The Use of Drama Techniques in Teaching Adult EFL Learners

MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

Bachelor Thesis

Brno 2012

Supervisor: Author: Mgr. Naděžda Vojtková Martina Váchová

Annotation

The Bachelor's thesis The Use of Drama Techniques in Teaching Adult EFL Learners deals with the use of drama in teaching English, putting emphasis on teaching adults. Chapter one is concerned with the advantages and disadvantages of using drama in teaching English and provides several practical tips on implementing drama into English lessons. Chapter two enumerates and describes various types of commonly used drama techniques. Chapter three characterizes adult learners, defines their expectations and analyses possibilities of using drama in adult education, with particular emphasis on enriching English lessons with drama oriented activities. Chapter four, being the practical part, consists of a series of lesson plans based on drama activities, accompanied with evaluations of the lessons.

Anotace

Bakalářská práce The Use of Drama Techniques in Teaching Adult EFL Learners se zabývá využitím technik dramatické výchovy ve výuce angličtiny, přičemž důraz je kladen na výuku dospělých. V první kapitole jsou popsány výhody a nevýhody používání dramatiky ve výuce angličtiny a dále je zde uvedeno několik praktických rad vztahujících se k zavádění dramatických postupů do hodin angličtiny. V kapitole druhé jsou vyjmenovány nejběžněji používané dramatické techniky. Třetí kapitola pojednává o charakteristických rysech dospělých studentů a nastiňuje možnosti využití dramatiky ve vzdělávání dospělých, zejména v souvislosti s možnostmi obohacení hodin angličtiny. Čtvrtá kapitola zahrnuje přípravy na hodiny založené na dramatických postupech a hodnocení proběhlých hodin.

Key words: Drama, drama techniques, EFL, adult learners, adult education, conversation courses, lesson plans

Klíčová slova: Dramatická výchova, dramatické techniky, vzdělávání dospělých, konverzační kurz, příprava na hodinu

Declaration

I declare that I worked on this bachelor thesis independently and used only the sources listed in the bibliography. I agree that the work will be kept in the Masaryk University library for study purposes.

Brno, 3 December 2012 ------Martina Váchová

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Naděžda Vojtková for her kind guidance and helpful advice. 4

Content

Introduction...... 7

Theoretical Part...... 9 1. Drama……………………………...... 9 1.1. What is drama...... 9 1.2. The advantages of using drama...... 9 1.3. The disadvantages of using drama...... 12 1.4. Several tips before using drama...... 13 2. Drama techniques………………………………………...... 15 2.1. Hot-seating...... 15 2.2. Role on the Wall...... 15 2.3. Conscience Alley………………………………………………………………..15 2.4. Frozen Frames/ Still Images…………………………………………………….16 2.5. Thought-tracking………………………………………………………………...16 2.6. Teacher in Role………………………………………………………………….16 2.7. Mantle of the Expert…………………………………………………………….16 2.8. Role Play…………………………………………………………………….…..17 2.9. Simulation……………………………………………………………………….17 3. Adult learners...... 18 3.1. Characteristics of an adult learner...... 18 3.2. Adult learners‟ expectations...... 19 3.3. Adult learners and drama...... 20 3.4. Drama with adults in ELT...... 21 Practical Part 4. Lesson plans for a conversation course...... 23 4.1. Description of the course...... 23 4.2. Lesson plans...... 24 4.2.1. Lesson plan 1-Extraordinary Newspaper Stories...... 24 4.2.2. Lesson plan 2-TV News Bulletin...... 27 4.2.3. Lesson plan 3-Guided Tour...... 29 4.2.4. Lesson plan 4-Life in the Terminal...... 32

4.3. Final assessment of the course...... 41 Conclusion...... 44 Bibliography...... 46 Appendices...... 48 Appendix A: Lesson plan 2 Handout...... 49 Appendix B: Lesson plan 4 Handout...... 50 Appendix C: Questionnaire...... 52

Introduction

The popularity of communicative teaching method in the last decades brought interest in using drama in teaching foreign languages. However, there are still many teachers and learners reluctant to include drama techniques, presumably for the reason of lack of information on what drama in language classes looks like and how it can be incorporated into lessons. I must admit that I used to be one of them. Several years ago, I associated teaching languages through drama with working on a masterpiece by a great classical playwright. An idea of rehearsing a play in order to prepare a performance for public crossed my mind and I immediately lost interest. I considered drama to be something complicated and time- consuming, convenient only for enthusiastic theatregoers. The turning point came when I experienced a lesson based on drama techniques as a student. During my studies at university I was impressed by a lesson led by one of my colleagues in the subject Cultural Studies. When I asked her about her source of inspiration she recommended me Neelands and Goode and at that moment a new world opened to me. I started to study literature and became interested in using drama conventions in my teaching. I realised that I had been using some of simpler drama techniques even before being aware that they are drama, for example roleplays and mimes. I have found out that there are many established activities used in drama education that can be adapted to TEFL. However, many of them are designed for bigger groups and most of the resources deal with the use of drama in teaching children. I teach both young and adult learners. As for the children, it seems to be quite natural to use dramatization, in fact I have always been basing their lessons on roleplays, mimes, storytelling and similar techniques. However, doing drama with the adults was a real challenge, I became profoundly interested in it and soon many questions to consider appeared in my mind, which in the end resulted in the decision to focus my thesis on this topic. The aim of this Bachelor Thesis is to examine several questions concerning possible use of drama education as a tool for teaching foreign languages to adults. Firstly, would adults benefit from doing drama activities in English classes in the same way as children do? Secondly, is it possible to use drama activities with small groups (4-6students)? Finally, how would adult students respond to drama? I have divided my work into two parts. The theoretical part deals with the definition of drama in context of teaching languages, describes adult learners and enumerates several most

7 common drama techniques. The practical part offers my own lesson plans incorporating drama activities accompanied with my reflections on them. I hope the lesson plans will be inspiring for other teachers considering introducing drama into their lessons.

Theoretical Part

1. Drama

1.1. What is drama

To start with, it is important to point out that drama in this context does not mean performing a scripted play on stage. Neelands and Goodle consider theatre “the direct experience that is shared when people imagine and behave as if they were other than themselves in some other place at another time” (3). This implies that we all have experienced drama in our lives – what else is the pretend play in toddlers and preschoolers than a roleplay? We can take drama as a natural process, as a part of everybody‟s life. Wessels (7) believes this is also true for adults: Drama is doing. Drama is being. Drama is such a normal thing. It is something that we all engage in daily when faced with difficult situations. You get up in the morning with a bad headache or an attack of depression, yet you face the day and cope with other people, pretending that nothing is wrong. You have an important meeting or an interview coming up, so you „talk through‟ the issues with yourself beforehand and decide how to present a confident, cheerful face, what to wear, what to do with your hands, and so on.

