Drama, dialogues and video teaching
When I commenced teaching English, a high percent of teachers had a drama history. Some were resting actors, others had drama teaching qualifications, others had education qualifications with a drama speciality. In British ELT, an entire lot more had been qualified in English, or in American Studies. My first manager turned into Colin Granger, and at Anglo-Continental we had weekly theatre suggests, (see hyperlink) with rehearsed play readings as soon as a month. Guy Wellman, Colin Granger, Nick Keeping and me took component. All of us had drama revel in. Guy had acted at Cambridge University, Colin and Nick had drama qualifications, I did drama as my diploma subsiduary at Hull, and film history for my MA. We have been soon joined via Karen (Viney) additionally with drama qualifications. In the summer season, we have been joined through Peter de Souza, from the Scottish RADA The subsequent summer, my vintage college pal, Roy Faithful, lecturing in drama at Winchester, joined us. Sometimes John Curtin, who have been an actor, puppeteer, pianist and singer in addition to being a teacher joined us for performs. Chris Owen, every other ex-actor, joined our regular corporation.
The ranks of ELT authors within the mid to late seventies consequently covered a high proportion of humans with drama training and experience. No one had to inform us the fee of position play, or acting out dialogues, or including dramatic expression with gesture, facial expression and body language. We all believed in it.
I changed into astonished after I started going to global conferences to recognise that for many instructors, drama strategies had been definitely new. Seminal books on the challenge which include Drama Techniques in Language Learning by means of Alan Maley & Alan Duff (CUP 1978) were, to us, stuff we already did, but have been a revelation to many teachers outside Britain.
Then matters modified. In some approaches, I assume it was herbal: the foreign languages graduates started out to take over from the drama / English graduates. Not that the “drama” oriented had been susceptible on languages. Many had also studied languages at college. John Curtin was fluent, by which I imply near native-speaker degree, in at least 4 languages, and capable of maintain a verbal exchange in five greater. But there had been more authors with out a drama inclination.
An surprising facet effect of the ‘returned to grammar’ movement changed into text-heavy books with very little talk, consisting of the primary version of Headway. Books started out to appear like the books we used learning French or German at faculty. Long texts, 30 or forty new phrases a lesson. Long grammar expositions. Not much snappy speak. The big recognition and achievement of Headway meant a quarter of a century of absolutely everyone seeking to clone it (and Headway itself delivered extra communicate within the later versions). I asked a trainer I’d recognised for 20 years why she cherished Headway a lot (due to the fact she did) and she or he stated, ‘It’s due to the fact you in no way run out of vocabulary to give an explanation for.’ That’s precisely what we had reacted towards in the early days of the communicative movement. By the manner, communicative didn’t always imply ‘functional.’ I requested what the students had been doing at some stage in all this vocabulary rationalization, and she or he instructed me they loved it and wrote it all down. In the 70s, we wanted them to act it out, invent new sentences for themselves, activate, communicate. We by no means wanted the learner to be passive consumers of vocabulary and grammar information. Yes, our very own books have been also structural, getting them to use grammatical forms for communication in a based manner, however now not to “research facts about grammar.”
By the early twenty first Century, while we posted IN English and the English Channel films, books with a incredible deal of discussion had been unexpectedly in the minority. We appreciated Touchstone (Michael McCarthy, Jeanne McCarten, Helen Sandiford; CUP) especially, which also had masses of discussion and interplay (primarily based on the American spoken corpus). It came out around the identical time as IN English and we hoped the two together marked a reversal of the fashion far from dialogue. We had been imparting both at JALT in Nara at the equal time.
Noticeably, videos to accompany the text-heavy books tended to the documentary style, or vox pop instead of dramatisation. Personally, I determined the History of the Morris Minor motor car, or Charles Dickens and Portsmouth dull fare certainly, and a waste of the capacity of video. This handiest displays real international TV. It’s cheaper and simpler. It caused the scenario we discovered ourselves in in which so many of our dramatic movies were positioned out of print. We met a new editor, who it grew to become out had taught English number one kids, however had in no way taught ELT nor adults. Their task (I pick the neutral pronoun) became to determine at the destiny of grownup ELT video, which they did by means of asking humans. They came back after a 12 months and said “people only want real fabric and the information now.’ We tried to point out that as OUP turned into no longer a information manufacturer, they had been giving lower back the sector (which they’d taken so comprehensively from the BBC inside the overdue 80s and 90s) lower back to the BBC. No avail. Most of our motion pictures had been placed out of print.
