Body and Language: Intercultural Learning Through Drama

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Body and Language : Intercultural Learning Through Drama Advances in Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy ; V. 3 Greenwood Publishing Group 1567506712 9781567506716 9780313011900 English Drama in education. 2002 PN3171.B574 2002eb 371.39/9 Drama in education.

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Page i Body and Language

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Page iii Body and Language Intercultural Learning Through Drama Edited by Gerd Bräuer Advances in Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy, Volume 3 Gerd Bräuer, Series Editor Ablex Publishing Westport, Connecticut • London

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Page iv Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Body and language : intercultural learning through drama / edited by Gerd Bräuer p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56750-671-2 (alk. paper) 1. Drama in education. I. Bräuer, Gerd. PN3171.B574 2002 371.39′9—dc 21 2001053831 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2002 by Gerd Bräuer All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001053831 ISBN: 1-56750-671-2 First published in 2002 Ablex Publishing, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.ablexbooks.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Page v Contents Series Foreword Introduction I. Goals and Potential 1. Understanding Drama-Based Education Betty Jane Wagner 2. Intercultural Recognitions Through Performative Inquiry Lynn Fels and Lynne McGivern 3. Transcultural Performance in Classroom Learning Ann Axtmann 4. Process Drama in Second- and Foreign-Language Classrooms Jun Liu

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Page vi II. Approaches, Methods, Techniques 5. Teaching Foreign Language Literature: Tapping the Students’ Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence Manfred Lukas Schewe 6. Coping with Obstacles in Drama-Based ESL Teaching: A Nonverbal Approach Cameron R. Culham 7. Video Recording and Playback Equipment Timothy Collins 8. Designing Artful Reflective Strategies: The Guided Case Study Philip Taylor 9. Undergoing a Process and Achieving a Product: A Contradiction in Educational Drama? Douglas J. Moody 10. The Educational Potential of Drama for ESL Sarah L. Dodson III. Practical Applications: Courses and the Curriculum 11. The Arts and the Foreign-/Second-Language Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Actively Engage Students in Their Own Learning Janet Hegman Shier 12. Performing Brecht: From Theory to Practice Franziska B. Lys, Denise Meuser, John Paluch, and Ingrid Zeller Instead of an Afterword Magic on Stage: Urfaust and Other Great Plays for Educational Pleasure Karla Schultz and Penelope Heinigk Index About the Contributors

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Page vii Series Foreword Advances in Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy is a series focusing on the people involved in the process of language education: students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others related to the learner within a broader social context. Issues such as writing, reading, speaking, and listening are examined here for their potential for individual growth, learning partnership, and group dynamics. In the same context, it is of substantial interest for the authors of each volume to look at the pedagogical specifics of various fields of language learning, such as oral traditions, drama, music, or visual arts. The influence of alternative teaching methods and modern technology on learners and educators also raises substantial questions for this ongoing publication project. The main approach for each volume of the series is one of practice-based research, wherein language practitioners become reflective researchers in order to deepen their own and the reader’s theoretical understanding of their

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Page viii work and to develop practical consequences. For this purpose the relationship between practice and research is intimate, and the subtle interchanges between doing and reflecting are inseparable. Therefore, the contributors for this series focus on classroom practice: Empirical research is presented, case studies are introduced, individual teaching experience is discussed, and theoretical frameworks are developed. Nevertheless, all practical issues of language pedagogy are handled here in their theoretical contexts, with the aim of further deepening conceptual understanding of pedagogical phenomena and processes in language acquisition. A second, not less important goal of this series lies in bridging the gap in academic discourse between research and classroom practice and the integration of the wisdom of language educators from all areas of language education: primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and adult education. As indicated, the prospective authors and readers of this series are expected to be future teachers, educators at all levels of instruction, and all those interested in pedagogical research. The wide range of creators and recipients of the series is geared toward a general collaboration among learners, rooted in the belief that people can profit from each other’s knowledge and experience throughout the entire educational pyramid. I want to expand the boundaries of this collaboration in the process of learning about the pedagogy of language teaching by bringing together in this series American teacher-researchers with their international colleagues in order to stimulate mutual learning and interdisciplinarity across languages and cultures. Ablex Publishing, as the host of this series, offers a great resource in spreading the word throughout the world.

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Page ix Introduction Drama and theater are not mutually exclusive. If drama is about meaning, it is the art form of theater which encompasses and contains the meaning. If theater is about expression, then it is the dramatic exploration of the meaning which fuels that expression. Norah Morgan and Juliana Saxton, from Teaching Drama: A Mind of Many Wonders This third volume of the series is designed to be an introduction to the use of drama in the foreign- and secondlanguage classroom. It highlights the bridging character of drama-based teaching for intercultural learning and, therefore, fosters a better understanding of the significance drama has also for first-language instruction in today’s multicultural world, where transculturation (see Ann Axtmann) is a growing individual and social necessity. Following the position of Norah Morgan and Juliana Saxton (1987), drama here is not limited to artistic work or pedagogical use, but rather it means the

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Page x interplay between body and language in general that leads to doubts, questions, and insights for learners interacting with themselves and others and their linguistic and cultural identity. Developing Gerald Graff’s stance of teaching conflict (1992) further, I envision the experience of dramatic conflict in the language classroom as a strong base for a type of education where teachers and students cooperatively set the stage for learning and, at the same time, individually define the meaning of their effort for knowledge. What are the content, techniques, methods, strategies, and curricular structures that engage learners in a continuing and meaningful dialogue between one’s own culture and the one yet to be discovered? What comprises the language, after all, that allows us to understand one another? What is the body through which we communicate? As a basis for answering these questions, the authors of this book touch on a very general issue, that of learning. Nothing Goes Without Body ( Ohne Körper geht nichts ), a recent German publication on the physicality of drama work (Koch, Naumann, Vaßen, 1999), makes a simple fact visible that has been denied in traditional Western education for much too long. When seen as a phenomenon of the mind alone, learning is stripped of half of its medium and educational potential. The loss is even greater considering that the physical aspect of the mind itself is also frequently overlooked. Concepts of most recent cognitive science such as ‘‘blending and conceptual integration” (Turner 1996), where structure from input-managing mental spaces is seen as projected to a separate, “blended” mental space (see also Turner’s Web page), will help to open minds for a better understanding of the physiointellectual spaces where learning actually happens. To feel, see, read, imagine, communicate, to live (in) these spaces and expand them requires acceptance of the physical quality of education, whether in art (see also Zeki 1999), history, music, mathematics, literature, or language. The focus on (linguistic) signs and signals alone is not enough to convey language knowledge successfully. Communicating the physical language of things, ideas, and people is equally important for learning. After all, a full grasp of the many dimensions in the German book title Nothing Goes Without Body is itself hard to imagine without the physical experience of walking or moving. Yet, for this pedagogically oriented book it is not enough to talk about the physical aspect of learning. It will also be of interest to discuss the “dramatic arrangement” of the body on the “stage” called classroom and within the “plot,” meaning educational processes students and teachers engage together. In Betty Jane Wagner’s groundbreaking book, Educational Drama and Language Arts (1998, p. 84), I found a quotation by the nineteenth-century poet Percy Bysshe Shelley that captures the pedagogical function of arranging the body for the purpose of growing as a whole person: A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains, the pleasures for his species must become his own.

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Page xi Since the time of French educator Jean Piaget, this act of role taking is known as symbolic play (1962), where the child, in Piaget’s terms, moves away in its cognitive development from an “egocentric stage” to building social relationships (Wagner, 1998, p. 173). The reason for this great educational potential of role taking within larger social contexts lies in its complexity of representing reality. Educational theorist Jerome Bruner identifies three aspects of human cognition: enactive (the physical gesture), iconic (the image), and symbolic (the linguistic sign) representation—all three, as an interconnected entity, make up the essence of dramatic role taking as an entity of social being, which explains its unique power for gaining knowledge. Because the phenomenon of “spontaneous social symbolic play” (Wagner) tends to disappear out of students’ lives during primary school, it lies upon us educators to help them in methodologically efficient ways to maintain and further unfold the potential drama carries for anyone’s learning. There are two major issues currently discussed in drama-based foreign- and second-language methodology. The first is goal-oriented, asking whether the acquisition of accuracy or fluency is more important, and whether a controlled (for example, learning through imitation) or an open learning environment (for example, through improvisation) is more efficient. The second issue is concerned with the method of using drama in language teaching: either processoriented, where drama becomes an immediate medium for language learning, or product-oriented, where it becomes primarily the reason for language learning. In the course of this book, through outlining the theoretical frameworks of both issues and introducing personal narrative, comparative observation, and analytical reflection, the specific opportunities for learning of the seemingly contradictory poles within each issue emerge. Nevertheless, this introduction to the pedagogy of drama-based teaching across the foreign- and second-language curriculum has been undertaken without the systematic approach previously demonstrated admirably by Shin-Mei Kao and Cecily O’Neill (1998). It rather follows what educational theory calls practice research and what the teaching profession recognizes as theory-practice-learning: Reflective practitioners examine their experiences with drama as a mode of instruction, through which they themselves also continue to learn about the educational use of drama. The outcome of such meaning making in educational processes will always be fragmented and fragile by nature, considering the ever-changing perspectives within individual reflective practice, not to mention within entire academic disciplines and professional fields. As with practical research in any other subject, this study cannot propose a complete or fixed set of answers on how to use drama in language education. This book rather provides ideas and, at the same time, obstacles, doubts, and questions about these very ideas. In utilizing this book, let me encourage the reader to become a reflective learner as the authors did while drafting, commenting, sometimes even

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Page xii reliving (through additional practice), and, finally, revising their chapters. Let me suggest a position of negotiating one’s own personal experience in the light of the authors’ sometimes very different or even contradictory perspectives about this rather nontraditional educational path. In this context, I want to urge the reader to keep in mind the unique circumstances of each of the classrooms introduced in this volume. Instead of seeing them as models of instruction, they should rather be used as individual starting points for reflection and imagination on one’s own future teaching experience. Later on, some of these chapters might be revisited in a different light. Part I aims for a deeper theoretical understanding of drama-based education and intercultural learning. In outlining the theoretical framework of these issues at the core of the book, Part I works as a point of reference for the other two parts of this volume, which discuss reflections on practical aspects of drama-based education. Part I is introduced by Betty Jane Wagner, one of the pioneers of educational drama. Based on decades of her scholarship on learning theories by Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner and out of her own collaboration with the late curriculum specialist James Moffett, she further explores three major qualities of intellectual operation—enactive, iconic, and symbolic (Bruner)—as actual channels for educational processes. In this context, Wagner is specifically interested in the advantages of these ways of thinking for the teaching of dramatic invention (Moffett/Wagner), which she sees as the matrix for speaking, listening, reading, and writing. With this theoretical excursus, the author provides a scientific explanation of the efficacy of educational drama for learning. Lynn Fels and Lynne McGivern apply Wagner’s view toward the teaching of intercultural recognition through a specific mode of learning they have developed: performative inquiry. Fels and McGivern revisit a role drama about Canadian aboriginal experience in residential schools to illustrate the possibilities of intercultural conversations and transformations realized through performative inquiry. In the authors’ eyes, successful second-language learning requires an embodied understanding of the context, land, history, and political, social, economic, and cultural environments of the target language. Performative inquiry provides a momentary entrance into “other’’ worlds through embodied play and reflection, thereby challenging students with opportunities for intercultural awareness, dialogue, and understanding. In the light of the previous chapter, Ann Axtmann offers an expanded perspective on culture learning. In the process of comparing the cultural “self” and “other,” she suggests to create a new place through play, where the “native” and the “foreigner” meet and mingle. Her chapter examines the notion of transcultural performance within classroom learning. Incorporating ideas of Howard Gardner, Edward T. Hall, Raymond Williams, and Ngugi wa

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Page xiii Thiong’o, the discussion builds on Fernando Ortiz’s suggestion that transculturation happens when several cultural aspects come together to produce something entirely new. Concrete examples from the author’s teaching with two radically different student populations illustrate a transcultural pedagogy that incorporates the multiple intelligences, notions of time and space, and interdisciplinary arts through bodily, sensory practices. Jun Liu closes Part I by developing a methodological framework for the three previously introduced stances on educational drama. He proposes that process drama, a term widely used in North America (but originally from Australia) and synonymous to “educational drama” or “drama in education” in Britain, can serve as a viable language teaching method within a “focus on form” approach—which refers to how attentional resources are allocated. Based on a theoretical description of the approach, he further defines the concept of process drama through concrete classroom experience across foreign languages, synthesizes its pedagogical characteristics, demonstrates the main classroom procedures of this method, and theorizes about the challenges language teachers might face by using process drama. Part II is, in close reference to its theoretical framework introduced in Part I, an outlook onto practical aspects of drama-based education. The primary focus here lies on the specific scale of everyday classroom practice, including teaching approaches, methods, and techniques. In (re)defining and discussing them, obstacles, doubts, and questions arise, making visible the dynamic character of educational drama, where success and failure depend heavily on how well the specifics of individual teaching and learning situations are being understood and transformed into pedagogical power. The chapters in Part II provide coping strategies with the ever-changing currents in the drama-based classroom. Manfred Schewe centers his chapter around nonverbal activities as an integral component of a drama-based teaching and learning concept. He proposes an argument for the use of Gardner’s multiple intelligences approach, with a special focus on the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. The learning potential of pantomime is introduced by giving concrete examples from the German as a foreign-language classroom. These include a non-verbal approach to literature within a teaching unit on the subject of “intercultural encounter.” Part of this teaching unit demonstrates how a basic drama technique—still image—can be employed and, in the same context, how Bertolt Brecht’s Basic Model for an Epic Theatre can be used in order to work toward a deeper understanding of critical incidents, which are connected to the chosen literary text. The article concludes with more general reflections on drama as a holistic approach to teaching and learning foreign and second languages within the broader context of an ‘‘education for European citizenship.” Cameron R. Culham identifies obstacles encountered in his drama work with English as a Second Language (ESL) adults. Out of these obstacles, he

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Page xiv analyzes in detail the principal problems and questions and specifies them with examples drawn from practice. The author offers activities with silent communication as their common focus as methodological alternatives for some of the highlighted problems in the drama-based classroom. Practical examples of nonverbal, interactive activities that eventually promote language use are further explored by theoretical discussion from both the fields of drama in education and second-language acquisition. Although this chapter pertains primarily to ESL for adults, the activities suggested may be adapted to suit different languages and age groups. Timothy Collins reports on his experience using video recording and playback equipment to videotape college beginning Spanish students performing their own role-plays. He details the steps he followed with the class and elaborates on the numerous benefits that resulted from the project: the students’ increased motivation to learn Spanish, their higher self-esteem and lower anxiety levels, a greater sociolinguistic competence in the new language, and the vast amount of knowledge about Spanish culture successfully processed in this class. Collins also discusses the impact television as a medium with its two parts (video recording and playback equipment) had on the drama techniques he applied to his teaching. He finishes his chapter with a list of tips teachers can use to design similar projects. Philip Taylor has placed his chapter in the metacognitive realm of education. He describes a drama-based strategy that he calls guided case study, as useful for uncovering how students respond to educational processes. In the guided case study strategy, students reflect on an issue, incident, or event through the guise of role: Students are presented with an immediate ongoing fictional dilemma that demands their urgent attention. This dilemma, although presented as an imagined case, resonates with a familiar classroom experience. Through the process of reflecting on the case, students are challenged to probe and share their understanding of an educational event. Douglas J. Moody positions himself within the current debate about the learning potential of educational drama in foreign-language acquisition. He sees this discussion as being polarized between those practitioners who use process-oriented approaches and those educators who define their methodology as product-oriented. Moody considers the correspondent effectiveness of educational drama in foreign-language acquisition from these two distinct, though, as he argues, complementary perspectives: the product-oriented approach, which involves processes of interpretation, rehearsal, and public performance of a text, is as valuable for language learning as is the process-oriented approach, which leads naturally to products along its way, such as improvisations in order to justify itself. As a summary of Part II, Sarah Dodson shows the teaching approaches, methods, and techniques discussed previously as applied to an ESL drama class. Through this complex example, she demonstrates the practical framework of how drama-based instruction can integrate both oral communication

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Page xv and literacy skills in the learning process of the target language. The author explains the content-area activities that lead to the students’ successful rewriting, rehearsing, and performing of an original play in English. Part III, also in close reference to the theoretical stances on educational drama in Part I, sheds light on a broader picture: the drama-based language curriculum. In direct continuity with the discussion of teaching approaches, methods, and techniques in Part II, two extensive and somewhat different examples of how to unfold interdisciplinary structures and relations in foreign- and second-language education are introduced. Janet Hegman Shier argues in her chapter that the arts provide a framework to address at the same time cognitive and affective aptitudes of the learner. Theater in particular, with its built-in commitment to both process and product, provides an arena and model for learning that increases students’ confidence to reach beyond individual cognitive and affective limitations as it promotes their responsibility and desire to be actively engaged in their own learning process. The author describes the working methods of a multimedia university theater, which led to the implementation of interdisciplinary art, drama, and imaginative writing assignments in first- and second-year German language curricula. Shier discusses the value of embodying learning in a physical way to reach all learners and emphasizes that the arts can facilitate the development of skillful communication based on knowledge, practice, and personal experience. Franziska Lys, Denise Meuser, John Paluch, and Ingrid Zeller document and comment on a production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Der Ozeanflug,” a collaborative project between two university departments, German and Theater. The goal of the project was to provide foreign-language instructors and students with a multidimensional academic teaching and learning environment that would not only help unfold an interest in reading drama but also encourage the use and production of language in a meaningful and culturally significant way. The chapter addresses the pedagogical reasons for undertaking such a project, discusses the structure of the project within the context of a course, and describes the experience of both teachers and students, as they move from working with Brecht in a traditional classroom setting to performing it on stage. Instead of an afterword, Karla Schultz and Penelope Heinigk present a chapter in which they share a close insight into the emotional and motivational realm of foreign-language theater productions and promote the use of drama as a means of educational pleasure in a Brechtian sense: The house lights in the Pocket Theater go black. The audience—eighty-some students, faculty and community visitors—sits hushed. On stage, a mysterious blue liquid swirls in a bulbous vial, seemingly suspended in the dark. We hear a sigh of satisfaction, then the down lights fade up. A lanky, gray-wigged Faust in cap and gown is holding up the vial, the blue has paled to clear. He puts it on a

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Page xvi shelf in the wings, walks behind a chalky-white lectern propped onto a garden column (bought cheaply from a hobby shop), and commences to recite Goethe’s immortal introductory monologue, “Hab’ nun, ach, die Philosophie und leider auch die Theologie durchaus studiert mit heißer Müh….” Once again, this book would not have been possible without the help of many people. I want to especially thank my colleagues Cecily O’Neill, Gerd Koch, and Florian Vaßen, who served as reviewers of the submissions to this book. Thanks also to Matthew Allen Hale from Emory University, who helped a great deal with the technical preparation of the manuscript. My deepest gratitude goes to all of the contributors to this publication, with whom I have enjoyed working. Last, but not least, I want to thank the production team from Greenwood Publishing Group, especially senior editor Jane Garry, and George Ernsberger and Publishing Synthesis Ltd., for continuing encouragement and guidance. REFERENCES Bruner, Jerome S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Graff, Gerald. (1992). Beyond the cultural wars: How teaching the conflicts can revitalize American education. New York: Norton. Kao, Shin-Mei, & Cecily O’Neill. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama. Stamford, London: Ablex. Koch, Gerd, Gabriela Naumann, & Florian Vaßen (Eds.). (1999). Ohne Körper geht nichts. Berlin: Schibri. Morgan, Norah, & Juliana Saxton. (1987). Teaching drama: A mind of many wonders. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Piaget, Jean. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Turner, Mark. (1996). The literary mind: The origins of thought and language. New York: Oxford University Press. Turner’s Web page: www.wam.umd.edu/~mturn/WWW/blending.html Wagner, Betty Jane. (1998). Educational drama and language arts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Zeki, Semir. (1999). Inner vision. An exploration of art and the brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Page 1 I Goals and Potential

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Page 3 1 Understanding Drama-Based Education Betty Jane Wagner Those of us who have chosen a career working with language have inevitably chosen to work with the bodies as well as the minds of our students. What is language but sound produced on the breath by the complex action of the tongue, palate, larynx, and glottal mechanism to create aural symbols that have meaning in a particular language community? Indeed, communities are defined in large part by the language they share, a language that inevitably embodies a culture, an ethos, and a worldview. Furthermore, within each broad language group, there are subgroups defined by dialects and discourse communities that set them off from one another. How a group uses language, what topics they choose to talk about, and at what level of formality or social distance at which they communicate all help determine the character of a subgroup within any broader language community. A second characteristic of language teaching is that it inevitably immerses us in a profoundly social milieu. At least until computers can recognize and represent aural human speech a lot better than they can now and can be programmed to respond spontaneously to speech (which I, for one, don’t

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Page 4 believe will ever happen), one cannot learn to creatively engage in a conversation in a language unless one has real human beings to interact with. Audiotapes and computer language programs can help one learn certain common exchanges or routine phrases, but to learn how to improvise new utterances one has not yet heard, at least one other speaker of the target language is needed. This is why informal improvisational drama activities are so powerful in the foreign-language classroom. To participate in an improvisation, one needs to use the body not only to produce appropriate language but also to express emotion and ideas through gesture, posture, and facial expression. Because the scene in a drama is an imaginary one, the participant is free to exaggerate or assume a persona that frees him or her to experiment with a wider range of language than ordinary exchanges might evoke. Improvisational drama is effective because of the repeated pressure it puts on participants to respond. It is not enough for students to hear the target language spoken; they need to talk themselves. Studies have shown that television viewing as a medium for teaching language is of limited effectiveness. Children need not only to hear a language spoken but also to be expected to respond by producing their own language. A number of recent studies and reports—such as those of Blanch (1974), Bryam and Fleming (1998), Erdman (1991), Gaudart (1990), Geffen (1998), Kishimoto (1992), Masson (1994), Miller (1986), Ralph (1997), Welkner (1999), and Wilburn (1992)— demonstrate the effectiveness of drama in facilitating the learning of a foreign language. COMPARISON WITH WRITING AND READING DEVELOPMENT In the pedagogy of writing, two terms are often evoked: audience and purpose. Students who have neither are unlikely to develop voice in their writing. They need to know first who will read what they write and why they need to read it. Students simply write better for known audiences when they are telling about something they think their reader needs to know. Writing in the classroom may look like it is personal and private, but as students read their drafts to one another, the act of writing becomes social. The tension to produce a text that is true to what the writer wants to say and yet also one that communicates to one’s peers is central to the decisions that every writer must make. For example, in a second-grade class made up largely of students who were born in Mexico, I asked the students to write about what their families do to remedy a cough. One of the children wrote that his mother gave him a spoonful of tequila at bedtime. One of his classmates asked, “What is tequila?’’ The fact of a social milieu, one that included students of different cultures, created a need for greater precision in writing; in other words, audience and purpose determined content. The same is true in a classroom drama. A

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Page 5 language learner with an audience and a purpose is pressed to discover the words he needs to respond appropriately in the context of the drama. There is a parallel in the process of learning to read. It is often noted that children become literate in literate environments, but literate environments are not enough, or turning kids loose in libraries would be all we need to do. No, what has to happen is a gradual induction into a literate discourse community, a group of persons who talk and interact in terms of a literate culture. It is not enough to learn to read and write; a literate person also needs to learn how to talk like one who senses the value of the written word—his own as well as that of others. Highly valued instructional strategies, such as reading circles, author’s chairs, collaborative writing, cooperative learning groups, all share an emphasis on talk and on the community it generates. An effective foreign-language classroom needs to do the same. Becoming literate is not just about the skills of literacy—it is fundamentally about expanding one’s community, about entering a conversation that goes beyond the confines of the child’s home and intimate family and neighborhood group. Because our classrooms are increasingly multicultural, this means crossing ethnic and cultural boundaries to converse with those who differ. Becoming fluent in another language is not just about the mastery of the vocabulary and grammar of that language. It is a way to expand one’s community. Just as a reader lives in a wider world than a nonreader, so a speaker of more than one language lives more broadly. Both reading and learning another language can also function as ways to gain a perspective on one’s own experience, language, and culture. As Marshall McLuhan said, “I don’t know who discovered water, but I know it wasn’t a fish.” When we are immersed in only one language, we are not likely to be aware of its peculiarities or limitations. As most learners of a second language will tell you, we discover our first language as we dive into a second one. When a person learns another language, something is “undergone.” We “undergo” when we allow our encounters to modify our established conceptions. When we undergo an experience, we ultimately have to change ourselves and our way of looking at the world. This is what true learning is—a modification of our very selves. No instructional strategy is any more powerful than drama-based education for creating situations in which students undergo an experience that has the potential of modifying them as persons. Educational drama, which we define here as informal classroom improvisation, affects the ways students think and learn. In the rest of this chapter, I highlight research that shows drama’s powerful effect on thinking, reading, writing, and foreign-language learning, and I review two major theories that underlie drama as a way to learn—those of Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner. Finally, I end with an illustration. When students engage in improvisational drama, they are behaving symbolically. They are saying, for example, that for the purposes of imaginative play, a certain chair is a pilot’s cockpit. This ability to say that this stands for

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Page 6 that is critical to thought. Unless children can respond to and create symbols, they cannot learn to read, write, or engage in mathematical thinking. Why do any of us want to converse, read, write, or reason? We engage in these processes in order to perceive, to expand our perspective on, and to more deeply understand and enter into our world. As we do this, we use symbols. Young children spontaneously engage in imaginative play for the same three reasons—to understand, to gain a larger perspective on, and to interact more profoundly with their world. In drama (just as in thinking, reading, and writing) students make meaning by connecting their prior experience to the challenge of the moment—to come up with an apt image and response as a player in an improvisation. This is not different from the challenge of the reader or writer of a text to come up with an apt image or response. In drama-based education, students generate an improvisation—assuming a role in a particular moment in time and creating with others a plausible world. I am not considering in this chapter performing texts—acting out plays— although that can also be a very effective way to master another language.1 THE EFFECT OF DRAMA ON COGNITION, ORAL LANGUAGE, READING, AND WRITING A great many studies show that drama develops thinking, oral language, reading, and writing. Six of these respected studies show that drama improves students’ cognitive growth, as reflected in language skills, problem-solving ability, and I.Q. Moreover, the changes are lasting.2 Several studies show that drama also improves role taking,3 which is comprehending and correctly inferring attributes of another person. These inferences, which include another’s thinking, attitudes, and emotions, are a function of cognitive perception. In Piaget’s terms, to engage in role taking is to ‘‘decenter” or move away from a predominantly egocentric stage of development. Growth in cognition is dependent on growth in role taking. Not surprisingly, drama improves oral language as well as thinking. I looked at thirty-two quasi-experimental or correlational studies of the effects of drama on oral language development, and found that twenty-five of these show that drama improves or correlates with improvement of oral language.4 And what is the effect of drama on reading? Five literature reviews conclude that drama seems to be effective in promoting literacy.5 Eighteen out of twenty-nine quasi-experimental studies I found in the literature show that drama improves story recall, comprehension, and/or vocabulary.6 To illustrate, let’s look at the stunning results of the Whirlwind Program in Chicago. Whirlwind has developed a Reading Comprehension Through Drama program that is currently conducting a series of twenty drama lessons in many

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Page 7 Chicago public schools. Their widely respected statistical study (Parks & Rose, 1997) of fourth-graders showed that the students who participated in the Whirlwind program improved three months more than the control-group students in their Iowa Test of Basic Skills reading scores. This test is administered each spring to all Chicago public school students. The Whirlwind students improved 12.1 months from 1996 to 1997 on the Iowa test, and those without Whirlwind 9.1 months in the same period. In the Reading Comprehension program, a group of Whirlwind actors read short stories to the children in grades K– 8, and then they work together with them to act out the stories, draw pictures of them, and create threedimensional miniversions of them. In the process, they form more detailed images in their heads as they read; these images are what help them remember and understand the facts of the story. The program’s results have recently come to the attention of Cozette Buckney, the Chief Education Officer of the Chicago public schools. If Whirlwind had chosen to measure only the effect of the program on the drama skills of children—which did improve significantly, by the way—the impact might not have been noticed. But when reading skills improved, it was frontpage news in the Chicago Tribune (Beeler, 1999). This is why it is politically important for those of us who advocate drama to share results like these with policymakers. Drama has a positive effect on writing as well. Emergent literacy studies show that children give their early writing a multimodality associated with gesture and graphics.7 Drama serves as an effective prewriting strategy, clarifying for children concepts they might want to explore through writing. Recent observational studies report remarkable maturity in student writing that emerges from drama.8 Significant shifts in audience awareness occur before, during, and after drama. The writing produced in role shows more attention to sensory imagery, awareness of the reader, insight into characters’ feelings and empathy, and the need to clarify information and to disclose it selectively. Seven statistical studies, including one I conducted, show that drama improves the quality of writing.9 It also significantly correlates with early word-writing fluency. Preschoolers who engage in symbolic play and drawing are more likely to read and write early. Some of the best writing my own students have produced over the years has come when they are writing in role. At this stage in my career, I cannot imagine teaching any content at any level, including the graduate level (as my doctoral students will tell you) without drama. It is a powerful stimulus for thinking and writing. THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS For the past twenty-five years I have advocated that educational drama is a basic and central experience, not an expendable frill in the classroom. When

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Page 8 the late Jim Moffett and I were coauthoring the text Student-Centered Language Arts and Reading, K–12 (1992), we expanded the notion of basic language arts beyond the commonly accepted reading, writing, speaking, and listening. We added “dramatic inventing” as one of the five basic skills because we firmly believe that drama is the matrix out of which all the other so-called basic skills emerge, namely, speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In other words, drama is the most basic of the basic skills. What is the theory that explains the efficacy of improvisational or educational drama as a foundation for thinking, reading, and writing? The theory is this: Both educational drama and literacy are rooted in the same assumptions about learning. Two of the most generative learning theories to explain the role of improvisational drama are those of Lev Vygotsky (1966; 1978) and Jerome Bruner (1983; 1986; 1990). Both were instrumental in ushering in the constructivist theory of learning, and both provide a solid foundation for using drama in the classroom as a way to deepen and enlarge understanding of any subject matter. Several other major theorists have asserted that imaginative role-playing is central to the development of thinking: Douglas Barnes (1968), James Britton (1970), and, of course, my coauthor, Moffett (Moffett & Wagner, 1992). Nor should we overlook the guiding educational philosopher of the early decades of this century, John Dewey (1959), nor Jean Piaget (1962), who, like Vygotsky (1966), showed how pretend play, especially the use of objects in a nonliteral fashion, parallels cognitive development. Piaget (1962) asserted that conceptual thinking develops through activity, spontaneous play, manipulation of objects, and social collaboration. He showed how participation in drama leads to improved listening, comprehension, sequential understanding, and the integration of thought, action, and language. Constructivist Theory of Learning Our understanding of the learning process has undergone a sea change in the last three decades, and thanks to the brain research quantum scientists are currently conducting, we may be on the verge of another such profound change. Simplistic behaviorist models of learning are now largely discredited, except to account for mastering the simplest of mechanical skills. Back in the 1950s when I was immersed in behaviorism at Yale University, Jerome Bruner and other cognitive psychologists in New York were discovering the brilliant Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. They were not just tinkering with or reforming behaviorism; they were replacing it by putting the significance of meaning and values back into the center of human psychology. They began a quest to discover and describe formally how human beings create meaning. In so doing, they climbed into bed with thinkers who had been banished from psychology’s house for most of this century: philosophers, historians, anthropologists, linguists, novelists, poets, and dramatists.

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Page 9 The result has been the positing of the now widely held constructivist theory of learning based on the recognition that knowledge is constructed by each learner. As children actively engage in experiencing the world, they are just as actively constructing models in their minds to account for what they are undergoing. The way they think is literally transformed by their experience and by their attempts to make sense of it, and especially by those experiences that call for responses that are just beyond what they can generate on their own. Except for those psychologists who in the last quarter century have shifted from the construction of meaning to the processing of information, likening the brain to a computer, major learning theorists keep the making of meaning at the center of their understanding of how the human mind works (Bruner, 1990, p. 4). Constructivist theory posits that human beings actively create their own models or hypotheses as to how the world works not just with the mental stuff of their biological brain but in dialogue with the culture in which they live. As Bruner (1986) suggests, humans construct meaning in the presence of three worlds: (1) the world they are born with, their innate human propensity to make sense of the world and their capacity to acquire language; (2) the objective reality of the real world; and (3) the culture in which they are immersed. According to Bruner, all theory in science and all narrative and interpretive knowing in the humanities are dependent on the human capacity to create—to imagine a world. This is the amazing capacity that markedly sets us off from other members of the animal kingdom. As Susanne Langer (1957, p. 57) puts it, “Imagination is the primary talent of the human mind, the activity in whose service language has evolved.” Children are active meaning-makers both in their play and in their work. They imagine how things work, and they test out those imaginings. In other words, learners are active, goal-oriented, hypothesis-generating symbol manipulators. Learners express the understandings they have constructed in symbols—in gestures first, then in spoken words, drawings, and, finally, in written language. As they are pressured to find answers on their own, they are actively learning. A recent comparative study of the differences between Japanese and U.S. math lessons showed that teachers in Japan first ask students to solve a problem on their own before they teach a lesson. U.S. teachers tend to teach the lesson first and then ask the students to apply what they have learned. The Japanese students learn faster and more thoroughly. Drama is more like the Japanese math lesson. Each drama creates a problem for students before they have been taught how to respond. They act first and then reflect on their actions. Perhaps this accounts for drama’s power in effecting learning. Another characteristic of drama is its emotional component. Because of the immediacy of the dramatic present and the pressure to respond aptly in role in a social setting, participants become vividly alive to the moment and alert

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Page 10 to what is expected of them. As they get caught up in the emotion of the dramatic activity, they are often able to express themselves in a more mature manner and language than they could otherwise. Zone of Proximal Development Both dramatic improvisation and a dialogue with a teacher or more knowledgeable peer can provide the lure to learn in what Vygotsky (1978, p. 86) calls a learner’s zone of proximal development—the level just beyond the one at which one can function on one’s own. Watch children in their spontaneous play. They typically take on adult roles. Perhaps because they are little and powerless, they want to be the captain of the rocket ship, the most powerful Ninja, the bossy mother who knows what everyone needs and should be doing. As children engage in spontaneous symbolic play or classroom drama directed by a teacher, they assume not only the language but also the personae of important adults. In the process, they are catapulted into a developmental level that is above their actual one. As they improvise, they are pressured to behave and use language in new and previously untried ways. For example, Lee Galda and Anthony Pellegrini (1990) report on a three-year-old-girl and a four-year-old girl who are playing doctor together. As they take off the doll’s imaginary diaper, one reprimands the other for using the word “poo poo” when in role as the doctor (p. 94). The act of taking on a new persona demands a word choice beyond the language of her everyday life. The experiences the child has had in the society of adults is brought to bear on the task at hand, and the pull is toward internalizing a diction that had not ever before been part of the child’s own repertoire. This experience is not different in kind from that of the foreign-language learners who must try on a new way of expressing ideas. How is an improvisational drama different from a story the child hears or reads? Drama is done not just with words but also with the body and gesture. It can be engaged in long before the child is ready to read and write. Therefore, Vygotsky sees it as the powerful prelude to and appropriate extension of literacy. Although young children often roleplay alone, accompanying their actions with a flood of egocentric speech, when they start dramatic play with other children, they have to mesh their speech with that of others. It will no longer do to say only what they want to say. They must respond appropriately to the action and speech of others. Dramatic play is a profoundly challenging social event. Players must negotiate a single vision of what the drama is about, what the setting looks like, who takes which roles, and so on. Often in improvisational drama, we find children scaffolding, that is, providing a framework on which other children can stand as they are pressured into their zone of proximal development. Holly Giffin (1984) presented an example of this in an observation of a child in role as queen

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Page 11 who is playing with a boy who is not quite yet able to imagine himself in his role. She orders him to bring her a vial of poison, and he comes back with a paper cup with real water. He grins sheepishly and smiles, “It’s only water.” Without for a moment stepping out of role, the queen takes it, sniffs it, and decides, “You’re right! Go get me the other vial.’’ The next time her page comes in and bows, he is firmly in role. “Here is the poison, your Majesty.” Drama can challenge children to use both gesture and language they have never needed before. Gesture is a communication system even more basic to humans than language. The Role of Gesture Our first experiences both before and after birth were centered in our bodies. As newborns, we knew when we were hungry, dry, comfortable, held in strong and loving arms. As infants, every part of our body was engaged in making sense of our world—in constructing meaning. Before we could talk, we used gestures to communicate. Vygotsky sees these as the earliest symbolic behavior. We reached toward and pointed at what we wanted. We waved “bye, bye” before we had a word to go with the gesture. Thus movement and gesture, even before vocalization, are the beginning of communication. Gesture starts as random movement and ends as precise symbol. Random vocalization grows into speech; gesture develops into drawing and, later, writing. Writing begins with a baby’s gestures in the air; these are signs and symbols just as our later pictures and writings on paper are also. Watch a child turn a block into an airplane or rocket. The gesture becomes the thing, and the child who is making this happen knows perfectly well this is a game of pretend. Because of the way he is moving the object, it has become for the moment a symbol for something else. If you ask him if this is a real rocket, he’ll look at you like you are stupid. Of course, it is not. But, please, let’s keep the game going; don’t stop the pretending to ask dumb questions like that. Gesture—because it is done with the hand—also leads to drawing. The first drawings children do are not representational; rather, they are metaphorical symbols. This circle stands for a face. Most young children go through the familiar stage of drawing tadpole people. These simple drawings are not representations of the real people they see. Instead they are simply shorthand symbols. Arms and legs are just sticks attached to the circle. As Howard Gardner puts it, their early pictures “stand for the entire class or represent an ideal type, instead of depicting particulars that can be identified and then paired up with their realization in the ‘real world’ ” (Gardner, 1980, p. 65). Vygotsky sees both drawing and drama as developing from gesture. From the symbolizing in drawing and drama, it is just a short step to writing.