1.2. The advantages of using drama

In traditional teaching, students are often introduced new grammatical structures and subsequently trained to practise them while the teacher is correcting their mistakes. As Alan Maley and Alan Duff say, “the conviction that Vocabulary + Essential Structures = Language lies at the base of nearly every foreign language syllabus” (7). This may result in mastering the forms theoretically without being able to use them actively in speaking. Maley and Duff continue: “Much language teaching is done through structures or so-called situations in the belief that once a sentence has been correctly formulated a use can always be found for it. First comes form, then meaning” (7-8). They criticize this approach because it results in

9 getting learners used to “making sentences fit into structural moulds” (8) which they illustrate with the following simile: To use an analogy, such a learner is like an architect who designs a building before inspecting the site on which it is to be placed. There may be nothing structurally wrong with the design, but if the building is five storeys high with a stone façade, and is intended to fill the gap between two steel-and-glass skyscrapers, the architect will clearly have to put in some overtime! (Maley and Duff, 8) We should also mention other linguists who are against this approach. Stephen Krashen points out the importance of “natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the message they are conveying and understanding” (Krashen in Wessels 12). Charlyn Wessels writes about the importance of teaching genuine communication in which the participants do not take turns in a regular pattern as “most ordinary conversations contain hesitations, interruptions, distractions, misunderstandings and even silences” (11). Other important features of communication are emotional involvement: “a conversation could evoke the whole spectrum of feelings from violent anger to tenderest love in the speakers” (Wessels 11) and body language: “facial expressions, gestures, the positions of our limbs, and non/verbal sounds, which can be as eloquent as words” (Wessels 11). The big drawback with the commonly used textbooks is neglecting of these non-verbal components of communication, which according to Wessels is the reason why “many students fail, or take such a long time, to achieve the ability to communicate effectively outside the classroom” (11). As Wessels goes on, she suggests drama as a possible solution to this situation: “The use of drama would involve a consideration of most (if not all) of the aspects of genuine communication discussed earlier – background, emotions, relationships, status, body language, and other paralinguistic features” (11). Maley and Duff have similar opinion: “Drama attempts to put back some of this forgotten emotional content into language – and to put the body back too” (7). Drama can bring the opportunity to communicate naturally in the classroom because it provides the language learners with meaningful context for speaking and listening. Maley and Duff enumerate several elements that form this context or the situation: Setting - the physical surroundings, for example restaurant, airport, station Role and status - Maley and Duff point out that it is important “to encourage students from the very start to become sensitive to the way in which our built-in views of our

own roles and those of others are defined and clarified through language” (10). Each person interchanges various roles during the day and the particular role undoubtedly influences the way they speak. Wessels also mentions the influence of the status – whether the speaker is a superior or a subordinate (11). She continues on the mutual influence between the setting and the status: “The lofty customs officer at the airport undergoes a radical change of status when stopped for speeding by the traffic police on the motorway” (11). Mood, attitude and feeling – feelings have influence on language in almost all situations. Maley and Duff especially emphasize the importance of intonation: “much of our feeling . . . is conveyed through intonation, and it is important for students to associate the intonation pattern with the feeling that gives rise to it” (11). Shared knowledge – practically all conversations that people lead comprise to certain extent shared knowledge, something what both participants know and thus there is no need to say to each other. Maley and Duff believe that this is the reason “why the language of text-books often strikes us as being artificial” (11-12). They think that even at lower levels saying the self-evident, such as “The blue pencil is longer than the red one.” should be avoided as students hardly manage to use such sentences meaningfully.

Another advantage of using drama techniques in teaching foreign languages is that drama brings fun to lessons, which increases students‟ motivation and makes learning more memorable. Harmer writes that “one of the teacher‟s main aims should be to help students to sustain their motivation” (20). Introducing drama activities could be one of the possible ways how to manage it. “There is no place here for stereotyped responses, set-up discussions, pre- planned arguments or „free conversations‟ in which everyone speaks and nobody listens, or else nobody speaks and the teacher is left to quench the fire started by his or her burning question” (Maley and Duff 13). Wessels also mentions positive effects of drama projects on EFL learners‟ confidence (13).

1.3. The disadvantages of using drama

Taking into account the potential of using drama mentioned above it might seem surprising why teachers do not include more drama-oriented activities in English lessons. There are several factors that can prevent teachers from incorporating drama in their teaching. First of all, the lack of experience plays an important role. Wessels (14) says: If drama can really enrich the language class in all these ways, why are so many teachers reluctant to use it? Many still think of drama as 'theatricals', because this is their only experience of it. Often the fault lies not with the individual teacher, but with the training that he or she has received; a training that presents education as the one-way transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student, rather than the creation of a learning situation in which the student is also the teacher. Most teachers in the Czech Republic did not come across any kind of training in this field as drama is generally not a compulsory part of teacher-trainers syllabuses at universities and therefore many teachers have merely vague idea of drama techniques and how to exploit them. It is true that at present time students at many universities have opportunity to sign up for optional courses focused on using drama, however, it is not uncommon that only the students with previous experience or interest in drama make use of this chance. Others might be discouraged by the idea of performing a play for the audience which in their opinion is the main part of drama lessons. Next, teachers have limited resources available when they want to prepare drama- based lessons. As I have already mentioned, drama conventions are not widely used in teaching at Czech schools and thus, in general, school libraries are not well-equipped as for the relevant literature is concerning. Moreover, not many books offer guidance on how to use drama in teaching foreign language. Another source that should be mention here is the Internet. We can assume that nowadays the vast majority of teachers have access to the Internet and use it on regular basis which can enable them to search wide range of resources for drama teachers. However, the use of these materials can be limited simply because of the fact that the essential part of drama resources is primarily aimed at native speakers and thus can be too complicated to be used with learners of English, especially at lower levels. Even those materials that are focused on teaching English as a foreign language may be found inappropriate for the particular group. As a result many teachers consider the process of

12 searching the Internet very time-consuming and they easily get discouraged. To sum up, the lack of appropriate ready-to-use materials can be frustrating for teachers considering implementing process drama into their lessons. It is necessary either to adapt materials or create one‟s own and here we again encounter the obstacle of teachers‟ little knowledge of drama techniques. Another constraint can be students‟ reluctance to participate in drama-oriented activities. This can be caused by their introversion or shyness, not all students are willing to act in front of their classmates. Others can consider drama-oriented activities mere play that is not justifiable in the process of learning English and that reduces time for more serious work.

1.4. Several tips before starting with drama

Many teachers fear to start with drama in their classes for the first time. Charlyn Wessels recommends “a gradual induction period” to allow both the teacher and the learners time to get used to drama. Teachers should initially try some simple activities and react to students‟ attitude to them: “if a group doesn‟t want to be taught through drama, it should not be forced on them. Gradual and careful introduction and demonstrable success, enjoyment and involvement is the way to convince the students of the value of learning through drama” (20). The relationship between the teacher and learners plays an important role in drama education. Drama demands enthusiasm – not only for the lesson, but also for the students. And this in turn depends on the formation of a relationship of mutual trust in which neither teacher nor student feels „at risk‟, but they willingly change roles and status to achieve the aims of the lesson. (Wessels 15) Maley and Duff talk about the necessity of creating “a relaxed atmosphere” (22) and suggest changes in the layout of the room. However, as they point out, what is even much more important is the shift in teacher‟s role in the class. When doing drama with the class teacher is not supposed to be the “source of all knowledge nor the sole arbiter of what is „right‟ and „wrong‟, „good‟ and „bad‟. Your [the teacher‟s] main function now is to set things in motion” (22). The teacher should introduce the activity and then let students work independently. The relationships between students will notably affect the process because they have to cooperate and trust each other. Wessels thinks that teacher should help the group to get to know each

13 other better either by implementing some „getting to know‟ activities into lessons or by encouraging socializing outside the classroom (22). Apart from relationships there are several other elements that can influence success or failure of a drama activity. First of all we have to take into consideration place where the drama activities should be performed. Most classrooms can be easily rearranged to fit the needs of drama lessons, the activities usually involves movement so it is advisable to leave some space in the room empty to enable students to circulate. Time is another important point. The school lesson in our country lasts 45 minutes, but this is not always true in the context of adult learners. In language schools there are often 60-minutes lessons or double lessons – 90 minutes in total which can be enough for even more complex drama activities. Last but not least, it is necessary to make clear what the aim of the lesson is and make sure that students are aware of it. According to Wessels, this will help students to concentrate, improve their time-management and finally they will experience the feeling of accomplishments when the aim is fulfilled (24).