methods of teaching drama
The RSA Cert TEFL in Bournemouth turned into being taught by Robert O’Neill, another ex-actor. We went on incredible short drama guides at International House, run by using Doug Case and Ken Wilson. We watched the English Teaching Theatre carry out on degree with Ken Wilson and Judy Garton-Sprenger. Other instructors with drama qualifications joined Anglo-Continental, consisting of Terry Phillips. We ran an ARELS route on Teaching With Drama at Anglo-Continental ourselves in 1977.The ranks of ELT authors within the mid to late seventies consequently covered a high proportion of humans with drama training and experience. No one had to inform us the fee of position play, or acting out dialogues, or including dramatic expression with gesture, facial expression and body language. We all believed in it.
I changed into astonished after I started going to global conferences to recognise that for many instructors, drama strategies had been definitely new. Seminal books on the challenge which include Drama Techniques in Language Learning by means of Alan Maley & Alan Duff (CUP 1978) were, to us, stuff we already did, but have been a revelation to many teachers outside Britain.
how to teach drama in the classroom
If we couldn’t get spherical doing theatre shows everywhere, then video become the subsequent quality issue. The English Teaching Theatre (ETT) have been early in producing films in their sketches. Strategies introduced a video aspect. We added a video element to Streamline. It all seemed herbal, and the direction we selected became dramatic. Some went for thriller dramas. We, just like the ETT, went for comedy. But it all worried looking people interacting, and the usage of it as a model for work.Then matters modified. In some approaches, I assume it was herbal: the foreign languages graduates started out to take over from the drama / English graduates. Not that the “drama” oriented had been susceptible on languages. Many had also studied languages at college. John Curtin was fluent, by which I imply near native-speaker degree, in at least 4 languages, and capable of maintain a verbal exchange in five greater. But there had been more authors with out a drama inclination.
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An surprising facet effect of the ‘returned to grammar’ movement changed into text-heavy books with very little talk, consisting of the primary version of Headway. Books started out to appear like the books we used learning French or German at faculty. Long texts, 30 or forty new phrases a lesson. Long grammar expositions. Not much snappy speak. The big recognition and achievement of Headway meant a quarter of a century of absolutely everyone seeking to clone it (and Headway itself delivered extra communicate within the later versions). I asked a trainer I’d recognised for 20 years why she cherished Headway a lot (due to the fact she did) and she or he stated, ‘It’s due to the fact you in no way run out of vocabulary to give an explanation for.’ That’s precisely what we had reacted towards in the early days of the communicative movement. By the manner, communicative didn’t always imply ‘functional.’ I requested what the students had been doing at some stage in all this vocabulary rationalization, and she or he instructed me they loved it and wrote it all down. In the 70s, we wanted them to act it out, invent new sentences for themselves, activate, communicate. We by no means wanted the learner to be passive consumers of vocabulary and grammar information. Yes, our very own books have been also structural, getting them to use grammatical forms for communication in a based manner, however now not to “research facts about grammar.”
By the early twenty first Century, while we posted IN English and the English Channel films, books with a incredible deal of discussion had been unexpectedly in the minority. We appreciated Touchstone (Michael McCarthy, Jeanne McCarten, Helen Sandiford; CUP) especially, which also had masses of discussion and interplay (primarily based on the American spoken corpus). It came out around the identical time as IN English and we hoped the two together marked a reversal of the fashion far from dialogue. We had been imparting both at JALT in Nara at the equal time.
Noticeably, videos to accompany the text-heavy books tended to the documentary style, or vox pop instead of dramatisation. Personally, I determined the History of the Morris Minor motor car, or Charles Dickens and Portsmouth dull fare certainly, and a waste of the capacity of video. This handiest displays real international TV. It’s cheaper and simpler. It caused the scenario we discovered ourselves in in which so many of our dramatic movies were positioned out of print. We met a new editor, who it grew to become out had taught English number one kids, however had in no way taught ELT nor adults. Their task (I pick the neutral pronoun) became to determine at the destiny of grownup ELT video, which they did by means of asking humans. They came back after a 12 months and said “people only want real fabric and the information now.’ We tried to point out that as OUP turned into no longer a information manufacturer, they had been giving lower back the sector (which they’d taken so comprehensively from the BBC inside the overdue 80s and 90s) lower back to the BBC. No avail. Most of our motion pictures had been placed out of print.
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