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Page 12 Enactive, Iconic, and Symbolic Representations of the World Now let’s consider the theory of the second major constructivist, Jerome Bruner. He sees gesture as enactive representation—one of the three major ways human beings think—ways they represent and deal with reality: enactive, iconic, and symbolic or representational. Enactive representation. Enactive is with the hand, iconic with the eye, and symbolic with the brain. In enactive knowing we learn “by doing,” by experiencing with our body. Iconic knowing is knowing through an image—either in the mind, in drawing, or in gesture. Symbolic knowing encompasses translation into language, the symbol system par excellence . However, all three kinds of knowing are actually symbolic. We can easily see that drama involves all three kinds of representation. Role players use their bodies, create images in their minds and with their gestures, and use language to symbolize experience. Often in educational drama, participants stop to create drawings to help them visualize their common experience. Thus, participants in drama engage in enactive, iconic, and symbolic representation. In Chicago, in addition to the reading comprehension program described earlier, the Whirlwind artists showed firstgraders how to make letters with their bodies—enactively learning to connect shapes with sounds, an essential for early reading development. A statistical study (Rose, 1999) showed that after twenty sessions, the children who physically represented sounds by making shapes with their bodies improved significantly more than control students in their ability to recognize both consonant and vowel sounds and to separate spoken words into their phonemes. Enactive learning is very effective with young children. Iconic representation. Now let’s look at iconic representation—knowing through images. Like role-playing, drawing stems from gesture. It is gesture crystallized. But not only drawing or drama creates images. Without imaging in our minds we cannot read or write either. So like enactive representation, iconic knowing is not unique to drama. The growth of representational or symbolic thought is largely dependent on the ability to create mental images. Image begins as fleeting sensate happening, neural firings, and sensorimotor rehearsal. With the onset of the stage of development Piaget has termed object permanence, the child can hold the image and recall it when absent. This gives way to symbolic thought and dramatic play. Giving children a good environment that encourages them to imitate and symbolically play will enhance imagery skills and cognitive development.10 Studies show that the ability to fantasize freely is a cognitive skill related to concentration, fluency, and the ability to organize and integrate diverse

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Page 13 stimuli. Drama influences imagery toward increased discrimination and vividness, and enhances the students’ ability to control their images. Writing, like reading, is dependent on iconic representation. The challenge, especially for the fiction writer and poet, is in large part to create pictures with words. Symbolic representation. As noted earlier, both dramatic play and drawing are ways children enter imaginatively into their worlds. In both, they are engaging in symbolism. Because dramatic play and drawing are ways of saying this stands for that, Vygotsky sees both as a precursor to writing. Like gestures, all three—dramatic play, drawing, and writing—are symbolic acts. It is just a step from drawing and drama to using letters symbolically, because writing is simply another way of symbolizing, and like drama and drawing, it has its roots in gesture. It is done with the hand, not the voice. It is putting onto a page something that stands for something else. A letter of the alphabet is simply a symbol for a speech sound. Like drawing and writing, in improvisational drama one thing stands for another. The only difference is that the setting for drama must be a social one. Even here, however, there is an overlap with reading and writing. Literacy events for young children tend to be highly social occasions as well, as A.H. Dyson (1990) has so richly documented. THE FIRST SCREAM To illustrate the power of drama and the other arts in helping students learn enactively and iconically, I close with an illustration of a classroom improvisational drama. The focus on the concrete symbol led to an understanding by the children of a much larger and more abstract issue—the need for safety regulations in factories. This is an account of an eight-year-old’s response to a well-developed weeklong unit of study incorporating drama as well as other arts in Bradford, England. Christopher Ford conducted this history lesson for a group of seven-to nineyear-olds. He used a true story about an event in the history of the school as the theme for the first week of the school year. The event was a tragic one set in 1869, when the boiler exploded in a bobbin mill that had stood next door to the school the students now attended. The safety valve of this steam boiler had been blowing off frequently in the weeks leading up to the tragedy. Local shopkeepers had complained. The manager of the mill told the boilerkeeper to do something to stop the complaints. He did. He put weights on top of the safety valve and tied them down with heavy rope. At 10:25 on a Wednesday morning, just as the primary children went out into the playground next to the mill for recess, the boiler exploded. It demolished the mill, killing many workers inside, including the manager’s

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Page 14 son. The wall collapsed onto the playground killing eight children and injuring many more. The bodies of two fiveyear-old boys were found with the hobbyhorse on which they were playing. The heavy safety valve from the boiler was found over a quarter of a mile away in a railway goods yard. The country was outraged. New laws about factory safety were passed as a result. The class of children explored this story through drama, reading, and writing for the entire week. Mr. Ford led them through enactive, iconic, and symbolic representations of the event. The children looked at Victorian photographs and found out about Victorian schools. They read the local newspapers of the day and paid special attention to the London Times of 1869 to see what the children or their parents might have talked about at the breakfast table on the day of the tragedy. They looked for news items that children of that day might have noticed. Then they used the enactive symbolization of dance to explore a theme of force and power against the fragility of people. They explored though drama the actions of town persons who heard about the tragedy and the reactions of relatives and friends of those who were killed or injured. They took on the roles of those who were near rather than actually in the explosion. One source of information puzzled them. It was the original school logbook, which the school still keeps. There they read the headmaster’s comments of that day. It merely said, “Was obliged to send the children home today owing to the boiler explosion, eight of the children having been killed and many injured.” Nothing more. The next entry was for three weeks later and read, “Commenced school today with a very fair attendance.” After a few days of absorbing information about this event, the children focused on the first scream. Here the work became iconic, to use Bruner’s term. The children used art materials to create an image of the first scream. Lydia’s clay piece was a stark profile of a face with a wide-open mouth. Then they dramatized that first scream, moving to enactive representation. Then they froze the action to capture a moment in time. They shared with each other their split-second pictures created with their bodies. The teacher asked them to think about a piece of writing that could capture a split second of the whole event, but that would somehow tell people everything they needed to know about what happened. Lydia’s poem shows the way her iconic and enactive learning fed into her use of words: THE FIRST SCREAM One day. An ordinary school day. Wednesday 9th July 1869, an eight year old screamed in the National School on Park Road. Children in the school were as still and silent as mice and stared across the room to where Emily Grey was standing.

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Page 15 Now, Emily Grey was a nice girl. She had blond curly hair, blue eyes, rosy red cheeks and pinky-red smooth lips But now she had wide, peeled eyes, pale face and a dry sore throat. Emily Grey was petrified. She had her eyes fixed outside. All kinds of thoughts were jumbled in her mind. Astonished, puzzled, confused, hurt. In the playground below, bricks piled high. Heavy, jagged, sharp, rough. And underneath a face. Soft, gentle, delicate, smooth Blond hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks. Her sister. By Lydia, aged 8 This young child was able to capture the ordinariness of the scene and the sense that this little girl did not deserve this fate—she was “nice.’’ The poem builds from the sound of the scream that riveted the attention of the class to Emily Grey’s face, then to what she saw outside, and finally to the denouement of the last two words. The juxtaposition of adjectives painted the picture graphically: “heavy, jagged, sharp, rough” versus “soft, gentle, delicate, smooth.” Economy of language, sensory imagery, dramatic juxtaposition, and the shock of the last line—all lead to the powerful impact of this profound response to a real but at first distant historical event. Soon after this week, the school held one of many open houses for children to share their work with their parents. The teacher explained to Lydia’s mother that it had taken a whole week to write those few lines, and that no other writing had been done during that week. He asked her how she felt about that. Did she mind the fact that her daughter only wrote a few lines in a whole week? She replied that she had spent all her life never writing lines like that, so her daughter only taking a few days to do it was a wonder, not a worry. In conclusion, drama aids thinking because it has the same goal as that of all cognition—to understand, to gain a larger perspective on, and to engage more profoundly with the world. This is the goal of foreign—language teaching at its best, and it should be no surprise that for reaching this goal, drama is a highly effective teaching strategy. NOTES 1. See, for example, Peter M. Spoerl’s, “Spelunkenpadagogik: A Personal Account of Dramatic Performance in the Foreign Language Classroom,” Correspondence, 35/36, 5–10. 2. For elaboration, analysis, and citations of these studies, see Chapter 5, “Reflection and Cognition,” in Betty Jane Wagner, Educational Drama and Language Arts: What Research Shows , pp. 77–89.

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Page 16 3. Ibid. , pp. 84–86. 4. For elaboration, analysis, and citations of these studies, see Chapter 3, “Oral Language” in Wagner, Educational Drama, pp. 34–56. 5. For elaboration, analysis, and citations of these studies, see Chapter 9, “Story Recall, Reader Response, and Comprehension,” in Wagner, Educational Drama, pp. 173–198. 6. Ibid. , pp. 187–198. 7. For elaboration, analysis, and citations of these studies, see Chapter 7, “Writing,” in Wagner, Educational Drama, pp. 123–132. 8. For elaboration, analysis, and citations of these studies, see Chapter 4, “Language Power Through Working in Role” by David Booth, pp. 57–76; and Chapter 7, ‘‘Writing,” pp. 123–129, in Wagner, Educational Drama. 9. For elaboration, analysis, and citations of these studies, see Chapter 7, “Writing,” in Wagner, Educational Drama, pp. 132–147. 10. See Chapter 5, “Reflection and Cognition,” in Wagner, Educational Drama, pp. 77–89. REFERENCES Barnes, Douglas. (1968). Drama in the English classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Beeler, Amanda. (1999, July 18). Whirlwind program puts new spin on reading class. Chicago Tribune, Section 1, pp. 1, 3. Blanch, Emma. J. (1974). Dramatics in the foreign-language classroom. ERIC focus reports on the teaching of foreign languages, No. 23. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 096 847). Britton, James. (1970). Language and learning. Baltimore: Penguin. Bruner, Jerome S. (1983). Child’s talk: Learning to use language. New York: Norton. Bruner, Jerome S. (1986). Play, thought, and language. Prospects , 16, 77–83. Bruner, Jerome S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Byram, Michael, & Fleming, Michael. (1998). Language learning in intercultural perspective: Approaches through drama and ethnography . New York: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, John. (1959). Art as experience. New York: Putnam’s. Dyson, Anne Haas. (1990). Talking up a writing community: The role of talk in learning to write. In S. Hynds & D. L. Rubin (Eds.), Perspectives on thought and learning (pp. 99–114). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Erdman, Harley. (1991). Conflicts of interest: Bringing drama into the elementary foreign language classroom. Youth Theatre Journal, 5 (3), 12–14. Galda, Lee, & Pellegrini, Anthony D. (1990). Play talk, school talk, and emergent literacy. In Susan Hynds & Donald L. Rubin (Eds.), Perspectives on thought and learning (pp. 91–97). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Gardner, Howard. (1980). Artful scribbles. New York: Basic Books. Gaudart, Hyacinth. (1990). Using drama techniques in language teaching . Malasia. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 355 823). Geffen, Mitzi. (1998). Drama in English: An enriching experience. English Teachers’ Journal (Israel), 52, 53–57. Giffin, Holly. (1984). Coordination of meaning in shared make believe. In I. Bretherton (Ed.), Symbolic play: The development of social understanding (pp. 73–100). New York: Academic Press.

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Page 17 Kishimoto, Toshiko. (1992). Teaching business Japanese and culture using authentic materials: A popular television drama . South Carolina. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 348 867). Langer, Susanne L. (1957). Philosophy in a new key. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Masson, Catherine. (1994). Pratique de l’oral par le theatre (Oral practice by way of role playing). In M. Mahler (Ed.), RELIEF: revue de linguistique et d’enseignement du français (Review of linguistics and French language instruction). Ontario, Canada. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 377 678). Miller, Marsha Lee. (1986). Using drama to teach foreign languages. Texas. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 282 439). Moffett, James, & Wagner, Betty Jane. ([1976, 1983] 1992). Student-centered language arts and reading, K–l2 . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann. Parks, Michaela, & Rose, Dale. (1997). The impact of Whirlwind’s Reading Comprehension Through Drama program on 4th grade students’ reading skills and standardized test scores . San Francisco: 3-D Group. Piaget, Jean. ([1945] 1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Ralph, E. G. (1997). The power of using drama in the teaching of second languages: Some recollections. McGill Journal of Education , 32 (3), 273–288. Rose, Dale. (1999). The impact of Whirlwind’s Basic Reading Through Dance program on first grade students’ basic reading skills: Study II . San Francisco: 3-D Group. Spoerl, Peter M. (2000). Spelunkenpädagogik: A personal account of dramatic performance in the foreign language classroom. Correspondence , 35/36, 5–10. Vygotsky, Lev S. (1966). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet Psychology, 12, 62–76. Vygotsky, Lev S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (M. Cole, V. JohnSteiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1990). Dramatic improvisation in the classroom. In Susan Hynds & Donald L. Rubin (Eds.), Perspectives on talk and learning (pp. 195–211). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1994). Drama and writing. In A. C. Purvis (Ed.), The encyclopedia of English studies and language arts, Vol. 1 (pp. 403–405). New York: National Council of Teachers of English and Scholastic. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1997). Books at play . Worthington, OH: SRA/McGraw-Hill. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1998). Educational drama and language arts: What research shows. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Wagner, Betty Jane. (Ed.). (1999). Building moral communities through educational drama . Greenwich, CT: Ablex. Wagner, Betty Jane. ([1976] 1999). Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a learning medium . Portland, ME: Calendar Islands. Wagner, Betty Jane. ([1991] 2000). Imaginative expression. In J. Flood, J.M. Jensen, D. Lapp, and J.R. Squire (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (pp. 787–804), sponsored by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. New York: Macmillan. Welkner, James. (1999). Lights up: Drama in the ESL classroom. In A. Barfield, et al., JALT98 Proceedings. The proceedings of the JALT annual international conference on language teaching/learning & educational materials expo. Focus on the

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classroom: Interpretations. Japan. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 436 094). Wilburn, Deborah. (1992). Learning through drama in the immersion classroom. In E.B. Bernhardt (Ed.), Life in language immersion classrooms. Multilingual matters 86. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 355 823).

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Page 19 2 Intercultural Recognitions Through Performative Inquiry Lynn Fels and Lynne McGivern Singing the space there are meetings and I am transformed . . . —Barba (1995; 165) At the edge of dawn, child warriors, we stand, shoulder to shoulder. Our tribal chief walks the line that separates us, adorning tribal ribbons on our chests. “Wear these with pride, my sons, my daughters. This ribbon symbolizes your membership in our tribe. It speaks of the history of our people and of our courage. It speaks of our presence in harmony with the land. Be strong, be of good heart and care for each other.” He clasps our hands, and together we become one with the tribe. The ceremony ends and we slip away. Some dash off to splash in the stream, others pick blueberries, and some of us secret ourselves in the woods to spy on older siblings. The sun seeks a higher loft in the sky, and blesses us with the bright warmth of day.1

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Page 20 LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH DRAMATIC EXPLORATION AS A MEETING PLACE OF INTERCULTURAL CONVERSATION AND TRANSFORMATION Successful foreign- or second-language learning requires an embodied understanding by the learner of the context, land, history, cultural, social, and political environments experienced by first-language speakers. Language learning is a personal, communal, and political act that involves border-crossings—strangers in a new land. Critical applied linguistics2 recognizes the foreign-/second-language classroom as a site of struggle where social issues and cultural values play a significant role in the curriculum (Norton, 1995; Toohey, 2000). The tools and strategies we choose and the curriculum we present embody our own pedagogical positioning, values, and expectations for both our students and ourselves. As the various authors of this book illustrate, drama can be a dynamic tool for teachers who seek to situate foreignand second-language learning within a context and environment. Drama transforms the four walls of a classroom into a variety of situations, environments, and relationships that require students to take on roles and contextspecific language. Students navigate these dramatic situations in pairs or small groups, often with the rest of the class as audience. Sometimes they work with a written script; sometimes they improvise within the logic of the scene, and so learn the vocabulary and grammatical structures required within a given context of play. The objective of these drama activities in the foreign-/second-language classroom is to give students the opportunity, through simulation, to “rehearse” linguistic exchanges that they may encounter in everyday life. Unfortunately, the dramatic situations usually proposed by language instructors or textbooks involve one-dimensional situations with a prescribed dialogue and conclusion. Students, for example, are required to take on the roles of customers and waiters, store clerks and shoppers, doctors and patients in which dialogue and action are often restricted to the learning objectives of vocabulary and grammatical structures. Consequently, learning opportunities provided by such drama activities to explore beyond the given text or to engage in critical thinking or creative exploration are limited. From a critical applied linguistics perspective, the scenarios typically chosen for drama-based foreign- and secondlanguage learning promote the dominant culture, consciously or unconsciously reinforcing cultural behaviors, expectations, and relationships common to the culture of the language being taught. Absent from or silenced in these dramatic exchanges are the identities and experiences of language students who are instructed to work within a prescribed text. Lost is an opportunity for a sharing of multiple perspectives, for engaging in intercultural dialogue, and, most importantly,

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Page 21 for inviting a shifting of paradigms that signal an embodied understanding that opens new possible conversations. Not walls of cement, but . . . the melodies of our presence3 Each of us and our students dwell within an embodied presence of language, gender, sexual and ethnic identity, cultural heritage and values, individual and communal experiences, ambitions, and perspectives. Our embodied presence speaks through our choices of action, the positions we take, the curriculum we create or to which we respond, and our relationships with others both within and outside the classroom. The questions that challenge us are the following: How do we engage the embodied presence of individual students within our language classrooms? In the opening up of curriculum to the presence of our students, what learning will be realized within the interplay between the multiple world(s) of experience and identities embodied within each individual? What concerns, fears, challenges, questions will students entertain as they (re)language their world? What issues will they choose (if given a choice) to explore? How will individual melodies resonate within the presence of others? With what experiences, memories, stories, will they gift us? How may we as teachers and learners engage in a meaningful dialogue that invites the sounding of all voices? As Ann Axtmann investigates in her chapter on ‘‘Transcultural Performance in Classroom Learning,” the opportunities within the foreign-/second-language classroom for intercultural pedagogy are facilitated through creative exploration through the arts, or what we name performative inquiry. Drama activities such as improvisation, tableau, or writing in role open spaces for intercultural conversations that can transport students beyond the mechanics of conventional language learning into an empowering world of political and communal recognitions that invite new spaces of intercultural dialogue and understanding. Our ambition then is to engage our students in dramatic explorations that recognize the experiences, heritage, values, and stories embodied within individual students. Performative inquiry in the language classroom provides an opportunity to open up a “third space” of presence and exploration, where intercultural interactions and possible negotiations and recognitions emerge.4 A third space or performative space is a creative interactive space within which participants negotiate multiple possibilities of action and, through shared participation and reflection, learn from each other both within and outside the drama. For example, in a role drama of the fabled Pied Piper, students in role as town councilors may reverse their decision not to pay

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Page 22 the Pied Piper when faced by a delegation of shopkeepers decrying the financial impact of a town without children, or when confronted by the tears and threat of lawsuits by parents enraged by the loss of their children to the slighted piper’s tune. Within the performative space of the role drama, children learn that individual choices of action have repercussions and that decisions need to be carefully considered and negotiated from multiple perspectives. As educators, our challenge is to break free from Barba’s “walls of cement” that so often inform our curriculum and to venture into the intertextural5 realm of social responsibility and intercultural learning that drama invites. By giving ourselves permission to release the expected and prescribed scripts of drama-based language learning, we open curricular spaces of intercultural possibility for students within a pedagogical environment of dynamic interplay and recognition of the presence of “others.” Language is inclusive of the language of experience, environment, and relationship; context; spoken, written, and danced language; cultural beliefs and values—an embodied text that speaks across time and experience (Norton, 1995; Norton/Toohey, 2002; McGivern, 2002). Each one of us is an embodied text, and as we engage in conversation and interaction, intercultural texts are written or spoken or played into shared memory and presence. Within the possible imaginary worlds of performative inquiry, the classroom becomes a site of questioning and reimagining, a playing with language, choices of action, and possibility. The role drama on residential schools explored in this chapter is a powerful illustration of the possibilities of performative inquiry as an intercultural space of embodied exploration and learning. Opportunities for intercultural learning through drama are as multiple as the cultural, social, economic, communal and personal experiences, perspectives, and imaginations of the participants at play. To listen to the melodies of our presence as students engage in intercultural conversations of embodied play is to open the door to a stranger and enter into a transcognitive dance of recognition. DRAMA AS A TEACHING TOOL AND RESEARCH SITE OF INTERCULTURAL RESPONSIBILITY AND RECOGNITION I teach a drama-in-education course every summer.6 The classroom is my research site: Through drama or what we call embodied play,7 we create imaginary worlds, and within those worlds, we learn about ourselves, our choices of action, our responsibilities to others. Today, a hot July morning, we set aside our coffee cups, and gather into our circle as shafts of sunlight fall through the high windows of the classroom. When the four students

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Page 23 leading the day’s role drama announce that for the next ninety minutes we are to be in role as First Nations people,8 I become apprehensive. Donning the roles of aboriginals is risky business: Always, there is the danger of stereotyping; the risk of stepping on cultural and racial sensitivities; a superficial pretending to be what we are not. Cultural sensitivity, authenticity, and respect play against the precarious benefit of exploring native issues through drama. The language and experience of the First Nations people is not my language or experience. As a drama educator, I must judiciously balance the risks of cultural injury with the possibilities and opportunities of learning. My concerns are mirrored on the faces of the other participants, a multicultural grouping of teachers and student teachers who have enrolled in the course to investigate drama as a teaching tool cross-curriculum. Should we enter into this? Leading the role drama are two First Nations students, a second-language learner from Japan, and a Canadian-born native speaker of English, who now wait patiently for our commitment. They have designed the drama and are curious about the possible world(s) that will unfold as we breathe life into the skeleton of their imagined text. They have questions that they want to investigate through drama, and they are placing trust in us to join their explorations. The imaginary world we are about to create will be one guided by them. I take a deep breath and trust that the “path we lay down in walking’’ (Varela, 1987, 63) will lead us to compassionate interstanding.9 PERFORMATIVE INQUIRY AS EMBODIED INTERTEXTUAL LEARNING performance is heartbreath dancing possibility and interstanding into presence Performative inquiry is a research methodology and mode of learning that invites students to explore imaginary worlds within which space-moments10 of interstanding and intercultural recognitions are possible. Performative inquiry explores creative actions and interactions realized through performance.11 Performative inquiry recognizes performance as an action-site of learning,12 thereby opening up opportunities for research and teaching investigations. Within the possible imaginary worlds of performative inquiry, the classroom becomes a site of questioning and reimagining, a playing with language, choices of action, and possibility. Initiating the inquiry is a question, an issue, a fragment of story, an experience, or phenomenon that the teacher and students wish to investigate. Performative inquiry uses elements of role drama, including soundscapes, tableau, writing-in-role, and improvisation to initiate embodied intertextual conversations within imaginary world(s) created by participants.

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Page 24 For example, a teacher may be interested in exploring the issue of bullying with his or her students. Rather than holding a class discussion, the teacher decides to investigate the issue through performative inquiry. She designs a role drama situated in a fictional community where bullying is a problem in the local school. The children, in role as school administrators, teachers, social workers, or concerned parents, are invited to a meeting to develop an action plan. What concerns will they raise? What solutions will they propose? After the role drama, students reflect on what they learned about bullying and the community’s responsibilities and choices of action in situations where children are being bullied. Through their embodied play in role and in the reflection following the role drama, the teacher and her students may gain insight into the causes and effects of bullying and may be encouraged to actively address the problem of bullying in their own lives. An essential component of performative inquiry is a collective sharing of experience and reflections among participants following the performative exploration: What happened, what choices of action were taken, what other actions or responses might have been possible, what insights or feelings or questions emerged, what might have been learned from the experience? This reflection may be in the form of group discussions, circle-sharing, journal writing, or replaying situations that emerged during the initial inquiry. Performance boldly and precariously declares that Being is performed (and made temporarily visible) in that suspended in-between. —Phelan, 1993, 167 A theoretical understanding of performance13 as a mode of learning may be helpful in a conversation about drama as a teaching and research tool within a foreign-/second-language classroom. Performative inquiry is based on a theory of learning that recognizes that learning is realized through performance.14 Performative inquiry draws, in part, from enactivism (e.g., Varela et al., 1993; Davis et al., 1996) through which learning is a “laying down in walking” of “new possible worlds.” Knowledge is seen as not separate from the learner but embodied within creative action and interaction. “What we do,” Varela (1987) says, “is what we know, and ours is but one of many possible worlds. It is not a mirroring of the world, but the laying down of a world’’ (62). These new possible worlds may be created through the actions and interactions of students in role; it is within performance that exploration happens and possible space-moments of learning may emerge. For example, the students leading the residential school role drama wanted to explore the impact that residential schools have had on First Nations people: How has the aboriginal residential school experience influenced individual and communal responses and choices of action? Cognizant of the need to help their fellow students understand the impact that the loss of community and cultural

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Page 25 heritage through forced assimilation might have had on First Nations people, these students chose a dramatic framework within which to set their inquiry. Their ambition was to create an imaginary world where students in role as First Nations people could view aboriginal issues and experiences from a new perspective.15 Through ritual, visualization, improvisation, and symbolic artifacts, students in role were able to create and sustain an imaginary world that allowed investigation of First Nations issues from within. Performative inquiry—the exploration of a topic or issue through performance—involves “an ongoing bringing forth of a world” (Maturana & Varela, 1992), created by participants who bring to their dramatic play embodied texts of knowledge based on their experiences, cultural heritage, and relationships with others. The multiple perspectives brought into the imaginary world(s) of performance by individual students and the consequent interactions between create an embodied text of creative interplay and intertextual conversations that may be reflected upon at the conclusion of the role drama. For example, in the role drama on residential schools, choices of action taken within the role drama were later discussed during the debriefing session with the four role drama leaders and participants. Individual students spoke of the choices of action they had taken within the drama, and the impulses behind their action. Together they reflected on why they had responded the way they had during the role drama, wondered whether they might have acted the same way if they had found themselves within a similar situation in the “real world,” and shared individual insights and perspectives in relation to their own lives that participation in the role drama brought to light. Possible space-moments of learning come into being through (re)playing the landscape of inquiry through creative action and interaction. Learning is possible through inhabiting and investigating imaginary world(s) that are momentarily played into being. By entering into the role drama, participants in role as First Nations people may encounter moments of interstanding that shift their understanding of the issues being explored. For example, a student may discover that a historical event in a history book written by a British publisher “plays’’ differently when, in role, he or she experiences the disempowerment of a parent whose child is taken by a government official. These space-moments of learning or interstanding are what drama educators call Aha! moments.16 Aha! moments are moments of recognition or transcognition—space-moments of learning—that come into being in the interstices between the real world(s) and not-yet real world(s) of performance.17 A solitary moment within a role drama brings forth a new possible world and, within a space-moment of recognition, opens new horizons within which to wonder and wander. Learning then is an ecological interaction: Performance plays on “the edge of chaos” where patterns of interrelations and interconnections are created

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Page 26 and re-created through an “endless dance of co-emergence” (Waldrop, 1992, 12). Learning becomes an embodied “laying down in walking” realized through the interplay between participants within coevolving world(s).18 What determines the footsteps that mark the coemerging path(s) are the cultural, racial or ethnic, sexual, social, political, economic, communal and personal experiences and identities of individual participants. Intercultural recognitions— what Ann Axtmann calls “transculturalization”—happen when students understand the world from a new perspective. Performative inquiry, then, is a research methodology and mode of learning that invites the coevolving world(s) of performance, interpretation, complexity, and cognition into a transformative dance of possibility. To entertain performative inquiry as a research vehicle and curricular place of learning is to recognize risk, the unexpected, that opens us to possibility and impossibility.19 There is risk in imagining into being a space to explore the world(s) of First Nations people; there is risk in giving voice and presence to students; there is risk in trusting in the moment. And yet, it is within the intertextual interplay realized through performance that intercultural recognitions, empowerment, and interstanding become possible. As a tool for exploration and interpretation, performative inquiry invites teachers and students to investigate their world(s) through creative and critical (re)imagining. By locating performance, or specifically, drama, within a learning theory and research methodology, we, as teachers and researchers, open spaces of curricular and linguistic exploration. On the edge of chaos, where our imaginary and embodied worlds coemerge in a continuous intertextual dance, we locate ourselves within spaces of creative action and interaction, where unexpected possibilities of intercultural recognitions dance into being. RECOGNIZING OTHER WITHIN I am braiding the hair of my youngest child. Her brother is playing outside with friends. My neighbor has come to visit, and we chat idly, as Grandmother sits in the corner, snoozing. A knock breaks our conversation. “Ah, another neighbor,” I murmur, opening the door. But it is a stranger. He is dispassionate, official. ‘‘I have come for your son. Residential school. It is decreed by the Canadian government.” Looking over his shoulder, I see my son coming towards us. At other houses, too, there are government officials knocking on doors. They have papers. They have come for our children. My son turns to run, but they have anticipated this. He is seized and taken away with the others. Our children. “No!” My cry of pain, despair, rises above us, startles us into silence. My son and I look at each other, no words but my hand reaching out to him.

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Page 27 Performative inquiry opens spaces of intertextual play within which social responsibility and individual and communal response may be investigated. When we take on a role, often we are said to be “in the shoes of” the one we are playing. Yet, to claim to be so entirely is impossible. A former First Nations residential school student and a Japanese male ESL student are worlds apart, and yet, through drama, it is possible for either to have a momentary recognition of the realities that shape each other’s world(s). Although we bring unique perspectives, experience, and cultural understandings to individual situations, there are moments when, like Alice in the Looking Glass, in role, we slip through an opening in the gap, and stand in-between worlds for a momentary glimpse of another place and another way of being. It is a moment when we stumble, when we gasp in recognition, when time stops, and we suddenly understand that there is another possible view from which to see our world, another possible action that we might pursue. This space-moment of learning is what Applebaum calls the stop. Between closing and beginning lives a gap, a caesura, a discontinuity. The betweenness is a hinge that belongs to neither one nor the other. It is neither poised nor unpoised, yet moves both ways . . . It is the stop. —Applebaum (1995, 15, 16) I have read of the dislocation of First Nations children to residential schools and imagined how parents might have felt. However, it was not until the terrible scene in our role drama when the government official dragged away my child, that I truly connected with the pain of loss and disempowerment experienced multiple times within our nation’s history. And, within a heartbreath, I had a momentary glimpse of the pain and consequences of such a moment. How could a mother lose her child and not forever be broken? How could a child, in the brutal stripping away of family relationships, culture, and language, not look back in anger and despair? During debriefing, the student in role as my son, spoke to his sudden recognition of his situation. “It wasn’t until I heard your cry and saw your tears, that I began to question my own response and suddenly, I felt afraid and began to fight back.” Drama requires a leap of trust in which students, playing in role, touch, however briefly, the emotional anguish of a parent losing her child and a child’s desperate response. In that temporal moment, we embody the First Nations community’s wounding, and (re)experience the scarring imposed by another culture. We cannot claim ownership to another individual’s or cultural group’s experience, but we can open ourselves to witness and honor their stories, experiences, and memories through the momentary glimpse that is gifted us through drama. While not claiming to be “in the shoes of” the other, compassion for another’s experience becomes part of the conversation, an intercultural learning shared through dramatic (re)play.20

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Page 28 How do we read the silent conversations within and outside the dramatic world(s) of shared experience? The government official at the door is a stranger, and yet he and his actions are also my heritage and responsibility. I, a Caucasian female, in role as a First Nations mother, open the door to the Japanese male ESL student playing the role of a Canadian government official. What comes to light is an odd overlapping of roles, identities, histories, cultural stories, and experiences. Performative inquiry layers question upon question, seeking not answers, only possibilities within the betweenness of exploration. What intercultural relationships evolve in a single meeting that are in truth multiple meetings realized through time and space? it is in the meeting places between we become Here and Now, something happens. In the foreign-/second-language classroom, students seek entry into new linguistic spaces located in the betweenness that is “a hinge that belongs to neither one nor the other” (Applebaum, 1995, 15, 16). In struggling to restabilize, an intercultural dance requires new footings, new ways of moving within an embodied language of discontinuity, unfamiliarity, the not-yet-known. Drama invites students to share these moments of uncertainty and dislocation, and to speak to the experience embodied within a disrupted imaginary world. The learning that happens within drama is then revisited within the context of our everyday lives. Performative inquiry provides a momentary entrance into ‘‘other” worlds through embodied play and reflection, thereby offering students opportunities for intercultural awareness, dialogue, and understanding. Transported into an unexpected environment, the student must reexamine the familiar against the unfamiliar, and through the resulting disequilibrium recover a new balance of meeting oneself within a new environment. We are pushed into lines, facing the residential school principal who speaks in an unknown tongue. His tone of voice is unkind, disinterested. Suddenly the guard strides along the lines, where we stand shoulder to shoulder. He strips off our tribal ribbons. You will speak only English! You will speak only English! He shouts. He is now moving down my line. I pull the ribbon from my shirt and hide it in my pocket. I secret this small self that is my identity. I can taste the fear of discovery. The others are without their ribbons. Someone protests and is disciplined. We are angered and sullen in our loss. A priest speaks softly, pats a child’s arm, says a gentle word, moving down the lines, taming the sorrow, the pain, the anger. The student in role21 as the residential school principal speaks to us in Japanese, and while the body language and tone are clear, the words are not. The unfamiliarity of place and language is disorientating. Pulled from the

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Page 29 familiar, we are relocated within a space that forbids us to sound our presence, a space that denies our communal and cultural voice. Faced with the foreign language of the principal, we are able only to guess the meaning of his gestures, intonations, and facial expressions. The actions of the guard, however, are brutally eloquent, as are his blunt words, “Speak English! Speak English!” The intent of assimilation is clearly expressed by the residential school principal’s use of an unfamiliar language and by the removal of our tribal identities. The ritual assimilation repeats itself along each line of children standing rigid— through lines of generations. Power and denial silence resistance; those who dare to speak out are punished. In a game taught to us by a student in role as the priest, I and others deliberately break the rules, stealing cards, lying in the absence of a winning hand. Small acts of disobedience, resistance enters the community as a language of survival. The tribal ribbon remains hidden in my breast pocket; clinging to the torn ribbon of my heritage, I refuse to embrace the new language imposed by the authorities. Through their embodied intertextual play within the imaginary world of a residential school, the role drama leaders and students arrive at new locations of intercultural learning. During the debriefing following the role drama, personal stories, questions, and moments of learning are shared between students as they slip out of their roles as native children and become again themselves. Loss of identity, stripping away of language, home, and family relationships find resonance in individual experiences and intercultural recognition. Many students speak of suddenly understanding the experience of the First Nations people from a new perspective. Although the individual stories of First Nations children who experienced residential schools are not ours, the shared experience of a residential school within the imaginary world created by our role drama is, and that experience opens us to new possible realms of personal and communal acceptance and interstanding. “We will play a game,” announces the priest, holding a thick braid of rope in his hand. Behind him, stand the guard, and the government official. “This rope represents your future. We will pull from one end, and three representatives chosen among you will pull from the other. This game will decide the fate of your people. Choose three of your strongest.” We look at each other. Who will speak to this dangerous task? You. You. And you. The three brace their feet, faces set in determination, the rope gripped in their hands. We crowd around them. The priest, guard and government official seize the rope, and the tension pulls taut between the two groups. “Now!” But we have not chosen our warriors well, already they are weakening. We lean towards them, willing strength into their muscles. I suddenly remember my tribal ribbon, and pull it crumpled from my pocket. ‘‘Here!” I cry, reaching forward. To my amazement, others have already secured tribal ribbons on the bodies of our warriors. Like tattered flags, attached to arms, legs, backs, shoulders, they signal the defiant presence of our people, our heritage, our culture, as the warriors pull, pull against the weight of the