2. Drama techniques

In drama education various activities called drama techniques or conventions are used in the process of building a performance. Neelands and Goode consider drama conventions tools useful for exploring and communicating the meaning (3). The following is only a brief description of several commonly used drama techniques that can be easily adapted for teaching foreign languages. The descriptions of individual techniques are based on Neelands and Goode and the web page dramaresource.com.

2.1. Hot-seating

Aim: to explore the character and their motivation or unknown parts of the story One of the students sits in front of the class pretending to be the character and the others (either in roles or not) ask him questions. Questions can be prepared in advance or asked on the spot. This convention helps to reveal the character‟s motivation and encourages reflection on people‟s behaviour.

2.2. Role on the Wall

Aim: to get to know the character, to brainstorm ideas Students work with a large sheet of paper where the outline of the character is drawn. Either in groups or individually, they put down what they know about this character. They can write both facts (age, appearance, clothes) and inner feelings of the character. The result of their work is then put up on the wall.

2.3. Conscience Alley

Aim: to analyse a situation that requires a decision Students stand in two lines facing each other, the student in the role of a character walks slowly in the middle and everybody gives him/her advice. As an alternation the group standing on one side could be asked to give arguments for while the other one against. In the end he/she makes a decision.

2.4. Frozen Frames/ Still Images

Aim: to illustrate a specific event, to explore the feeling of characters Students are asked to freeze at a certain moment of performing or they gradually build a scene using their bodies. The advantage is that learners are able to express more than they would be able say in words. It can be also successfully used to control dramatic moments. It is also possible to divide students into 2 or more groups and then one group performs while the rest comment on what the still-image means.

2.5. Thought-tracking

Aim: to reflect and analyze the situation and role The group focuses on the character who is „frozen‟ in a still-image or a frozen frame and comes with ideas what this character‟s thoughts are. Person who wants to contribute a thought can tap the character‟s shoulder. These thoughts can be contrasted with what he/she says publicly. This can help to understand inner feelings of the character.

2.6. Teacher in Role

Aim: to develop or control the drama activity, to challenge learners‟ thinking The teacher involves in the drama, either as one of the participants or as a leader. Teacher can give evidence of stepping in or out the role by using a prop connected to the character (for example a hat) or signify that they are in a role only when sitting on a particular chair. This allows the teacher to comment on the situation from outside and actively influence it from inside at the same time. This convention can be used in connection with others, for example Hot-seating.

2.7. Mantle of the Expert

Aim: to move responsibility from the teacher to learners, to provoke involvement, to boost confidence

The learners are given roles of experts in a particular field connected with the situation – they can become social workers, architects, designers, archaeologists. The group is often supposed to fulfil a task with help of these experts. This activity can be adapted to a great variety of topics and provoke meaningful opportunities to speak.

2.8. Role Play

Aim: to get into role This convention belongs to the basic ones, it is widely used because of its simplicity and familiarity both to teacher and students. It can be established quickly by mere allocating roles to learners or learners can choose roles themselves. More complex alternative is to distribute role cards with additional information on the character, their opinions, wishes or some hints how the character will behave in particular situation. No matter how simple this activity might seem, it can be very beneficial – it helps learners to understand different viewpoints and accustom their language and movement to different characters.

2.9. Simulations

Aim: to simulate real-life situations which require making decisions or solving problems Group is presented with a situation that they have to solve, often within a time limit which puts tension on participants. Through simulations learners can identify with the problem and examine various criteria before making a final decision. Group can be for example asked to design a new town facility within a given budget. It is usual in stimulations that learners are provided with some guidelines that have to be taken into account – a set budget, criteria of the competition or various rules.

3. Adult Learners

3.1. Characteristics of an adult learner

It is evident that adult learners differ from young learners in many ways. Scientists have been dealing with the distinctive features of the former ones for a long time. In 1833 a German teacher Alexander Kapp introduced the term andragogy as a science dealing with education of a „man‟ in contrast to pedagogy dealing with education of a „child‟ (Smith). The leading figure of andragogy later became Malcolm Knowles who formulated six basic assumptions defining adult learners (57-63): The need to know – adults need to understand why they need to learn something. Teachers should become facilitators who show learners how they will be able to use what they have learnt in real life. Knowles adds that “even more potent tools for raising the level of awareness of the need to know are real or simulated experiences in which the learners discover for themselves the gaps between where they are now and where they want to be” (58). The learners’ self-concept – adults have a need to be self-directing and to be seen as such by others. However, in context with education, adults, according to their previous experience from school education, often start to behave dependently and expect the teacher to lead them. When the teacher accepts this role, adult students may suffer from not fulfilling their psychological need. The role of the learners’ experience – adults come to education with a noticeably larger amount of experiences than children or youth do. Moreover, the spectrum of experiences is much wider, which means that learners themselves can be valuable resources for learning. This implies that in adult education experiential techniques such as discussions, simulations and problem-solving activities should prevail over transmitting methods. Nevertheless, Knowles also mentions negative effects: through various experiences adults may have formed a range of prejudices and bias and might have become reluctant to new approaches. Readiness to learn – adults are ready to learn things that are in accordance with their personal development and social roles. Various techniques, such as simulation, exposure to models and career counselling, can help to invoke the readiness.

Orientation to learning – adults are task-centred or problem-centred. They resent learning something for its own sake. They tend to learn new knowledge and skills best when these are useful in their real lives. Motivation – according to Knowles, intrinsic motivation prevails.

3.2. Adult learners’ expectations

We have already mentioned that adult learners enter educational courses with a vast quantity of previous knowledge and life-experiences. This, together with possible differences in age and background, brings a huge variety to the class. The differences among individual learners are much bigger than in school-aged children or teenagers‟ classes. Consequently they can also have a range of different expectations of the course. Amanda Hayes, a specialist in Further Education, sums up the most significant adult students‟ expectations of an educational course (8-12). Firstly, adult learners expect their teacher to be a professional with high level of knowledge not only of their field, but also of methodology. He or she should also follow the latest development in both areas mentioned above. As for the personality, adults long for a respectable teacher, who is enthusiastic about their subject. Hayes says: “Whatever subject we teach, we need to be exemplars of best and current practise” (8). Secondly, the learners expect to fulfil their personal learning aims. However, as Hayes writes, these are not necessarily “identical to the course objectives” (9). Teachers should be aware of their students‟ goals and adjust the course accordingly. It is also crucial to bear in mind the fact that students are influenced by the learning process and can alter their goals as the course proceeds. Thirdly, adult learners expect to get feedback. This aspect might be neglected, especially in non-formal education when students are not going to take any formal exam. However, they need to know what they have achieved and they expect advice on further progress. Another point worth mentioning is stimulating and safe environment. It can be promoted by suitable seating arrangement (Hayles recommends a horseshow due to the fact it encourages a feeling of equality), providing refreshment facilities or by teacher and students‟ joint coffee breaks. Lastly, adults expect to be treated with respect. Hayles emphasizes that it is absolutely essential that teachers avoid humiliation, sarcasm or being patronizing.

