Creative Drama in the Second Language Classroom

by David Dodge

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I am a high school teacher at Holy Cross Secondary School in Kingston, Ontario. I have been teaching French as a Second Language for 10 years, and have found the experience very positive and rewarding. However one of my most difficult challenges as a F.S.L. teacher is helping students achieve a high level of oral communicative competence. In fact, I have often wondered whether oral fluency can be taught, particularly in an artificial setting such as the classroom. How can we bridge the language gap which exists between the classroom and the outside world? I believe there is significant merit in studying creative-drama techniques and their practical application in thesecond-language classroom.

An actor can alter the circumstances of life portrayed on the stage, he can find it in himself in a new super-objective. He can give himself up to the main line of action which goes, through a play, he can combine his recalled emotions in one way or another, he can put them in this or that sequence, he can develop habits in his role which are not native to him, and methods of physical portrayal as well, he can change his mannerisms, his exterior. All this will make the actor seem different in every role to the audience. But he will always remain himself too.
Stanislavski (1961)

The native-language student is an actor. In fact, I would argue that all human beings are actors, since we are constantly taking on roles and perfecting their various personas to correspond to the situation at hand. We also develop complex methods of adjusting our behaviour and speech styles to meet the needs of each different encounter in our lives. Similarly, second-language students must broaden the repertoire of personas at their disposal to include a culturally appropriate persona in the target lan guage. Unfortunately, the way in which a second language is acquired is often mechanistic and artificial, depending on a theory of teaching which ignores the emotional and non-verbal content of language. From my experience and research, I believe that the use of creative dramatics in the second-language classroom not only addresses the nonverbal aspects of language, but also provides a satisfactory linguistic base on which to build communicative competence.

This year, I began to reflect on my experience of using creative drama in the classroom, and particularly, why these activities appear to be highly successful. First, the students and I have found these activities very productive and fun, which has made the teaching and learning more enjoyable. Secondly, I have found that creative-drama techniques allow more direct involvement in learning on the part of all the students. In fact, their own personal involvement tends to increase their sense of personal com mitment to the subject. Thirdly, creative drama allows more students to become involved, which leads to more student-centered activities. Fourthly, it allows for more avenues of learning. Teachers tend to cover the visual and audio avenues. However, we often forget that some students are kinesthetic learners. I have also found that creative drama activities often allow students to relax about how they produce in French. Why? Perhaps, because emphasis is put on other objectives in an activity instead of on the actual French that is uttered. In other words, French becomes the vehicle of communication instead of the main issue to get uptight about. Students can therefore be successful with other objectives even if they have trouble producing well in French. Finally, I believe that these activities work effectively to increase the students' sense of trust in the teacher and in each other because they allow for a very humanistic approach. From my experie nce, I found that this increases both student motivation to try and do well and the students' willingness to become risk takers, which is fundamental for second-language learning. In fact, I believe that those students who are too inhibited to stick their necks out, and risk making an error will never learn a second language as well as a student who learns to take that risk.
CarpeDiem.