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Page 30 church, the government, the teachings that are not ours. The moment turns, and triumphant we chant, “Pull! Pull! Pull!” with all the heart and courage of a people sounding voice. The image of the three students in role as First Nations people, their bodies covered with the torn ribbons of masking tape, plays still within the shaft of light in our sunlit classroom. I sense again the shock and delight of discovering that others, too, had secreted their tribal ribbons; that they, too, had defied the order of the guard. I am not alone in my resistance. Now, in this moment, the courage, language, cultural heritage, and experience of our people is voiced by a symbolic honoring and remembering of tribal belonging as we cheer on each warrior pulling the rope. Through the tribal ribbons secreted and then restored, we find our voice, and sounding presence, we realize renewed hope for our people. The moment, a symbolic tug-of-war born within the imaginary world of drama, reaffirms cultural identity and membership, speaking simultaneously of past, present, and future. Slipping between the gap, we realize and recognize the possibility of rebirth of the First Nations people, both within role and without. OPENING SPACES FOR INTERCULTURAL RECOGNITIONS AND NEW POSSIBLE WORLDS OF INTERSTANDING The intercultural learning that happens when we open our curriculum to welcome the individual voices and experiences of our students through embodied play is breathtaking. More than successfully creating an appropriate linguistic situation where language happens within context, performative inquiry opens the possibility for spacemoments of learning, intercultural connections, resonance, and recognitions. Our choices of action in role and our reflections following the residential role drama reveal the intercultural understanding realized and recognized within individual moments. Through embodied play, shared conversation, and journal writing, we came to new intercultural recognitions of the experiences of the First Nations people and our shared history that will influence future individual and communal choices of action and interaction. In the coevolving world that is our classroom, we strive to create opportunities for our language students to invite participation and to open new spaces of dialogue. Performative inquiry creates a context and performative space within which students are invited to imagine possible actions and interactions. What if? In the residential school role drama, students were welcomed with the gift of tribal ribbons, signifying membership and opportunity for participation. They entered into a relationship of language, culture, and experience, a

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Page 31 relationship brutally rendered asunder by government officials removing the community’s children to the residential school. “Speak English! Speak English!” Reclaiming a future within the dominant society required acts of resistance and the strength and pride realized through a symbolic and physical remembering and honoring of a shared heritage. “Pull! Pull! Pull!” Hand over hand hauling in the netted light —Phelan (1993, 177) Performative inquiry is a research methodology that explores possible journey-landscapes, charting space-moments of learning realized through performance (Fels, 1998). The residential role drama created an imaginary world within which moments of interstanding were recognized: the agony of ruptured families, the stripping away of identity, the reclaiming of voice and culture. The role drama required that we—a class of teachers and student teachers from a variety of cultures, languages, and experience—step outside the so-called real world of the classroom to meet each other within the interstices through our shared experience within an imaginary world. The betweeness is a hinge that belongs to neither one nor the other. In the sharing circle, as the talking stick was passed from hand to hand, our individual experiences within role and in our own lives found voice. Exploration of relationships through drama transcends culture, time, and place to arrive on our doorstep. And on opening the door, momentarily, unexpectedly, we recognize the stranger who is us. NOTES 1. Throughout this chapter, all these writings are from within a role drama about residential schools, designed and led by four adult students (Beverley Machelle, Matt Chenoweth, Yasushi Kadota, and Stephen Yachou) in a drama-in-education course, University of British Columbia, July, 1997. The tribal ribbons were lengths of colored masking tape attached to our shirts, above our hearts. The experience, language, and expression of drama are, for many, a lost practice, embodied in forgotten childhoods of imagination and play. The drama-in-education course reawakens students’ ability to reimagine themselves in a variety of roles and situations within different role dramas. A role drama (or role play) is a drama activity where participants explore in role an imaginary world created by the teacher in collaboration with his or her students. An imaginary world, for example, might be a town where citizens respond to the bankruptcy of the local fish processing plant; a medieval kingdom whose peasants are planning a revolution in protest of high taxes; a conference of pigs and wolves discussing the issue of unauthorized home demolitions. Students take on the roles of individuals who live and work within the imaginary world. They speak, respond, and make choices of action from the perspective and position of their role as if they were individuals living within that situation. Tarlington and Verriour (1991) explain that “role drama is a powerful method of teaching that aims at promoting a change of understanding or insight for the participants. It is like walking in

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Page 32 someone’s shoes—exploring the thoughts and feelings of another person by responding and behaving as that person would in a given situation” (p. 9). The role drama described in this chapter involved an imaginary First Nations community and residential school in which students were invited to take on roles of First Nations children, parents, and grandparents. The leaders of the role drama played a variety of roles including a government official, a priest, a guard, and a residential school principal. Students in role create possible new worlds through which perspectives, personal and communal actions, and cultural values may be explored both during the role drama and upon collective and individual reflection at the drama’s completion. 2. For the purpose of this chapter, critical applied linguistics draws from the work of Alistair Pennycook (1999) and Brian Lynch (2000) as cited in McGivern (2001), which establish characteristics for a critical approach to applied linguistics. These characteristics include: an interest in domains such as gender, class, ethnicity, and the ways language and language-related issues are interconnected; the notion that research needs to consider paradigms beyond the dominant, positivist-influenced research approach; a concern for changing the human and social world and not just describing it; and the requirement that critical applied linguistics be self-reflexive. See McGivern (2001). 3. The original quote from theater director, Eugenio Barba, reads ‘‘Not walls of cement . . . but the melodies of your temperature” (Barba, 1995; 162). We have taken the liberty to replay his words; we hope that the spirit and intent of what he wrote breathes within our rewritten lines. 4. The third space, within this context, refers to the generative space created through performance, a space that simultaneously straddles and intersects the shared physical space of the classroom and the imaginary world(s) created through performance. Within this third space are the interactive world(s) of embodied experiences and imaginations of participants in creative action and interaction. Literary theorist Homi Bhabha describes the “third space” as a process of hybridity that “enables other positions to emerge. . . . The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation” (p. 211). For further elaboration of the “third space,” see Rutherford (1990). 5. The term “intertextual” refers to the interchange that occurs between two or more individuals through embodied language. If we consider an individual as a text that engages in conversation and interaction from a perspective that arises from personal, communal, cultural, social, political, economic, ethnic, gendered experience and identity, then there are multiple possible dynamics that may come into play within an interchange between two individuals. This intertextual interchange is situated within the context of an environment that is itself a text influenced by and reflective of historical, economic, political, social, and cultural significance. Therefore, when two foreign- or second-language students enter into conversation, a complexity and multiplicity of possible intertextual recognitions may arise. 6. In this chapter, one author (Lynn Fels) writes as a performing arts educator and uses the first person singular to identify her work. The remaining work is cowritten, using the plural “we,” and is guided by the experience of the second author (Lynne McGivern) whose experience combines theater and English as a second language teaching. 7. “Embodied play” is a term we use for drama in recognition of the active and simultaneous engagement of mind, body, and imagination. Embodied play acknowledges a holistic recognition of an individual’s creative and active exploration within an imagined environment and situation. The term is a gentle reminder to educators that learning through

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Page 33 drama is holistic, interactive, and student-centered, involving critical and creative thinking and participation. For example, when asked to improvise, students speak, respond, and act as if they are present in the proposed situation, taking their cues from context, environment, prior knowledge, and in response to each other. The resulting scene is a product arising from the children’s own creative actions and decision-making rather than the result of a written script or a prescribed set of teacher-imposed directions. The emergent interactions draw simultaneously on the body, mind, and imagination of each student, as they improvise the scene. Embodied play includes dramatic activities such as improvisation, role-play, tableau, soundscapes, and writing-in-role. 8. First Nations people is used in reference to Canadian aboriginals in respect to their political, cultural, and historical presence in Canada. 9. The term “interstanding” is used instead of “understanding” because it speaks to the learning that happens in the interrelational spaces of interaction. Taylor and Saarinen (1994) state that “understanding has become impossible because nothing stands under (p. Interstanding 2). Interstanding has become unavoidable because everything stands between.” We chose the word interstanding because it is through the interplay between the “known world(s)” and the “not-yet known world(s)’’ that performance breathes learning into presence. See Fels (1998). (Pages in Taylor and Saarinen’s book Imagologies are numbered by chapter title and page sequence within that chapter). 10. “Space-moment” speaks simultaneously to a space of embodied time and place. Space-moment acknowledges Heidegger’s proposal that rather than see time and space as being separate entities, time and space are embodied as a single entity that he labels “time-space.” We use the word “moment” rather than “time” to signal the creative action and interaction that occurs during that “time” within which possibilities (and absences) may be realized and recognized. See Fels and Meyer (1997). 11. For the purposes of this chapter, “performance” refers to explorations through drama. However, performance also encompasses the creative processes of dance, writing, music, and visual and media arts. Similarly, a “performative inquiry” may involve the investigative tools of dance, visual and media arts, music, writing in tandem with or separate from those of drama. 12. “Action-site of learning” refers to the performative space within which creative action and interaction create opportunities for learning. Learning is simultaneously realized within a space and action that are not separate from each other but interdependent and interrelational. For example, in our residential role drama, the actionsite of learning identifies the performative space within which participants interact in role as First Nations children and, through their interactions and choices of action, may come to possible moments of learning. See Fels and Stothers (1996) for their conceptualization of performance as an action-site of learning. See also Fels (1998). 13. An etymological reading of the word “performance” brings us to form as structure and ance as action, as in (d)ance. Per prescribes the adjacent form and brings with it the meaning of “utterly, throughout and through” but also “to do away, away entirely or to (the) destruction of.” So we may read performance then as “simultaneously through form and through the destruction of form we come to action.” See Fels & Stothers (1996). Understanding that action is “knowing, doing, being, creating” (Fels, 1995), we recognize the learning that happens through performance. This reading of performance locates performance “on the edge of chaos” where, straddling the world(s) of structure and chaos, complexity theorists claim life dances into being. See also Waldrop (1992).

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Page 34 14. In this situation, we are referring to the creative processes of drama. However, the investigative creative processes within visual and media arts, music, writing, and dance are also action-sites of learning. 15. Within a role drama, students have the unique opportunity to simultaneously view and experience a dramatic moment or situation from two different perspectives, simultaneously experiencing the situation in role and as individuals with unique identities and histories of experience. 16. Not all possible Aha! moments are simultaneously or universally realized and recognized within the immediate performance; however, they may be embodied within the role drama and recognized at the completion of the role drama during the debriefing process as students and teacher reflect on their experience. 17. A “not-yet real world” or “imaginary world” is the performative world(s) created by participants through performance (e.g., a variety of possible dramatic processes, conventions, and activities). Participants are aware of the imaginary world they are creating: a not-yet real world that coemerges within the “real world(s)’’ of everyday life. For the purpose of this chapter, both the not-yet real world(s) and the real world(s) are understood as a multiplicity of dynamic temporal worlds folding one into the other, within which the known and unknown, absence and possibility exist simultaneously. We do not wish to suggest a dichotomy or the existence of two separate worlds. An imaginary or not-yet real world is not a separate entity from the real world(s) but coevolving in creative action and interaction. It is the interstices of these worlds (real and not-yet real) that is the “third space” or performative space in which “Aha!” moments—that is, space-moments of learning—may be individually or collectively recognized. 18. Knowing that we live not in a single, one-dimensional world but within multiple temporal dynamic world(s) of actions and interactions, possibilities, absences, and multidimensional relationships. Our world(s) is(are) not realized in isolation but in action and interaction with multiple worlds coemerging, coevolving through our knowing, doing, being, creating with others (Fels, 1995). 19. Curriculum theorist, Dr. Ted Aoki, in conversation with Lynn Fels during her thesis defense in which he inquires about the “impossible,” that is, that which is not yet possible to imagine into being—that which remains beyond our grasp, like the force that moves the tides, unseen yet present in all our innocence and ignorance of being, becoming (March 29, 1999). 20. Dramatic (re)play speaks both the dramatic playing in role of a situation and the replay experienced through reflection and shared conversation. 21. A student in role may take on a variety of roles throughout a role drama. In the residential school role drama, the Japanese male ESL student played both a government official and the residential school principal. REFERENCES Applebaum, D. (1995). The stop. Albany: State University of New York Press. Barba, E. (1995). The paper canoe: A guide to theatre anthropology . (R. Fowler, trans.). London: Routledge. Davis, B., Kieren, T., & Sumara, D. (1996). Cognition, co-emergence, curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28, (2), 151–169. Fels, L. (1998). In the wind clothes dance on a line. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 14, (1), 27–36.

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Page 35 ——. (1995). Cross-country with Grumet: Erasing the line. Educational Insights . http://www.lane.educ.ubc.ca/insights/home.htm. Fels, L., & Meyer, K. (1997). On the edge of chaos: Co-evolving world(s) of drama and science. Journal of Teacher Education, 9 , (1) 75–81. Fels, L., & Stothers, L. (1996). Academic performance: Between theory and praxis. In J. O’Toole & K. Donelan (Eds.). Drama, culture, and education (pp. 225–261). Australia: IDEAS. Lynch, B. (2000). Rethinking assessment from a critical perspective (Conference Paper). AAAL 2000, Vancouver, B.C. Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1992). Tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding (Rev. ed.). Boston: Shambhala. McGivern, L. (2002). Identity under assault: What do I do with the dirt under my nails? (unpublished paper). University of British Columbia. ——. (2001). Appropriate assessment for young language learners: A case for social responsibility to critical language testing (conference paper). RACE 2001, Tempe, AZ. Norton, B. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning.” TESOL Quarterly 29(1), 9–31. Norton, B., and Toohey, K. (2002). Identity and language learning. In R.B. Kaplan (Ed.), Oxford University handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 115–123). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pennycook, A. (1999). Introduction: Critical approaches to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 33(3), 329–348. Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: The politics of performance. London: Routledge. Rutherford, J. (1990). The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha. In J. Rutherford, (Ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference (pp. 207–221). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Tarlington, C., & Verriour, P. (1991). Role drama . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Taylor, M., & Saarinen, E. (1994). Imagologies. London: Routledge. Toohey, K. (2000). Learning English at school: Identity, social relations and classroom practice. Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Varela, F. (1987). Laying down a path in walking. In W.I. Thompson, (Ed.), GAIA: A way of knowing—political implications of the new biology (pp. 48–64). Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne. Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1993). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Waldrop, M. (1992). Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos . New York: Simon & Schuster. Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. London: Blackwell.

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Page 37 3 Transcultural Performance in Classroom Learning Ann Axtmann Great Spirit. Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. —Native American Indian prayer Entering the Mexico City airport, we are bombarded with busy chatter as several men ask: “podemos llevar las maletas?” “necesitan algo, ustedes?” or “los puedo ayudar?’’ Rapid and chaotic sights, smells, and sounds surround us. It’s the1970s. We have just arrived from New York City in order to take part in the formation of a new dance company at the National Autonomous University of Mexico or U.N.A.M. None of us speaks Spanish. In the next days and weeks, with dictionaries in hand, we grapple with the complexity of learning a language as we ride the bus to work, buy groceries, and, in general, adapt to a new environment. Making friends and speaking only Spanish facilitate the learning process. Every weekend we take off to distant places. Around the country we ride second-class buses that bumble along winding mountain roads packed with men, women, and children carrying bags of frijoles and maíz, flowers, and live chickens. By necessity, we

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Page 38 surrender to the process of sensory experience, socialization, and mobilization; our bodies, minds, and spirits are jolted, activated, and transformed. No American-style hotels for us, no hot water or streamlined air-conditioned vehicles. This shared experience was my first course in personal transculturation. Cross-cultural exchange, whether in our daily lives or in pedagogy, is a sensorial and somatic experience that challenges us in new and exciting ways. In Mexico, my colleagues and I were thrown into a language and cultural learning process that was filtered through the senses. Our trips in the evening to the panadaría to select, buy, and consume delicious pastry were part of the experience. Within a few months, we were all fluent Spanish language speakers. Several years later, as founder/director of a dance department at the State University of Puebla, I further developed my own reading and writing skills. Within the context of intercultural learning situations in which the verbal and the nonverbal mutually inform one another, the body is a primary site where difference and universality can be sorted out. Through experience, we deepen our awareness of self and others. In the classroom, the multiple intelligences, personal and collective narrative, and interdisciplinary art practices support this process. This chapter offers an analysis of how what I call “transcultural performance” stimulates and facilitates the pedagogical moment and, more specifically, second-language classroom learning. Framed by Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (1993, 1999) and an analysis of the terms transculturation, culture, performance, and transcultural performance, I will suggest practical exercises in which identity, time, and space can be explored across cultures. These activities were developed with two radically different student populations in the United States: classroom teachers (K–12) from the Appalachian region of southern Ohio engaged in a Masters Program in the arts and students in a private, urban liberal arts college in New York City. I propose that an understanding of transculturation can contribute to a more effective and transdisciplinary teaching practice. TRANSCULTURATION I first discovered the concept of transculturation during my fieldwork, archival research, and writing on Native American intertribal powwows. As a former dancer/choreographer, I wanted to appreciate what was for me a “foreign” dance language: powwow dancing. “Transculturation” best describes the mobile interrelationships that occur at powwows as well as my own ethnographic process of looking at and moving across cultural borders. At powwows, people from the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere speak English, Spanish, and many indigenous languages; they also represent different socioeconomic classes, genders, ages, ethnicities, and geographical regions. Within an inclusive environment of welcoming hospitality, powwow participants socialize, dance, eat, and celebrate together. North American powwows

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Page 39 are ongoing, increasingly popular, and ever-changing; they are transcultural performances. In general, transcultural performances can be examined as “case studies” that perform culture across diversity and represent cultural difference, conflict, and transformation. Therefore, transcultural performance is a useful tool with which to teach across cultures. In the 1940s, in his book Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz first defined ‘‘transcultural” as an alternative to “acculturation.” In an introduction to Ortiz’s text, Bronislaw Malinowski explains: Every change of culture . . . every transculturation, is a process in which something is always given in return for what one receives, a system of give and take. It is a process in which both parts of the equation are modified, a process from which a new reality emerges, transformed and complex, a reality that is not a mechanical agglomeration of traits, nor even a mosaic, but a new phenomenon, original and independent. (Ortiz, 1995, p. xi) Thus, as people interact in mutual give-and-take through the transcultural performances of Native American intertribal powwows, they produce, together, a “new phenomenon, original and independent” (Ortiz, 1995, p. xi). In learning a second or third language we necessarily go through some kind of transculturation in which both our native language and our new language are transformed. Within the context of that transformation, Gardner’s (1993, 1999) theory on multiple intelligences has influenced me to shape the activities proposed in this chapter. Though most people are familiar with Gardner’s theoretical premise, we have yet to fully utilize his ideas within classroom practice; I venture to say that though the multiple intelligences and interdisciplinary arts are often used on K–12 levels, they are less prevalent in colleges and universities. Moreover, in discussing transdisciplinary education we often speak of crossing over and in-between disciplines; yet, how often do we dare to move our students from their seats in order to integrate the body into the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity? Because second-language learning IS so much about sensory input and the relationship between a particular “foreign” language, the culture(s) from which it emerges, and our own native language/culture, we must activate the body as well as the mind. Many educators, philosophers, psychologists, artists, and cultural theorists have contributed to this debate. In order to more fully involve the body, Gardner’s theory in particular provides a vast array of possibilities. Multiple Intelligence Gardner, a developmental psychologist, offers an alternative to the notion of monolithic intelligence in which cultural context plays a role. Thus, he

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Page 40 states that “an intelligence [is] a biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture” (Gardner, 1999, pp. 34–35). He further asserts: I regard MI theory as a ringing endorsement of three propositions: We are not the same; we do not all have the same kinds of minds (that is, we are not all distinct points on a single bell curve); and education works most effectively if these differences are taken into account rather than denied or ignored. Taking human differences seriously lies at the heart of the MI perspective. At the theoretical level, this means that all individuals cannot be profitably arrayed on a single intellectual dimension. At the practical level, it suggests that any uniform educational approach is likely to serve only a small percentage of children optimally. (Gardner, 1999, p. 91) Moreover, each individual learns differently through linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodilykinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence, or a combination thereof. Recently, Gardner has also introduced the possibility of three new intelligences: a naturalist intelligence, a spiritual intelligence, and an existential intelligence (for further discussion, see Gardner, 1999, pp. 47–66). Though all the intelligences are often separately conceived, if grouped in clusters, we can develop an infinite variety of learning experiences that will enhance our students’ reception and assimilation of didactic material. In secondlanguage learning, pedagogical practices that incorporate multiple intelligences as well as the interdisciplinary arts are both somatic and sensorial. These practices, juxtaposed by a general understanding and clarification of the term culture, facilitate personal and social intercultural learning. CULTURE We have come a long way since 1952 when Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn published their seminal text on the definition of culture, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions . Since then, many uses of the word have emerged. For instance, Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist, Raymond Williams, a sociologist, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, an African playwright, novelist, and cultural theorist from Kenya (who writes in English and his native language of Gikuyu), offer us many constructive ideas. In reference to the vast diverse and multiple layers of cultural production, these three scholars point to a more accessible use of the word “culture” within pedagogical applications. Hall, who worked for many years in the corporate world as a consultant in cross-cultural behavior, is my first example.

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Page 41 Culture–Bodily Motion in Time and Space Ahead of his time, Hall (1973, 1982, 1983, 1989) articulated new ways to look at society through nonverbal communication, and contributed to what Williams would call a “converging’’ of disciplines that include both anthropology and sociology as well as artistic practices, theory, criticism, history, and political science (Williams, 1982). Hall suggests innovative ways to think about culture through bodily movement, time, space, and the senses. His emphasis on the body and bodily movement relates directly to performance and pedagogy. Hall focuses on what people do, not what they say. For him, cultural expressions, in response to what one is surrounded by, are in continual transformation. Hall suggests that culture is “the way of life of a people [or] the sum of their learned behavior patterns, attitudes, and material things” (1973, p. 20). He adds that it is crucial for each one of us to grasp our own individual notion of culture. Nevertheless, Hall (1989) proposes that most anthropologists agree that culture has three general characteristics: It is not innate, but learned; the various facets of culture are interrelated—you touch a culture in one place and everything else is affected; it is shared and in effect defines the boundaries of different groups. . . . Culture is man’s medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture. (p.16). It has been my experience that when students explore this expansive view of culture, they become more aware of the infinite variety of culture within themselves as individuals, in their communities, and throughout the globe. In order to facilitate our examination of WHAT culture IS, I share two exercises that I have incorporated into courses in both Appalachia and New York City: one, a collective free-writing exercise on the blackboard; two, a small group activity. Practice (1): At the blackboard, chalk in hand, I ask students, “What is culture for you?” Thus, we begin to produce together a rather messy, open-ended diagram that might include “categories” such as social structures, religion, fashion, gender, race, class, ethnicity, food, health, ideology, morals, geography, transportation, and so forth. In my several years of doing this, each class names and organizes cultural categories differently; discussions ensue, confusion reigns, and people are usually amazed by how broad culture really is; and, how interrelated. In examining the blackboard diagram, we also discuss commonly used terms such as multicultural, cross-cultural, intercultural, intracultural, and transcultural in order to analyze the many ways in which cultural aspects relate, connect, blend, and transform.

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Page 42 Multicultural refers to a kind of mosaic or salad bowl of cultural aspects that appear as places in space; these rarely touch, intersect, or overlap. In second-language learning, multicultural allows us to observe differences but not necessarily to make the embodied transition from one language to another. Cross-cultural initiates some movement between categories as they cross over, this way and that, to the “other side” or “side(s)”; yet, crossing over does not imply that those elements mix in any way. In contrast, intercultural and intracultural point to relationships, motion, and mediation. Intracultural indicates those cultural elements that are shared between a people—for example, a marriage between two persons from the same cultural background or traditional theater forms such as Japanese Kabuki or Indian Bharata Natyam that reflect a particular group of people, their language, and customs. Intercultural would imply that there are two or more aspects coming together, not necessarily in any particular way, but, nevertheless, connecting. Transcultural takes us one step further as cultural elements mesh in modification into something new. Practice (2): In the second exercise, students cluster in threes or fours. Using large paper, crayons, scissors, and cellophane tape, each group creates a three-dimensional, visual representation of culture. Before working on their “object,” each group converses amongst themselves about “what culture is.’’ As students engage in this transcultural process, the results can be astounding. Materials transform into myriad representations of “culture.” Chains are built; globes constructed with the “categories” etched along the outside; elaborate sculptural forms are produced with paper cut-out shapes; and three-dimensional maps that might include homes, libraries, and gardens are constructed. In both of these exercises, students are challenged to conceptualize, to incorporate their bodies into the learning process, and to work together. In addition, they collaborate intellectually and artistically through a linguistic definition of terms and a joint creative and visual arts project. Collaboration is key to both exercises. Culture—Cultivation and Mediation Defining culture a bit differently than Hall, Williams begins, in his first chapter of The Sociology of Culture , by noting that culture is a cultivation of sorts, a process of what he describes as the “informing spirit” (Williams, 1982, p. 10). In distinguishing between idealist and materialist culture, Williams discusses how these two seemingly disparate elements intersect through “mediation,” a central concept within intercultural learning situations that incorporate the body and transcultural performance. He proposes:

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Page 43 At its most complex, the analysis of social material in art extends into the study of social relations. This is especially so when the idea of ‘reflection’—in which art works directly embody pre-existing social material—is modified or replaced by the idea of “mediation.” (p. 24) Thus, mediation becomes an important component of transcultural experience and learning as we shift between languages and across cultures. Williams takes this a step further when he addresses the issue of ideology or belief systems. He adds: What the cultural sociologist or the cultural historian studies are the social practices and social relations which produce not only ‘a culture’ or ‘an ideology’ but, more significantly, those dynamic actual states and works within which there are not only continuities and persistent determinations but also tensions, conflicts, resolutions and irresolutions, innovations and actual changes. (Williams, 1982, p. 29) In other words, society performs, as culture, the spiritual, ideological, social, and material aspects of individuals, communities, and nations. In linking the ideal and the material, Williams emphasizes a wide-ranging vision of culture that includes the body, mind, and spirit in relation to the social. Culture—Change Through Social Relations Also emphasizing the social, Ngugi proposes that culture is very much “a product of a peoples’ history and embodies a whole set of values by which a people view themselves and their place in time and space” (Ngugi, 1993, p. 42). When contemplating culture, Ngugi further underlines the crucial notion of change when he writes: [I]t is important to see phenomena in nature, society, and even in academia, not in its isolation but in its dynamic connections with other phenomena. It is important to remember that social and intellectual processes, even academic disciplines, act and react on each other not against a spatial and temporal ground of stillness but of constant struggle, of movement, and change which brings about more struggle, more movement, and change, and even in human thought. (pp. 28–29) As someone who experiences on a daily basis the difficulty of living, teaching, and writing across languages, he suggests that ‘‘cultural contact can therefore play a great part in bringing about mutual understanding between peoples of different nations” (p. 42). This visceral “cultural contact” leads us to the myriad ways in which culture is performed through relationships not only in our local community, nation, and global travels but in our classrooms.

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Page 44 I find that as my students are able to share aspects of their own culture(s), they grow and develop skills in crosscultural communication and learning. By performing personal narratives, they draw upon the linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal intelligences. In the last decade I have been including the autobiographical collage in my classes in Transcultural Performance (NYC) and Multicultural Arts (Ohio). Collage making and the subsequent presentation of the collages have been a powerful, poignant, and revelatory experience for all participants, myself included. Practice (3): Collages are usually made with large, white poster boards. To prepare, I ask students to think about themselves as cultural beings: who they are, where they come from, their families and friends, their heritage, and their identities in relation to race, class, ethnicity, gender, and age; they also collect all kinds of objects, photographs, magazine and newspaper cutouts, and the like, and bring them to class. (If time permits, collages are created together in class, but may also be assigned as an outside activity.) As an in-class activity, I suggest that people bring in music that reflects their own culture(s) so that while they work they listen and share yet another aspect of themselves. They are also invited to use crayons, glue sticks, and scissors. In the process, it is important that each person be allowed the time she or he needs to complete the task. Completed collages are placed on the wall and around the room. Each individual shares, others ask questions, and a lively discussion develops. Consequently, the classroom becomes a site of sharing. While students share their cultural memories amongst themselves, they are also, using Williams’s concept of mediation, negotiating their differences. The experience becomes both intrapersonal and interpersonal (Gardner, 1993). In Appalachia, I observed a rich reservoir of distinctive voices come forth. A student who hadn’t “faced up” to her Native American ancestry is encouraged to do so; others look at issues such as farm loss, alcoholism, and everchanging family values. With tears in their eyes, some students feel compelled to share painful memories. Some of my younger students in New York City suddenly discover that, indeed, they do have a rich cultural heritage—even if they are only 18 or 19 years old. Groups in both Appalachia and NYC discover differences and universality between themselves. Moreover, their sense of one another changes through performed, visceral cultural knowledge of self and others. By listening to one another’s stories, students also learn to accept others by shifting their own cultural viewpoints in another aspect of give-and-take. As Ngugi (1993) has suggested, we must mobilize our centers of perception in order to develop multiple perspectives from which to understand the world. He further elaborates on this idea as he explains, “Moving the centre in the two senses—between nations and within nations—will contribute to the freeing of world cultures from the restrictive walls of nationalism, class, race, and gender” (p. xvii).

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Page 45 Besides the creation and sharing of collages, another way to experience multiple perspectives is illustrated by a fourth classroom exercise that mobilizes the body in space—an experience that happens naturally when we travel geographically from place to place. In classroom learning (and life) we often sit in the same seat day after day, the same job, or repeat old habits just because they feel safe and secure. The following sequence pushes students to confront stasis and mobilize both the bodily-kinesthetic and spatial intelligences. Practice (4): Students get up from their chairs and walk around the room; as they examine details such as windows, exit signs, chairs, and so on, I also ask them to notice their own breathing, the motion of their walk, and how it feels TO BE in the space. Then, each person stands still and from that vantage point surveys all that she or he sees in the space. Again, everybody goes to an entirely different spot (this can be on top of a chair, in the corner, under the table); from this new perspective they look again at the size, shape, and contents of the room. This is repeated several times. Throughout I encourage people to enjoy the process and be creative as they choose different vantage points. This is a wonderful way to experience how it feels to look at the world from multiple perspectives. As illustrated in this exercise, and by my own experience in Mexico, when we enter a new cultural world, our senses of both time and space are transformed through the body. Our center(s) of perception alter; “culture shock” often occurs. In other words, the more completely and intensely we experience cultural nuance, the deeper the transition from one world to another. Likewise, when we learn a new language, we must constantly “shift our centers of perception” through notions of time and space. These bodily experiences and expressions produce performance. PERFORMANCE Performance, as historian Joseph Roach (1996) suggests, might refer to the completion of a purpose, the execution of an often effervescent act and ‘‘restored behavior” related to personal and collective memory (p. 3). For instance, everyday activities—such as a busy street at rush hour, a conversation between two people in a café, or children romping around a playground—might be considered performance. The fine and performing arts, public and popular festivals, parades, and rituals as well as media events and television programs are performance. Performance also implies some kind of communication between the reciprocal and ever-changing interrelationships of all participants engaged in dialogic conversation; even if in performing for others, that other is oneself (Carlson, 1996, pp. 5–6). Furthermore, the ephemeral quality of performance itself produces a fleeting temporal quality not unlike the immediate pedagogical moment. In both,

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Page 46 continually changing interactions occur between people as they learn through the verbal, nonverbal, the individual and social, and the body, mind, and spirit. As we engage the body in learning about the multiple and varied aspects of culture—language being just one of these—differing notions of time and space offer many opportunities for understanding culture through performance. Time As Hall (1982, 1983, 1989) proposes, time in the United States and most “Western” cultures is monochronic; that means it is linear, goal oriented—a progressive road that looks ahead to the future and demands schedules, segmentation, and promptness. On the other hand, in polychronic time several things happen at once; what is important is not the goal but the process; an event begins when the moment is ripe, not prescribed. Without leaving the United States, we can experience these differences as our diverse populations mix and mingle; the common expression “CPT time” refers to “Colored People’s Time”—indicating more leisurely temporal practices; and, at Native American intertribal powwow celebrations, the Master of Ceremonies often says, ‘‘Okay, today we’re going to start on time, on white peoples’ time—not Indian time.” Gender, age, class, and individual personality issues are also played out in monochronic and polychronic time. How many times have we waited in the grocery line as an elderly person slowly and carefully pulls out the exact change from her or his purse? The following exercise embodies these time distinctions. Practice (5): I invite students to stand, choose a distant spot in the room, and focus intensely on it. At the clap or drum beat, each person walks quickly, without running, as directly and urgently as possible to the place of choice; I instruct people to move as if it were “a matter of life or death.” The activity is repeated several times. After several rounds, the room fills with a sensation almost of anxiety. To demonstrate the polychronic, once again everybody chooses a spot, a goal; now, they have “all day” to get there; they can chat along the way, dream, plan their dinners. In this fifth exercise, students learn that there are many ways to reach a destination through time and space. Often cultural preferences are defined by how particular peoples mesh time and space—for example, Native American cultures generally think in terms of blending time and space in relation to the land (Deloria, 1994), whereas Euroamericans usually conceive of them as separate entities. Other differences emerge from how people feel about their personal space. Space The notion of personal space has been articulated by numerous scholars: for example, Irmgard Bartenieff (1980), Hall (1982, 1989), and movement

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Page 47 theorist Rudolf Laban (1971). Basically, personal space surrounds each one of us like an enormous balloon; within that space, we have three layers of closeness: near, mid, and far. The close, near-reach area is where we groom as well as touch ourselves and others intimately. In the mid-reach space, we gesture in conversation and perform work activities such as typing and caring for a baby. Finally, stretching our bodies outward as far as possible, we touch the edge of an invisible spatial globe that spirals and circles around us. How we use our personal space and distance ourselves from one another are largely affected by cultural distinctions. Latinos frequently touch one another as they converse, whereas other people may be offended or uncomfortable with physical proximity. In the following sequence, students become familiar with their own preferences. Practice (6): In an open space, I tell students to explore the space closest to their bodies. Simultaneously, they say aloud and do (perform) movements such as combing their hair, applying lipstick, or dressing. As they move outward to the mid-reach, people enlarge their gestures with moves commonly used in conversation, manual tasks like computer work, washing dishes, and so forth. When they reach the outer edge of their personal “balloons,” or farreach, they enact activities that require the body to extend itself out into space as in sports, dance, or actions such as hailing a cab or window washing. In each reach space, I encourage a full consciousness of the body and its surrounding area—for example, the space behind the body and close to the ground. As students move around the room, they meet others—get close or keep their distance. After doing the exercise, questions might be asked: What does personal space mean to you? In general, how close do you want to get to other people? Does gender play a role in all this? Age? Ethnicity? How does the use of personal space manifest in different cultures? My students have varied responses to their own comfort zones; generalizations cannot be drawn; some people feel better when interacting at a distance, whereas others like the security of closeness; many agree that mid-reach is the most commonly used area in social interactions. By embodying notions of time and space, we are performing culture and developing ways in which to contemplate cultural difference. The body comes alive through movement in time and space just as our blackboard diagram and visual representations of culture involved the students in a broad, inclusive mode of thinking. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have suggested six exercises that incorporate transcultural performance: (1) a collective analysis of the term “culture” on the blackboard; (2) the creation/production of visual art renditions of culture;

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Page 48 (3) the creation/production and sharing of personal collages; (4) moving in the classroom space from multiple perspectives; (5) moving urgently or slowly to different spots in the room to experience different senses of time; (6) moving through the three levels of personal space in relation to one’s self and one’s classmates. From one semester to another, students have responded in surprising ways to these activities. Each group of individuals relates differently to the collective definition of culture as well as the creation/production of personal collages. As people activate their bodies in time and space, they stimulate sensory and somatic channels. In addition, because students work as a group, these exercises reinforce a social experience of culture. The depth of personal and collective transculturation depends a great deal on the chemistry of each class. When sharing, listening to one another, and moving together, people dare to explore multiple perspectives and mediate their views of themselves and others. Thus, transformation happens on a transcultural level through performance. With my graduate students in rural Appalachia and undergraduates in urban New York City, I have observed distinct responses from these populations. The graduate students, mostly seasoned classroom teachers, older women who are mothers and grandmothers, bring issues of family into their personal collages. Often, these are people who have never traveled out of southern Ohio or West Virginia. They are intrigued with how their own newly learned insights about different languages, peoples, and cultures can feed into their own class plans; students tell us that a deeper transculturation happens for them as they return to their own schools and apply their knowledge. The undergraduates in NYC are more preoccupied with forming an identity of their own and often come away from class with a greater capacity for understanding the complexity of culture and language. Frequently, the students of color in both Appalachia and New York City take the lead; by contributing views of culture that may be new to their classmates, they open eyes, ears, and hearts. In general, motion, mediation, and multiple perspectives are key to a transcultural pedagogical experience as two or more elements meet, negotiate, and transform into something new. Performing identity, time, and space through multiple intelligences and the interdisciplinary arts can facilitate the learning of a new language. Thus, as we learn words, pronunciation, idiomatic expressions, grammar, spelling, accent, and so forth, the entire cultural context and history of that language also comes alive as we speak, read, write, and relate to others. Likewise, our native language—which influences how we speak, write, act, and understand the newly learned language—shifts and is, perhaps, forever transformed by a circular process of transculturation. Acknowledging that change is paramount in all cultural manifestations, Ngugi brings us back to the corporeal by comparing transformation in human society to the body. He states that “society is like a human body which

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Page 49 develops as a result of the internal working out of all its cells and biological processes—those dying and those being born and their different combinations—and also in the external context of the air and other environmental factors” (Ngugi, 1993, pp. xv). By linking visceral bodily experience, as both sensorial and somatic, we as teachers guide our students in the complexity of transcultural learning. Almost thirty years after my first trip to Mexico, as I return time and again through the Mexico City airport, the Benito Juarez, I am reminded of my first experience: the shock, but also the challenge and excitement of entering a new and unknown world. Shock can disorient. It can also give us that extra push as we delve into another culture and a new language. REFERENCES Bartenieff, Irmgard (with Dori Lewis). (1980). Body movement: Coping with the environment . New York: Gordon & Breach Science Publishers. Carlson, Martin. (1996). Performance: A critical introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Deloria, Vine, Jr. (1994). God is red: A native view of religion . Golden, CO: Fulcrum Pub. Gardner, Howard. (1993). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. (10th anniversary edition). With a new introduction by Howard Gardner. New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1983). Gardner, Howard. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books. Hall, Edward T. (1973). The silent language. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. (Original work published in 1959). Hall, Edward T. (1982). The hidden dimension . New York: Doubleday. (Original work published in 1966). Hall, Edward T. (1983). The dance of life: The other dimension of time. New York: Doubleday. Hall, Edward T. (1989). Beyond culture. New York: Doubleday. (Original work published in 1976). Kroeber, A. L., & Clyde Kluckhohn. (1952). Culture: a critical review of concepts and definitions. New York: Vintage Books Laban, Rudolf. (1971). The mastery of movement. Revised by Lisa Ullmann. Third Edition. Boston: Plays, Inc. (Original work published 1950). Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (1993). Moving the centre: The struggle for cultural freedoms . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Ortiz, Fernando. (1995). Cuban counterpoint: Tobacco and sugar . Introduction by Bronislaw Malinowski. With a new introduction by Fernando Coronil. Durham & London: Duke University Press. (Original work published in 1947). Roach, Joseph. (1996). Cities of the dead. Circum-Atlantic performance. New York: Columbia University Press. Williams, Raymond. (1982). The sociology of culture. New York: Schocken Books. (Original work published in 1981).