3.3. Adult learners and drama

Having analysed adult learners‟ expectations let me try to apply this analysis on the use of drama. As we could see in the previous chapters, participants of adult education expect their teacher to be an expert which can collide with the fact that teachers of English, no matter how professional in English they are, very often lack education in drama. This might make them feel unprepared and unsecure about teaching drama to others, in particular to adults. It is more than obvious that if the teacher feels unsecure about what he is doing he can easily transmit the doubts to his pupils and make them resistant to innovative teaching methods. Maley and Duff (4) emphasize the impact of teacher‟s self-assurance on the result of drama-based lesson: For drama activities to work well, teachers themselves need to be convinced that they will work. A class rapidly senses any hesitancy or nervousness, or lack of conviction on the part of the teacher. You are the key to the success of these activities. If you do them reluctantly, or half-heartedly, it is better not to do them at all. Another point that should be taken into consideration is the previous educational experience that participants bring into class as it can remarkably influence the attitude of learners towards learning. Speaking of adults, there can be noticeable differences among their backgrounds which can also be applied on various levels of experience with alternative methods in education. Not only the length of formal education plays an important role, but also experience with courses in further education can influence their attitude to various techniques. Those who have never come across using drama techniques in education may not see the point of doing it. Wessels (10) writes: Not all students will perceive it as being inherently useful, and will fail to bring with them the high degree of „motivational readiness‟ essential for the success of such a project. Here the role of the teacher is crucial, his task is to explain to the learners how they can benefit from immersing in drama-based lessons. In addition, adult learners are goal-oriented therefore it is vitally important that they are aware of the way how activities performed in class can help them achieve their targets and fulfil their needs. Focusing on adults, we must not omit their possible psychological barriers to participate in activities involving stepping out of the safety behind their desks and taking risks

20 performing in front of their classmates. Some of them might consider drama-oriented activities, especially those ones connected with physical movement, embarrassing. The way how to overcome this obstacle might lie in the gradual introduction of drama and allowing students plenty of time to get used to it. It is not advisable to force adult learners to do too much in too short time, they must feel comfortable before they take part in drama activities. Positive atmosphere and mutual trust can also help to cope with the anxiety.

3.4. Drama with adults in ELT

As far as teaching English to children is concerned, teachers tend to use drama in lessons much more than with adults. There is a wide range of activities that are occurring in primary schools or even kindergartens on a large scale, such as miming, songs, chants, role plays, making puppets and playing with them. All of these activities are part of everyday lives of children, thus it seems quite natural that many teachers base their lessons on them and it shows that pupils benefit from them. As Philips (6) explains: Using drama and drama activities has clear advantages for language learning. It encourages children to speak and gives them the chance to communicate, even with limited language, using non-verbal communication, such as body movements and facial expressions. There are also a number of other factors which make drama a very powerful tool in the language classroom. Try thinking about the ways in which reading a dialogue aloud from a textbook is different from acting out that same dialogue. You will find that the list is a long one. This is because drama involves children at many levels, through their bodies, minds, emotions, language, and social interaction. As it has been already mentioned in chapter 1, some experts believe that the same principles can be applied on adult learners. Krashen talks about the need of natural communication, Wessels as well as Maley and Duff emphasize the importance of non-verbal communication, body language and emotions (see ch. 1). They suppose drama has a great potential to provide teachers and learners with meaningful context and develop the non-verbal aspects of communication. As we can see drama can be enormously beneficial in teaching English to adult learners. Nevertheless, it is also important to consider possible problems. In addition to difficulties mentioned in the previous chapter, we should bear in mind time constraint. In

21 general, adults have to handle a lot of duties, they have to divide their time among work, family and personal life and therefore they cannot devote so much time to learning a foreign language. Speaking of private courses, adults most often attend one session a week, lasting between 60 and 90 minutes, which probably is not long enough to work on a long-term drama project resulting into performing the final product on the stage. However, as regards various drama activities or conventions, they are very flexible and can be used any time during the lesson in order to make the lessons more authentic. ...drama is a marvellously flexible technique that can fit into any area of the timetable. It requires no major adjustments on the part of the teacher. It does not even demand that teachers should change the materials they are presenting. But it will help to bring the materials to life, by infusing the lifeless print with the feelings, imaginations, and thoughts of the learners, who become active participants in the learning process (Wessels 10).

Practical Part

The practical part of this thesis comprises a series of lesson plans that I created for a summer conversation course. These lesson plans incorporate drama techniques in the lessons with regarding to principles mentioned in chapter 3. Especially the necessity of gradual implementing of drama was taken into account. The course starts with more conventional activities and drama techniques are added step by step.

4. Lesson plans for a conversation course

4.1. Description of the course

The lesson plans were designed for a one-week summer conversation course that took place from Monday to Friday, there were 4 lessons a day, that is 20 lessons altogether. Each session started at 8:30 and finished at 11:45, with one fifteen-minutes break. There were 5 participants aged 29-42, all of them female. As far as their education background is concerned, 2 participants had secondary education, 3 of them university education. The level of their English according to CEFR was mostly B1+, one of them was aiming at B2 level in reading and listening. The main objectives of the course were to develop speaking fluency, to improve communicative competence and to extend and reinforce vocabulary range. I also set myself several personal aims. Firstly, to try out various drama techniques, secondly, to find out whether adult students can benefit from using drama in English lessons and last but not least, to explore adult students‟ attitude to using such techniques. As I have mentioned above, I tried to incorporate drama techniques gradually. When preparing the course syllabus, I decided not to devote all the course time to drama. I combined drama activities with more traditional ones, using various materials from textbooks, resource books and Internet articles. Special attention was also paid to setting good relationships through getting to know activities at the beginning of the course. Bearing in mind that the group will be meeting every day in a period of one week, I was looking for a motif that would link individual lessons together. I opted for the topic of journalists and their work, since it enables wide variability. Some activities are based

23 exclusively on this theme (e.g. TV News Bulletin) whereas others are merely loosely connected to the topic of journalism (Guided Tour – visitors could be just tourists but the motif of foreign journalists on an exchange visit helps sustain the story). Having chosen journalism as a common thread running through all the lessons, I basically looked for suitable stories or worksheets and tried to apply drama techniques to them. The choice of drama techniques was inspired by Neelands and Goode and website dramasource.com which provides a brief outline of most common drama conventions.

4.2. Lesson plans

In this chapter four lesson plans based on using drama activities are introduced. I considered the layout of the lesson plans carefully as it plays an important role in utility for potential users. Each of the following lesson plans consists of four parts: brief introduction, detailed description of activities, final evaluation of the lesson and suggestions. The first part of each lesson plan outlines basic facts about the lesson: time, level, aims and materials needed. The second part is dedicated to the process of the lesson. In order to make the descriptions of activities clearly organised, they have been divided into two columns, the first containing instructions for the teacher while the latter describing what the students are supposed to do in each stage. Further, as I have piloted all the lessons, I have complemented the lesson plans with my evaluations in which I reflect on the strong and weak points of the lessons, deal with problems that occurred and come up with possible solutions. My reflections are based on comments which I put down after each session into the teaching diary and on students‟ feedback. Since I was curious whether the course was fulfilling the expectations of students, at the end of each day I included a short discussion on activities they had experienced. Furthermore, at the very end of the course I asked the participants to fill in a short questionnaire and a final discussion followed. The last part of the lesson plans, called Suggestions, offers possible improvements and modifications to the original lesson plans.

4.2.1. Lesson plan 1 – Extraordinary Newspaper Stories

Length: 45min Level: intermediate and above Aim: By the end of the session the students:  will have read several short stories about crime.  will have learnt new items of vocabulary focused on crime and newspaper stories.  will have used the language of the stories in interviews.

Materials: a set of Angry Motorist „Kills‟ Car story plus pictures for each pair of sudents, a set of pictures and extracts for Boy Driver Saves Father story for each pair (both adopted from www.onestopenglish.com) ,a toy microphone (it is not necessary, however, may be useful to make the activity more interesting, it can be easily made of a paper roll and a paper ball)

Stage 1 Reading Teacher Students Teacher distributes newspaper articles Students work in pairs, they read the story Angry Motorist Kills Car and sets of pictures and consequently try to put the pictures in the accompanying the story. right order. Teacher checks whether the task has been completed successfully.

