicative competence at its heart and promotes dramatic, linguistic, paralinguistic, interpersonal and cultural skill-building”. All of these skills are essential to being a proficient speaker in English and enable students to cope in situations where their vocabulary and grammar alone will not suffice to communicate.
One study found that an overwhelming number of lessons are built in what they call the “IRF format”: It starts with an initiation by the teacher, followed by a response of the learner, and ends with a feedback of the teacher. This neatly organised sandwich may be easy to apply to your own lessons and gives a lot of control over interaction and action within a given lesson, but lacks the authenticity real communication would have. Learners who are only ever exposed to this form of communication lack the pragmatic competence to actually participate in real-world communication and are far more likely to shy away from interacting with English speakers outside of this very limited classroom experience.
While there are various methods and approaches that can rectify this common mistake, one of the most energetic and simultaneously effective ones is drama and improv. It combines the ability to simulate authentic situations through defined scenarios with the challenge of the situation being very open-ended. The scenario frames the talk and gives all learners a common understanding of where and what is happening, activating their schemata and prior knowledge while still offering a differentiated approach through natural differences in proficiency and outcome. Furthermore, it allows TESOL teachers to incorporate specific linguistic skills or functional language chunks into a scene without boring learners through drills and static tasks.
Click on any of the three subsections below to dive deeper into possibilities and theoretical knowledge for the three sections: fluency, accuracy and anti-bias education.