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Page 51 4 Process Drama in Second-and Foreign-Language Classrooms Jun Liu In the field of second-/foreign-language teaching, there is a need for us to reflect on what we have accomplished so far in language teaching methods over the last century. Ever since Anthony (1963) proposed to distinguish between approach (something akin to a theory), method (a curriculum, program, or procedure), and technique (any action in the classroom to implement the method), there have been many refinements in terminology and other ways of describing what we do in second-/foreign-language classrooms. A fine-grained, historical analysis has been offered by Strain (1986), in which such terms as Method, method, and methodology are distinguished in subtle ways along with method-procedure, method-technique, design, procedure, presentation, implementation, activity, syllabus, materials, evaluation, tactics, strategies, curriculum, and so forth. All these terms and various arrangements were used in one way or another by Anthony and Norris (1969), Rivers and Temerley (1978), Strevens (1980), Richards (1983), Richards and Rodgers (1986), Strain (1986), Nunan (1991), and Brown (1994).

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Page 52 Despite the general disagreement in terminology for what teachers use to teach a second/foreign language—an approach, method, technique, procedure, or otherwise—there is consensus in identifying the following ways of language teaching, based on a historical perspective: Grammar-Translation (e.g., Darian, 1972; Howatt, 1984), Direct Method (e.g., Hornby, 1950; Jespersen, 1933; Palmer, 1923, 1940), the Audiolingual Method (e.g., Fries, 1945; Lado, 1957, 1977), Total Physical Response (e.g., Asher, 1969, 1977), the Silent Way (Gattegno, 1972, 1976), Community Language Learning (e.g., Curran 1972, 1976; Rardin & Tranel, 1988), Suggestopedia (e.g., Bancroft, 1978; Lozanov, 1978), the Natural Approach (e.g., Krashen, 1981, 1982; Terrell, 1977, 1982), and Communicative Language Teaching (e.g., Brumfit & Johnson, 1979; Canale & Swain, 1980; Widdowson, 1978). Although none of these methods seems to be applicable to all situations given the diverse backgrounds of language learners, different learner needs and various learning contexts, the place effective teaching methods play in language classrooms is undeniable. In fact, language teachers are constantly searching for effective teaching methods to use in their daily classes. In second-/foreign-language classrooms, there are generally two options in teaching. One option is Focus on Forms, and the other is Focus on Meaning. Focus on Forms is considered a traditional approach in which course design starts with the language to be taught. The teacher and the textbook writer divide the second language into segments (e.g., phonemes, words, collocations, morphemes, or patterns), which are presented in models, initially one item at a time, in a sequence determined by frequency, or difficulty. Learners are to synthesize the parts for use in communication. Synthetic techniques often used include explicit grammar rules, repetition of models, memorization of short dialogues, linguistically simplified texts, transformation exercises, or explicit negative feedback. When the primary focus of teaching a language is on forms, lessons tend to be rather dry, consisting principally of work on linguistic items, which students are expected to master, often to native speaker levels, with anything less treated as “error,’’ and little if any communicative second-language use. Unlike Focus on Forms, the starting point of Focus on Meaning is not the language but the learner and learning processes. It is the learner, not the teacher or the textbook writer, who must analyze the second or foreign language. Advocates (Krashen, 1981, 1982) believe that much first- and second-language learning is not intentional but incidental (i.e., while doing something else) and implicit (i.e., without awareness). Therefore, grammar is considered to be learned incidentally and implicitly. Second- or foreign-language learning is thought to be essentially similar to first-language acquisition, so that reestablishing of something similar to the conditions for first-language acquisition, which is widely successful, should be necessary and sufficient for learning a second or foreign language. Lessons with focus on meaning, which are often interesting, relevant, and relatively successful,

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Page 53 are purely communicative, and learners are presented with gestalt, comprehensible samples of communicative second-language use. There are, however, a number of problems with each option. In the first option, Focus on Forms, for instance, there is no needs analysis to identify a particular learner’s or group of learners’ communicative needs, and no means analysis to ascertain their learning styles and preferences. Second, linguistic grading, both lexical and grammatical, tends to result in pedagogic materials of the basal reader variety, textbook dialogues and classroom language use being artificial and stilted. Moreover, Focus on Forms tends to produce boring lessons, with resulting declines in motivation, attention, and student enrollment despite the best efforts even of highly skilled teachers and textbook writers. Although considerable progress in a second or foreign language is clearly achieved in the second option, Focus on Meaning, studies also show that even after many years of classroom immersion, students’ productive skills remain “far from native-like, particularly with respect to grammatical competence” (Swain, 1991), exhibiting, for example, a failure to mark articles for gender. Such items have been in the input all the time, but perhaps not with sufficient salience, and with inadequate sanction (e.g., negative feedback) on their accurate suppliance. Similar findings of premature stabilization have been reported in studies of adult learners with prolonged natural exposure by Pavesi (1986), Schmidt (1983), and others. Therefore, a pure focus on meaning is also insufficient. In order to overcome the pitfalls of both options, a third option, Focus on Form, has been recently advocated (Doughty & Williams, 1998; Long & Robinson, 1998), referring to how attentional resources are allocated. The expression could be interpreted as “focus on meaningful form;” the study of the form is based on meaningful contexts rather than a predetermined and decontextualized linguistic form It involves briefly drawing students’ attention to linguistic elements (words, collocations, grammatical structures, pragmatic patterns, and so forth), in context, as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning, or communication, the temporary shifts in focal attention being triggered by students’ comprehension or production problems (Long & Robinson, 1998). The purpose of Focus on Form is to induce what Schmidt (1983) calls noticing—registering forms in the input so as to store them in memory. In other words, to deal with the limitations of a pure focus on meaning, systematic provision is made in Focus on Form for attention to language as object. Focus on Form is learner-centered, and it respects the learner’s internal syllabus and is under learner control. Although Focus on Form, as a compromising approach between accuracy and fluency in language teaching, is sound in theory, its implementation in second-/foreign-language classrooms is not an easy task. We need effective teaching methods with concrete techniques and strategies that engage language learners in a variety of communicative activities through which learners’ communicative competence is acquired (Savignon, 1983; Ellis,

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Page 54 1985, 1994). Among those environment-enhancing activities, drama has shown itself through many years of research and practice a useful tool in engaging learners in constructing their own language growth, reflecting meaning in the fullest sense of personal and cultural relevance, matching individual levels of ability, and supporting self-initiated activity (Maley & Duff, 1978; Di Pietro 1982; Kao, 1994; Kao & O’Neill, 1998). Though using drama for educational purposes has been widely practiced for years, studies on using drama for second- or foreign-language learners seem to be relatively scarce. From short stories to role-plays, and from simulations to scenarios, the dramatic activities in language classrooms tend to remain “exercise-based, short-term, and teacher-oriented’’ (Kao & O’Neill, 1998, p. 3). Part of the reason is that language learners, especially those at lower proficiency levels, are still at the stage of developing their basic language skills and are thus limited in expressing their ideas and thoughts in the second language. Another reason is that some language teachers, pressured by school-administered proficiency tests and exams, tend to emphasize too much on the accuracy of the students’ output, and jump in too quickly for correction of students’ errors in speaking, thus inhibiting their students from entering into “dramatic worlds” (O’Neill, 1995) free of anxiety. Needless to say, drama worlds uncover a broad spectrum of drama activities useful in classrooms. In fact, dramatic worlds exist anywhere and at any level. Kao and O’Neill (1998) presented available drama activities on a continuum from totally controlled language exercises and scripted role-plays through the semicontrolled activity of the scenario, to the kind of open communication of Process Drama. Although this continuum resembles the first two options in second-/foreign-language teaching discussed earlier with Focus on Forms at one end and Focus on Meaning at the other, Process Drama that starts with communicative activities and ends with reflections on experiences and linguistic expressions serves the purpose of the third option—Focus on Form—attaining to both accuracy and fluency in language learning. In the following sections of this chapter, I am going to explore the meaning of Process Drama, discuss its conceptual framework, synthesize its characteristics, demonstrate its classroom procedures, and speculate on the challenges language teachers often face in using this method. PROCESS DRAMA: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTIONS Process Drama, a term widely used in North America (but originally from Australia) and synonymous to “educational drama” or “drama in education” in Britain, is concerned with the development of a dramatic world created by both the teacher and the students working together. Through the exploration of this dramatic world in which active identification with the exploration of fictional roles and situations by the group is the key characteristic, second- and foreign-

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Page 55 language learners are able to build their language skills and develop their insights and abilities to understand themselves in the target language. Like theater, it is possible for Process Drama at its best to provide a sustained, intensive, and profoundly satisfying encounter with the dramatic medium and for participants to apprehend the world in a different way (O’Neill, 1995). A fundamental theoretical basis of Process Drama is Strategic Interaction (Di Pietro, 1987), which recognizes that language learning is both a personal and a social behavior. Strategic Interaction includes such essential elements as the ability of language to create and engage students in new roles, situations, and worlds; dynamic tension; the motivating and challenging power of the unexpected; the tactical quality of language acquired under the stress of achieving a goal; the linguistic and psychological ambiguity of human interaction; the group nature of enterprise; and the significance of context. Though all these elements in Strategic Interaction become the core characteristics of Process Drama, Process Drama tends to incorporate these aspects in a more complex, immediate, and flexible format. Process Drama puts more emphasis on immediacy, involvement, student autonomy, and teacher functions. Rather than merely a series of brief exercises, explorations and encounters in Process Drama include a variety of strategies and modes of organization (O’Neill & Lambert, 1982; O’Neill, 1995). As Kao and O’Neill (1998) posit, Process Drama involves “careful sequencing and layering of dramatic units or episodes, often in a non-linear way, to cumulatively extend and enrich the fictional context” (p. 13). The intense series of episodes or scenes bring about the tension of drama, the motivation to overcome obstacles, and the fluency and accuracy necessary to accomplish the task with both the support and challenge of the teacher who is also a participant in the dramatic world. According to Kao and O’Neill (1998), Process Drama requires language to be used in meaningful, authentic situations, where the focus is on posing questions and seeking answers to those questions. Teachers and students cocreate the dramatic “elsewhere,” a fictional world, for experiences, insights, interpretations, and understandings to occur. Process Drama in language classrooms usually starts with a pre-text to set a theme or situation that will engage and challenge the participants, and then gradually a series of episodes will be improvised or composed and rehearsed over a time span for elaboration. Everyone in class is involved in such an activity, and there is no external audience. While engaging in a role in the event, the teacher will be able to diagnose the students’ language skills and understanding, support their communicative efforts, model appropriate behaviors and linguistic expressions within the situation, question their thinking, and extend and challenge their responses in the entire process. Recent research asserts that Process Drama has at least three functions in a language classroom—namely, cognitive, social and affective (O’Neill & Lambert 1982; Di Pietro, 1987; Wagner, 1988; O’Neill, 1992, 1994, 1995; Kao, 1994).

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Page 56 Cognitive Function All classroom learning can be located along two independent dimensions: the rote-meaningful dimension and the reception-discovering dimension (Ausubel et al., 1978). Although meaningful/discovery learning is believed to be more effective and active than rote/reception learning, it is not synonymous with the learning of meaningful material. First, the learning material is only potentially meaningful. Second, a meaningful learning set must be present. It is the lack of the latter—meaningful set—that accounts for many a failure in language learning and places the language teacher in a situation to search for a better solution. Process Drama, however, can turn such a situation to an advantage by bringing into the language classroom a dramatic world and building pedagogy around it. In order to enhance communicative competence in language learning, Process Drama allows students to work together in large groups, small groups, and in pairs to discuss and improvise possible scenarios or dramatic situations, and construct and explore images, roles, ideas, and situations while developing their language skills. As such, Process Drama not only strengthens the creativity in the students’ meaningful learning set but also helps enable students to be actively involved in acquiring the language skills in a meaningful context. Language instruction is more desirable if language is regarded as a creative process. The cognitive function of Process Drama hence serves this purpose. Social Function Process Drama seeks to build communicative competence and confidence among participants through working with others. The social function lies in the cooperative, supportive interaction among peers that eventually prepares them for real-life communication (Nunan, 1992). Moreover, Process Drama can also provide the key to unlock the potential for human expression and communication in a broader social context and thus can serve that purpose in the language learning context (Anderson, 1989). The pragmatic use of language learned through Process Drama over a variety of activities, such as scenarios, improvisations, and meaning-negotiation practiced in the classroom prepares students for better communication in real life. Furthermore, through Process Drama, students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds can build social skills and become more sensitive listeners and more apt and mature conversationalists. They also grow in their capacity to send and receive increasingly complex and mature verbal messages effectively, independently, creatively, and symbolically (Wagner, 1990). Affective Function Second- and foreign-language learning is a humanistic understanding (Stevick, 1982). Students who are learning a new language through Process Drama are usually given the opportunity to discuss their options and plan their

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Page 57 strategies in group before they act out. Therefore, students are highly motivated and actively involved in participation through risk-taking and practice. One of the unique characteristics of Process Drama is the tension resulting from requiring that the players determine the outcome. This tension allows the players to concentrate on using the target language as strategically as possible as they decide on a position and then act it out. In an important way, the students are playing themselves in exercising their roles. They are free to make decisions through trial and error, and, in doing so, to find the language needed to express themselves. Through a series of challenging and rewarding activities, Process Drama helps break down inhibition and form a group support network. Students will not feel ridiculous or funny in doing drama, because all of them are active participants, including the teacher. IMPLEMENTING PROCESS DRAMA IN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS Although Process Drama takes a variety of forms and is determined by a large number of factors, such as the learners’ language proficiency levels, the content of teaching, time constraints, and the syllabus, there are a number of techniques/strategies for language teachers that are believed to be essential in characterizing what Process Drama is and how it works. According to the sequence in teaching, these techniques/strategies are: 1. Determine the context in which themes and topics suit the learners’ linguistic abilities as well as sociocultural backgrounds, and create a “pre-text” as a starting point. 2. Identify and utilize a variety of roles for students and the teacher. 3. Build different levels of tension to sustain dramatic activities. 4. Utilize body and language in developing communicative competence through both verbal (e.g., questioning, probing, meaning negotiation) and nonverbal channels (e.g., tableau) to express what is beyond their linguistic repertoire to maximize learners’ linguistic output in authentic and improvised context. 5. Reflect on the experiences and introduce, reinforce, and explain linguistic expressions, usage, and pragmatics necessitated in the given scenarios. Pre-Text in Context Although Process Drama proceeds without a script, and its outcome is unpredictable, it starts with a pre-text in a chosen context. Choosing the right context is therefore the very first step language teachers should take in using Process Drama in their classrooms. The contexts vary from realistic situations (e.g., forest fire, summer camp), to aspirational themes (e.g., NBA players, TV shows such as Survivor and Who Wants to be a Millionaire ), to imaginary scenes (e.g., the return of a lost friend, a trip to Mars). The teacher will

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Page 58 determine the context based on the learners’ linguistic abilities, sociocultural backgrounds and skills, as well as their age levels. As Kao and O’Neill (1998) posit, a context that is obviously far removed from everyday concerns can “offer a light-hearted, playful atmosphere, in which exploration and enjoyment are the primary purposes and the lack of pressure to produce a ‘correct’ speech promotes confidence and fluency” (p. 24). Once the context is decided, the teacher will give the class a “pre-text’’ to unfold the dramatic world. Pre-text, a term coined by O’Neill (1995), refers to the source or impulse for the drama process, and it also carries the meaning of a text that exists before the event. A pre-text gives a linguistically clear and emotionally engaging starting point for students to unfold the dramatic world. For instance, in the context of “the return of a former school principal,” the pre-text, told by the teacher who serves in the role of the current principal of the school, could be like this: “My friends, our former principal, Mr. Smith, who disappeared five years ago, is coming back to our school tomorrow. He has lost his ability to speak, but he will be in charge of our school.” This pre-text will soon arouse a dozen questions about Mr. Smith over the past five years, his ability to run the school, his intention to return to school, and what would happen to the current principal when Mr. Smith takes her place. As seen, the pre-text immediately plunges the students into in imagined world, the details of which will emerge as the participants contribute to the development of the scene. The pre-text will determine the initial moments of action, establishing location, atmosphere, roles, and situations, providing the arc from which the full circle of action can be anticipated. The students’ linguistic output triggered by curiosity and imagination will start from here. As seen, a pre-text can be initiated by “a word, a gesture, a location, a story, an idea, an object, or an image, as well as by a character or a play script” (O’Neill, 1995, p. 19). As an effective starting point, pre-text will launch the dramatic world in such a way that students will initiate and identify their roles and be responsible for what is going to happen in the development of the drama. Unlike a mere stimulus, pre-text has its function to activate the weaving of the text well before it takes its shape. Functioning as the source of the text generated by the process, pre-text defines the nature and limits of the dramatic world, implies roles for the participants, and switches on expectation and binds the group together in anticipation. In fact, an effective pre-text serves as a preliminary frame for Process Drama, and carries “clearly accessible intentions for the roles it suggests—a will to be read, a task to be undertaken, a decision to be made, a puzzle to be solved, a wrong-doer to be discovered, and a haunted house to be explored” (O’Neill, 1995, p. 20). Roles in Role Once the pre-text is given, students will be engaged in different roles from working as a big group, to small groups, and then perhaps to pair work to

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Page 59 explore the dramatic world from different perspectives, and to develop their linguistic potentialities. Such roles are spontaneous (Johnson & O’Neill, 1984) and coconstructed as the result of meaning negotiation and dramatic creativity. Moreno (1959) differentiates role-taking from role-creating. The former means the enactment of a situation predetermined by the teacher, which is common in traditional language classrooms; the latter, which is more creative and spontaneous in nature, encourages students to use their own imagination by utilizing both linguistic and nonlinguistic expressions. Once a pre-text is given, the students in a class usually start questioning, as a whole group, until a broad picture is clear to everyone. Then they will form small groups and try to negotiate their own dramatic approach to unfold the situation from their own perspectives. Finally, small groups can be broken down into pairs to offer minisegments of the large picture. The initial purpose of using role is to invite participants to enter the fictional world. Once this invitation has been accepted, participants can respond actively, begin to ask or answer questions, and oppose or transform what is taking place. Meanwhile, the role presented by the teacher is available to be “read” by the whole class, and like spectators at a play, the participants are entangled in a web of contemplation, speculation, and anticipation. The formation of group cohesion and identity is assured as interest, commitment, and appropriate responses to what is being presented are generated. To illustrate this process, let’s return to the example of “the return of the former principal.” Once the pre-text is given, all the students will be curious about this person and start asking questions, such as “Where did he go for the past five years?” “How come he is unable to speak?” “Why should we let someone who is unable to speak be in charge of our school?’’ In small group activities, some possibilities exist. One group might act out a scene as a news conference in which group members will play the role of news reporters asking questions about the former principal who is assisted by an interpreter. Another group might act out a scene of the former principal’s daily life in the past five years, perhaps in the hospital, or another place. And another group might choose to use a tableau, a series of frozen pictures, to depict how he was before, how he lost his speaking ability, and what made him return to the school. In pair work, students can choose one-on-one conversation between two school kids, a teacher and a student, a seasoned teacher who used to work with the principal and a newly hired teacher who has not met the former principal before, two neighbors in the school district, the current school principal and her superintendent, and so forth, to reflect various sorts of reactions toward the return of the former school principal. It needs to be pointed out that in the entire process of these dramatic activities, the teacher is always in role. Rather than being an external facilitator, or a side coach, the teacher takes on a role and enters the developing action of the drama together with the students. In this way, the traditional teacher-student power relationship is broken, and the students are empowered

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Page 60 to enter the dramatic world to maximize their linguistic output through creative dramatic activities. As Kao and O’Neill (1998) state, when the teacher takes on a role in the interaction, “it is an act of conscious self-presentation, and one that invites the students to respond actively, to join in and to extend, oppose or transform what is happening” (p. 26). When the teacher takes a role, the students are immediately drawn together in listening, thinking, and building the event with speculation and anticipation as they look for clues to the emerging dramatic world in which they participate. To revisit our example of the return of the former principal, the teacher can play the role of a news reporter, the former principal’s relative or close friend, or the superintendent. Thus, the teacher in role will be able to give enough information to answer dozens of questions from the students to get the ball rolling. As a leader or a character in the soon-to-happen event, the teacher in role can initiate a piece of work through a dramatic and economic pre-text, establish atmosphere, model appropriate behaviors, move the action forward, and challenge the participants from within (O’Neill, 1995). Indeed, the teacher in role has a double function. The teacher in role is “to attack and yield, provoke and withdraw” (Brook, 1968, p. 122) from inside. From outside, the leader seems to be in complete control of the action although the developing logic of the piece needs to be obeyed, and arbitrary and individual decisions need to be avoided. The role of the teacher in role is, after all, participant facilitator. Tension in Extension The key element that sustains Process Drama at various stages is tension originated by the pre-text and developed throughout the entire dramatic process. Tension can be interpreted as “mental excitement” and “intellectual and emotional engagement" (Morgan & Saxton, 1987), “conflict” (Spolin, 1963), or ‘‘essential aesthetic element, and essential structural principle in generating dramatic worlds” (Kao & O’Neill, 1998). Tension exists within the situation and between situations across time. It is the result between what is known and what is unknown, between what is anticipated and what actually happens. For example, we know that the former principal is to return, but we do not know what has happened to him over the past five years. We know that he is going to be in charge of the school, but we do not know whether he is capable of doing so as he has lost his ability to speak. We anticipate that the school will continue under the current administrative system, but the return of the former principal might change the course of action. As seen, the very topic chosen for the Process Drama is full of tension. The initial tension is triggered by the teacher’s pre-text creating a knowledge gap for the students, and the initial tension is extended to lead to subsequent tensions as the drama unfolds. Effective questioning from both the teacher in role and the students will lead to the emergence of different levels of tension depending on the

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Page 61 context and the teacher’s purposes. These levels of tension include direct confrontation, dilemma, or time pressure. Students need to work out the solutions through obtaining information, exchanging ideas, argumentation and persuasion, and rapid response as the drama extends through the entire learning process. Body and Language While Process Drama maximizes learners’ linguistic output through tension, it also encourages learners to utilize their nonverbal communication strategies to compensate for their linguistic deficiencies. As language learners are learning the language through dramatic activities, it is assumed that their creative ideas and thoughts are sometimes inhibited by their lack of linguistic expressions, and therefore, utilizing their body language stretches their imagination out of their linguistic boundaries. In traditional language classrooms, learners are often challenged with a lot of questions from the teacher, and their speaking abilities tend to focus on answering questions. As communication is a two-way interaction, students are greatly encouraged to ask questions prompted by the pre-text at the initial stage of Process Drama. Practicing questioning strategies can immediately benefit our students as they will rely on questioning to obtain information in the real world. Skillful questioning within Process Drama can “strengthen students’ commitment to their roles, supply information indirectly, model the appropriate language register, focus their linguistic efforts, remodel inaccurate responses, and deepen students’ thinking about the issues involved in the drama” (Kao & O’Neill, 1998, p. 31). Through questioning, students can negotiate their meaning and make informed decisions as to what they will do as a group in unfolding the dramatic world. On the other hand, students, especially those at beginning or lower-intermediate levels of language proficiency, will need to rely on their body language to express their thoughts and ideas and also to allow other students opportunities for meaning interpretation. One of the most common forms of body language in Process Drama is called “tableau,” or “frozen picture,” or “freeze frame” created by students to show a series of segmentations each of which has a sufficient demonstrative power. Tableau is a very useful dramatic tool that enables students to strengthen the reflective elements of their work in Process Drama. According to O’Neill (1995), the function of a tableau is ‘‘to arrest attention, to detain the viewers, to impede their perception” (p. 127). It increases the creativity of the mind and allows the participants in class to perceive, analyze, and interpret its meaning in the sequential artistic framework. The stillness of tableaux “suspends time, causing the eye to focus on an image and slows down the process of input” (Marranca, 1977, p. xii). For instance, in the return of the former principal, students in a group can perform a scene of an accident suggesting the cause of the speech loss of the former principal, and a scene of a doctor at a hospital

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Page 62 showing an X-ray screen to his family members, and a scene of his desire to return to his old school, and so forth. Tableau is a great body language for open interpretation and meaning negotiation. The group members can also explain what is intended as compared with what is interpreted by other group members to allow modification to occur. As a frozen image will compel the observers to come up with informed guesses and multiple possible meaning interpretations, it encourages students’ linguistic output to be free from anxiety, and thus allows the teacher to identify the forms the students have already mastered as well as those they still need to learn in order to convey their thoughts and ideas appropriately and idiomatically, and to introduce and reinforce these forms based on the needs of communication. Reflective Learning Reflecting on what has happened at different phases of Process Drama in the language classroom is an effective way of understanding students’ learning and diagnosing what forms students need to enhance their communication. As reflection usually takes place immediately after dramatic events, it facilitates meaning negotiation, and form-function alignment. Reflection can also be used to review progress, understand the thought processes, prepare for the next stages of drama, and resolve problems. All the students and the teacher in the class are drawn together reflecting on the event they built together and looking for clues about the imagined world that is unfolding before them, as well as finding their place within it. They will discover from within the action and the nature of the roles with which they have been endowed or have adopted, and the relationships of the roles, and communicative competence they have acquired through their active participation. In second- or foreign-language classrooms, Process Drama takes two kinds of reflection. One is experience reflection, and the other is linguistic reflection. However, these two kinds of reflection are not separate and distinct from one another. They are interrelated and influence each other. In experience reflection, the central purpose is to give learners the opportunity to focus on themselves and their reactions and feelings in different phases of learning through Process Drama. In linguistic reflection, the focus is on whether the learner uses appropriate linguistic means to perform the social functions necessitated in the Process Drama. It is through reflection that much can be learned about learning. For many language learners, the only source of feedback on their learning is their teacher. Even though the teacher’s feedback is a useful source of information about students’ learning, learners themselves are in the best position to examine their own learning through self-reflecting, peer-commenting, and discovering what happens in learning that might be unknown to the learner in the process. Although gaining experiences of learning through Process Drama is important, deeper learning occurs only when such experiences are critically examined and reflected.

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Page 63 Students’ reflections can also trigger a deeper understanding of teaching. Such reflections involve examining teaching experiences as a basis for evaluation and decision-making and as a source for change (Bartlett, 1990; Wallace, 1991). Through reflections, teachers can understand why and how things are the way they are, what value systems they represent, what alternatives might be available, and what the limitations are of doing things one way as opposed to another. Reflection enables the teacher to be more confident in leading students to try different things in the Process Drama and assess their effects on learning, taking into consideration students’ linguistic abilities and developmental stages (Pienemann, 1984). CHALLENGES FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS It has been claimed that the use of Process Drama offers new dimensions of learning for students in second- or foreign-language classrooms. However, there are many challenges that both teachers and students may face when these active, collaborative, and essentially dialogic approaches are introduced in a previously traditional language classroom. Language learners, on the other hand, who have been accustomed to traditional teaching methods sometimes find it hard to accept this innovative way of learning. In her teacher-as-researcher study of using educational drama in an English class to thirty-three Taiwanese college students, Kao (1994) reported that her students demonstrated high interest in contributing to conversation in terms of speech turn-taking, topic-initiation and sequencing, effective activation of the previous acquired knowledge, significant progress in communication, and positive perceptions about language proficiency. However, Kao also pointed out some negative attitudes and peer pressure among some students in using drama in class. As a language teacher, she encountered constant challenges in the negotiation of classroom organization, teacher-student and student-student relationships, and varying and integrating teaching-learning resources (Kao, personal communication). To Kao, drama means much more than entertaining her students. It requires thorough preparation before, careful observation during, and constant evaluation after the practice. Organizing a language classroom while keeping in mind how students learn effectively, what problems they need and want to solve, and what learning skills produce optimum learning places the management of the classroom into a collaborative arena. Few would disagree that the use of Process Drama has established itself as a means of providing such a collaborative language-learning environment in which resources, activities, and behaviors directly influence the learning outcome. Designing and organizing such a collaborative language-learning environment itself is a big challenge for the language teacher. The teacher has to not only manage the physical settings of the classroom in terms of the furniture placement but also control the pace and

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Page 64 mood of the class in terms of what, when, and how to present the pre-text and guide the students through various phases of dramatic activities to enhance effective learning. In addition, language teachers often face some other challenges as follows: Do We Have Sufficient Time to Use Process Drama in Language Classrooms? Limited amount of instructional time is always a big concern for teachers in using Process Drama in second-/foreignlanguage classrooms. In many countries, such as China, Taiwan, and Japan, where the centralized educational system, the college entrance exams, and the textbook-oriented teaching prevails, the use of creative methods and innovative techniques such as Process Drama have to take into consideration time-effectiveness. Whereas using Process Drama could be time-consuming both in teacher preparation and classroom organization, in spite of its effectiveness, many teachers prefer to stay within their safe zone by carefully planning in their language syllabi the instructional time for the introduction, reinforcement, as well as review of linguistic items. It needs to be pointed out that Process Drama as an effective teaching tool is not to replace what has already been useful in language classrooms. As an additive tool for teaching communicative skills, it can work equally well if only part of the phases are used together with other commonly used teaching procedures. Besides, under time constraints, some of the phases in Process Drama—such as pre-text, tableau, or reflection—can be short, in process, and be used alternatively. Is Enjoyable Environment Synonymous to Effective Learning? Educational drama as a version of communicative language teaching creates an environment for the students to use the target language communicatively and enjoyably. In a survey of student attitudes toward communicative and noncommunicative activities, Green and Harker (1988) raised a basic question: “Do enjoyment and effectiveness go together?” While activities like using Process Drama in the language classroom are certainly an enjoyable experience for students, the survey results did not indicate whether or to what extent students believe that enjoyment contributes to effectiveness, or the extent to which perceived effectiveness helps make activities enjoyable (Green & Harker, 1988). As Kao’s study (1994) indicates, although drama activities can create a nonthreatening and comfortable environment for language learning to take place, both language teachers and researchers should not overlook some possible negative effects of a “light classroom atmosphere.” Students who have extremely weak confidence in themselves as language learners may feel even more frustrated when other students are

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Page 65 actively involved in participation (Liu, 2000). Also, some students who show no concern about the course may take advantage of the flexible and light atmosphere created by Process Drama. This is also a challenge language teachers will face in creating a lively classroom atmosphere. Do Language Teachers Need Special Training in Process Drama? Furthermore, many teachers believe in the effectiveness of using drama in language classrooms, but they have not received special training and they do not know how to use it appropriately and skillfully. According to Heathcote (1978), the skills of teaching lie in making time slow enough for inquiry, interesting enough to loiter along the way, and rigorous enough to bring new thought processes into understanding. Hence the techniques of the proper use of Process Drama activities are very important. For instance, without proper management of intonation, the pitch of the sound, proper body language, and the necessary emotion, the pre-text, no matter how intriguing it is, cannot achieve its most expected result, and therefore the power of Process Drama will be seriously diminished. This cautions many an ambitious teacher ready to employ Process Drama in their language classrooms that a thorough understanding of the theory and a reasonable amount of practice is always a welcome preparation to ensure when, where, and how to maximize the potentials of Process Drama in language classrooms. Process Drama seems to be able to shorten the distance between the teacher and students in talking but is not powerful enough to completely break the conversational rules in the traditional classroom (Kao, 1994). This is a big challenge language teachers should work at with effort. In traditional language classrooms as in China, Japan, and Korea, the big size of the class as well as the emphasis on grammatical forms in a lecture type of class place the teacher in a high status with dominating power. Even though using Process Drama techniques in language teaching can help break this power relationship, the traditional stereotype of the teacher as an authority in the eyes of the learner is deeply rooted and has always been an obstacle in maximizing the effectiveness of using Process Drama in language classrooms (Liu, 2000). As Kao (1994) stated in her data analysis, although she tried very hard to create a more authentic and natural setting for making a conversation, the social rules of making classroom discourse still dominated the procedures of the students’ oral interaction most of the time. Therefore, language teachers, in order to make the best use of Process Drama, should try hard to transact status in dealing with the relationship between dominance and submission, superiority and inferiority, and being active and passive (Johnstone, 1981). The teacher should set things in motion by ensuring that the students understand what they are supposed to do and then step back as far as possible from what is happening, controlling but not directing (Maley & Duff, 1978). It is

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Page 66 tempting, however, for the teacher to intervene when there is something “wrong” or there is silence awaiting to be broken up, but the teacher should learn to withdraw while making it clear that s/he is there only when s/he is needed (Maley & Duff, 1978). Interestingly, Kao (1994) found in her study that there is a subtle relationship between the level of the teacher’s control of the activity and the students’ involvement. It seemed that the students could play a more active role in participation when the teacher had less control of the topics and procedures. But the activity might lose its original purposes and become disorganized when it is out of control. How to encourage the active participation on the part of the students in dramatic activities without losing control is therefore a great challenge to the teacher. How to handle ‘‘unknown elements” and find the balance between the teacher’s and the students’ roles in drama are crucial to the students’ interest and level of participation (Kao, 1994). How to Select Resources That Are Conducive to Process Drama Activities? Dramatic worlds that arise in the classroom are not necessarily defined in advance, and they will not always develop in terms of a linear narrative (O’Neill, 1992). Language teachers often encounter difficulties in selecting resources: the kinds of scenes or episodes during the process to produce the most satisfactory development of the dramatic world, which will lead to some kind of completion and fulfillment. The important point here is, as O’Neill (1992) posits, that the selection itself is not a question of deciding in advance on a sequence of episodes, so that there is in effect a fixed scenario within which students improvise. The challenge for the teacher is how to remain genuinely improvisatory to allow for spontaneity, uncertainty, ingenuity, exploration, and discovery to occur. When the teacher chooses a “pre-text” as a starting point, she needs to plan carefully the encounters or episodes that will launch the dramatic world. But such a dramatic world will be explored and discovered improvisationally along the process instead of being predetermined. This is a real challenge for the teacher and an inspiring experience for the language learner. To remain genuinely improvisatory, however, does not assume that the language teacher has no clear idea of what to teach and how to teach effectively each time before she enters into the classroom. How to select appropriate topics and design various dramatic activities compromising linguistic and communicative needs to cater to the majority of linguistically and culturally diverse students is always a concern for language teachers. The dilemma for language teachers in using Process Drama is how to strike a balance between the notion that controlling linguistic elements will hinder students’ expression on the one hand, and the notion that liberating students’ responses will result in the difficulty to organize a clear and orderly structured

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Page 67 teaching on the other hand. That is to say, teachers in using Process Drama should be able to strike a balance between meaning and form and between fluency and accuracy to assure students of the effectiveness of learning. In a two-year research project in French Immersion Programs, O’Neill (1994) found that teachers in immersion classroom face a special difficulty. Where the teacher is the only proficient target language speaker within the child’s world of school, home, and community, the teacher’s input should be responsible for the child’s development of language learned, for the environment created to reflect the French-speaking world in which the cultural values are reflected. Likewise, using Process Drama is also challenging for language learners. In language classrooms, students have to utilize what they have learned, such as vocabulary, grammar, or nonverbal cues, to describe or act with the events they have seen or heard. Needless to say, concentration and enthusiasm are indispensable in participation in these activities. In sum, Process Drama, as a useful activity, will become a welcome method in balancing learners’ accuracy and fluency in second-/foreign-language classrooms. Its major power lies in its concordance with communicative competence as a purpose, and interaction as a focus in language learning and teaching. Though some difficulty still remains in regard to its integration into the curriculum to meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students, the advantages of using Process Drama in combining the important elements of linguistic accuracy, cultural appropriateness, emotional involvement, active, physical participation, and the language class as a community are obvious as discussed in this chapter. What needs to be done is the joint effort of both researchers and classroom teachers in designing and implementing more classroom research to substantiate the role and function of Process Drama in different language classrooms at different levels in different teaching and learning contexts. REFERENCES Anderson, M.L. (1989). Theater techniques for language learning: Assumptions and suggested progression activities. (ERIC Document reproduction Service No. ED 321 572). Anthony, E.M. (1963). Approach, method, and technique. English Language Teaching, 17, 63–67. Anthony, E.M., & Norris, W.E. (1969). Methods in language teaching . ERIC focus report on teaching of foreign languages No. 8. New York: Modern Language Association of America. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 031 984). Asher, J. (1969). The total physical response approach to second language learning. Modern Language Journal, 53(1), 3–17. Asher, J. (1977). Learning another language through actions: The complete teacher’s guide book. Los Gatos, CA: Sky Oaks Productions. (2nd ed. 1982). Ausubel, D.P., et al. (1978). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

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Page 68 Bancroft, W.J. (1978). The Lozanov method and its American adaptations. Modern Language Journal, 62(4), 167– 175. Bartlett, L. (1990). Teacher development through reflective teaching. In J.C. Richards and D. Nunan (Eds.), Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 202–214). New York: Cambridge University Press. Brook, P. (1968). The empty space. London: Penguin Books. Brown, H.D. (1994). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Brumfit, C.J., & Johnson, K. (Eds.). (1979). The communicative approach to language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canale, testing. Curran, Curran,

M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and Applied Linguistics, 1 (1), 1–47. C.A. (1972). Counseling-Learning: A whole-person model for education. New York: Grune and Stratton. C.A. (1976). Counseling-Learning in second languages. Apple River, IL: Apple River Press.