Stage 2 Roleplay Teacher Students Teacher tells the students that they are Students in pairs prepare a short spot about going to pretend to be TV news presenters the incident and after preparation time informing about the Angry motorist incident perform in front of the whole group. in the evening news, allows students some time for preparation and then asks them to perform. A toy microphone can help Ss feel

25 more in the role and release the tension when performing.

Stage 3 Reading Teacher Students Teacher gives students another unusual Students in pairs put the extracts in correct story with pictures, this time the pictures are order. in the right order, however, the text is cut into several short strips which are in random order. Teacher checks with the whole group.

Stage 4 Role play Teacher Students Another role play follows: Students are in the role of police officers who are in the pub after work. They are chatting with other friends about an interesting incident that happened during their today‟s shift.

Evaluation: The lesson based on this lesson plan was incorporated in the first day of the one- week‟s course. I deliberately chose role play as the first of the drama techniques because I supposed that due to the fact that role plays are relatively widely used in various English textbooks most students would be familiar with this kind of activity and feel safe when performing. It proved to be a good choice. I also wanted to provide the students with some print materials at the beginning of the course as I anticipated that they were used to working with textbooks and handouts and having some material to reference before/during speaking helps them feel more comfortable. The lesson worked well, students easily fulfilled the first matching task, the text was not difficult for their level, they only had difficulties with vocabulary connected to cars- tyre, tyre iron, bonnet. After being asked to prepare the first role play, most students seemed to be surprised, some of them even worried that they would

26 not be able to perform, but in the end they overcame all troubles and finished the task successfully. As for the second story, reading activity ran smoothly, students became really interested in the story and when the second role play was introduced they enjoyed enthusiastically. In my opinion, the lesson was a success and a good beginning of mutual cooperation.

Suggestions: A good introduction activity could be giving students several crucial words from the first story and asking them to predict the plot. This would raise the interest of the students in the story and, meanwhile, the less familiar words could be pre-taught.

4.2.2 Lesson plan 2 – TV News Bulletin

Length: 45min Level: intermediate and above Aim: By the end of the session the students:  will have used the language of decision making, expressing opinions, agreeing and disagreeing in a discussion.  will have written several short scripts for TV news.  will have presented several news stories.

Materials: Handout with topics (adapted from www.teachingenglish.org.uk; see Appendix A)

Stage 1 Introduction Teacher Students Teacher asks students some of the Students answer and discuss their following questions: experience with TV news. Did you watch TV news yesterday? What stories do you remember? Do you ever watch news bulletins on TV? What kinds of stories are usually reported?

Stage 2 Simulation Teacher Students Teacher sets up the situation: students are Students read the list and simulate having a in the role of TV news bulletin crew who are meeting, they hold the discussion until they having a meeting to decide which stories will come to an agreement on 6 most important appear on TV news tonight. It is necessary to events and the most appropriate order of choose 6 stories and decide in which order reporting these events. they will be reported. In the end students present the result of Teacher distributes the list of events. their discussion to the teacher.

Stage 3 Writing Teacher Students Teacher asks the students to prepare the Students work in pairs, first they have to news bulletin, they are supposed to report 6 decide which stories will each pair be stories they have chosen in previous activity responsible for and then they work out the in a five-minute slot. appropriate scripts.

Stage 4 Performing Teacher Students Teacher points out that each student has Finally students perform the bulletin. to take part in the performing of the bulletin.

Evaluation: At the beginning of the lesson it seemed to be difficult to stimulate the discussion about TV news as all participants admitted they had not watched the news recently. However, when we began to talk about news in general, they slowly started to come up with ideas. When the stimulation task was assigned, the students became more interested. All of them participated in the discussion and they enjoyed the task very much. The students managed to express their opinions and give reasons to advocate their choices. They excluded several options quite easily but then it showed they had had different opinions on the remaining stories which made them even more involved. They discussed the topics on the list properly, giving examples of stories applied on our country which resulted in spending more time on

28 this stage than I had expected, but I dare to say it was beneficial. In my opinion this was the most fruitful part of the lesson as everybody was immensely enthusiastic about expressing their points of view and they worked on developing oral fluency. In the next stage students worked in pairs, they distributed the stories among them without any difficulties and wrote the scripts for the stories. I would like to point out that pairwork proved to be extremely helpful at this stage. Not only it was a good way of generating ideas on what to write about but it also provoked a lot of discussion, students evaluated their partners‟ suggestions and they focused on the appropriate length of their contributions. The last activity involved presentation of the final product-performing the news bulletin. Each student was asked to participate actively in this activity. As we did not have enough time left for this activity the students simply read their scripts. If we had had more time I would have asked the students to prepare performing the bulletin without using their notes to promote more speaking practice. I can say the task was fulfilled successfully even though the students overestimated the length of their utterances and finally the bulletin appeared to be much shorter than 5 minutes.

4.2.3. Lesson plan 3 – Guided Tour

Length: 45min Level: intermediate and above Aim: By the end of the session the students:  will have used the language of making questions and describing pictures.  will have practised talking about their town.  will have rehearsed showing foreigners round the town.

Materials: Pictures connected with the town where the course is taking place

Stage 1 Describing pictures Teacher Students Teacher brings a set of pictures with Students work in groups of 3-5 people. One main sights in the town/part of the city where person has a picture, the others take turns in

29 the course is taking place, pictures of asking him/her questions to find out what the important local people or events held locally. picture depicts. Once the main motif is Teacher keeps the pictures secret while revealed, they go on to find out more details. explaining how the activity processes. When Ss think they have clear images of what the picture looks like, the picture is shown to them to compare their ideas with the reality. Then another person chooses a new picture and the activity continues in the same way.

Stage 2 Motivation Teacher Students After all pictures have been uncovered, Students should come to a conclusion the teacher encourages students to find out that all the pictures have something to do what all pictures have in common. with the town/city where they are at the When the town/city is mentioned, teacher moment. introduces the starting point of the next Students are divided into 2 groups-Czech activity: some students are local journalists and foreign journalists, then they make pairs while the others are foreign colleagues who comprising one person from each group. are on a business trip. Czech journalists have to take the visitors on a guided tour round the city. The teacher informs where the group will exactly go.

Stage 3 Guided tour Teacher Students Teacher monitors and helps when Students set out on a short walk from the necessary. language school to an important place in the town/city (e.g. a well-known sight, an important building or a square). Czech journalists comment on what can be seen on the way and can also talk about the town/city in general-history, legends,

interesting facts. Foreign journalists listen and ask questions to find out as much as possible.

Stage 4 Feedback Teacher Students When the group reaches the end of the All students are joined together. They journey, the teacher asks the foreign discuss what they talked about during the journalists to compare the information they walk. gained from their guides.

Evaluation: The first activity - Guessing the Pictures - created a lot of enthusiasm among the students, they came with plenty of questions and were eager to find out what the pictures looked like. However, in the beginning two members of the group tended to dominate the process, asking one question after another, not leaving the others enough time to make up their own questions. As I did not want to interrupt the flow of the activity, I let them finish the first picture and then adapted the rules by telling them to take turns in questioning clockwise. On one hand, this slowed the activity down, but on the other hand, all students got the same chance to speak. Another problem which arose during the introductory stage was that it was not clear enough to what extent should the pictures be described. The first picture depicted the square being under reconstruction and there also were a few workers in the foreground. At the moment when the students managed to work out that it was a photo of the square in their town, they considered the task to be fulfilled. When I encouraged them to get into more details they continued and after a while successfully guessed what was happening in the photo. However, when the second picture was being examined, they tended to focus on too many details such as what the people were wearing etc. which caused the activity to become quite time-consuming. I recommend either giving more precise instructions beforehand or moderating the activity if any inconveniences appear. In the second stage the students easily recognised that all the pictures were connected to their town. When I put on a role play, half of the group seemed to be thrilled by the challenge while the other half looked a bit nervous. I let them make pairs according to their choice as I wanted them to feel secure and comfortable. When we set off, the tension was 31 gradually released and everybody co-operated well. The weak point was that the students regarded their knowledge of the town as insufficient which sometimes prevented them from speaking. I dealt with this situation by encouraging them to focus on basic facts they know and by reminding them of their roles of journalist not professional guides. I advised them not to worry about the lack of knowledge and instead, try to improvise and take the chance to rehearse showing foreign visitors round the town. Later the students overcame the difficulties and the activity went on well. Nevertheless, it made me think of inserting a preparation stage into this lesson plan which would precede the guided tour. As we had run out of time, I had to skip the last stage, I just asked the students to briefly comment on the activity. Generally, the lesson was positively evaluated, the students appreciated being exposed to real life situation and were satisfied with accomplishing the task. In my point of view, the lesson stimulated reasonable amount of speaking practice, although, admittedly, the students in the roles of guides were given much more fluency practice than the visitors. The solution could be in not omitting the final stage where the visitors were to share the information gained during the walk, which would help balance the participation of both groups.

Suggestions: It might be useful to set a time limit for the Picture guessing to prevent the students from talking about the same picture for too long. As I have already mentioned above, students could also benefit from being allowed time to get ready before the main activity. They could be given some leaflets in English to flick through and get some ideas what to talk about. However, I believe this stage should be kept short, otherwise the spontaneity and opportunity to improvise would disappear.

4.2.4 Lesson plan 4 – Life in the Terminal

Length: 4 x 45min Level: intermediate and above Aim: By the end of the session the students:  will have practised asking questions.  will have read an unusual story.  will have retold the story.

 will have used the language connected to airports.  will have talked about daily routines.  will have conducted several interviews.  will have written a newspaper article/diary entry.

Materials: a picture of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, a handout with information about Nasseri (adapted from www.wikipedia.com; see Appendix B), dictionaries, whiteboard+markers, a large sheet of paper, crayons or felt-tip pens

Stage 1 Lead in- Brainstorming Teacher Students Teacher provides students with the picture Students try to come up with different of Mehran Karimi Nasseri and asks them to ideas about occupation, age, family, origin brainstorm ideas who this person is. and lifestyle of the man depicted in the photo.

Stage 2 Teacher in the role Teacher Students Teacher is in the role-he/she pretends to Students try to find out as much be Mehran Karimi Nasseri and encourages information as possible about the identity of the students to question him. the mysterious person in the photo. In case students get stuck and cannot come up with any ideas, teacher can give them some hints that arouse their curiosity.

Stage 3 Reading Teacher Students Teacher distributes the text about Mehran Students read the text silently, comparing Karimi Nasseri and asks students to read the the information given with the facts they extract on their own. learnt in the previous activity. They can Teacher provides students with check the meaning of unfamiliar words in the dictionaries, however he/she gives them dictionary but they should focus only on the

33 instruction they should try to guess the words that are necessary for understanding meaning of new words form the context the meaning of the text. rather than look up too many words in the Students answer teacher‟s questions about dictionary. the character. When the students finished reading teacher elicits some basic facts about the character.

Stage 4 Character on the wall Teacher Students Teacher quickly draws a big-sized outline Students collectively try to write into the of a person on the board and informs students outline as many details about the character as that it represents Mehran Karimi Nasseri. they remember. They can also write their assumptions outside the figure. Provided that the number of students in the class is too high, the activity will run smoother if the teacher writes the words on the board himself or appoints a secretary who writes down all ideas.

Stage 5 Still image + Voices in head Teacher Students Teacher asks one volunteer to make a still One student performs a still image. The image of the scene when Nasseri found out others think about his inner feelings. that his briefcase had been stolen. After a short while students should be Teacher asks students to try to formulate ready to say the sentences out loud. If they one sentence saying what Nasseri is thinking want to contribute, they pat the student in the about. role of Nasseri on the shoulder and then they say the thought.

Stage 6 Role play Teacher Students Teacher says to the students that Nasseri Students work in pairs or groups of three decided to go on with his journey and fly to and try to role play the dialogue between Britain in spite of the fact he does not have Nasseri and Immigration clerk. his passport. However, the immigration check revealed it and sent him back to France. Teacher divides group into pairs and asks them to role play the scene at the airport when Nasseri is not able to show his passport to British immigration.

Stage 7 Nasseri’s narrative - Teacher in the role Teacher Students Teacher asks students to help him Students in the role of passenger at the rearrange the chairs in a line looking similar airport sit on the bench next to Nasseri and to benches in the airport hall. listen to his speech. Teacher adopts the role of Nasseri, sits down on the bench and invites students to join him and listen. Teacher starts narrating about his flight back to France, about being arrested after arrival and released soon after that, about the beginning of his residency at the airport. He/she continues on the trial in 1992.

Stage 8 Reading Teacher Students Teacher steps out of the role of Nasseri Students work in pairs. They are allowed and tells the students they are going to mime to use dictionaries or consult new vocabulary the part of the story they have just heard at with their classmates. the airport. But before they start, they will

35 have chance to read the relevant extract of the story. Teacher hands out next part of the text and asks students to read it in pairs.

Stage 9 Miming Teacher Students Teacher asks students to prepare miming Having finished reading, students have to the story. work together and agree on how to perform Teacher asks students to retell the story in the story. They should try to negotiate in their own words. English. Students mime the story. In the end students retell the story in their own words, they take turns in narrating one sentence each.

Stage 10 Body sculptures Teacher Students Teacher reminds the students that Students first brainstorm possible things Nasseri has been living at the airport terminal that could Nasseri use to equip his place and for many years. During this time he has then try to represent them with their bodies. adjusted the place where he is staying to fit After a couple of minutes the teacher better his needs. He still has the luggage he freezes the scene and comes to examine the came with many years ago and some other statues. If teacher touches the statue, it must equipment he managed to find at the airport. give some information about the thing it Teacher asks students to think briefly represents: What it is, what it is used for, about what sort of things surrounds Nasseri how Nasseri got it, how long he has had it or and then try to make body sculptures that even how this thing is feeling. represent furniture and things around Nasseri. Teacher gives signal „Freeze!‟ and walks round still sculptures, tapping one‟s shoulder

36 occasionally to find out about the statues.

Stage 11 Collective drawing Teacher Students The teacher brings a large sheet of paper, Students are going to draw a plan of the lays it on the table and asks students to sit airport that is the home of Nasseri. The around it. drawing will be done collectively. To practice speaking and listening, students cannot draw their own ideas, they have to instruct others to draw. Everybody must say at least 2 sentences. The place where Nasseri lives must be on the plan.

Stage 12 Nasseri’s day - Still images Teacher Students Teacher asks students to close their eyes Students with eyes closed listen to and imagine how Nasseri spends day at the teacher‟s questions and try to imagine as airport. What time does he wake up? What many details as possible. can he see when he opens his eyes? What can Students in small groups prepare pictures he hear? What does he do when he gets up? illustrating various parts of Nasseri‟s daily Does he have breakfast? What does he do in routine using their bodies. While one group the morning? Does he go for lunch? How is performing, the other one is describing does he spend afternoons, does he have any what is happening. Their description may friends to spend time with? What does he do differ from what was intended by the in the evening? performers, but the group performing Still Teacher tells the students to open their image is not allowed to speak or move, there eyes and work together on Still images to will be chance to compare their versions depict particular moments of Nasseri‟s afterwards. typical day. Teacher‟s assistance might be necessary to help the group describe their colleagues‟ still images, teacher can ask what is happening and what the characters think.