Darian, S. (1972). English as a foreign language: History, development, and methods of teaching . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Di Pietro, R.J. (1982). The open-ended scenario: A new approach to conversation. TESOL Quarterly, 16(1), 15–20. Di Pietro, R.J. (1987). Strategic interaction: Learning languages through scenarios. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Doughty, C., & Williams, J. (1998). Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fries, C.C. (1945). Teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gattegno, C. (1972). Teaching foreign languages in schools: The silent way. 2nd ed. New York: Educational Solutions. Gattegno, C. (1976). The common sense of teaching foreign languages. New York: Educational Solutions. Green, J.L., & Harker, J. O. (1988). Multiple perspective analysis of classroom discourse . Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Heathcote, D. (1978). Of these seeds becoming. In R.B. Schumann (Ed.), Educational Drama for Today’s Schools. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Hornby, A.S.E. (1950). The situational approach in language teaching. A series of three articles in English Language Teaching, 4 (5), 98–104, 121–128, 150–156. Howatt, A.P.R. (1984). A history of English language teaching . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jespersen, O.E. (1933). Essentials of English grammar . London: Allen and Uniwin. Johnson, L., & O’Neill, C. (Eds.). (1984). Dorothy Heathcote: Collected writings on education and drama . London: Hutchinson. Johnstone, K. (1981). Impro: Improvisation and the theater . New York: Theater Arts . Kao, S.M. (1994). Classroom interaction in a drama-oriented English conversation class of first-year college students in Taiwan: A teacher-researcher study . Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus. Paper granted by National Science Council. Kao, S.M., & O’Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama . Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

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Page 69 Krashen, S.D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning . Oxford: Pergamon. Krashen, S.D. (1982). Principles and practices in second language acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon. Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lado, R. (1977). Lado English series (7 books). New York: Regents. Liu, J. (2000). Understanding Asain students’ oral classroom participation modes in American universities. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 10(1), p. 155–189. Long, M., & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research, and practice. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 15–63). New York: Cambridge University Press. Lozanov, G. (1978). Suggestology and outlines of suggestopedy. New York: Gordon and Breach. Maley, A., & Duff, A. (1978). Drama techniques in language learning . New York: Cambridge University Press. Marranca, B. (1977). The theatre of images. New York: Drama Book Specialists. Moreno, J.L. (1959). Psychodrama: Volume II: Foundations of psychotherapy. Beacon, NJ: Beacon House. Morgan, N., & Saxton, J. (Eds.). (1987). Teaching drama: A mind of many wonders. London: Hutchinson. Nunan, D. (1991). Language teaching methodology: A textbook for teachers . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Nunan, D. (Ed.). (1992). Collaborative language learning and teaching . New York: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, C. (1992). Building dramatic worlds in process. Reflections: A booklet on shared ideas on Process Drama. Columbus: Ohio Drama Education Exchange. O’Neill, C. (1994). From words to worlds: Language learning through Process Drama. GURT ‘93: Proceedings of the Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics. O’Neill C. (1995). Drama worlds: A framework for Process Drama. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. O’Neill, C., & Lambert, A. (Eds.). (1982). Drama structures . London: Hutchinson. Palmer, H.E. (1923). The Oral Method of teaching languages. Cambridge, U.K.: Heffer. Palmer, H.E. (1940). The teaching of oral English. London: Longman. Pavesi, M. (1986). Markedness, discoursal modes, and relative clause formation in a formal and an informal context. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8 (1), 38–55. Pienemann, M. (1984). Psychological constraints on the teachability of language. Studies of Second Language Acquisition, 6 (2), 186–214. Rardin, J.P., & Tranel, D.D. (1988). Education in new dimension: The Counseling-Learning Approach to Community Language Learning. East Dubuque, IL: Counseling-Learning Publications. Richards, J.C. (1983). Listening comprehension: Approach, design, procedure. TESOL Quarterly, 17(2), 219–240. Richards, J.C., & Rodgers, T. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching . New York: Cambridge University Press. Rivers, W.M., & Temerley, M.S. (1978). A practical guide to the teaching of English as a second or foreign language. New York: Oxford University Press. Savignon, S. (1983). Communicative competence in foreign language teaching. Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Development.

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Page 70 Schmidt, R. (1983). Interaction, acculturation, and the acquisition of communicative competence: A case study of an adult. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 137–174). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Spolin, V. (1963). Improvisation for the theater. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Stevick, E.W. (1982). Humanism in humanistic approaches: An empirical view. (ELT Document 113). British Council. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 258 464). Strain, J. (1986). Method: Design-procedure versus method-technique. System, 14(3), 287–294. Strevens, P. (1980). Teaching English as an international language. Oxford: Pergamon. Swain, M. (1991). French immersion and its offshoots: Getting two for one. In D. Freed (Ed.), Foreign language acquisition: Research and the classroom (pp. 91–103). Lexington, MA: Heath. Terrel, T.D. (1977). A natural approach to second language acquisition and learning. Modern Language Journal, 61(7), 325–336. Terrel, T.D. (1982). The Natural Approach to language teaching: An update. Modern Language Journal, 66(2), 121– 132. Wagner, B.J. (1988). Research currents: Does classroom drama affect the arts of language? Language Arts, 65(1): 46–55. Wagner, B.J. (1990). Dramatic improvisation in the classroom. In S. Hynds & D.L. Rubin (Eds.), Perspectives on Talk and Learning . Urbana, IL: NCTE. Wallace, M.J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers: A reflective approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H.G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. English Language Teaching, 27(1), 15–18.

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Page 71 II Approaches, Methods, Techniques

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Page 73 5 Teaching Foreign Language Literature: Tapping the Students’ Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence Manfred Lukas Schewe Thinking is not merely taking place in the head. . . , it is a bodily experience. —Robert Wilson Over the last decade, the focus of my activities as a language teacher, teacher trainer, and researcher/reflective practitioner has been on the theory and practice of drama as a holistic concept of learning and teaching a foreign and second language, especially German as a foreign language. In various publications (Schewe & Shaw, 1993; Schewe, 1993; 1998a; 1998b; 1998c; 2000), I have outlined how language pedagogy can benefit considerably from practice in drama in education, theater in education, and professional theater. Language teachers can widen their didactic-methodological repertoire by observing and learning from those who create interactive scenarios and stage communication in the process of making theater, that is primarily authors, directors, and actors. Their work is immediately related to our concerns as language teachers, because the ability to interact and to communicate in efficient ways is, after all, at the heart of language teaching/learning.

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Page 74 In Schewe (1993) and Schewe and Shaw (1993), drawing primarily on research in drama-in-education and language pedagogy with its related disciplines, a case was made for a drama-based approach to foreign- and second-language teaching/learning and a theoretical framework proposed; within this framework a broad range of perspectives were considered—for example, neuropsychological, sociopsychological, psycholinguistic, psycho-physiological—which would lend support to the drama concept of foreign-and second-language teaching/learning. I think it is safe to say that, at the beginning of the new millennium, the contribution that drama can make toward furthering the subject debate in language pedagogy has been recognized worldwide by researchers as well as practitioners. Testifying to this are more recent publications such as those by Kao and O’Neill (1998), Bolton and Heathcote (1998), Wagner (1998), Tselikas (1999), Schlemminger, Brysch, and Schewe (2000), or this present volume. Also, in recent years drama was and continues to be a topic of interest for many conference organizers in the area of modern languages.1 MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES For this publication I was asked to offer some reflections on the role of the body in language and intercultural learning. I want to use Howard Gardner’s (1993) theory of multiple intelligences as a backdrop to my argumentation. There are two reasons for this: (1) It gives further substance to the theoretical framework that I developed and proposed in previous publications; and (2) its implications for curriculum and assessment in Ireland have, between 1995 and 1999, been the focus of educational research at University College where I work; the research findings have recently been documented in Hyland (2000). In this research report (p. 7, my emphases) reference is made to Gardner’s eight intelligences as follows: • Linguistic Intelligence allows individuals to communicate and make sense of the world through language (poets, journalists, writers, orators). • Logical-mathematical Intelligence enables individuals to use and appreciate abstract relations (scientists, mathematicians, philosophers). • Musical Intelligence allows people to create, communicate, and understand meanings made out of sound (singers, musicians, composers). • Spatial Intelligence makes it possible for people to perceive visual or spatial information, to transform this information, and to re-create visual images from memory (architects, engineers, sculptors). • Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence allows individuals to use all or part of the body to create products or solve problems (craftspeople, dancers, surgeons, athletes, choreographers). • Interpersonal Intelligence enables individuals to recognize and make distinctions about others’ feelings and intentions (parents, politicians, psychologists, salespeople).

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Page 75 • Intrapersonal Intelligence helps individuals to distinguish among their own feelings, to build accurate mental models of themselves, and to draw on these models to make decisions about their lives (difficult to observe in specific occupations, but relevant to most). • Naturalist Intelligence allows people to distinguish among, classify, be sensitive to, and use features of the environment (farmers, botanists, geologists, archaeologists). The eight areas represent the range of intelligent human functioning. While each area is identified as a discrete intelligence, each also interacts with others in complex ways to produce the richness of human behaviour and achievement. Ordinary human functioning requires such interaction. Many people will exhibit a highly-developed intelligence, not perhaps in their occupation, but in pastimes, interests, hobbies, in personal projects, or in social and personal relationships. The general research findings seem to suggest that if effective learning is to take place in a (language) classroom, a teacher should ideally create learning opportunities that take into account as many of these intelligences as possible. There seems to be ample evidence for the fact that greater learner participation and student interaction can result, responsibility on the parts of the students is likely to increase, more interest in the subject is created, and improved learning outcomes can be achieved. This would suggest that language teachers who would naturally emphasize linguistic intelligence in their work consider also other intelligences—for example the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence— and become more aware of the language opportunities that can be created, as it were, by bringing the body into play. One glance at the intelligences list will suffice in order to realize that a drama-based concept of teaching and learning deserves to be called holistic. Certainly six of the intelligences are heavily drawn upon in day-to-day drama work, and even the remaining two—logical-mathematical and naturalist—could be addressed in specifically designed drama projects. The discussion on multiple intelligences rekindles the subject debate in language pedagogy revolving around the notion of different learner types. However, even if research in German as a foreign language (e.g., Aguado, 2001) and applied linguistics (e.g., Ellis, 1994, 471–527) has kept on highlighting the fact that learners learn in different ways, these differences have as yet not been too clearly defined and there are relatively few examples regarding the practical implementation of tasks that would accommodate different learner types. The more recent interest in taskbased language pedagogy (Ellis, 2000) might help to spark off more interest in pursuing further research on how tasks ought best be designed in order to facilitate learning for different learner types; meanwhile, however, language pedagogy could yet benefit more from ideas put forward by proponents from general education. In this context, I want to revert back to the (UCC) research report

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Page 76 mentioned previously (Hyland, 2000), which, among other things, evaluates ‘‘action research projects” carried out by teachers and student teachers. In one section of the report (p. 125), a student teacher who used drama in the teaching of Irish and also other subjects is quoted and has this to say: Drama in Education has worked really well for me in CSPE, Geography and even Irish . . . . Since beginning this project the classroom had become a very interesting, creative place for both the pupils and myself, a place where learning takes place for everyone. Use of the Multiple Intelligences in class is slowly but surely becoming second nature to me and the more creative I am, the more involved and enthusiastic the students are. In fact our class has become noted in the staffroom and by other students for its creativity and displays—a concept quite exciting for many in the group since they are classed as a lower stream. For me as a teacher, Drama in Education and Multiple Intelligences theory have worked wonders. Based on the notion that drama is an effective tool in the teaching and learning of foreign and second languages because of its capacity to gainfully utilize multiple intelligences, in the following I offer some thoughts on how especially bodily-kinesthetic intelligence can be tapped in a drama-based language classroom. We do not necessarily need words in order to communicate, but can express joy, sadness, love, hate—indeed the whole range of human experience—with our bodies. This shows especially in the art forms of dance and theater for which the body and its capacity to create meaning through movement and/or stillness are of central importance. That the signaling possibilities of our bodies are endless is, for example, demonstrated in performances of contemporary Austrian playwright Peter Handke’s “Die Stunde, in der wir nichts voneinander wussten,” directed in the 1990‘s by Luc Bondy at the Schaubühne, Berlin. Although words are not spoken during this more than two-hourlong performance, the audiences seem to enjoy what is unfolding before their eyes and to be fascinated by what the actors say through (the interplay of) movement and stillness. Note in this context also the fairly recent production of “Körper” (bodies) choreographed by Sasha Waltz at the Schaubühne, Berlin, or indeed many of the plays that American director Robert Wilson staged successfully in renowned European theaters and elsewhere over the last two decades. The philosophy underlying his directing style is encapsulated in the words that introduce this chapter and were translated from Keller (1997, 106). Drama in the (language) classroom naturally cannot compete artistically with the work of professional theater companies; but even if we have to concede that teachers and learners are more limited in their expressive repertoire and simply have not got the skills a professional actor or director

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Page 77 has, they can still gainfully experiment with methods that are used in the professional theater. One of these styles is pantomime, a form of dramatic art that immediately calls to mind names like Samy Molcho, Marcel Marceau, and the like. Although for the teacher it might be helpful to know a little about these icons and/or to have participated in a pantomime training workshop, it is generally speaking not necessary to have developed pantomime into a high art before one applies it in a classroom setting. In fact, any teacher and any learner is in a position to express with his/her body, for example, what a specific object looks like (a guitar, a gun, etc.), that a person is sad, a couple are quarrelling about something, and so on. Pantomime work in the classroom sensitizes learners to nonverbal aspects of communication. They train the ability to recognize nonverbal signs, including culturally embedded gestures, and learn to communicate despite lacking certain language skills. Pantomime work offers the opportunity to physically connect academic endeavor with a student‘s individual experience. What is shown in a pantomime can become a starting and reference point for further classroom activities that involve speaking, listening, writing, and reading. The teacher (of German) can find a useful introduction to pantomime-related basic terminology, principles, and exercises in an article by Kaftan, published in a theater pedagogical volume edited by Vaßen/Koch/Neumann (1998) that contains several contributions focusing on the interrelationship of body and theater, including a foreign language–related article by Bräuer. UNIVERSAL AND CULTURALLY SPECIFIC BODY LANGUAGE Even if the idea of doing pantomime work in the classroom initially might seem to be daunting and even paradoxical, there are good reasons for using this resource, as I demonstrate further. That it is by no means a novel idea can be shown by a few lines from the introduction of a small booklet Instant Greek. A teacher of German who had participated in my drama workshop at the Goethe Institute in Athens some years ago had seen it in a bookshop and gave it to me, because she was intrigued by the direct connection to some of the pantomime-based exercises we had experienced in the workshop: Greek is a difficult, complicated language. It can take from a year to ten years to learn and most tourists do not generally have that sort of time. There is firstly the problem of a different alphabet, then an intricate grammar, difficult pronunciation, dialects . . . the list is endless. True, it is always possible to find in the big centres a Greek who can speak English, French or German but for those who venture into the villages, the small tavernas, the problem remains . . . how to communicate?

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Page 78 Now for the first time you can learn to communicate in a way that is probably older than language itself. With the help of one of the master exponents of this method, Professor Barba Yanni A.M.C., D.G., H.P.H., you will be able to converse easily on the most essential subjects of Greek daily life. Follow the Professor carefully, study his movements, watch his facial expressions, the slight lift of an eye-brow, the shrug of a shoulder, a twinkle in his eye, his stance . . . and you too will be able to speak Greek in a flash. (Papas, 1985, p. 4) It is quite amusing to study the drawings in this booklet, each of which shows a man expressing something with his body. What he intends to express and how he does it is explained on the page opposite the picture. For example: • What : “I am telling the truth.” • How : “Look awful, cross your index fingers, kiss them and bring them apart.” or: • What : ‘‘You can put a hole in my nose.” • How : “This is a very Greek expression and implies ‘you can do what you like but I still won’t do what you want.’ Screw up your face, place one forefinger against your nose and twist.” The underlying assumption in this booklet is that there is a specific Greek body language that the reader can learn “in a flash” and, according to the author, is “far more effective and simpler” than learning the words. Thumbing through this booklet, which is apparently written for fast-track tourists, one soon realizes that the author might be going a bit far here and there. Some of his cliché drawings and corresponding explanations have more entertainment value than anything else. Although tourists with little or no knowledge of the language might encounter serious communication problems in certain situations and have no other option but to resort to body language, it is important to note that nonverbal communication cannot be restricted to culturally specific conventionalized gestures. This becomes clearer when I refer to Baur’s reflections (1990, 33–36), which introduce readers to “Suggestopedia,” an alternative method of language teaching/learning that draws heavily on the use of gestures and therefore is immediately related to a drama concept of foreign- and second-language teaching and learning. On the basis of research findings in semiotics he states that the number of culturally specific gestures and the role they play in intercultural communication are rather limited. (Examples for such gestures: Germans would not necessarily understand the gesture “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you” used in English-

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Page 79 speaking countries; native speakers of English would not necessarily understand the equivalent German gesture “Ich drücke dir die Daumen” which translates as “I press my thumbs for you.”). He emphasizes that our interest as language teachers should preferably be in the universal aspect of body language—for example, in “deictic gestures,” which are used to point at/locate something (“here,” ‘‘there,” “above me,” etc.); “pictographs,” which are gestures used in order to illustrate the image of a reference object (e.g., a guitar, a glass); and all those gestures that accompany our speech and serve, for example, to sequence what we say, regulate the course of the interaction, accentuate specific meanings, or express our feelings. NONVERBAL ACTIVITIES: SOME EXAMPLES In order to make learners aware of the possibilities and also limitations of nonverbal expression, I often give them the following instruction: “Think of all the different countries that exist in this world. Focus on three of these, the first of which should geographically be quite near to your own country, the second at a further distance, and the third the most remote. In this order, write your choices on a slip of paper.” The students, who are seated in a circle, put their slips of paper on the floor. Then I ask them to get themselves a slip that is not their own, adding that they not show it to their neighbor on the right or left. The students are then paired off, and all pairs simultaneously carry out the following task: Begin with the first country on your list, taking turns with your partner to explain what countries you have on your list. Note, however, that you are not allowed to use words, but are restricted to a non-verbal form of explanation . This may include the making of sounds. This usually generates a lot of fun and makes for a very lively class. During the feedback session immediately after the exercise, the students will, for example, become aware of the following: • Culturally specific conventionalized gestures/movements (a student who has to explain Spain might choose to raise his/her arms above his/her head and, while turning round, might snap his/her fingers in order to imitate Flamenco) • Cliché images of a country (a student who has Australia on his list might decide to hop like a kangaroo) • Strategies they apply when giving a nonverbal explanation (hum the national anthem of a country; indicate geographical location by drawing on a piece of paper or black-/white board; use movement and gestures to hint at a country’s typical products/activities (for example, in the case of Italy, eating spaghetti)

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Page 80 • The difficulty of expressing something that is not related in any way to one’s own first-hand or mediated experience. For a student who has never been in or even heard of a particular country, there is really no point of departure. I deliberately ask the students to do this exercise simultaneously. This puts them at ease, especially those students who have no previous experience in expressing themselves nonverbally and/or might have reservations about it. While the students are involved in this activity, I observe carefully how each pair is coping and have those pairs who come up with interesting solutions and seem confident enough with the task show one of their nonverbal explanations to the rest of the class so that the learners have a focus and can exchange views on what they have seen. Especially in the case of a new class, the teacher needs to be very sensitive and must not ask the students to perform before they are ready for it. A simple exercise like this could, especially in the case of a multicultural learner group, lead on to further work on culturally specific gestures—bearing in mind, of course, as we noted earlier, that the number of these is rather limited and that learners might therefore find it difficult to retrieve and show such gestures. In that case the teacher could, if she/he is in a position to do so, supply appropriate examples here. The benefit of using pantomime in foreign- and second-language teaching/learning has been touched upon occasionally in the past (e.g., Long & Castanos, 1976; Carels, 1981; Mariani, 1981). In the area of German as a foreign language, Wolf (1990; 1993) has put forward what to date appears to be the most convincing rationale for pantomime as a means of triggering speech. She offers a four-phase model of pantomime work that is based on universal themes like time, space, people, objects, dreams, and so on. Her video documentation and accompanying booklet give a good impression of how, in the first phase, learners are introduced to the topic. In the second, they collect as many topic-related ‘scenes’ as possible, and, in the third, they work toward connecting these scenes and creating a story, before in the fourth phase a longer spoken scene evolves in which gestures and miming and speech interact together to make a whole. With regard to the topics she chooses for working with multicultural learner groups, Wolf (1993) points out: “The topics as a whole are conceived to incorporate the various dimensions of life in general, thus encouraging the student to venture into using his personal experiences based on the individual cultural background” (203–204). However, in the practical example that I describe in what follows, my starting point is not a general, universal topic, but a concrete extract from a literary text. It will be shown how this can be made dramatically serviceable, by employing pantomimic action and by means of the production technique of “shadowing,” that is, the re-creation of an action by a second group immediately after the first group has performed it.

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Page 81 Nevertheless, what Wolf (1993, 202) has to say on the purpose of pantomime might serve as a backdrop: to make visible a fictional reality through movement. The miming performer selects, outlines, exaggerates in order to get across his own ideas. The activation of the imagination is essential just as much for the process of performing as it is for the act of beholding, guessing at the meaning of and recognizing an act or a scene. A NONVERBAL APPROACH TO A LITERARY TEXT I’d like to show an example of how I would see the opening phase of a teaching unit on the subject of Intercultural Encounter, and particularly how pantomime-based activities can form an integral part of classroom work centered on the study of a literary text with the goal of arriving at a deeper understanding of a sensitive and complex intercultural issue: asylum seeking. I chose to work on this topic because several European countries, including Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland, have to cope with a growing number of asylum seekers. Especially for Ireland, this is a relatively new phenomenon and, accordingly, the reactions of the Irish population are very mixed.2 In order to illustrate a particular point I am making, I at times refer to my teaching experiences in a group of second-year students of German whom I presently (February 2001) teach at University College Cork. The Text (Extract) to Be Used The basic idea comes from the 1990 story About the Concealment of a Guest by the Swiss writer Linus Reichlin. It takes as its theme an extreme form of intercultural meeting, namely, the existential problems of people who have to seek asylum and are thereby dependent on assistance from their fellowmen and women. A translation of a short review by Martin Kraft (1990) gives further details: A Kurd from Turkey, whose father and brother were shot dead, and who has himself endured prison and torture, flees to Switzerland. There, after his application for asylum has been turned down, he finds refuge in a “Wohngemeinschaft,” illegally, needless to say. This is a very typical personal fate, which Linus Reichlin presents with documentary-style credibility combined with narrative verve. This is a book not only about asylum seekers but also perhaps even more about the Swiss and their difficulties with them. Although the book is not impartial, it is ideologically not clearly one-sided in that also the lack of solidarity among the Turks themselves becomes evident. The facts, although appearing to be credibly researched and documented, are, however, only the point of departure for a lively investigation into the emotions

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Page 82 of the Kurd, who is suddenly confronted with a strange world, as his presence knocks the unthinking everyday routine of the Swiss out of kilter. The story is at times sad and touching; at others, in spite of the tragic background, it demonstrates grotesquely comic graphicness. An example of the latter is the scene in which the hungry Kurd finds himself in the presence of a woman, who, as she consumes a huge breakfast, delivers a reproachful harangue about the social conditions in his country. I thought it would be very interesting to work pantomimically with the course participants on the following extract from the story. The narrator describes an event using ‘‘a minimum of words,” and this treatment of the extract will be instantly familiar to learners of a foreign language. It goes like this: One person tries to communicate with another—in the mother tongue, in the foreign tongue, and, if necessary, with hands and feet. (1) On the 18th of April the carpet weaver moved into the workroom upstairs. He placed his two plastic sacks beside the bed. Paul—everyone else being out of the house that Saturday afternoon—showed the guest the bath and toilet and took him downstairs to the kitchen and living room. Paul was surprised that, contrary to his expectations, he was not dealing with an intellectual. Having quickly established that the worker spoke no foreign language, the tour of the house was carried out with a minimum of words. (2) Then they stood silent in the living room. Paul invited the guest to sit down. The carpet weaver offered him a Marlboro. Paul was a non-smoker. In return he asked the guest if he wanted something to drink. Paul took a glass from the shelf and put it several times to his mouth. Smiling, the carpet weaver declined, although he was thirsty. Paul’s embarrassment grew. After ten minutes of silence, spent smiling at each other, Paul excused himself, saying he had things to do. (3) Now, for the first time the carpet weaver sat alone in his host’s living room. He saw that he was visible from outside. He changed his seat and sat in the corner, where he was safe from prying eyes. He had good reason to be cautious: on the way to this house he had seen two men in grey-blue uniform getting into a car outside the house opposite. One of them had been wearing a leather jacket. . . . They could just as well have been harmless night watchmen as a special unit of the police. For about two hours he sat alone in the living room. His concept of hospitality, and the conduct this concept expected of a guest, prevented him from drinking from the tap in the kitchen. He saw bread, but didn’t touch it. As he saw no sign of an ashtray, and felt too apprehensive to look for one, he didn’t smoke. The room was markedly different from that of his former hostess by virtue of the condition of its furniture: the stuff here seemed older and more used. He waited.

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Page 83 (4) Vreni saw that he had nothing to drink. She asked him if he wanted a beer, some mineral water or milk, and the carpet weaver put his hand on his stomach and shook his head. He had not yet learned that in this, her country, it was the custom first to ask the guest if he was hungry and thereafter to give him food. He hoped the woman would now give him something to drink and something to eat, for he was hungry. Instead of which, she sat down next to him and leafed through a dictionary. After searching for a long time she bade him welcome, in Turkish. I would now like to outline a procedure that is definitely transferable to other literary texts—insofar as these texts contain interactive situations that the course participants can act out by means of gestures and mime. Even if the organization of the sequences to be acted out by the class is quite complex, the basic idea is simple: The teacher presents the literary text extract as a puzzle, which in the course of the class is assembled by the students. Planning the Class For the following teaching steps, I would foresee a double class (two forty-five–minute sessions) and a group of sixteen to twenty intermediate standard learners of German. Every step begins with an impulse that triggers the participants’ learning actions. In each step, it is indicated by (a) which means these actions are carried out, that is, if the students work individually, in pairs, or in small groups; (b) how the working space is organized; (c) which props and aids are needed; and (d) the production techniques employed. (Full details on the planning of dramapedagogical classes can be found in Schewe 1993, 275–300). Teaching Steps Teaching Step 1 Impulse: The teacher explains that the class will be devoted to working on a new literary text and explains the procedure: “We need seven actors who will perform the mime. Then we need another seven actors who will recreate the mime performance. All the other participants are spectators/audience who will observe the actions in both performances. But, like the actors, they will have a written task to fulfill.” The teacher divides the participants into the aforementioned groups. Learning Actions: Seated in a circle, participants listen and consider to which group they wish to belong. Teaching Step 2 Impulse: The teacher organizes the dividing up of the participants and makes clear:

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Page 84 a. which participants will be first to perform the mime; b. which participants will afterwards attempt to accurately re-create the mime, using words; c. which participants will act as audience/observers of the two staged actions. The teacher then allots specific written instructions and explains that each group of performers will get different text extracts, which they are not to show to the other groups. Learning Actions: The participants get into their chosen groups, read their work assignment, discuss it, and decide among themselves who does what. Props/Aids: Extract from the literary text; written instructions (see the appendix at the end of the chapter). Teaching Step 3 Impulse: The teacher tells the first group of actors to begin rehearsals for their performance and asks the second group (the re-creators/shadowers) and the third group (the audience/observers) to closely observe the rehearsal work. Learning Actions: On the acting area, actors try out pantomimic actions until they find a form on which they agree. In the audience/observer area, the participants watch closely and try to understand the main points of what is being shown in the pantomimic action. Props/Aids: Extract from literary text. Production technique: Pantomime Teaching Step 4 Impulse: The teacher organizes the sequence of the four performances. The performing duo A/B commence their performance. Immediately after they have finished, their “shadow group” A1/B1 re-create the action, this time with words. The teacher asks all the observing participants: 1. to take notes during and/or after each of the four scenes; 2. to note down how they understand the scene (Where does the action take place? What are the people in the scene doing? What are they reacting to? How are they reacting? What are they saying to each other or to themselves?). Before moving on to the next scene, the audience/observers give feedback on what they have seen, before the performers themselves report back on the scene they have played. Learning Actions: The participants on the acting area perform. The other participants, seated in a semicircle (audience area) pay close attention, attempt to find meaningful connections, and write down their thoughts and compare notes on their interpretation of each scene. Props/Aids: Paper/marker

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Page 85 Production Technique: Pantomimic performance/re-creation of performance by the first group by the ‘‘shadowing” second group. Teaching Step 5 Impulse: After all the scenes have been performed, the teacher asks the actors and audience/observers to 1. Form mini groups (3 or 4 persons per group), and, once again, using their notes, recall what happened in the four scenes. 2. Agree on (a) a meaningful running order for the scenes; and (b) uniting the four scenes under a suitable title. (The chosen title is then written on the board for all to see.) 3. Justify why they’ve chosen that particular running order and that particular title. First, each of the minigroups in turn gives its chosen title, and then, again in turn, each minigroup gives reasons for its choice. Learning Actions: participants in minigroups, reading, negotiating with each other, formulating, writing, speaking, listening. Props/Aids: Black-/Whiteboard Production Technique: Reflection Teaching Step 6 Impulse: The teacher distributes the text extract from Linus Reichlin’s “Concerning the Concealment of a Guest” to the participants. S/he asks them to note the details of the text, particularly the sequences of the action. S/he asks them to decide which of the enacted scenes and suggested titles of the previous learning steps best fit the text. Learning Actions: Participants in minigroups listen, read silently, agree on the content and details of the text. They identify connections between the new text and the scenes they have played. They voice their views on this subject. Props/Aids: Text extract Production Technique: Reflection Didactic Notes In intercultural encounters, like those described by Linus Reichlin in his docu-story, words have their limitations; a point that becomes clear in later sections of the story, as can be seen from this example: The man asked him a question. The carpet weaver couldn’t understand it. So, smiling, the carpet weaver told the man, in Turkish, that he couldn’t understand him. The man, in turn, couldn’t understand what the carpet weaver had said, and made a resigned gesture with his hands and shook his head regretfully. (pp. 38–39) Clearly, text material like this is an inducement to test the limitations and possibilities of nonverbal communication in the classroom, and it provides a

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Page 86 ready-made subject for a teaching unit devoted to intercultural encounters. The drama-pedagogical point of departure described here aims at making the participants curious about the text. At first they may well feel confused by the pantomimic performances, and they may have questions concerning elements of these, but gradually the connections between the scenes performed become clearer. This type of treatment of literature is based on the techniques employed by professional creators of literature. “Throwing up questions and not revealing connections is a popular literary technique which has two functions: one, it makes the reader curious, and, two, it creates tension”3 (Ehlers, 1992, p.16). As has become clear in teaching steps 4 and 5, I usually ask the students who are observers/audience to practice their writing skills by noting down what they have seen. Sabrina, a second-year student of German, wrote in response to the mimed action based on part three of the text extract (see earlier list): Er guckt durch ein Fenster an. Er ist total erschrocken, neugierig. Er schwießt, ist nervös. Er hat Hunger. Vielleicht wartet er auf jemand. Er denkt immer an, dass vielleicht etwas Schlimmes passieren könnte, oder jemand kommen könnte, der gefährlich ist. Er kann nicht ruhig sitzen, der Fuß macht immer Bewegung. Er macht etwas mit die Rolladen. Er denkt immer an die Zeit, hat sie viel Zeit? Oder hat sie nur kurze Zeit? What she attempts to express in German is this: He looks through a window, is completely terrified, curious; he is perspiring, nervous. He’s hungry. Perhaps he is waiting for somebody, he keeps thinking that something terrible might happen, that somebody dangerous might turn up. He does something to the shutters. He keeps thinking about the time. Has he got a lot of time or just a little? When held against the original text, this example shows that students at this level are well able to (a) make a fictional reality visible through movement and (b) recognize and interpret what they saw performed. By comparing their written versions with each other, the students become aware of details, get a good overall sense of the essence of the four scenes, and form opinions on how these interconnect. Rhona, for example, suggests the following scenetitles in this order: 1. The new tenant; 2. An awkward situation; 3. At the window; 4. The interview. Although I think that the proposed procedure of leading the students into a literary text via mime and having them piece together a “nonverbal puzzle” certainly will arouse interest on the part of the students and result in a lively language class, during which the students practice their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, the following needs to be taken into consideration:

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Page 87 It is important that non-verbal approaches do not turn into mere “guessing games,” where the group expends its energies on trying to decipher what is happening in the tableau or mime, rather than interrogating the images or sequence of gestures for the meanings they contain. (Kao & O’Neill, 1998, 31) Still Image: A Basic Drama Technique In light of space limitations I can only sketch briefly how I would propose to continue the work on “meanings” at a deeper level. This could be done by asking the students, after they received and carefully read the text extract, to form still images ,4 which capture key moments of the story in the text. This could, for example, be done in pairs (A is working on B as the statue) or small groups of three (A as the director gives instructions to B, the sculptor, who models C into a statue). It is important that students take their time for this task and bear in mind that every detail of a gesture and/or facial expression carries meaning. The ensuing discussion arising from a comparison of text and images could then feed into more text-independent work. The students at this stage would bring their own (mediated) experiences and knowledge regarding the life situation of asylum seekers into play, and this could be looked at from two perspectives: the asylum seekers’ own perspective, and the perspective of native people (social workers, police, people in the street, etc.) who come into contact with them. I asked second-year students of German at University College Cork to form still images encapsulating these different perspectives and to respond to those images in writing. A few (translated) examples of their written work might suffice here to show how the students engaged with the task and give the impression of the kind of images that were created: 1. Still images under the title: “How we see ourselves’’: • We are victims of bureaucracy. We are forced to queue, are regarded as statistics rather than people. (Jeremiah) • We find it difficult to make a living. She is selling magazines and really has to push for a sale. He is playing the accordion and thinking of home while playing familiar melodies. (Ellen) 2. Still images under the title: “How others see them”: • They ignore the asylum seeker and try not to look at him. They look everywhere else except at him. One person tries to help him and the man with her disapproves. He is beneath them not just physically but metaphorically. People see him as a hindrance and seem to be annoyed by him. They try to avoid him as he begs. One person is very hostile to him, calls him a ‘parasite.’ (Elaine) • Many walk past him. Few give him money. They feel intimidated or else they are quite unfeeling towards him. Everybody looks away from him, ignores him, only one really notices him. (Clare)

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Page 88 Focus on a ‘Critical Incident’ In a further step students could be asked to invent a “critical incident” that involves an asylum seeker and other people. This incident would become the focus of further work that would draw on techniques described by Bertolt Brecht in “The Street Scene. A Basic Model for an Epic Theatre.” The following gives a sense of the kind of classroom activities that might arise when re-enacting the invented incidents: It is comparatively easy to set up a basic model for epic theater. For practical experiments I usually picked as my example of completely simple, “natural” epic theater an incident such as can be seen at any street corner: an eyewitness demonstrating to a collection of people how a traffic accident took place. The bystanders may not have observed what happened, or they may simply not agree with him, may “see things a different way”; the point is that the demonstrator acts the behaviour of driver or victim or both in such a way that the bystanders are able to form an opinion about the accident. (Willet, 1994, 121) Students would take on the role of witnesses and relate to the incident from various points of view. This of course needs preparation and puts considerable demands on the students’ ability to express themselves in a foreign language. However, at the intermediate level of my students, this seemed to be appropriate. A group of students (Barry, Ellen, Elaine, Gordon) chose a busy street as a setting for the incident: It is Christmas and the streets are busy. A Romanian man is hungry and looking for some money for food. (Christmas music in the background adds to his feeling of aloneness and alienation.) He gets verbal abuse from a rowdy drunken youngster. He gets up to try and chase the young kid, but trips and winds up falling flat on his face thereby adding to his shame and embarrassment. He’s even worse off than at the start!’’ Various aspects can be looked at when this incident is enacted and possibly re-enacted by different students: Who observed this happening? How did those who observed this respond? Did they do anything? If not, what did they think? What was going on in the youngster’s head? What did he actually do? How did he actually do it? What words did the asylum seeker use? How did he say them? What will he do next? And so on. Questions such as these make clear that every detail is meaningful and counts in order to come to a fuller understanding of the incident. The demonstrator’s task isn’t easy, because s/he has to find a way of showing and simultaneously narrating from his/her perspective as a witness how the incident happened, what exactly happened, and what effect it had on those who were involved in it and/or witnessed it. Nevertheless, for the language teacher and learner it comes as some relief that Brecht emphasizes: “The

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Page 89 demonstrator need not be an artist” and “need not imitate every aspect of his characters’ behaviour, but only so much as gives a picture” (Willet, 1994, 122–123). The Broader Intercultural Perspective A final step in this teaching unit would be to look at the issue of asylum seeking from culturally specific perspectives. Reverting back to our text extract, this would throw up the question: What experiences have the Swiss had with asylum seekers/immigrants over the last decades? And, in comparison, lead on to the question: How do the Irish, in times of an unprecedented economic boom, deal with a rapidly increasing number of asylum seekers coming into the country?5 At this stage it would seem appropriate to refer to further text and film material from different sources (statistics, newspaper articles, TV documentaries, etc.). It is likely that this information now can be absorbed better by the students, because they can link it to the concrete images that evolved during the activities outlined here. These required that they tap primarily (but not only) their bodily-kinesthetic and linguistic intelligences, but also their spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences. I wish to conclude by proposing that my following contention be discussed further in language pedagogy: The more intelligences come into play and interconnect when dealing with language, literature, or culture-related issues, the deeper will be the understanding that can be achieved and the more likely it is that foreign language students, as potential mediators between cultures, will be in a position to take a stand, indeed to take action with regard to these issues. Foreign- and second-language education, after all, consists of more than learning how to speak, listen, read, and write. In Europe, for example, language teaching and learning needs to be seen within the broader context of an “Education for European Citizenship”—a central goal of which is to use language in order to get “access to knowledge at social, cultural, administrative and political levels’’ and participate actively “in transnational concerns” (Wringe, 1996, 77). Within a holistic drama concept of teaching and learning a foreign and second language, the two goals can be achieved: to systematically further the students’ language skills and to explore and address issues that will, even if in varying degrees, affect all our lives, be it here in Europe or on a more global scale. NOTES 1. Note in this context the 12th International Conference for Teachers of German in Lucerne (July/August, 2001), which devotes a whole section to the discussion and practical

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Page 90 exploration of how drama/theater can facilitate the teaching and learning of literature in a German as a foreign language class. 2. In this context, note two headlines in the Irish Times (February 3, 2001, p. 3): “Immigrants turned back by ferry staff ”; “Prefabs to house asylum seekers.” 3. I have given concrete examples in other works of how the conscious employment of the tension factor plays an important role in the preparation and presentation of drama-pedagogical teaching units in the foreign-language classroom. One example would be the adaptation of a novel (Schewe & Wilms, 1995; Schewe, 1998a), another example would be an extended teaching unit on the subject of “Youth in Germany,” for which a photograph and a short newspaper report supply the initial trigger (Schewe, 2000). 4. A still image or tableau is a visual representation of a state or action that occurred, occurs, or will occur at a particular moment. As in a photograph, the people in a still image show specific postures, gestures, and facial expressions. How this basic drama technique can be gainfully utilized in the language classroom is described in more detail in Schewe (2000, 87–90). 5. When I recently used this material with the group of second-year students whom I referred to in my chapter, it also happened that Oonagh Kearney’s play Urban Angels was being performed in the local university “Granary Theater’’ (January 23–27, 2001). It is a new Irish play that, among other things, deals with the life circumstances of Davor, a young man who had to flee war-stricken Macedonia. It highlights the difficulties he encounters in Irish society. I saw a welcome opportunity to compare the text extract used in my German class, which accentuates the plight of a Kurdish carpet weaver looking for asylum in Switzerland, and passages from this new Irish literary text. APPENDIX Task I: For the three performer duos A/B, C/D, E/F and solo performer G: Read the following paragraph attentively and find answers to the following questions: • Which persons in the text are named? What image do you have of these persons? • What are these persons doing? What direction are they moving in, and how are they moving? • What are they expressing through mime and gesture? Each person decides on the role s/he is going to play. Rehearse a pantomimic performance that shows as precisely as possible what is described in the section of text. Act out your scene when asked to by the teacher. Tip: As part of their production task, each performer receives a text extract. Depending on the previous dramapedagogical experience of the participants, the teacher decides whether the different paragraphs of the text should be played in accordance with their sequence in the text, or whether this sequence should be broken, as in the following suggestion: Performer duo A/B (passage 4); performer duo C/D (passage 1); performer duo E/F (passage 2), and Performer G (passage 3).

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Page 91 Task II: For the shadowing duos A1/B1, C1/D1, E1/F1, and the solo shadower G1: Observe carefully what the performer duo X/Y are showing in their pantomimic performance: • What movements are the persons making? • What are they showing by gestures and mimicry? Consider: What is happening in this scene? What sense does it make? Try to imagine what the people in the scene are saying and thinking! You should not only imitate nonverbally what the performer duo X/Y have shown physically but also express verbally what they might have said and thought. Task III: For the rest of the participants, who perform the function of audience/observers: 1. In the first part you will see a play without words—that is, pantomime. What does each of the four scenes show? What are the persons doing? What connection is there between the four scenes? 2. In the second part you will see a repeat of the four scenes. This time the actions will be accompanied by words. Judge how well the scenes have been re-created by the shadowers (Which details were once again evident? Which details were not so clear this time? What new details were added in this performance of the scene?) Note also whether what the persons say is appropriate to their actions. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks to the Arts Faculty of the National University of Ireland, University College Cork for financial support and to my colleague Kevin Power for translating passages from German into English. REFERENCES Aguado, Karin. (2001). Pädagogisch-didaktische Lernkategorien I: Typen von Lernern und Lerntypen. In Helbig, Gerhard, Götze, Lutz, Henrici, Gert, Krumm, Hans-Jürgen (Eds.), Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Ein internationales Handbuch. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, (pp. 751–760). Baur, Rupprecht S. (1990). Superlearning und Suggestopädie. Grundlagen—Anwendung—Kritik—Perspektiven . Berlin and New York: Langenscheidt. Bolton, Gavin, & Heathcote, Dorothy. (1998). Teaching culture through drama. In Michael Byram & Michael Fleming (Eds.), Language learning in intercultural perspective. Approaches through drama and ethnography (pp. 158–177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bräuer, Gerd. (1998). Gesture, body, and the text: Brecht-drama in the US foreign language classroom. In F. Vaßen, G. Koch, & G. Naumann (Eds.), Wechselspiel: KörperTheaterErfahrung (pp. 154–163). Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel Verlag.

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Page 92 Carels, P.E. (1981). Pantomime in the foreign language classroom. Foreign Language Annals 14, 407–411. Ehlers, Swantje. (1992). Lesen als Verstehen. Berlin/München: Langenscheidt. Ellis, Rod. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. (2000). Task-based research and language pedagogy. Language Teaching Research, 4 (3), 193–220. Gardner, Howard. (1993). Frames of mind—The theory of multiple intelligences. London: Fontana Press. Hyland, Áine (Ed). (2000). Multiple intelligences. Curriculum and assessment project. Final Report. Cork, Multiple Intelligences, Curriculum and Assessment Project; Education Department, University College Cork. Kaftan, Jiri. (1998). Bemerkungen eines Lehrers der Pantomime. In F. Vaßen, G. Koch, G. Naumann (Eds.): Wechselspiel: KörperTheaterErfahrung. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel Verlag, 101–110. Kao, Shin-Mei, & O’Neill, Cecily. (1998). Words into worlds. Learning a second language through process drama. Stamford, CT and London: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Keller, Holm. (1997). Robert Wilson. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Kraft, Martin. (1990). Rezension: Linus Reichlin—Vom Verstecken eines Gastes. In Zytlese . Literaturbeilage 1990 zur Zytglogge Zeitung. Long, M., & Castanos, F. (1976). Mime in the language classroom. English Teaching Forum 14(2), 26–29. Mariani, L. (1981). English through mime. English Teaching Forum 19(2), 36–37. Papas, William. (1985). Instant Greek. Athens: A. Samouhos. Reichlin, Linus. (1990). Vom Verstecken eines Gastes. Bern: Zytglogge Verlag. Schewe, Manfred, & Shaw, Peter (Eds.). (1993). Towards drama as a method in the foreign language classroom . Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Schewe, Manfred. (1993; 1999). Fremdsprache inszenieren. Zur Fundierung einer dramapädagogischen Lehr- und Lernpraxis. Oldenburg: Zentrum für pädagogische Berufspraxis, Universität Oldenburg. Schewe, Manfred, & Wilms, Heinz. (1995). Texte lesen und inszenieren. Alfred Andersch: Sansibar oder der letzte Grund. Stuttgart: Klett. ——. (1998a). Culture through literature through drama. In: Michael Byram & Michael Fleming (Eds.), Foreign language learning in intercultural perspective—Approaches through drama and ethnography. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. ——. (1998b). Emotion und Kognition im Fremdsprachenunterricht—Eine dramapädagogisch-ästhetische Perspektive. In Materialien Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 47 (pp. 162–178). (Veröffentlichungen der Beiträge zur Jahrestagung 1997 des Fachverbandes Deutsch als Fremdsprache). ——. (1998c). Dramapädagogisch lehren und lernen. In Udo O.H. Jung (Ed.), Praktische Handreichung für Fremdsprachenlehrer. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. ——. (2000) DaF-Stunden dramapädagogisch gestalten—wie mache ich das? In Gerald Schlemminger, Thomas Brysch, & Manfred Lukas Schewe (Eds.), Pädagogische Konzepte für einen ganzheitlichen DaF-Unterricht (pp. 72– 105). Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag. Schlemminger, Gerald, Brysch, Thomas, & Schewe, Manfred Lukas (Eds.). (2000). Pädagogische Konzepte für einen ganzheitlichen DaF-Unterricht. Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag. Tselikas, Elektra I. (1999). Dramapädagogik im Sprachunterricht. Zürich: Orell Füssli.

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Page 93 Vaßen, Florian, Koch, Gerd, & Naumann, Gabriela (Eds.). (1998). Wechselspiel: KörperTheaterErfahrung. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel Verlag. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1998). Educational drama and language arts: What research shows. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Willet, John. (1994). Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an Aesthetic. London: Methuen. Wolf, Sabine. (1990). Pantomime als Sprechanlass. Videomaterialien für die Lehrerfortbildung. Begleitheft mit Unterrichtsvorschlägen. München: Goethe Institut. ——. (1993). Pantomime and Statue Theater in the Foreign Language Class. In M. Schewe, & P. Shaw (Eds), Towards drama as a method in the foreign language classroom (pp. 201–207). Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang. Wringe, Colin. (1996). The role of foreign language learning in education for European citizenship. Evaluation and Research in Education 1 0(2/3), 68–77.

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Page 95 6 Coping with Obstacles in Drama-Based ESL Teaching: A Nonverbal Approach Cameron R. Culham INTRODUCTION After several years as an ESL teacher, I became aware of a barrier that, at times, prevented clear communication in my classes. A particular situation made me realize that misunderstandings arose because we had different perceptions of one another’s nonverbal language. Not only did I speak a different verbal language from my students, we also related quite differently in the area of nonverbal communication. I recall very clearly the incident that first brought this to my attention. I mention it here as it is symbolic of many intercultural misunderstandings that arise in second-language work. We gathered as a class at a downtown shopping mall to begin an activity in which the students would take pictures of local people and buildings. The students did not arrive all at once. The group, as it grew, began spreading out to the point where local merchants in our meeting area were concerned that we would block access to their shops. I noticed people’s growing annoyance and I began to feel anxious, no doubt giving off signs of tension to my group. In an effort to diffuse a potentially difficult situation, I began gesturing to the

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Page 96 group (a direct pushing motion) to move back and allow a passage way for shoppers. My students paid little attention to me. Many of the students I teach come from Japan, Mexico, and other densely populated countries; what I and the others had perceived to be an overcrowded gathering area was perhaps not so to them. In fact, it was only later that term, when the group became more articulate, that I discovered that the gesture I had so fixedly been employing in my efforts to move them back was all the while being misread by them as saying either “Stay where you are” or “Keep quiet!” No matter how animated I became with this gesture that I perceived to signify “Move back,” their cultural reading of my sign was telling them a different story. This kind of misunderstanding happens quite often in the second-language classroom where nonverbal language is a key means of communication. THE IMPORTANCE OF NONVERBAL LANGUAGE I have become intrigued by the sorts of ‘‘dialogues” that take place in the silent interactions: the shifts, the glances, and the nods of the diverse groups of people with whom I have been working so closely these past ten years. Through my research at the Department of Theatre, I have been studying how drama in ESL (DIESL) might be helpful in foregrounding this nonverbal aspect of human interrelation. At the same time, I have become aware of how drama activities enhance language learning and promote intercultural awareness. This chapter details aspects of my research and cites current findings. An important resource that prompted my research is the curriculum for the English Language Centre, where I have been teaching for seven years. In the course objectives, the curriculum requires that students should have an “awareness of nonverbal communication” (ELPI Level 410 Curriculum, 2000, p. 7). This goal is one of a wide variety of benchmarks that include such objectives as “the student can begin to use the present perfect” (p. 3) and “the student is able to instruct others to do something” (p. 22). Whereas most of the benchmarks are easy enough to address, identify, and teach, the nonverbal curriculum goal has troubled me for some time, and it, too, has played a part in driving my research. Many current ESL textbooks affirm the importance of nonverbal awareness in the language learning process, yet only go part way in examining this topic. For example, this question is posed in a chapter entitled “Body Language” (Naber, 1998) in a text intended for student use: “Can body language sometimes create communication problems for newcomers? Explain with examples” (p. 95). Such a discussion, although important, is difficult to approach without real-life examples. In my studies, therefore, I have been investigating how drama in ESL might provide a method for such discovery and discussion. The art of gesture lies at the very core of human existence and plays a part in every face-to-face human interaction. Canadian Jean Vanier, founder of

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Page 97 L’Arche, a caregiving organization for people with special needs, speaks of the significance of gesture when he writes: I have in some small way learned to inhabit my body and to see it not just as a channel for therapy but as a way of revealing my heart and being in communion with others. . . . This communion demands respectful listening to the nonverbal language of the other person. In the world of friendship and relationship, gestures normally precede the word. The word is there to confirm the gesture and give it its signification. (1998, pp. 78–79) Another author who is conscious of the power of the nonverbal in human relating is Tom Harpur (1994): From something as near-universal as the simple act of shaking hands to the pat of encouragement or congratulation on the shoulder . . . touch is obviously much more than a meaningless or impotent gesture. It is a means of communication, an expression of solidarity, a bonding of persons and communities, and a profound visual symbol of an unseen transmission of healing energy and power . . . an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. (p. 42) ELEMENTS OF THE NONVERBAL IN DIESL Gestures, or “manual symbols” (McNeill, 1985), are defined as more than physical movements; they are “referential acts [that] convey meaning, depict events, and represent ideas. They specify and often clarify verbal references and they can denote meanings that may not be in the accompanying words” (Bavelas, Chovil, et al., 1992, pp. 470–471). Researchers speak of such terms as “mirroring” to describe the listener’s behavior as he ‘‘mirror images” the expression of the speaker or “motor mimicry” as a phenomenon of expression observed by Bavelas, Black, et al. (1988). Both observations are of particular interest to me as they can be explored through drama activities. Theater practitioners are aware of the importance of gesture in conveying messages. Peter Brook has been stirring the intercultural pot in his remarkable theatrical productions since the 1970s, demonstrating how drama holds rich and promising opportunities for our journeys of understanding. Teachers in intercultural and interlinguistic education have a great deal to infuse into their work from Brook’s developments and others’ theatrical explorations. Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold was an early innovator in intercultural theater. Meyerhold used the nonverbal as a transformation medium—that is to say, he used the theatrical style of one culture (for example, Noh theater from Japan) as a way to open up new meanings for a western European audience. Meyerhold wrote of provoking “an effective reflex in the spectator which is not necessarily conveyed through intellectual channels, but which relies on

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Page 98 sensorial sensitivity, on kinaesthetics. . . . The essence of human relationships,” he reminds us, “is determined by gestures, poses, glances and silences. Words alone cannot say everything” (Braun, 1969, p.155). Finally, in terms of drama in education research, Betty Jane Wagner (1998a) discusses the role of gesture in language learning: Our first experiences both before and after birth were centered in our bodies. As a newborn, we knew when we were hungry, dry, comfortable, held in strong and calm arms. Even then, we were aware of language—not as a system that encodes meanings, but as a phenomenon of consummate interest. As an infant, every part of our body was engaged in making sense of our world—in constructing meaning. Words surrounded us, but they were not a predominant way of knowing. Before we could talk, we used gestures to communicate. (p. 63) Wagner (1998a; see also in this book) describes how children’s understanding depends on enactive knowing or kinesthetic experience. According to Wagner, “Dramatic play and drawing are ways children enter imaginatively into their worlds. In both, they are engaging in symbolism” (p. 66). This symbolic play is readily employed by students in the workshops that will be described in this chapter, and it is as crucial to their explorations in their new language as it is to children learning their first language (Bolton, 1984; Anning, 1994; Brown, 1994). THE NONVERBAL DRAMA WORKSHOP Prior to my graduate studies, I had explored the possibility of introducing drama to the ESL classroom but experienced only limited success. One of the reasons for my lack of success was that I was inviting the students to engage primarily in information-sharing activities. Kao and O’Neill (1998) explain that many ESL teachers who attempt drama in their classrooms restrict their efforts to the simplest and least motivating and enriching approaches, such as asking students to recite prepared scripts for role play. The emphasis has tended to be on the accuracy of the language . . . rather than on the meaning that is being conveyed (p. 3). Recent innovations, such as role (or process) drama (see also Liu in this book), offer alternative drama strategies that have a task orientation. Employing a variety of drama techniques, the participants in a process drama are collectively telling a story that is shaped in an unfolding and organic way by the participants. “Language acquisition,’’ Kao and O’Neill (1998) explain, “arises from the urge to do things with words, and this need becomes paramount in process drama, when participants are required to manipulate the dramatic circumstances to achieve their own goals” (p. 4). In general, when I lead groups I have not met before, the host teacher is present and, in most cases, takes part. In this way, that teacher may become

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Page 99 an advocate for drama strategies. Most often, I teach beginner or intermediate students in these workshops, and the introductory activities I choose are dependent on their level of language ability. With the upper-level groups, I usually conduct a short discussion. This takes the language focus away from me and puts it on them as they talk about their observations. I follow this with a physical warm-up such as “Follow the Leader” with musical accompaniment and plenty of group movement. With the beginner-level students, I begin with a simple physical warm-up activity, and the reflection on how we communicate through gesture follows. Introduction: A Group Discussion Running 10 minutes. time: Activity: Pair discussion; whole group discussion. Focus: To get students thinking about the relevance of the work to their own language learning experience. Questions:“In what ways do people communicate gesturally?” and “Have you noticed ways that people in Canada gesture differently from people in your country?” Activity 1: Group Warm-up Running time: 10 minutes. Activity: ‘‘Follow the Leader”; whole group. Focus: To introduce physical work to help make students comfortable with one another. Questions: “What sorts of things do we have to think about when we lead?” Activity 2: Physical Name Game Running 15 minutes. time: Activity: Standing as a group in a circle, one person introduces him/herself and adds one action that describes him/herself. Everyone repeats that action and name. Focus: To give them words with which they are familiar (their names) and invite them to add a movement that helps them to remember classmates. To have students play physically with familiar language and at the same time provide an ice-breaker that helps them learn each others’ names. Question:“What sorts of things have we learned about each other?” Activity 3: Passing the Claps Running 15 minutes. time: Activity: A clap is passed sequentially around the circle; the clap is then passed between A and B who must now clap together,

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then B and C clap together, and so on around the circle. Once a rhythm is established, extra claps can be introduced by the leader. Focus: To work on group rhythm and establish eye contact with classmates. Question:“In what ways did you communicate to your partner that you were making a connection?” and “What were some of the difficulties you had with this game?” Activity 4: Circle Cross Running 12 minutes. time: Activity: Students are still in a circle and must negotiate by eye contact only their exchange of places. Only one pair of students may exchange places at any given time. Focus: To encourage participants to take a risk using only nonverbal communication. Questions:“What sorts of risks were involved in your deciding to make a move?” and “Can you think of some reasons that prevent us from going?” Activity 5: What are you doing? Running 15 minutes. time: Activity: Person steps into the middle of circle and mimes an action. Whole group supports that player by mirroring his/her action. When students in circle have discovered the name for that action, they turn to a neighbor and name it. Person miming action says the action out loud, which is the cue for another student to step in and quickly begin to mime a new action. Game continues until all have taken a turn in the middle. Focus: Students develop improvisational skills and learn to listen and react in a spontaneous way. New vocabulary is given a context. Question:‘‘How is this game similar to learning a language?” Activity 6: Group Mirrors Running 15 minutes. time: Activity: First the students work in pairs mirroring each other. A leads and B follows. Reverse. Next the whole group is in a circle mirroring together. A classmate leaves the room, and the circle selects a leader and begins mirroring. The classmate returns to guess the leader. Repeat. Focus: Connecting and helping a disparate group of students engage with each other safely, while freeing them to interact physically.

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Page 101 Questions:“When was it easy to tell who we were following and when was it more difficult?” and “What kinds of clues helped you to discover the leader?” Although these activities are primarily nonverbal, the instructions introduce students to new words and the reflective questions provide expanded language opportunities for the participants (Morgan & Saxton, 1991). The importance of establishing shared experiences through the reflective questions and subsequent storytelling allows the focus to be on making meaning (Kao & O’Neill,1998, p. 3). For example, in activity 2 the actions students choose to share often provide a glimpse into their cultures, personalities, and interests. In one class alone we discovered, in this activity, a Thai dance step, Tae Kwon Do techniques, and how fishing in Japan is different from that in Canada. Clown Workshop, Part One I have invited several guests into my classroom to work with my students in the theatrical frame: mask makers, puppeteers, and actors from plays we have seen. The guest who elicited the most enthusiastic response was one who said few words at all, yet managed to engage the group thoroughly. Shannan Calcutt’s award winning onewoman show Burnt Tongue was performed at the Phoenix Theatre at the University of Victoria (October 1999). My ESL students attended her performance, then she came into our classroom the following day, with a workshop lasting an hour and a half. Physicality is key to working in the role of a clown. Since the 1980s, ESL educators have been actively aware of the importance of movement for language acquisition. Asher’s Total Physical Response theory (TPR), for example, examines physical aspects of language learning and how ESL students can develop language without engaging in oral practice (Lightbown & Spada, 1993). Drama educators have always been conscious of the role physicality has on learners. “Not only do expression and gesture help to ‘fill out’ the words we are saying but they often express thoughts and feelings of which we may not be aware” (Morgan & Saxton, 2000, p. 10). Contemporary research supports the claim that students can learn to develop their kinesthetic intelligence (Gardner, 1983). The latest brain research, Brown and Pleydell (1999) remind us, presents strong evidence that movement (lots of it) plays an essential role in thinking, learning, and sensory integration. A young child is most likely to recall a new word, concept, or sequence of information when movement has been part of the learning experience. ESL students can, in the same way, maximize their learning through movement. Activity 1: Jacques a dit (a variation of Simon Says) Running 10 minutes. time: Activity: Students move about while leader provides rhythm by shaking a tambourine. While moving, students are invited to do

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Page 102 an action. They are instructed not to partake if the action is not preceded by the words “Jacques a dit”. If students made a mistake, they are gently tapped with a stick and they sit down. Focus:To get the students loosened up through movement, to explore the concept of impulse, and to build vocabulary (reach for the sky, etc.). Activity 2: Emotional Range Running 15 minutes. time: Activity: Leader writes an emotion on the board, then has the class add many more. Students are invited, through movement, to explore all together, and in their own time, the different levels of intensity of each listed emotion. Focus: Students observe one another and interact as a group, without being in performance mode. Together they explore how emotion is physicalized, how emotion shifts physical interpretation, and they explore the meaning of words used to express emotions. Students can relate to the emotions, body language, and expression, all representing a sort of international language. Activity 3: Crossing the Stage Running 15 minutes. time: Activity: Students are invited to walk, one at a time, across the room, having decided in advance what emotion and what intensity to convey. Audience responds by saying the feeling words that the ‘‘performance” generates. Focus: A gentle introduction to performance and risk-taking, with an opportunity to comment through feedback and learn to describe and interpret physical gestures in the target language. Activity 4: Clown Turns Running 3 minutes each. time: Activity: One student is invited to go in front of the group, and he/she puts on the clown nose and a hat of his/her choice and “enters.” The student is asked to establish contact with each member of the audience in an honest way. Then, as he/she leaves, to look back at the group once more. Focus: Both audience and performer are expected to commit to the interaction and support one another in order to expand the possibilities for communication. The goal is to create a meaningful conversation without using any words at all.

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Page 103 The clown workshop sets up a safe environment, allowing students to take risks in front of others. At the same time, it demands support from classmates. Although there was minimal reflection, these activities generated new language that was noticeable in later classes. The observation of the workshop leader: The amazing thing for me is how the language limits [the ESL students], and in clown, we no longer needed the language. They said so much without using words at all. In fact, the entire room seemed to shift focus. In clown, immediately, they understood, it wasn’t work anymore, they were connected, all part of the same world. (Calcutt, 1999) Clown Workshop, Part Two A year later I accompanied Shannan on her visit to another ESL class in our program, one led by a colleague. This group, like mine the year before, was limited in terms of verbal language competence. They were, as their teacher described them, an extraordinarily outgoing group, full of imagination and experience, and, like the earlier class, they represented a variety of nationalities: Turkish, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, and Mexican. For the teacher, it was important that her students saw the benefit of the workshop on their language acquisition process. For the first ten minutes, we talked about acting as an expression of feelings, about taking risks when an impulse was felt, and how the clown’s goal is to take this impulse to the extreme. We reminded the students that this work was about observing body language in ourselves and others. Unlike the previous workshop, my role this time was as an observer. Our objectives for this workshop were the same as for the last: to use clown techniques to explore the “physicality of language” (Morgan & Saxton, 2000) and to help students converse on an empathic or feeling level (Wagner, 1998b; Arnold, 1999) where social learning is seen to be concurrent with language learning. Through the introduction of simple drama/clown techniques, we were hoping to draw the attention of the students to the nonverbal ways in which they convey a great amount of meaning. Morgan and Saxton (2000) remind us that about 80 percent of meaning in our communications is paralinguistic—“conveyed by such things as tone, pitch, pace, emphasis and body language—facial expression, gesture, body stance and movement” (p. 8). In this second workshop, it was interesting but not surprising to see that, from the outset, the students had arranged themselves by ethnic group. This is often the case with groups at the start of the work, and it is, in fact, a primary reason for getting them moving, circulating, and interacting, actions that serve to break through those ethnic barriers. The activities not only stressed the importance of the clown being committed to the work but reminded us

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Page 104 that as audience members we needed to return that attention. This raised the stakes for the student performing in clown and for those observing. As the activities progressed, Shannan made noticeable efforts to hold the students to their end of the bargain: to support their classmates in role. For example, when one of the students in the clown “mask” made an effort to look at another but this was not honored by the recipient, Shannan firmly reminded the student audience of their responsibility. She was equally demanding of the student in role as clown: that he/she be honest and committed to the interchange. This was to create a tension that fueled the interactions and held the interest. It was interesting to observe how the pressure of the theatrical rules held their attention. The gentle tapping of “Jacques a dit’’ allowed Shannan to establish her role as director for the work that was to come. To be asked to do something over again, she assured the students, would not be perceived as failure. The “Emotional Range” activity reinforced this valuing of varying levels of success; students learn to trust their work and subsequently commit to it more readily. I also noticed that in “Emotional Range” students are sharing something every culture understands—that is to say, the universality of feeling. The final exercise, “Clown Turns,” was the most challenging. It provided the opportunity for students to have a deeper and longer nonverbal interchange. The demanding attention to both the message given and its reception gave the work the seriousness it needed. Two instructions from Shannan that seemed to aid the students were “Do not do, just be . . . do not act!” and “The mask is not to hide behind but to reveal yourself through.” Two examples of this work: “José” from Latin America, and “Grace” a Korean woman (names are pseudonyms in the interest of confidentiality), took part in the “Clown Turns” activity. There was a palpable tension among those of us seated on the floor as José prepared “backstage.” A reliable framework for the task was securely in place, and this seemed to reassure the participants on both sides. When José appeared, wearing a hat and the red nose, he looked completely different, and our students reacted with audible surprise. How he had been transported! Instantly a hush fell on the whole room, and I had the sense that this reaction surprised him. Shannan insisted on his looking at her (she was the only one to speak) and once she could see his commitment, she invited him to begin his turns. José made a deep connection with each of his classmates. With some he laughed, and with others his expression became serious. For the most part, the students were as engaged as he. One student shied away from his gaze, and Shannan reminded everyone of the rules, which heightened the tension even more. When José left the stage area, a sigh of relief was breathed by the group, followed by laughter. It was as if they had been holding their collective breath throughout. When José reentered “out of role,” Shannan immediately went up to him and they embraced, a natural reaction to the intensity of his contribution. Her hug “spoke” for us all. For some time afterwards, the students responded to the

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Page 105 experience by talking about what had taken place in pairs, and then in the wider group. This pair talk (in English) allows students to debrief and to test out their vocabulary before committing themselves to speaking in the public forum. The importance of a certain amount of side chat is a key technique to the development of individual confidence. Grace was outgoing and had entertained the group by her antics in the previous exercise. However, Shannan did not allow her to resort to cliché acting even for an instant. From the moment Grace appeared, we could all sense her discomfort in her role. Shannan held her stare for a much longer period of time than she had with José. Grace was overly concerned with making all of us laugh. I sensed that the group’s refusal to join in meant that they had come to expect a deeper connection, like the one they had just experienced with José. Then, in an almost magical moment, Grace allowed herself a true expression, and there was no turning back. This time the group “sigh” happened with the actor facing us. People sensed that Grace was having difficulty holding the role, and so they supported her by giving her serious looks in return. By the time she had gone around the circle, a conversation of a completely different sort had transpired. It had shifted to a meaningful and deeper level, free of cliché. Again, when Grace returned, Shannan embraced her. In a post-workshop interview, Shannan explained, “The goal is not to make the audience laugh, which, of course, is the immediate thought when putting on a clown nose and standing in front of people. When Grace got past the “show,” she was completely beautiful to watch. The audience feels what the clown is feeling. We want to see the clown’s struggle, see the clown thinking on the outside, sharing her feelings of inadequacy. It’s a two-way mirror— there is no fourth wall; we are engaged in the same world’’ (Calcutt, 2001). Grace was able to use her English to articulate how difficult the experience had been, and yet how satisfied she was with her achievement. Powerful emotional experiences often release a competency in English of which neither the teacher nor the student has been previously aware. It is the need to talk about what has happened that gives students the capacity to find the words. These approaches to ESL teaching through “silent” drama are significant. Kao and O’Neill (1998) speak of entry level ESL students and the importance of accessing their nonverbal language in drama work. “Beginning level L2 (second language) learners,” the authors note, “have very limited proficiency, and thus verbal communication is almost impossible in drama . . . linguistic items presented to the learners prior to the drama and an emphasis on nonverbal responses in the activities, become very important” (p.127). My investigation into nonverbal communication, paradoxical as that may seem for a language teacher, has provided me with new possibilities for the problems that I have encountered in working with adult students in DIESL (Drama in English as a Second Language).

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Page 106 GENERAL PROBLEMS WITH USING DRAMA IN ESL I have identified a number of principal problems encountered when using drama in language learning. I base these conclusions on my experience as well as that of my colleagues, and from my own experiences as a language learner. The first problem is that classes typically have a diverse blend of cultures and language groups. Students come from Mainland China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, and Brazil and often are all together in a class. Hall (1982) notes the diversities of comfort levels in different cultures with regard to areas such as spatial awareness, privacy, social status, and utterance. ESL teacher interviews confirm that students from certain cultures may interact in a demonstrative manner, whereas others have a tendency to internalize. Creating a balance when faced with such a potpourri of cultural diversities is no small undertaking and often a cause for concern for those who teach in the ESL environment. Secondly, the students are adults who bring a diversity of experiences with them; many are already graduates of postsecondary programs in their own countries, and many are on temporary professional development leave from careers. Therefore, in my classroom, there exists considerable life experience, and this creates a certain imbalance in many activities that we do. Some are comfortable with an interactive approach, others not at all. It has been my experience that such cultural and biographical diversity, rich as it can be, at times creates a certain degree of tension in the ESL classroom. The third problem is that with such sophisticated backgrounds, students are not always readily tolerant of what they initially perceive to be “child’s play.” Problem four is that many of my students come from education systems where arts in the classroom have little place, and this adds to the difficulties. It is my understanding that although students have often been audience to performances, they have rarely been creators of them. The fifth problem is that students from many of our cultural groups see theater as something that is done only by professionals and they do not see how they can acquire (or already possess) such skills. A sixth problem is that drama is too often seen by my students as “frill,” something to do after class or with the few remaining moments in class, rather than as a valid learning event that can be introduced at the core of the work. As a result of these perceptions, students’ initial work in drama is often superficial and clichéd. The penultimate problem I identify here concerns performance expectations. When inviting students to work in our art form in the ESL classroom, the perception on their part is that “doing theater or drama” means creating a performance and being onstage. The mere thought of such a requirement can send shudders down student spines! The inevitable tension that ensues can destroy any quality in the students’ work. I have found that with lower-level learners in particular, creativity can be choked once the work becomes

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Page 107 performance-driven. With the correct approach, there is undoubtedly a place for theater with advanced ESL groups. In fact, my colleague Jane Leavitt successfully demonstrated this in her graduate work where her research (1997) shows the linguistic merits to be found in presenting plays: memorization, group work, pronunciation, and cultural awareness, to name a few. However, my research focus has a process orientation for the less accomplished English language speaker. Lastly, our students are generally more comfortable with teacher-driven classes because of their own education experiences prior to arriving at our language school. Of course, drama negates this approach. In fact it lies at the very heart of classroom drama that the teacher becomes cocreator with his/her students. Arriving in an already foreign learning environment, our students are initially reluctant to become engaged when invited to do so. This final problem is common for many ESL teachers who attempt to teach with a communicative methodology. In ESL pedagogy in recent years there has been a documented shift toward both affective learning and communicative strategies because the evidence shows teacher-driven teaching methodology to be much less effective (Nunan & Richards, 1990). Nevertheless, the students’ ingrained behavior and learning styles from their first language culture are firmly set. My interviews show that to almost all these students, the “teacher-dominated language classroom’’ still feels the most comfortable. Just as teacher-driven methodologies in ESL can have limited success, so too is drama teaching that is teachercentered equally unsuccessful. Kao and O’Neill (1998) point out that the kind of teaching where the teacher instructs and watches the students “do” (such as the restaurant menu/waiter scene that ESL teachers know all too well), “prevents learners from actively participating in the classroom conversation ” (p. 109). In essence, there is nothing there that comes from the students themselves. When the work is student-centered, the difference is clear. This was certainly the case in Shannan’s workshops. Perhaps the reactions to the work is best summed up in the words of a Taiwanese student: “I could not always understand but I could read the body and I understand” (Student journal, 1999). ESL teachers I have been interviewing share the students’ enthusiasm, saying that they feel closer to their students when engaged with them in the dramatic frame. They appreciate the openness and caring such an awareness brings to their classes. The host teacher for Shannan’s workshop noted that the workshop went “far deeper” than she had expected it to go. She commented on how this work gave her the opportunity to see her students differently, allowing them to cross cultural lines and connect emotionally. This particular teacher also commented on the spirit of trust that this workshop helped build in her classroom. She observed that “you need human competence and sensitivity to work this way because classroom safety is the most important issue.”