Stage 13 Role play Teacher Students Teacher divides class into 2 groups-one of Students playing journalists are going to them being representatives of Nasseri, the prepare for the interview together. They have other of journalists. Teacher informs students a meeting where they can prepare appropriate journalists are going to interview Nasseri in questions. They can make notes. order to write a newspaper article based on Students in the role of Nasseri can his story. brainstorm ideas about his hobbies, free time After preparation period teacher asks activities, eating habits, everyday life at the students to get into pairs consisting of one airport and so on. Nasseri and one journalist. If there is odd Students in pairs or groups of three number of students, in one group 2 perform the interviews, journalist are making journalists will cooperate on interviewing notes for future reference. Nasseri.

Stage 14 Writing Teacher Students Teacher distributes sheets of paper. Students who were previously in the role of journalists write an article about his story. Students in the role of Nasseri write an entry to his personal diary.

Evaluation: Whereas the first three lesson plans are allocated to 1 lesson (45-60mins), Life in the Terminal is a several-lessons‟ project. I decided to incorporate this project into day 4 of the course schedule, after the students had participated in other lessons using various drama techniques. As all the previous sessions proved to be successful, I dared to devote all one day (4 x 45mins) to a drama project. When I informed the students about this plan their reactions were widely positive, presumably due to the fact they were satisfied with drama activities which they had taken part in so far. The whole project started with speculating about a mysterious person in the picture. The choice of the lead-in showed to be convenient, the students became interested in the topic although in the beginning it was necessary to encourage them to think about the person more 38 deeply. They talked only about his occupation so I guided them to think about his age, nationality, family and lifestyle as well. When we continued with the second activity (Teacher in the role), it went much smoother as the students started to use the ideas from the previous stage to make questions. I decided not to reveal everything during this activity to keep students interested for the next stage. In spite of the fact that I intended to keep stage 3 (Reading) short, it took a considerable amount of time as the students tended to overuse dictionaries and translate the article word by word. I think that I should have set a clear task before they started to read, such as giving them a few questions to be answered. What could also help shorten the reading is setting a time limit. Character on the wall was appreciated by the students, they came up with a lot of words and it was a good opportunity to use new vocabulary items from the article. Moreover, it was a welcome change after reading activity and a bridge leading to the next stage. Voices in head was a slightly problematic activity. At first, the students did not understand what they were supposed to do. Next, when they comprehended, they were reluctant to join in. Finally, I had to do most of the talking myself and thus I decided to stop the activity. The feedback at the end of the session revealed two reasons why students felt insecure. Firstly, they were uncomfortable with the arrangement, standing in the circle made them feel more under pressure compared to sitting behind the desks, they worried about making mistakes when everybody watched them. Secondly, they did not want to speak because of the lack of language. After the session I realised that I could have dealt with problems at this stage by interrupting the activity, eliciting the language, writing useful structures on the board for the reference while speaking and then continuing with Voices in head. In the future I would insert eliciting the language before Voices in head starts. It could even be additional stage of Character in the wall-bubbles with Nasseri‟s thoughts could be drawn on the board. In the next stage students made an interview between Nasseri and immigration clerk at the airport. Before they began we discussed the situation with the whole group and focused on possible questions. Thus, when performing the activity, students did not come across any serious problems and both me and the students assessed this stage highly as for the amount of speaking practice. After finishing the dialogs I developed the story by using drama technique called Teacher in the role and then asked students to mime this part of the story. I distributed the text of this part for the reference while preparing. In this case students concentrated on main

39 events in the story and did not worry so much about unfamiliar vocabulary as they did during the first reading activity. While getting ready for miming, some students tended to use mother tongue instead of English. I tried to eliminate this tendency but, on the other hand, I did not want to spoil the activity so in the end I decided not to interfere. The miming as such was surprisingly successful, I had doubts whether adult students would be willing to participate in such activity, but they had no objections. After miming they retold the story. Some of them had difficulties with vocabulary and tried to find the words in the text. As a result, they tended to read whole passages of the text rather than use their own words and the fluency was disrupted. It might be useful to go through the text before miming activity and deal with any difficult vocabulary in advance. Body sculptures ran quite smoothly, although some students had few ideas what to talk about, but it was easily solved by asking them questions about the object they were depicting. Collective drawing proved to be very beneficial as for the language practice. In the beginning I set clear rules to prevent students from drawing their own pictures without talking to the others. A good variety of language structures and vocabulary was used. Moreover, students cooperated greatly and helped each other explain unfamiliar words. While the students were preparing their still images the use of mother tongue appeared again. Taking into account students‟ comments at the end of the day I found out that they switched to Czech when they were thinking creatively, because they had a lot of ideas in their minds and wanted to deliver them quickly, they did not want to spend too much time thinking about the form in order not to lose the meaning. They also mentioned lack of vocabulary connected with body movement. The final roleplay was very successful and fruitful. After working thoroughly on the topic the students had come across a lot of ideas and useful language and used both the former and the latter naturally and confidently. The roleplay was a good opportunity to consolidate all language items grasped in previous activities and, at the meantime, to develop fluency. The last stage involved writing either an article or an entry to Nasseri‟s personal diary. Writing was a good way how to calm students down and provide them with another chance to use all the language they had been working on for several lessons. In the end they read their works out loud.

Suggestions: It is possible to divide this project into two days with timing 2 x 90minutes. In this case I would finish the first session with miming and retelling the story (stage 9). The second

40 session would start with stage 10 (Body sculptures) which could be possibly preceded by eliciting the story from the students to refresh their memories. Even when the whole project takes part in one day, a short break would probably be necessary and the interruption is, in my opinion, the most suitable between stages 9 and 10.

4.3. Final assessment of the course

Apart from immediate feedback at the end of each session, the students were also asked to assess the whole project by the means of filling in a short questionnaire (see Appendix C) at the end of the last session. The participants responded anonymously and all 5 participants were willing to take part. Before they started, the meaning of questions was clarified, namely the term “drama activities” was explained as the students were not aware of the terminology. This subchapter summarizes the responses gained both from the questionnaires and the discussion that followed.

Question 1: Do you think this conversation course helped you improve your English? If yes, in what way?

All the students perceived the course as highly useful. The respondents believed that participating in this project had a positive impact on breaking down a barrier to communication in English and provided them with plenty of opportunity to try out their knowledge. As a result, all of them now feel more confident to communicate in English. Most of them mentioned the extension of vocabulary and acquisition of new structures. Two of them appreciated the deep immersion in the language and they claimed that they had started thinking in English even outside the class. Nevertheless, this can be caused by the considerable amount of time they spent engaged in English during the week rather than the methodology used.

Question 2: Which activities do you consider the most beneficial for your language development?

As was already mentioned, the course involved both drama activities and more traditional ones. The aim of question 2 was to find out which of them participants considered

41 more beneficial. Respondents were allowed to state more than one answer. The following table reports the results.

Number of Activity votes Vocabulary Bag 5 Roleplays 5 Guided Tour 3 Simulation 3 Writing 1

As it can be seen, both drama activities and more traditional ones are represented in the chart. The former include Roleplays, Guided Tour and Simulation, the latter Vocabulary Bag and possibly Writing, even though Writing was in fact a part of a drama project. Vocabulary Bag was an activity aimed at revising vocabulary. At the end of each session students were asked to agree on a set of new words they would like to remember and write them down on small cards. At the beginning of each session some activities connected with these cards occurred in order to reinforce continuously new vocabulary items. This was assessed very positively by the students as they were awarded opportunity to come across the same vocabulary repeatedly and thus acquire it thoroughly. All students named Roleplays as an important component in the learning process. There was a broad range of activities based on playing roles during the week, some students stated particular roleplays in the questionnaires while the others spoke of roleplaying in general. However, it was revealed in the follow-up discussion that all the roleplays were considered equally important by the students, thus no distinction was made for the purposes of this summarization. Simulation and Guided Tour were perceived highly positively due to the sense of real life situation and the high level of motivation. One student claimed that she had felt strong urge to express herself in English. To sum up, many drama-based activities were regarded as an effective device for learning English.

Question 3: Which activities do you consider the least useful for your language development?

3 out of 5 students did not give any answer to this question, one student named Voices in head and one Still images and Body sculptures. Admittedly, these were the activities which were the most problematic as for the use of the target language, students struggled with insufficient knowledge and tended to use the mother tongue.

Question 4: Would you like to attend a similar course in the future?

All the students responded positively.

Question 5: Would you like to attend a course based exclusively on drama activities?

4 students would not like to attend a course involving solely drama activities, while one student would be pleased to participate in such a course. It emerged in the discussion that even though the drama based activities were appealing and seen as extremely beneficial, most students find traditional methods equally important and do not want them to be omitted.

Conclusion

The main aim of this thesis was to explore the possibilities of using drama and drama techniques in teaching adult students English as a foreign language and to examine their attitude towards drama activities. The theoretical part of the work outlines the benefits and constraints of using drama in lessons. The major benefit might be seen in the fact that drama can promote natural communication in the classroom and provide meaningful contexts for speaking and listening. The basic elements that form the context are setting, role, feelings and shared knowledge. Moreover, drama brings fun into the classroom and thus has a positive impact on students‟ motivation which plays a crucial role in learning a foreign language. However, there are also some constraints which can inhibit the implementation of drama. First of all, it is the lack of teachers‟ experience, next, limited resources and finally, possible reluctance of adult students. In order to overcome the barriers, teachers should be enthusiastic, set up a good atmosphere and work on good relationships in the class. Furthermore, when teaching adults several distinctive features must be taken into account. Firstly, they need to know why they are learning something and how they can use it in real life situations. Secondly, adult learners need to be self-directed. Thirdly, they bring to the class broad range of experience which can serve as a resource for learning. Finally, they are task-centred. In addition, adult students hold several expectations concerning their learning: they expect their teacher to be a professional not only in English but also in methodology, they need to see that the learning process fulfils their personal aims, they expect to get feedback and last but not least, adult learners require respect. The starting point of the practical part was a one-week conversation course which I held in Mother Centre in Havlíčkův Brod. I set myself following objectives: to implement drama techniques into the syllabus of the course with regard to the above mentioned principles, to offer lesson plans that incorporate drama activities and to evaluate the lessons taught according to lesson plans mentioned above. Generally speaking, drama activities were positively accepted by the adult students. It seems that drama can be very beneficial in many ways. To start with, the students got actively engaged and felt the need to communicate in English. Further, while the course proceeded the students claimed in the end-of-the-day discussions that they had felt more confident and their motivation had risen. As for the language development concerns the students mentioned in the

44 questionnaires and final discussion that they had acquired a broad range of new vocabulary items and structures and improved the fluency. In addition, since the number of participants attending the course was 5, it was proved that it is possible to use drama techniques even with small groups. All the facts mentioned above lead to the conclusion that drama activities can have highly beneficial impact in the learning process and are generally well-accepted by adult students. However, due to the low number of participants involved in the experiment, a further research might be useful.

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Wessels, Charlyn. Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Print.

Appendices

Appendix A: Lesson plan 2 Handout Appendix B: Lesson plan 4 Handout Appendix C: Questionnaire

Appendix A: Lesson plan 2 Handout – TV News Bulletin

List of events:

 A local boy has bought a new bike from the shop (red with 18 gears).  The president of our country has been involved in a road accident. He is hurt but his life is not in danger.  An old woman from a small village on the sea has won $10,000,000 on the national lottery.  A cat has scratched his owner’s sofa.  Škoda company has won a multi-million pound contract to supply car parts to Ferrari.  There is a train workers‘ strike which has resulted in there being no train services all day.  Weathermen predict that severe weather will hit the capital tomorrow.  The national economy may go into recession if the government does not solve the unemployment problem.  A group of school children have painted pictures of the school dog.  Our country has won the World Team Darts Championship  The national health service advises people not to eat cheese because of a food scare. A bacteria can be found in certain cheese which should be avoided until the problem can be solved.  A local film maker has been nominated for an Oscar.

Adapted from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/lesson-plans/conversation-lesson-%E2%80%93-news

Appendix B: Lesson plan 4 Handout - Life in the Terminal

Mehran Karimi Nasseri pronounced [meɦˈrɔːn kʲæriːˈmiː nɔːseˈriː]; born 1942), also known as Sir, Alfred Mehran is an Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 8 August 1988 until July 2006, when he was hospitalized for an unspecified ailment. His autobiography has been published as a book and he may have been the basis for the movie The Terminal.

Early life

Nasseri was born in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company settlement located in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. His father was an Iranian physician working for the company. Nasseri stated that his mother was a nurse from Scotland working in the same place. He arrived in the United Kingdom in September 1973, to take a three-year course in Yugoslav studies at the University of Bradford.

Current position

Nasseri was expelled from Iran in 1977 for protests against the Shah and after a long battle, involving applications in several countries, was awarded refugee status by the United Nations High Commission for refugees in Belgium. This permitted residence in any European country.

Having claimed to have one British parent, although he has produced no evidence to support this, he decided to settle in the UK in 1986, but en route to there in 1988, his briefcase containing his papers was stolen in Paris. Despite this setback, he boarded the

50 plane for London but was promptly returned to France when he failed to present a passport to British immigration. He was initially arrested by the French, but then released as his entry to the airport was legal and he had no country of origin to be returned to; thus began his residency at Terminal 1.

His case was later taken on by French human rights lawyer Christian Bourget. In 1992, French courts ruled that, having entered the country legally, he could not be expelled from the airport, but it could not grant him permission to enter France.

Attempts were then made to have new documents issued from Belgium, but the authorities there would only do so if Naserri presented himself in person. However, under Belgian law a refugee who voluntarily leaves a country that has accepted him cannot return. In 1995, the Belgian authorities granted permission for him to return, but only if he agreed to live there under supervision of a social worker. Naserri refused this on the grounds of wanting to enter the UK as originally intended.

Nasseri's life at the airport ended in July 2006 when he was hospitalized and his sitting place dismantled. Towards the end of January 2007, he left the hospital and was looked after by the airport's branch of the French Red Cross; he was lodged for a few weeks in a hotel close to the airport. On March 6, 2007, he transferred to an Emmaus charity reception centre in Paris's twentieth arrondissement. As of 2008, he continues to live in a Paris shelter.

Life in Terminal 1

During his eighteen year long stay at Terminal 1 in the Charles de Gaulle Airport, Nasseri had his luggage at his side, and spent his time reading, writing in his diary, or studying economics. He received food and newspapers from employees of the airport. Contrary to what many believe, he has never been stuck in the transit area and was therefore free to move.

Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri

Appendix C

Questionnaire

1. Do you think this conversation course helped you improve your English? If yes,

in what way?

2. Which activities do you consider the most beneficial for your language

development?

3. Which activities do you consider the least useful for your language

development?

4. Would you like to attend a similar course in the future?

5. Would you like to attend a course based exclusively on drama activities?

Thank you very much for your help.