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Page 108 BENEFITS OF DIESL My research has helped me to identify a number of ways that nonverbal drama activities may benefit the ESL classroom (though this is by no means an exhaustive list), and the reader may see these as a viable way of addressing the problems I have previously discussed. 1. Students are able to express themselves in ways other than through words. When words do not come easily, nonverbal opportunities allow students to reveal themselves and learn about others in more direct and intuitive ways. The sign (gesture or facial expression or posture) is often less abstract than the word. 2. Teachers are also able to use nonverbal cues to demonstrate caring and concern for students in a way that language does not. 3. Nonverbal activities provide an excellent means of releasing the stress of language learning. The atmosphere of play prevails, and yet important learning is going on (Bolton, 1984). 4. Students, often hesitant to speak out, can become confident when the language expectation is removed. They will take an initial step (in its most literal sense) more readily than they will utter an initial word. 5. “Total Physical Response,” an established tool in ESL methodology, is enhanced through drama activities. The body is as much a part of thinking as is the mind, and nonverbal activities force everyone, teacher included, to “listen” in a different way. All become more astute readers of sign and readers of the body (Morgan & Saxton, 2000). 6. Power dynamics shift in all drama work as the teacher becomes a participant alongside the students. This “shift” enables teachers to be seen in ways that mitigate the sense of authority that can intimidate students. As well, students can reveal expertise previously hidden by verbal (or sometimes cultural) domination of other less inhibited members of the class. 7. Nonverbal drama activities transfer directly to verbal ones, and subsequent verbal interchanges are triggered by these nonverbal activities. ESL teachers need to be reminded that all words begin as impulses that are stimulated by attitudes and feelings that demand to be expressed (Brook, 1968). Current ESL research points to the benefit of creating a communicative learning environment for students, one in which all aspects of language are experienced (Nunan, 1999). Lightbown and Spada (1993) describe Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as: based on the premise that successful language learning involves not only a knowledge of the structures and forms of a language, but also the functions and

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Page 109 purposes that a language serves in different communicative settings. This approach to teaching emphasizes the communication of meaning over the practice and manipulation of grammatical forms. (pp. 119–120) Drama is by nature social, communicative, interactive, and gestural. Ongoing educational research demonstrates that ours is a world of “multiple perspectives’’ (Wagner, 1998a), and drama in ESL allows for an examination of those diverse perspectives. As educators, we need to concern ourselves with building nurturing learning environments for our students, always mindful that language mastery involves more than learning a series of words or grammar functions. My research illustrates how students are able to learn about one another through interactive drama activities. A natural curiosity exists with any group newly formed, but this is heightened in the globally diverse groups described here. Once a spark of interest is ignited by introducing activities like the ones described in the workshops, a genuine caring begins to emerge in the class, a concern for one another and a desire for deeper connecting. Nonverbal activities allow for this exploration in an accessible, unthreatening, and uncomplicated way. They “make visible the invisible,” in the words of the great mime, Marcel Marceau (1998). As a natural progression, the shared explorative environment leads to increased language use. It is not as contradictory as it may first appear to suggest that, in order to arrive at language proficiency, ESL teachers should consider the other dimensions of language that surround all spoken text, especially when the dramatic process can address such a broad range of learning styles. When sharing this work with teachers of ESL, I often sense that although they enjoy drama activities and see their value as group “ice breakers,” they question the benefits of the activities in terms of language enhancement or enrichment. As well, many say they are lacking in the flair it takes to carry these off effectively, dismissing themselves as “just not dramatic enough.” These are certainly viable concerns, and they are also, not surprisingly, expressed initially by the students. Teachers and ESL students clearly value activities that have strong and clear language outcomes. As an ESL teacher myself, I certainly appreciate the priority we give to explicit language learning, but I also see its limitations when practiced exclusively. I have shown here that language involves much more than verbal mastery. As ESL programs are becoming more communicative in nature, as our pedagogy is shifting its focus, drama offers new opportunities for learning. In the same way that Wagner (1998a) found her students to be more inspired to write once they had been engaged in the dramatic frame, so my students are keen to discuss what they have experienced and they are rarely at a loss for words. Although they often do not speak when directly involved in the activities, they certainly speak enthusiastically in the reflection time. Day (1990) points to the importance of student motivation in language learning, Coping with Obstacles in Drama-Based ESL Teaching 109

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Page 110 stating that “among the most widely discussed topics in second language learning is the role of motivation in the successful acquisition of the target language” (Day, 1990, p. 53). Not only are students self-motivated through drama work, but the social climate of the class is warmed significantly by their involvement with one another, and bridges are built for future exercises and classwork. A further research project could be to compare a drama ESL class with a non-drama ESL class to determine which communicates more freely and develops a more supportive and communicative classroom environment. In his “Hope is Vital” project, Michael Rohd (1998) describes such an environment as a ‘‘safe space,” “a working environment where participants feel comfortable playing and honestly sharing their thoughts and feelings” (p. 5). It has been my experience that when students no longer feel pressured to speak the language and when the focus is placed on nonverbal relating rather than on sentence mastery, an environment of safety and trust is created. A universal feature of all of the Arts is that mistakes are readily accepted (and expected) as an essential part of the creative process. The culturally imposed expectation to “always be right” is lifted and the mood lightens noticeably. With the fear of failure gone, the brain naturally absorbs more efficiently (Hart, 1983). Consequently, the language that is generated comes from the students’ desire to speak rather than the requirement to do so. Psychologist Herbert Clark (cited in Bruner, 1990) employs the term “folk psychology” to describe the examination of all that is public and communal in human interaction, a process that he equates with being performers in a play. When we enter human life, it is as if we walk onstage into a play whose enactment is already in progress—a play whose somewhat open plot determines what parts we may play and toward what dénouements we may be heading. Others on stage already have a sense of what the play is about, enough of a sense to make negotiation with a newcomer possible. (pp. 33–34) In a sense, our ESL students are newcomers who have all stepped onto that stage together. As their teachers, we already have a sense of what the play is about. It is our responsibility to make the negotiations and the conversations possible. REFERENCES Anning, Anne. (1994). Play and the legislated curriculum. In J. Moyles (Ed.), The excellence of play (pp. 67–75). Buckingham: Open University Press. Arnold, Jane. (1999). Affect in language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Bavelas, Janet B., A. Black, N. Chovil, C.R. Lemery, & J. Mullett (1988). Form and function in motor mimicry: Topographic evidence that the primary function is communicative. Human Communication Research 14, 275–299.

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Page 111 Bavelas, Janet B., N. Chovil, D.A. Lawrie, & A. Wade. (1992). Interactive gestures. Discourse Processes 15, 469–489. Bolton, Gavin. (1984). Drama as education. London: Longman. Bolton, Gavin. (1992). New perspectives on classroom drama. London: Simon & Schuster. Braun, Edward. (1969). Meyerhold on theatre. London: Methuen. Brook, Peter. (1968). The empty space. London: Penguin Books. Brown, Donald. (1994). Play, the playground and the culture of childhood. In J. Moyles (Ed.), The Excellence of play (pp. 49–64). Buckingham: Open University Press. Brown, Victoria, & Sarah Pleydell. (1999). The dramatic difference. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Bruner, Jerome. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Calcutt, Shannan. (1999). E-mail interview. Calcutt, Shannan. (2001). E-mail interview. Clark, Herbert H. (1977). Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Day, Richard R. (1990). Teacher observation in second language teacher education. In David Nunan and Jack Richards (Eds.), Second language teacher education (pp.43–61). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, Howard (1983). Multiple Intelligences: The theory into practice. New York: Basic Books. Hall, Edward T. (1982). Beyond culture. New York: Anchor Books. Hall, Edward T. (1966). The hidden dimension . New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. Hall, Edward T. (1973). The silent language. New York: Anchor Books. Harpur, Tom. (1994). The Uncommon touch: An investigation of spiritual healing. Toronto: McLelland & Stewart Inc. Hart, Leslie. (1983). Human brain and human learning. White Plains: Longmann Inc. Kao, Shin-Mei, & Cecily O’Neill. (1998). Words into Worlds: Learning a Second Language through Process Drama. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Knapp, Mark L., & Judith A. Hall. (1997). Nonverbal communication in human interaction, 4th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Leavitt, Catherine J. (1997). Second language acquisition in cultural understanding through theatrical metaphor. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Victoria. Lightbown, Patsy, & Nina Spada. (1993). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Little, Graham. (1982). Language Analysis Handbook. Hobart: Education Department of Tasmania. Marceau, Marcel. (1998). Introductory Lecture at the University of Victoria. May 1998. McNeill, D. (1985). So you think gestures are nonverbal? Psychological Bulletin, 92, 350–371. Morgan, Norah, and Juliana Saxton. (2000). 1998 ODEE Keynote Address: Influences around the word. In Drama Matters 4 (7–20). Columbus: The Ohio Drama Education Exchange. Morgan, Norah, & Juliana Saxton. (1991). Asking better questions: Models, techniques and classroom activities for engaging students in learning. Markham, ON: Pembroke Publishers. Naber, Véra Téophil. (1998). Let’s talk, let’s listen. Scarborough, ON: International Thomson Publishing Company (ITP Nelson). Nunan, David. (1999). Second language teaching and learning. Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers.

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Page 112 Nunan, David, & Jack C. Richards (Eds.). (1990). Second language teacher education. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Parsons, Beth, Megan Schaffner, & Graham Little. (1984). NADIE Papers No. 1: Drama, language and learning. Sydney: National Association for Drama in Education (Australia). Rohd, Michael. (1998). Theatre for community, conflict and dialogue: The hope is vital training manual. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. University of Victoria. English Language Centre ELPI Curriculum (level 410). 2000. Vanier, Jean. (1998). Becoming human. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, Ltd. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1998a). Drama as a way of knowing. In Carole Miller & Juliana Saxton (Eds.), The research of practice, the practice of research (pp. 57–72). Brisbane: IDEA Publications. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1998b). Educational drama and language arts: What research shows. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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Page 113 7 Video Recording and Playback Equipment Timothy Collins Many exciting technologies, such as computers, DVD players, and video recording and playback equipment, have become more widely available to language teachers in recent years. These technologies offer tremendous benefits to language learners and teachers. Teachers can use these technologies for purposes such as providing access to authentic material and native speaker models, providing visual reinforcement, and offering learners immediate feedback. Video recording and playback equipment, in particular, let teachers and students do many activities that in the past were difficult, if not impossible, such as watching movies on videotape, viewing programs taped off the air, and taping the students performing in their new language. Yet using this technology effectively presents many challenges to both learners and teachers. It requires planning, involves hard work, and demands new skills from both teachers and students. As a result, teachers wonder whether the benefits are worth the extra effort. This chapter reports on one of the author’s successful experiences using video recording and playback equipment in a beginning college Spanish class at a major university in the midwestern United States.

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Page 114 As teacher of this class, I used a video camera to record and play back role-plays my students prepared and acted out. The students and I agreed that the project was very beneficial, both in improving their Spanish skills and in increasing their motivation to continue learning the new language. The students gained self-confidence, developed teamwork skills, and had fun. In this chapter, I first detail the steps I followed with my class. I then discuss the benefits of the project, including the positive impact it had on my learners and my own views of teaching and learning a new language. Third, I give suggestions on how teachers can set up successful projects of their own. Finally, I discuss ways that using the medium of television transformed the drama techniques I employed with my students. THE SETTING My class was one section of Spanish 101, the first of a sequence of four Spanish courses designed to satisfy the university’s foreign language requirement. Though students had no choice but to study a foreign language, they had the option to select a particular language. Students had numerous options, including French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Arabic, modern and ancient Greek, Polish, and several others, in addition to Spanish. As is the case at most U.S. colleges and universities, Spanish was the most common choice. When asked to explain their choice of Spanish, learners usually said that they selected it because they anticipated using it in the future when traveling outside the United States. The students also commonly stated that they chose Spanish because they believed that Spanish was easier to learn than other languages. The students approached the course with mixed feelings. Most students admitted that they would not take Spanish if it were not a foreign language requirement. Nevertheless, many students were motivated to get good grades for reasons such as maintaining financial aid, getting into a graduate school, or achieving personal goals. I was one of nearly twenty teaching assistants teaching Spanish 101 that semester. The department’s director of lower-division courses oversaw the course. Each TA used the same book, ¿Habla Español? (Allen et al., 1981), followed the same syllabus, and gave the same exams. In this course, each TA was responsible for creating and giving eight to ten quizzes. The textbook and the class followed a grammar-based syllabus, and the book included activities for listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and numerous grammar exercises. THE PROJECT I chose to have my section of Spanish 101 do a video project for several reasons. First, I wanted to enliven my class and provide some variety for the learners. Creating scripts and acting them out before a TV camera would be a real change of pace from the usual routine of my classroom. In addition, I

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Page 115 wanted to give them the opportunity to see themselves using Spanish in order to gain a sense that they could use Spanish successfully. Nevertheless, I did not want the project to stray too far from the materials in the textbook that learners would be tested on. Therefore, I chose to have learners work from one of the dialogues in the textbook. To meet students’ expressed desire to develop language skills that would be useful while traveling, I tried to choose a dialogue that would allow for the development of social language students might use when in an Hispanic country. I also tried to select a dialogue that would allow the students to expand their knowledge of Hispanic culture. In the dialogue I finally selected, two female American college students explore the Ramblas of Barcelona (a wide pedestrian boulevard with many cafés, pet shops, and news stands) with a Spanish friend who is showing them around the city. At the café, they drink sangría, hear a tuna (a group of strolling madrigal singers), and have an encounter with another Spanish male, Omar. Omar is fascinated by women and cannot stop himself from saying piropos, a kind of flirtatious sexual compliment some Hispanic men direct toward women. (An example of a common piropo is a man saying the word guapa [“beautiful”] to a woman he perceives as attractive as they pass in the street.) Preparation To get started on the project, I approached the director of lower-division courses to gain her approval. I explained the advantages of the project and told her that I expected to divide the class into three groups and have each group prepare a role-play on one of these topics: what happened before the dialogue in the book, an expanded version of the dialogue in the book, and what happened after the dialogue in the book. My supervisor stated that I had to get the agreement of my class, that students could not use class time preparing for the project, and that the activity could not interfere with completing any material in the syllabus. She agreed that I could count the activity as four quiz grades, in order that the students be rewarded appropriately for their hard work on the project. To gain my class’s agreement, I presented an overview of the project and informed the class that rehearsals and all other preparations had to take place outside of class and indicated that the project would count as four quiz grades. I also let them know that the activity was not a requirement, and the decision to complete it was contingent upon their unanimous agreement to participate. I allowed the students to discuss the project among themselves, and in a few days, the students informed me that they had agreed that they would do the project. They said that the project appealed to them because it offered a change from our normal activities. They also said the video project sounded like an effective way to improve their grades because they believed that they could earn higher grades on the project than on the quizzes. Once I had the students’ agreement, I prepared an assignment sheet. A copy of the assignment sheet is in Appendix A. The assignment sheet lists the roles

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Page 116 for group members (director, scriptwriters, actors, and actresses) and gives due dates for scripts, rehearsals, and meetings with me. The teams had to assign themselves roles and then prepare three written products in Spanish: a script treatment (a brief prose plot summary) and first and final drafts of the script. I used the treatments to make sure that the completed scripts would make sense individually and within the larger group. I had students meet with me twice to discuss scripts, hold two rehearsals, complete a report form after each rehearsal, and hold a dress rehearsal with me. A copy of the rehearsal report form is in Appendix A. The students’ completed scripts expanded on the original dialogue in imaginative ways. The first group’s script dramatized what happened as the first three characters in the dialogue walked down the Ramblas to the café. The Spaniard explained the Ramblas to the Americans as the visitors listened and asked questions. The friends chatted, visited one of the open-air pet shops, and picked out a café. The second group’s script focused on the characters’ conversation in the café. The script expanded the dialogue in the textbook, particularly the part of the flirtatious Spaniard and one of the American females. In my students’ version, this young woman responded more positively to Omar’s overtures than in the original: When her more demure compatriot warned that Omar is a “Don Juan,” the more brazen female responded, “I’m a Doña Juana.” This group also included musical sound effects, replacing the original version’s madrigal singers with a flamenco guitarist, added a part for a waiter, and included details on ordering and paying. The final group concluded the encounter with information on how the females finally rebuffed Omar, returned to their car, and made plans for meeting the next day. The students’ completed dialogues contained a lot of valuable cultural information not part of the original, such as detail on the Ramblas, Spanish music, the social meaning of piropos in Hispanic culture, culturally appropriate ways of responding to piropos , ordering and paying in a café, greetings, and leave-takings. The second group’s decision to have one of the characters respond more positively to Omar’s flirtation was particularly interesting, because it gave the students an opportunity to reflect on different ways one might behave when trying to get to know a person from a different culture and to evaluate their own values. (The students’ version of the dialogue was also certainly an example of students using the Spanish they knew creatively in order to achieve their own intents and purposes!) The Taping Because of all the preparation, the taping went smoothly. The recording session took place in a special classroom large enough to accommodate my class and the television equipment and lasted an entire fifty-minute class period. We had a single camera mounted on a rolling tripod and two monitors,

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Page 117 one for the director and one for students to see themselves. I acted as director; a student operated the camera. The students all knew their parts, had all the props and sound effects they needed, and acted their parts with aplomb. Students had to watch each group tape its role-play and applauded vigorously after each group’s performance. One female student felt nervous because she was afraid she would not perform well in Spanish, and students in her and the other groups gave her a lot of encouragement at the taping. The Follow-Up The follow-up consisted of two parts. First the class viewed the tape, and then we discussed it. I used a list of questions to guide the discussion. Then students completed an evaluation form as homework. This form asked learners to summarize the aspects of their individual and group performances that were best and those that needed improvement. A copy of the discussion questions and the self-evaluation form are in Appendix B. I scheduled the playback and discussion for the day following the taping. Though I usually conducted the class in Spanish, I chose to have the discussion in English so that students could express themselves fully. The students were clearly agitated about seeing themselves on TV. One male student made a mask out of a large paper grocery bag and put it over his head at the start of class. The female student who felt nervous about the taping appeared mortified at the idea of seeing herself on television. To calm the students, I decided to abandon my original plan of viewing the tape right away, and instead began class with a discussion of their feelings about making the tape. I reassured the students by saying that I had seen all of the role-plays as the students performed them and that I thought they were very good. I also reminded the class that they had rehearsed their role-plays extensively, and asked them to reflect on whether they thought that students in the other groups had performed well. The students all agreed that the performances they had seen the day before were quite good, thus reassuring one another and themselves that they all had no reason to feel embarrassed about their work and making themselves feel more secure about viewing the tape. We then watched the role-plays and discussed each one using the questions in Appendix B to guide the discussion. The discussion questions focused on students’ language skills, their knowledge of Hispanic culture, and the value of rehearsal in language acquisition. Then we watched all three role-plays again without pausing, and we talked more. I last distributed the self-evaluation form for the class to complete as homework. Several themes emerged from the students’ comments in the discussion and on the evaluation forms. • Students agreed that their language skills had improved. All the students remarked that they felt surprised about how comfortable they looked speaking Spanish on the tape. They and I noted that they spoke fluently

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Page 118 and without pauses. In the class sessions after the taping, I noted that the gains in fluency continued. Students felt more confident about their ability to use Spanish, so they spoke up more willingly in class. Because they felt less anxious, they performed better, speaking with more ease and expressiveness. The students also learned a lot of important social language, language that would be key to having social encounters in an Hispanic country. In general, this activity represented a real breakthrough for the students because previously they had considered Spanish as a struggle, an academic requirement that had few tangible results. For many of them, the most significant result of this activity was the realization that success in learning their new language was within their reach. • Students learned about Hispanic culture. To write their scripts, the students carried out research on Barcelona, the Ramblas, Spanish cafés, Spanish music, piropos, and male-female relations in Hispanic culture. In the course of their investigation, the learners found out that tunas were not a normal part of the culture in Barcelona, but were more common in other parts of Spain, especially Castile. For that reason, the group changed the music from a tuna to a flamenco guitarist. Though they knew that flamenco was more typical of southern Spain, they found out that this type of music was performed on the Ramblas for tourists and therefore included it in their scripts. The students also were curious about piropos, because they found this custom different and surprising. They were amazed to learn that piropos were not considered socially incorrect and were also glad to find out the appropriate way a woman should deal with piropos (usually, by ignoring them). • Students learned that culture, body language, and communicative competence are as important as vocabulary and grammar. In order to write and act out their role-plays, students had to use proper intonation, gestures and other body language, and cultural information. In addition, as mentioned previously, they had to use proper greetings, leave-takings, and other social language. Students’ comments demonstrated that their appreciation and awareness of the skills they needed in order to be communicative, including sociolinguistic competence, had increased. • Students learned the value of rehearsal. In the course of the discussion, the students at first remarked that they found the amount of rehearsal unrealistic. They felt that in real life they could never be as successful as they had been on the tape because they would not be able to rehearse as much. This comment launched a discussion of rehearsal, including the amount of rehearsal we do in our L1, such as going over what we are going to say before an important or stressful conversation. The discussion made students realize that they rehearsed in English much more than they had ever thought and concluded that they could transfer this strategy to Spanish.

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Page 119 • Students’ self-esteem increased. After viewing the tape the students felt more confident and in charge of their learning. Several students indicated that seeing themselves speaking Spanish helped them believe for the first time that they could become successful speakers of Spanish. They felt that they could make sense of the new cultural information and use a foreign language with success to achieve real-world outcomes. • Students’ anxiety levels went down. Though students had a lot of anxiety before, during, and after the taping, their anxiety about performing in a foreign language declined significantly after viewing the tape. For example, the female student who had expressed so much anxiety about the taping told me that she felt much better after seeing the tape. She said that the activity had been very hard for her, but she was glad we had done it. I also noticed that after the project she participated in class more freely and had more self-confidence. I also noticed that the other students also felt more secure about their abilities in Spanish and participated more confidently in classroom activities in the weeks following the taping. • Students’ teamwork skills increased. Because the students had to work together to create the scripts and rehearse, they developed valuable teamwork skills. • Students noticed that they could enjoy learning and speaking Spanish. The students obviously enjoyed watching the tapes they had made. The dialogues were fun and engaging, and the students all agreed that though the project had involved a lot of hard work, the end result provided a lot of satisfaction. Students rated themselves on their self-evaluation forms and gave themselves letter grades and percentage grades on a 90/80/70 scale. Most grades were A’s, but only a few students gave themselves 100 percent. When I probed as to why students rated their work in this way, students’ answers indicated a certain amount of self-effacement. They seemed reluctant to acknowledge the outstanding nature of their work out of a concern of appearing self-important or, in the words of one student, “stuck up.” I, however, was convinced that everyone’s performance had been outstanding and gave everyone 100 percent for both individual and group effort. In addition, in this course, TAs were allowed to raise student’s final grades if they were between two letter grades. In order to do so, the TA had to present evidence of the students’ outstanding work to the supervisor. I used students’ work in this project to justify the higher grades, which my supervisor approved without question. DISCUSSION This activity had a number of benefits for my class. Learners’ language skills, self-confidence, and cultural knowledge all increased. Because the

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Page 120 students had to dramatize specific aspects of Hispanic culture, they delved into the cultural information much more deeply than if they had merely read, for example, a text about piropos. Learners agreed unanimously that seeing the tape made them feel that they could succeed. As a consequence, they became more relaxed, self-confident, and successful in subsequent classes, though their anxiety levels went up during the preparations. This was clearly a case of ‘‘seeing is believing,” and the improvements in classroom atmosphere, learner participation, and fluency throughout the rest of the course were remarkable. The students also commented very favorably on the activity in the end-of-course instructor evaluations. In addition, the students discovered that they knew enough Spanish to accomplish many of their own intents and purposes, including socializing with peers from different cultures. They realized that Spanish is not merely an academic exercise involving grammar and vocabulary but rather a communication system that they could use successfully to accomplish real-world goals. The activity also provided a number of benefits for me as a teacher. I really liked seeing my students enjoying themselves speaking Spanish. It made me feel that even a required course could become interesting and engaging instead of being experienced as a chore. It also let me prove to myself that I was able to organize lessons that incorporated new technologies in ways that benefited learners. The activity also provided real-world verification of many beliefs I was forming about language acquisition. For example, the results provided concrete proof that increased self-esteem facilitated language acquisition. The project also demonstrated to me that it was possible to teach students effective communicative skills and provide them with vivid cross-cultural experiences even in a foreign language classroom in an isolated university town in the Midwest. The project also helped me increase my selfconfidence as a language teacher. I realized that I had the ability to implement innovative teaching methods in my class, thus making me feel empowered to continue taking risks with other innovative teaching practices. In subsequent semesters, I brought in music, helped students prepare Hispanic foods, had students act out dialogues and conversations more regularly, and had classes videotape panel discussions and debates. This project also helped me develop a list of tips for organizing successful projects of this sort. I believe that my class project was successful for several reasons. 1. The project was related to the goals of the course. The dialogue came from the book and students knew that the material was relevant to what would be on the course’s tests 2. I got the support of my supervisor and kept her posted. I made sure that she understood what I wanted to do, honored the conditions she placed on the project, and gave her updates as work progressed.

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Page 121 3. I got the agreement of my class. I presented the project to them, including the amount of work and the benefits, and let them decide as a class whether they would participate. This was especially critical in a course that had many sections taught by different TAs. The students could not complain that they were being singled out for extra work but were rather agreeing to an optional bonus. 4. I built in success by breaking the project into manageable tasks and including checkpoints to make sure that the students did not go too far in a wrong direction without feedback. 5. I included plenty of follow-up, such as a discussion and a written self-evaluation, in addition to viewing the tapes. The discussion and questions elicited students’ reaction on their language skills, knowledge of culture, and language acquisition issues. This way, I kept learners’ attention focused on issues broader than just the dialogues they created, and learners were able to focus on the learning strategies they used and the educational outcomes they achieved. 6. I built in rewards commensurate to the amount of work and learner achievement by weighting the grade appropriately and giving high grades to reward students’ hard work and outstanding achievement. 7. My students’ anxiety showed me that monitoring feelings and emotions was very important and something I should have done better. I was sorry I did not find out about the students’ fear earlier, and I resolved that in future projects I would informally speak with all of the students individually to make sure they were feeling all right. I also resolved to let students know that it was OK to feel anxious and to talk to me privately if they felt intimidated or needed special accommodation. 8. Using technology, especially the first time, was a lot of work. The meetings, rehearsals, and preparation took extra time and energy. For that reason, anyone who undertakes this sort of project should make sure he or she has the resources needed to carry it out successfully. Finally, this project gave a number of indications of ways television as a medium transformed the dramatic techniques the class used. For example, because the camera only captures a limited amount of detail, students had to express their emotions and feelings very vividly so that they would be clear to the television audience. The medium of television also affected proxemics: As the students acted, they had to stand more closely together than they would normally on stage (or, indeed, in real life) so that they would all fit into the camera shot. Using the medium of television also introduced the role of camera operator and director as intermediaries. During the taping session, a student from a different group acted as camera operator, while I took the role of director of photography. Because neither the camera operator nor I were very familiar with the scripts, we did not always get the best camera shots. For example, there were moments when close-ups on one of the characters

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Page 122 were needed, but we did not zoom in quickly enough because we did not immediately realize that that particular shot was required. If I were to repeat this project with future classes, I would give learners the opportunity to rehearse with the camera and allow members of their own groups to act as camera operators and directors. Using television allowed the actors to become their own audience, something that cannot happen on the stage. As a result, students were able to observe themselves from the outside, which provided them with insight into the progress they had made in learning Spanish. However, the opportunity for students to observe themselves in this way resulted in a second, less desirable, result: initial anxiety, or stage fright, especially as students anticipated taping and viewing their work. However, students’ anxiety lessened once they were able to watch the tape and observe their success performing in Spanish firsthand. Another unanticipated consequence of using television was increased concern relating to body type and self-image, issues that are of particular importance to young adults such as my students. Many people feel anxious about their weight, and people often appear heavier on TV than they do on stage or in person. Several of my students had such concerns about their appearance, which caused them anxiety I had not been aware of until after the taping took place. In retrospect, I should have been more sensitive to these issues in planning the project. The experience of having my students create and view videotapes resulted in a number of concrete benefits to my class, allowed me to reflect on the effectiveness of communicative language teaching and use of technology in the classroom, gave me the opportunity to develop a number of strategies to make use of video recording equipment more effective, and gave insights on ways that television transformed the dramatic techniques my students were using. APPENDIX A The students received this assignment sheet. On Wednesday, April 1, our class will be videotaped performing role-plays based on the dialogue, “Las Ramblas” in our textbook. The class will be divided into three groups: Group 1: Will write and present a dialogue based on what they imagine happened before the dialogue in the book. Group 2: Will write and present an expanded, original version of the dialogue in the book. Group 3: Will write and present a dialogue based on what they imagine happened after the dialogue in the book. Each group should assign one of these jobs to each student: • Director

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Page 123 • Scriptwriter and head script writer • Actors and actresses Deadlines March 3: Director informs teacher in writing of each group member’s job. March 6: Each head scriptwriter turns in a brief treatment (plot summary) of the dialogue in Spanish. March 9: Head scriptwriters meet with the teacher outside of class. March Scripts due at the end of class. 13: March Teacher meets with head scriptwriters outside of class. 16: March Revised scripts due at end of class. 20: March Two rehearsal reports due at the end of class. 27: March Dress rehearsal with students outside of class. 30: March Directors meet with teacher after class. 31: April 1: Taping takes place in class. April 2: Class views tape in class. April 3: Completed self-evaluation forms due at the end of class. Rehearsal Report Director Name: Rehearsal Number: 1 2 (circle one) Date: _________ Time: _________ Place: _________ Students Present: ____________________________________________________ Students Absent: ____________________________________________________ 1. How did the rehearsal go overall? 2. Did the script need any revisions? Explain. 3. Are there any music or special effects needed? Did they work OK? 4. Is your role-play interesting? Fun? 5. Do you feel your group is ready to perform or is more rehearsal needed? APPENDIX B Discussion Questions Before Watching 1. What are your general reactions to this project? 2. Do you feel pleased about your performance? What about your group’s performance?

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Page 124 3. What went best during the taping? 4. What would you like to change about the taping? 5. What do you think the taped role-plays will be like? After Watching 1. What are your reactions in general? 2. What were the role-plays like? Funny? Interesting? Entertaining? 3. Was there anything you didn’t understand? Was the reason linguistic? Cross-cultural? Dramatic? 4. What did you understand best? 5. Did you learn anything new about the Spanish language? Hispanic culture? Your language abilities? Your other talents? 6. How did you feel seeing yourself and your friends speaking Spanish? What is the value of seeing yourself and your friends speaking Spanish? 7. The groups all rehearsed. Is rehearsal a part of other kinds of interaction? Do you ever rehearse in English? When? Why? 8. Did you enjoy this activity? Why? 9. Is viewing an action different from participating in it? Why? 10. Would you recommend that other classes do this activity in the future? Why? Evaluation Form Self- and Peer Evaluation 1. What was strongest in your individual performance or contribution? Why? 2. What was strongest in your group performance? 3. What needed the most improvement in your individual performance or contribution? Why? 4. What needed the most improvement in your group’s performance? Why? Self-Rating Rate your performance and your group’s performance. Give grades on a scale of 100. Yourself: _________ Your group _________ Teacher Evaluation You: _________ Your group: _________ REFERENCE Allen et al. (1981). ¿Habla Español? 2nd Ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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Page 125 8 Designing Artful Reflective Strategies: The Guided Case Study Philip Taylor Do teachers ever really understand the students they work with? What concrete attempts do teachers exploit to try and place themselves on the inside of students’ learning? We read a great deal in the professional literature about the power and efficacy of drama in education, but there is little written on the ongoing daily experiences of students in the drama classroom. What evidence is there that drama can help students understand the truths about themselves and the world in which they live? How have students reported on the relationship between drama activity and their learning? Like many of my colleagues, I have tried to uncover more about the teaching and learning process through my encounters with students (Taylor, 1998, 2000). I am especially interested in the specific processes that help students engage with material in fresh and innovative ways. This interest has prompted two questions: What strategies can I marshal in the classroom so that I am a more reflective teacher? How do students describe their experience of these strategies? In this chapter, I propose to describe one strategy I have found to be useful in uncovering how my students are responding to the class work. I call this

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Page 126 strategy the Guided Case Study. In the Guided Case Study, students are reflecting about an issue, incident, or event through the guise of role. The Guided Case Study presents students with an immediate ongoing fictional dilemma that demands their urgent attention. This dilemma, although presented as an imagined case, resonates with a familiar classroom experience. Through the process of reflecting on the case, students are challenged to probe and share their understanding of an educational event. This strategy can illuminate for the teacher insights into how to construct rich learning environments. The Guided Case Study can provide immediate feedback for the teacher on ways in which a teaching approach or procedure might be modified. The students’ observations through the Guided Case Study can support the immediate and sustained reflective practice of teachers. It would be valuable to illustrate the features of the Guided Case Study through an example. ABOUT ALBERT I first met Albert in New York City where I was employed to be his seventh-grade social studies teacher. I was working at the time in the United States while completing my doctoral research at New York University. I was immediately drawn to Albert as he would often engage me in discussions about my Australian background. He seemed especially interested in my homeland and intrigued as to why I had left Australia to work in America. Albert was an exceptionally intelligent student for his thirteen years and seemed self-satisfied with the high grades he would regularly receive. The parochial school Albert attended was located in a densely-packed urban neighborhood on the lower east side of New York City. The school, in a lower socioeconomic section of the city, was conservative in its educational outlook. The students would sit in rows of desks, for instance, and typically look toward the teacher who would be busily engaged in formal instruction. Albert, like the majority of his classmates, was a second generation Chinese-American. He lived in a housing commission apartment in the immediate neighborhood, an environment renowned for its violence and drug-pushing. I was to learn from Albert that he had considerable domestic responsibilities. As both of his parents worked in a restaurant, he would have to rush home after school in order to tend to his younger siblings. I often wondered when he would find time to attend to his school assignments given his home duties. Yet Albert seemed committed to his study and would always submit quality work by a given deadline. Midway into the year I asked Albert whether he would be interested in helping me understand more about the learning that takes place in school. I explained that I was keeping a logbook describing our sessions and I was especially eager to learn from students’ observations of my classes. I introduced him to the Guided Case Study strategy: I would present him with an

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Page 127 imaginary situation and he would be asked to respond to the stated circumstances. Although the situation would have parallels to practices that we might currently have been engaged in, I explained that he was not to construe the case as an exact replication of our own classroom situation. Albert agreed to participate in the Guided Case Study. BACKGROUND TO ALBERT’S GUIDED CASE STUDY Albert was presented with a number of different situations over a period of three months. Three of these situations focused on the fictitious character Mr. Gibbs, who was attempting to experiment with drama in the classroom. At the time, Albert and his own seventh-grade class were encountering drama activity in their social studies curriculum. The students had not experienced drama before in the curriculum, and for many it was both a challenging and a confronting experience. The Guided Case Study would be, I hoped, a useful protective forum to access the students’ responses to drama. These responses would directly impact upon my own planning and structuring of the classroom experience. I propose to examine three situations Albert was presented with. I intend to isolate the main features of Albert’s written reflections in his role as both the principal of Mr. Gibbs’ school (situations 1 and 2) and as Mr. Gibbs himself (situation 3). His written responses that follow are intact. I have not modified or amended Albert’s expression or grammar. The names given to Albert and his classmates are pseudonyms to protect the participants’ identities. Situation 1 Mr. Gibbs is a grade seven social studies teacher. Each year he has to cover the American War of Independence. He likes to teach by having the students read from the textbook and then complete short answer and multiple choice questions. He always ends his study with a chapter test. Although he sometimes conducts group discussions, Mr. Gibbs finds that it is always the same students answering the questions. He believes this is because many are shy and would prefer to write in their notebooks. Mr. Gibbs is about to teach a unit of work on Boston in the late 1700s. Imagine that you are the new principal of the school in which Mr. Gibbs works. You have seen his style of teaching in previous units of work and you would like to make some suggestions on how he might approach his Boston study. Albert’s Response Mr. Gibbs, I value highly acting out scenes from the chapter, especially making them understanding what’s going on, not just words. Make the students able to picture it and interpret it correctly. Do a short session of acting, and a person reading from the textbook as a narrator. Be sure that the

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Page 128 students interpret the chapter as concepts (#1 blah, blah, #2 blah, blah, #3 blah, blah) or as a story (First, blah, afterword, blah, finally, blah). I think that a classroom should have a lighter touch and atmosphere, and to get people to be more open, center attention on them, let them know that it is not a yes/no question, but a question of his/her opinion. I think this is why many students don’t like to talk, they know they can get away with it. I think a chapter is easier to understand as a story than as facts so that tests will be easier for them. I think a short session of writing will help because the writing will calm them and also give them a chance to interpret. School is too much work and not enough action. I think my suggestion of play, story, giving shy students more attention and getting not-so-shy students to support, and writing may not seem to work at the beginning, but as time goes, the people will gradually accept and work by the new activities. I think the test should be the same. Final suggestion—relate incident to something we understand. Teacher Follow-up Questions and Albert’s Reply: What do you mean when you say that the students who don’t like to talk can “get away with it” when they are only asked a “yes/no question”? When I say students don’t like to answer because it is a “yes/no” question because they know, if answer suits you, then you will forget them and go on. If answer don’t suit you, you just pass on and get a correct answer elsewhere. This makes them feel as if their answer don’t count for much. If they answer a correct answer, then show that you agree by saying something like, “I think so too, because, blah, blah, good answer.’’ If wrong, then, “Hm, but, blah, blah, okay?” or “Don’t you think so, Mr.X, please tell us why, blah, blah, do you agree original person?” In what way will writing “calm them”? After acting out something, a person is normally flustered and energetic. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Writing will allow them to interpret the action in words and this might help them think. Analysis The Mr. Gibbs scenario in situation 1 developed from my observation that at this school students seemed to be taught in a traditional manner. I would frequently note classrooms based on Freire’s “banking” concept of education, “in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” of the teacher (1970, p.58). Frequently, the students would describe classes preoccupied with notebooks, copying from the board, and listening to teacher talk about the textbook.

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Page 129 The Gibbs situation and Albert’s response confirm the dreary scholastic routine that Albert and his classmates experienced. What is interesting, though, is Albert’s understanding that certain teaching strategies such as questions that require a yes or no response limit students’ ability to interpret the work. He recognizes the power of conceptual thinking and how the construct of stories can help deepen and extend student reflections on the social studies curriculum. Albert implies that a curriculum rooted in discourse, dialogue, action, and interaction should serve as a classroom model. In this respect, he was sharing a view with educational theorists who have emphasized a shift from the mastery of information to the growth of skills and intelligences that help students become “learners who can approach knowledge in a variety of ways and struggle with the contradictions” (Verhovek, 1991, p. B4). Albert’s recommendation, that “acting out scenes” is one way to help students struggle with and tolerate the ambiguities, supports what drama educators have argued for some time. Students do recognize the power of drama to give them a voice they may not ordinarily have (Arnold, 1991). Drama is well placed both as a discrete disciplinary area and a methodological framework to highlight and expose complex material in a relevant and real way (Hughes & Taylor, 1993). Albert’s reflective writing in the first guided case study was not only broadening his contemplations about an art form but also encouraging me to experiment with designing and implementing compelling drama experiences. Those attempts at experimentation led to the second situation. Situation 2 Mr. Gibbs has tried to incorporate the principal’s suggestions into his Boston study. However, all has not gone well. Gibbs makes an appointment to conference with the principal. He talks about the following: “I thought it might be interesting if the students assumed the roles of journalists working for the Boston Gazette in the 1770s. I enacted the role of Benjamin Edes, an editor with anti-Royalist sympathies. I thought this situation might help the group consider what were some of the relevant issues during revolutionary Boston society. In the role of Edes, I proceeded to inform the journalists that I was concerned about the imminent arrival of many British soldiers. I was hoping the students, in their role of journalist, would suggest how the Gazette might influence public opinion to resist the soldiers’ arrival. But the class seemed confused by my role as they did not speak. They blankly looked at me and remained unresponsive. I kept commenting about how hard it was living in Boston, but each attempt was met with silence or a disturbing giggle. I don’t know why I bothered to try something different. Where do I go from here?” Albert’s Response I think it didn’t work because they weren’t into it. I presume you told them they were journalists, but that is not getting deep enough. For example, you

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Page 130 might list occupations such as head journalist, editorial journalist, mail journalist, celebrity interviewer journalist, behind the headline journalist, and all kinds of crazy things, and ask them from each field (mail journalist) what type of mail was received this week. Give them time to think of answers, to prepare, to shine !! Oh yes, you were still the teacher when you tried to talk and influence them to talk. Figure it this way, be either the boss of the paper or a hard working journalist too. If I were you, I might change my role of Ben Edes, and let someone take over. Make sure that the students are comfortable with the replacement, like the replacement has no enemies or is funny and can handle it. I will become a new staff member that needs to be taught about how each field works (Mr. X. how does the town feel about lobsters,1 I new at the editorial and need info). I also would not get too close to the person because then they will be scared and not think well. Don’t stand too far because then they will feel that the answer doesn’t matter and not give a good answer. Stand at a reasonable distance. They didn’t contribute because it was different and perhaps too unclear to work with. It was not easy for them to answer because they don’t want to be different from the ‘‘mob,” or just shy. I think you should ask some people you know could answer so that other people can follow an example. Analysis Readers might not be surprised to learn that there was a close parallel between this situation that Gibbs describes and an in-role drama I had attempted to negotiate with the students. I was interested to learn from my students how they read teacher in role and what circumstances assisted their active verbal participation. I deliberately layered into Gibbs’s reflections on the role-playing his frustration with the students’ silent responses. In my experience, it is not uncharacteristic for student groups to experience bafflement or uncertainty when the teacher assumes a role in the students’ dramatic play. However, before this guided case study with Albert, I had never attempted to follow up consciously the possible explanation for such student response. Albert’s acute and insightful perceptions on teacher role-play were to transform my approach toward this strategy. His observations on the relationship between the leader’s clarity in specifying the task and the depth of student involvement should be a lesson to all those interested in teacher in role. Albert aligns quality of participant response to the teacher’s ability to provide a richly colored scaffold. “Getting deep enough,” he urges, demands assisting the students’ storying possibilities. This assistance, he offers, may involve allowing students to assume leadership roles and drawing on the skills of students who are willing to participate. Albert is also aware that student engagement is tied into their comfort threshold. I remembered how I often would walk around the classroom and attempt to engage students with the role-play. However, in Albert’s mind, this

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Page 131 tactic can backfire as shy students “will be scared and not think well.” Teacher role-play, therefore, may need to be coupled with a human relations posturing that encourages student participation. Simply assuming a role and asking for students’ feedback will not promote a dynamic interaction. Cecily O’Neill, a leading practitioner in educational drama, reminds us that when teachers assume roles they must invite the student-watchers “to respond actively, to join in, to oppose or transform what is happening” (1989, p. 535). However, as Albert reminds us and her, this invitation will be accepted only if the situation is of sufficient motivating interest for them. Teachers need to experiment with different status levels and find the ways and means of constructing avenues down which students can travel and gain entry to an imaginary world. Situation 3 Gibbs wonders what his students are learning. He believes they are understanding something about Boston’s history, about what it must have been like to live back then, and why studying the past can help us understand the future better. Nevertheless, he also thinks they may be learning other things about themselves and one another. What would you think Gibbs’ students might be learning? Albert’s Response I learn that working with others and learned that others aren’t as gullible as I think. I mean doing everything I say. Some examples are is when I was with Tom, Meryl, and Nadia, and when I worked with Tom, and Teddy.2 In the first example, I saw that they really believe what they say and disagreed with me. With Tom and Teddy, they didn’t do all I say. In the film, there were contributing ideas from Tom that made mine better. I used to think my work was good, but now I see it can be better. They are more used to teachers and working with others and might not be so shy. Amara, who I think used to be very shy, seem very brave now since I’ve scene [ sic] the bullying scene. I think the changes in shyness may to some extent better. It may help them in the world and improve their discussion grade. Others, may become to bold and do bad things because their not shy anymore. Analysis In this Guided Case Study, Albert has forgotten about his role of Mr. Gibbs and instead written a personal response on his own learning. This sometimes happens when students reflect in the third person. The separation between role and self is not a clear one, nor should it be when participants are bringing their own understandings to their creation of role.

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Page 132 It is evident that Albert has been on a significant personal journey in his social studies classroom. He recognizes, for example, that his classmates are powerful contributors to his own rethinking and revamping of ideas. “I used to think my work was good,” he reflects, “but now I see it can be better.’’ The Guided Case Study has enabled Albert to take a long cool look at himself and realize that his peers play a significant role in the shaping and development of his own thinking. The process itself may have posed a number of challenges for Albert, particularly as to when he should compromise for the sake of the group or at which moments he should remain committed to a desirable idea. He also notes with interest the changes that have occurred in some of his peers. Although students may become less self-conscious through the work, he believes that this could potentially lead to them becoming too “bold and do bad things because their [ sic] not shy anymore.” It seems ironic that what a teacher might perceive as a positive development in a student’s social behavior is looked upon by the student as a subversive sign with potential deviant outcomes. Perhaps Albert is highlighting a cultural difference here between Chinese and Anglo-European groups. Although it is generally believed among drama educators that children must work for autonomy and “find resources within themselves to earn power” (Bolton, 1985, p.154), are teachers prepared for the discoveries that students might make about themselves and others if they finally manage to earn and then wield their own power? CONCLUSION: AUTHENTIC DIALOGUE Freire (1970) argues that only when teachers engage in “authentic” dialogue with their students will the latter become self-reliant and assume responsibility for their education. Such is achieved when the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacherstudent with student-teacher. The teacher is no longer merely the one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in their turn, while being taught, also teach. (p. 67) Reflecting in the third person through the Guided Case Study seems to be one immediate way in which educational leaders can assist their student groups to engage in empowering reflection. The Guided Case Study has not only enabled Albert, the student-teacher, to organize and structure his own learning but has also been an invaluable tool in this writer, the teacher-student, experiencing intensive reflective practice. Teachers perhaps underestimate the contribution their students can make to facilitating enriching classroom environments. Strategies like the Guided Case Study that aim to give voice to students’ observations of classroom

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Page 133 environments can enlighten and recharge dreary and lifeless pedagogical practices. The Guided Case Study is an agent that can command teachers and students to explore the fabric of classroom life, assess its vital elements, and enable them to respond to perceived strengths and weaknesses in teacher-student and student-teacher relations with authoritative efficacy. I encourage readers to experiment with the guided case study technique and document their experiences so that a wider dialogue among educators can emerge. NOTES 1. A reference to the British soldiers, who were also known as redcoats (thus, the reference to lobsters). 2. Readers are reminded that the names of Albert and his classmates are pseudonyms. REFERENCES Arnold, R. (1991). Drama in the round: The centrality of drama in learning. In J. Hughes, Drama in education: The state of the art. Sydney: Educational Drama Association. Bolton, G. (1985). Changes in thinking about drama in education. Theory into Practice, 24(3), 151–157. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Hughes, J., & Taylor, P. (1993). Reflection, action and imagination in the communication process. In Communication for science, technical and medical professionals: Theory and practice. Victoria: Macmillan. O’Neill, C. (1989). Dialogue and drama: The transformation of events, ideas and teachers. Language Arts , 66(5), 528–540. Taylor, P. (2000). The drama classroom: Action, reflection, transformation. London: RoutledgeFalmer Taylor, P. (1998). Redcoats and patriots: Reflective practice in drama and social studies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Verhovek, S.H. (1991, June 21). Plan to emphasize minority cultures ignites a debate. New York Times, B4.

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Page 135 9 Undergoing a Process and Achieving a Product: A Contradiction in Educational Drama? Douglas J. Moody The debate regarding the learning potential of educational drama in foreign language acquisition has often been polarized between practitioners of drama-based education who use process-oriented approaches and educators who define their methodology as product-oriented. This chapter considers the correspondent effectiveness of educational drama in foreign language acquisition from these two distinct, though I argue, complementary perspectives, by considering two contrasted learning environments. The two educational settings that I describe are very particular, and the results are not meant to proclaim how one method of drama-based education is more effective than the other. What I hope to illustrate, however, is that a product-oriented approach, which involves various processes in the interpretation, rehearsal, and public performance of a text, is a valuable form of educational drama that should not be excluded from the repertoire that foreign-language teachers have to use in their classrooms. On the one hand, a process-oriented approach tends to focus on the dramatic medium itself, in which the negotiation, rehearsal, and preparation for

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Page 136 a more informal, or improvisational, in-class dramatic representation becomes the focus for language learning. On the other hand, a product-oriented approach emphasizes the final staging of the students’ public performance, wherein the concluding dramatic realization in front of an audience is viewed as one of the primary goals of the learning experience. This investigation considers the seemingly contradictory nature of these two approaches, briefly outlines their theoretical frameworks, and presents two recent empirical studies for each of these interrelated approaches. This research examines the concept and implementation of what I have termed “essential play.” At the heart of this notion is the belief that foreign-language learning can be enhanced through creative group activities that utilize drama through both the process and production of dramatic activities. The constructivist theories of educators and cognitive psychologists such as Bruner (1996), Gardner (1982), and Vygotsky (1978), and promoters of drama-based education, including Slade (1995), Boal (1979), and Heathcote (1991), greatly inform my perception about the ways in which we acquire a first language and can be taught a second/foreign language. In the case of foreign-language learning, either methodology that makes use of essential play provides many educational opportunities for rehearsing and enacting characteristic representations of the target language and culture. I believe that in many cases both approaches overlap in their actual implementation in the classroom and require elements of “play” that I consider “essential.” A process-approach, which involves the evolution of students’ ideas into some form of dramatic realization, will not inspire that group of students adequately unless learning goals are made visible and tangible through small-scale products , which show participants that an actual audience other than the teacher will ultimately value their efforts. Anyone who has been involved with theater-as-performance understands that a product-oriented approach is actually a collaborative process , and that many stages, or “miniprocesses,’’ occur when a play is interpreted, rehearsed, and performed. In the foreign-language classroom, there are certain conditions that are required for essential play to be an effective addition to the curriculum. Finally, one of the most significant conditions that is integral to essential play is that student motivation is greatly enhanced through exercises and projects that allow the students to benefit from their freedom to cocreate in enjoyable ways— that is, to play . Doing a play, or improvising a dramatic situation, should also mean having fun. My research has been conducted in two separate, though interrelated phases, and examines two levels of Spanishas-a-foreign-language (SFL) students and instructors in two educational settings. The study explores how these two groups of students (one at a secondary school and the other at a liberal arts college) learned about a foreign language and culture when aspects of essential play were actively encouraged. The goal of drama-based education in the foreign-language classroom should be to explore how col-

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Page 137 laborative projects that utilize all kinds of educational drama can enhance foreign language acquisition and become an essential component of the learning process. As educators who are drawn to these methods, we appreciate how learners who are engaged in constructing meanings rather than receiving them can benefit from this form of instruction. Drama-based learning can indeed be very effective for foreign-language learning, and high-caliber theater productions result from the most disadvantaged or inexperienced actors, provided there is good social cohesion among the practitioners (Heath, 1993; Courtney, 1999). There are many worthy activities, methods, strategies and curricular structures for drama-based foreign-language teaching that are used by language teachers and that are considered in this collection of articles on advances in foreign- and second-language pedagogy. The two following descriptions of my recent empirical research illustrate the differences between process- and product-oriented approaches, and reflect on how these pedagogical methods might be integrated in order to bridge some of the divisions between the practices. In addition, some of the issues that distinguish between the realities of secondary and postsecondary levels of foreign-language teaching will be considered. The results from these two concurrent studies were very different—primarily because of the specific dynamics of the groups studied, and my original hope to bring the two groups together in an interinstitutional manner failed to materialize.1 Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that I was an outside investigator who had proposed to the two cooperating teachers that I would assist them with drama-based techniques and methods. At the onset of the projects, neither the high school class nor the college class had educational drama as the central focus of the curriculum. Therefore, I was trying to compel the cooperating teachers and their students to incorporate my notions of essential play and drama-based pedagogy into curricula that had been pre-established. The degree of success that I achieved in both settings is described in the following pages. THE WORKING CONDITIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL DRAMA: PROCESS AND PRODUCT APPROACHES IN PRAXIS Communication occurs at many different levels. In second language acquisition it is vital to teach students both syntax and a lexicon, but how can we teach students of a foreign language about pragmatics and other culturally imbedded communicative competencies? People also use gesture, movement, intonation, inflection, and less overt ways of establishing their relationships and positions of power, both in oral communication and with their bodies. Language is made up of utterances, actions, and reactions, and then of responding to those communicative acts. For this reason, drama-based peda-

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Page 138 gogy in foreign-language acquisition presents intriguing possibilities for students to interpret, rehearse, and embody the target language and culture. Many methods and approaches are available to the teacher of foreign languages, and in fact, a large majority of language teachers have used role-playing and other forms of improvisation in their classrooms. It is my contention that both an open learning environment, which uses such process-oriented approaches, and fully staged theater-based projects offer unique insights into the multiple levels of communication that comprise the human drama. There has been very little written about producing foreign language theater as a method for drama-based pedagogy, though some research exists, and a very small number of teaching publications have explored the benefits of performing texts (Smith, 1984; Miller, 1986; Gaudart, 1990; and Essif, 1998). The terms “product-oriented” and “text-based” are most often used to describe the method of selecting a script, of interpreting that text during rehearsals, and then of staging a performance for an audience beyond the classroom walls. Although a growing number of publications attest to the beneficial outcomes of process approaches to foreign-language teaching, most often in these works there is very little mention of product-oriented approaches. Some recent publications on process-oriented research include Wagner (1998 & 1999) and Kao and O’Neill (1998), and other long-standing practitioners such as Heathcote and Bolton (1995) continue to inform the field of process approaches to educational drama. In addition, in the United Kingdom, Theatre-in-education (TIE) has been evaluated (Redington, 1983), and a wide variety of publications that explore the use of Drama-in-education methods (DIE) have been in circulation for several decades (Wagner, 1976; Slade, 1995 [1963]), all of which has been wonderful advocacy for promoting the potential of process-based educational drama. In the United States and Latin America, various educators, researchers, and theater practitioners have described the benefits of drama-based education for both language acquisition and for social change (Heath, 1993; Boal, 1979). However, the fact remains that there are many foreignlanguage departments in the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world, where teachers and students dedicate tremendous time and energy to the production of theater-as-performance projects, and it is a shame that there has not been more public discussion about the pedagogical and social benefits of these practices. I would agree unhesitatingly that improvisation and other process approaches are frequently very effective, and that they allow learners to interpret the world through both their bodies and voices, in order to practice the gestures, movements, and utterances of the target language and culture in spontaneous and imaginative ways. However, literacy is also at the core of how human beings communicate and situate themselves in relation to one another and over time. We also have the texts of our lives, which are not only written upon our bodies in spontaneous oral communication, but additionally in our classroom assignments, creative writing pieces, and in our great works

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Page 139 of literature. Powerful aesthetic responses can also spring forth from a preconceived text. Serious reflection is required to interpret play scripts, and within those texts are the records of a language and culture, and the memories of past sensibilities and communicative acts. In the social milieu of foreign-language theater, teachers and students are able to portray these texts for their audiences, and to present the richness of the dramatic art form as intercultural speakers and performers. It is my wish, therefore, to expand the definition of the term “educational drama” to include both process- and product-oriented approaches. I believe that the process of doing foreign-language theater, which brings together a variety of methods that I identify as “essential play,” promotes highly productive opportunities for L2 acquisition. Process and product approaches are not opposite ends of a spectrum that are mutually exclusive, nor is one approach superior to the other. A great deal of learning also takes place when the methods of second- or foreignlanguage acquisition through dramatic processes are text-based and product-oriented. I believe that the supposed dichotomy between process-oriented and text-based approaches should not exist. In my own language classes, I have often used approaches that fall under the rubrics of “creative drama,’’ “drama-in-education,” “theater games,” “improvisation,” “process drama,” and “the mantle of the expert.” (Wagner, 1999; Boal, 1994; Heathcote & Bolton, 1995). In the description of the college-level “theater-as-performance” phase of the project, which I describe in greater detail in this chapter, undergraduate students who were involved in a Spanish play production learned not only about the Spanish language but also about the history of Spain, the aesthetics of Golden Age theater, and the dramatic tensions of courtly liaisons, in addition to gaining a better understanding of the many other signifiers inherent in the theater tradition of the target culture. This product-oriented approach and the process that led up to the performance itself were not only intercultural and reflective, but I argue, transformative in scope. Moreover, the learning process that unfolded as the play was studied, interpreted, and rehearsed remained a highly democratic one throughout. A dialogue occurred between the students and professor, among the group of actors, and ultimately, between the actors and the audience. Finally, educational drama in any incarnation can be transformative if the participants are willing to take ownership of the dramatic process and embrace its outcome. My definitions of essential play and educational drama, as well as the two empirical studies that I undertook, were conceived upon the premise that we are all members of what Hornbrook (1998) describes as the “dramatised society.” It was my assumption, therefore, that the students and teachers I worked with would rise to the occasion when they were presented with drama-based projects in their Spanish classes. It was also my expectation that these drama-based projects would allow me to explore further my notion of essential play. I expected to work with the high school students on productions of varying degrees of complexity, and I wanted to investigate the

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Page 140 effectiveness of process- through product-oriented approaches for foreign-language learning. However, the specific circumstances of the learning environments and the particular focal groups presented different opportunities for exploring these aspects of drama methodology. In his book, Hornbrook reflects on how educational drama is a spectrum of approaches, and his preferred term to describe this range is “dramatic art.” Dramatic art encompasses a wide variety of pedagogical and theatrical approaches for students who live in our dramatized society, and Hornbrook’s contention is that drama surrounds us, through the pervasive televised and cinematic performances that we view on our screens, to the visits to the theater we make as audience members, to the roles in society that we assume on the streets. As teachers in a dramatized society, it is important for us to take into account how an intrinsic aesthetic appreciation for drama can be used by students to interpret their world. From open learning environments to text-based instruction, educators should present opportunities for young people to study the ways in which drama defines us as human beings and reveals how we make sense of ourselves and our lives (Hornbrook, 1998). Yet Hornbrook also feels that at the heart of dramatic art is the primary significance of presenting the educational experience to percipients beyond the individual classroom—that is, to share the educational drama with an audience. Production, then, is the making and performing (Hornbrook’s emphasis) of the dramatic text, by writing, improvising, acting or role-playing. It has a meaningful application well beyond the school . . . [and] extends as a category from the construction of make-believe play by infants in the play corner, through the making of more formal improvisations or scripted performances at primary and then secondary level, to devised productions and examination assessment pieces. At its most sophisticated, production may also involve a range of non-acting skills such as lighting, stage-management or administration. (Hornbrook, 1998, 109–10) Consequently, I wanted to explore ways in which the audience, which I also believe is central to educational drama and my notion of essential play, could be included in the students’ drama-based projects. “MANZANAS Y NARANJAS”: A COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO DRAMA-BASED APPROACHES IN TWO DISTINCT SPANISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOMS The metaphor that I use to describe this study is an “apples and oranges” comparison. It suggests that, although there are a number of similarities between the two groups, direct correlations between the two phases of the investigation should not be made. During my research, I had spoken with both the

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Page 141 high school Spanish teacher and the college professor and joked with them about the way that my investigation was turning into a study that was looking at “manzanas y naranjas,’’ once it became fully evident how different the two student groups were from one another, and how far apart the degrees of student accomplishment were regarding the integration of educational drama in the SFL curricula. I knew that the focus of the college-level group would be product-oriented and that this highly motivated group of undergraduates would most likely respond favorably to a text-as-performance project. When I first began to observe and interact with the high school group, it was my strategy to analyze improvisational approaches, though I soon realized I had been overly optimistic that the high school students would respond positively to drama-based approaches in an open learning environment. Initially, and perhaps naively, I had assumed that I would be able use techniques from a process-oriented approach with this group of mostly unmotivated adolescents. Another of my original aspirations was that the highly motivated class of college students would interact with and inspire the high school students, but unfortunately, the two groups were never able to find the time to work together on a single project that would allow them to collaborate. Lave and Wenger (1991) have explored the potential for situated learning, and Vygotsky (1978) has proposed that the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) allows more capable peers to assist relative novices with the development of an apprehension and fluency in a language and culture. Bräuer (2001) has described how a Language Learning Center (LLC) has the potential for motivating high school foreign language students, in addition to strengthening community outreach from the college. In the LLCs, postsecondary students, who perform foreign-language plays, collaborate with secondary-school students, who study the theater-as-performance in tandem with the participants during the rehearsal process and at the final presentation of the work. It was my hope, therefore, that the “apples” at the college would be able to work with the “oranges” at the high school to present an interschool production of Spanishlanguage theater, but time and scheduling constraints made a face-to-face collaboration impossible at any time during the five-month study.2 In the first case study, I planned to provide amendments to the SFL curriculum at the high school that would ask the students to write and then perform their original dramatic representations of their imagined worlds. Early on in the study, the high school Spanish teacher and I both determined that the purest forms of process drama and a completely open learning environment were not suitable for the “Spanish 2” class that I would assist and observe. The group that I chose to work with was a class of lower-level beginners, who were placed in that class rather than the “Spanish 2X” classes (meaning “accelerated”), because they had not done as well as their peers in their first year of Spanish studies. This group of students was composed almost entirely of sophomores, and according to both the teacher’s and their own accounts, this Spanish language class was quite low on the students’ list

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Page 142 of academic priorities. In general, the students’ motivation was rather low, and most were taking Spanish only because they felt that it would “look good” on their transcript for prospective colleges. From the onset, I recognized that this group of students would be a challenge to work with, but I had hoped that the educational drama methods that I wanted to introduce would prove inspirational to the class. Initial exercises with the students confirmed for the teacher and myself that these beginner-level students did not possess a very receptive attitude toward a process approach. Most of the students were very resistant to the spontaneous oral production of Spanish of any kind. Their motivation to form spoken sentences in the target language was low, and much of their previous SFL experience was based on a curriculum that had emphasized the written form of the language, and in which a large portion of their instruction was given in English. Students that I observed in other Spanish classes at the high school were much more willing to speak Spanish than this particular array of students. Therefore, on the continuum of different drama approaches that are described by Kao and O’Neill (1998), it did not seem viable to use a completely open learning environment and a natural/spontaneous process approach with this group of adolescents. Improvisation at the beginner level is possible, of course, but when students are reluctant to take on the risks and the responsibilities involved in the spontaneous production of their second language, the possibilities for a process approach to language instruction become much more limited. The teacher and I decided to relinquish the process-oriented approaches that I had originally hoped to introduce into the lessons in order to provide more closed and controlled drama approaches that were grounded in literacy practices. Instead of improvisation and open scenarios, the students developed “minidramas,” which began with the composition of original scripts that the students were asked to memorize and to present as short scripted role-plays.3 The second case study involved a group of undergraduate students at a liberal arts college who were involved with a very different kind of drama-based learning experience. The scope of the intervention in the curriculum was, from the start, designed to be text-based and product-oriented and to culminate in a public performance of scenes from a classical work of early seventeenth-century Spanish theater. The students were upper-level undergraduates, many of whom were either majoring or minoring in Spanish. All possessed an ability in the language that ranged from upperintermediate to very advanced. Most importantly, the students were highly motivated and had eagerly enrolled in the Golden Age theater course to learn about the Spanish language and culture. The professor conducted the classes entirely in Spanish, and the difficulty of the literature studied and the sophistication of the literary discussions were very high. Moreover, the focus of the course was the literary text, and specifically Spanish Renaissance drama play scripts, which pre-

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Page 143 sented the appealing possibility of rehearsing and staging a performance of one of the plays from the syllabus. Throughout the entire project, the students remained personally involved in the regular class meetings and were fully committed to the success of the final production as a collective group of dramatic artists. The staging of the play, La Dama Duende, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, became the primary focus of the course. It consumed everyone involved. It became the heart and soul of what the Spanish literature class evolved into that term. One key aspect that led to the success of the experience was that the students took ownership of the play during the process of rehearsals and, to a degree, of the course itself. In the end, the instructor was compelled to share a fair amount of her power as the director as the time approached to stage the performance. At various times during the rehearsal process, different members of the ensemble took on the role of director and met with their classmates to rehearse the difficult scenes that were to be performed. Ultimately, at the very end of the term the professor had to adapt her original plans for the course syllabus to accommodate the demands of the live performance, which far outweighed the later reading and writing assignments that the students had originally been asked to complete to fulfill the requirements of the course. The theater-as-performance experience was product-oriented, but the result of the Spanish language theater production was that the class became even more democratically organized and energized because of the rehearsal and staging process of the play. In the succeeding sections, I consider in greater detail the differences between these two groups and illustrate how a product-oriented approach was highly successful with the college students, and moderately successful with the high school students. I also propose some suggestions for ways in which some process approaches might be integrated into these types of foreign-language classrooms to raise motivation even further. I do not claim that the lack of success with the high school phase of the study can be solely blamed on the students’ indifference to their Spanish studies. There were interventions that I, as the researcher and coinstructor, could have made to improve the overall performance of the high school students. As a teacher who is concerned about the education of young people, I constantly strive to reevaluate my methods to find ways to raise the level of motivation of the students I work with, and specifically, to determine how I might be able to do that with educational drama. THE UNRAVELING OF A PROCESS: THE FRUSTRATIONS AND DEFICITS OF RESISTANT LEARNERS One of my key aims of the investigation was to study how educational drama would be perceived and appreciated by the secondary school students

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Page 144 and their teacher. Because of my former experiences with the use of educational drama in my own classes at the postsecondary level with college-aged students, I was confident that the product-oriented approach for the Spanish literature class at the college would be effectively integrated into the curriculum. However, the high school students in that particular beginner-level Spanish class were an unknown factor. I was not certain how a process-oriented approach would work with these adolescents at the secondary level. My disappointment at how halfheartedly the students responded to drama-based approaches confirmed for me that there is no methodological silver bullet that can inspire all students at all times. During the first weeks of my research, I worked primarily as an observer of the educational setting and began to integrate myself into the class by participating in more conventional classroom activities, such as helping the students to review for quizzes and exams, to prepare for homework assignments, and to advise them during their inclass compositions. The students had to take a certain number of tests to fulfill the assessment procedures of the program, and these requirements at the high school presented relatively little flexibility for any significant educational drama amendments to be added to the Spanish 2 curriculum. The instructor was very enthusiastic about introducing the minidramas into the curriculum, but there were other more traditional components of the curriculum, such as fill-in-the-blank quizzes and standardized examinations, that were still considered necessary by the teacher, and quite surprisingly, by the students also. As I continued my observations, on several occasions students told me that they preferred taking tests to writing original dialogues and memorizing their lines for their in-class performances. These students were accustomed to a more passive form of learning, and many did not want to have the agency that is encouraged through student-centered educational drama. The drama-based approaches to the Spanish 2 class, therefore, remained partially integrated rather than central to the course design. Fleming (1998) writes that the purpose of using drama in the language classroom is to exploit its fullest potential. Rather than remain a contingent method, educational drama has the potential to affect the learning process more profoundly because “‘learning a foreign language’ changes to ‘learning a foreign language in a way which focuses on the richness and complexity of human behaviour’ or, to put it another way, it is to approach language in its cultural context” (Fleming, 1998, 149). If students are willing to embrace the cultural richness of a foreign language, then educational drama can serve to become integral to the outcome of language learning in its cultural context. However, try as we might, the teacher and I had difficulty demonstrating by any means the value of learning a foreign language to our resistant learners in that specific class. Process drama can be very effectual in L1 situations, even with participants who are considered highly challenging, such as disadvantaged inner-city students, incarcerated youth, or sworn political enemies (Wagner, 1976; Boal,

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Page 145 1979; Kohl, 1998). In addition, students who have a sufficiently advanced proficiency in a second or foreign language, and whose motivation to participate in the process drama is high, have the potential to benefit greatly from an open learning environment (Heath, 1993; Sánchez, 1993). However, when both proficiency and motivation are low, the prospect of process-oriented approaches being successful in the L2 classroom seems to become more remote. Most students in the Spanish 2 class I worked with had very limited lexicons. During in-class grammar activities, the students would answer the teacher’s prompts with single words in Spanish, but it was very uncommon for students to make the effort to construct complete sentences in Spanish. Any conversation between the students was in English. There were only a few students who were more willing to take occasional risks with their foreign language. Nevertheless, I hoped that the theater games and improvisational activities that I had used with my older students in other L2 classes would prove inspirational for the high school students too. However, several attempts at theater games in Spanish were not well received by the class. I decided that as members of the “dramatized society’’ I must find a way to inspire the students, and one of the resources that exists at the high school seemed to point toward a likely site for student performances, and one that would allow the minidramas to be viewed by a prospective audience beyond the classroom walls. Due to the advent of electronic mass media in this past century, we have become saturated in the dramatic structures of theater as never before. Young people in the early twenty-first century are enthusiastic spectators of dramatic fictions. Television presents theatrically-based dramatizations to a voracious audience of consumers, and it was with this belief in mind that I hoped to tap into the dramatic desires of the students at the high school. The high school has a cable-access television studio located in the basement of the building, and the staff at the station are always eager to assist students from the school with projects that can be broadcast to the local community. I hoped that the Spanish 2 students would be inspired by a series of their own minidramas that would be taped in and then broadcast from the cable-access television studio. I thought that if these students were able to work together to generate their original creative texts, that they might experience a process of collective knowledge production that would allow them to consider perspectives other than their own (Sleeter, 1995). The teacher and I decided that we would use product-oriented, drama-based approaches in two phases. The first exercise asked the students to work in pairs to write interview-style dialogues with famous people, and to perform for their peers in the classroom. The second assignment, scheduled closer to the end of the school year, required the students to collaborate in smallgroup work. These groups were asked to write and rehearse minidramas that would be videotaped and transmitted to friends and family members via the medium of television. The teacher and I had decided that the interviews would be appropriate for the class because at that point in the academic year the grammatical focus

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Page 146 was on forming questions and utilizing the past tense. There were certain basic structures of the language that the students had to study and requirements of the curriculum that had to be completed, and it was our desire to find creative ways for the students to practice these skills. The students also needed to be assessed on their performance in the dramatized interviews, and the teacher and I designed a rubric that we used to evaluate the students, which included these categories: fluency and comprehensibility, pronunciation, memorization, and presentation. Our goal was to make the students successfully use the grammatical and lexical structures that were required at this level of study in imaginative ways that would allow the participants to become more personally involved in their assignments. The students were told that the interviewer should not reveal the identity of the interviewee through the line of questions, so that the listeners would need to listen carefully to guess the identity of that famous person. An additional part of each student’s grade was to write a short composition describing one of the interviews that the student had witnessed as a member of the audience. The teacher had decided that this component of the interview project was necessary to make certain that the entire class actually paid attention to their classmates’ performances, as the tendency was for the listeners’ attention to drift during any oral presentations. Finally, it was our assumption that through the memorization of the texts of the scripts, the students would learn the vocabulary and grammar more thoroughly than through the usual classroom methods of teacher-centered instruction and traditional examination procedures. In order to model what we hoped the students would aspire to do in their minidramas, the teacher, myself, and a student teacher (who was doing her teaching practicum with the cooperating teacher), wrote our own original script, memorized our lines, and then performed our interview skit in front of the students. We demonstrated how to use props and basic costumes to enhance the presentation, as well as to articulate the personality of the famous person who was being interviewed. Part of the reason for this was to make the interview performances more theatrical, but also to determine which students were willing to put forth more effort. Our performance was also meant to scaffold for the students the desired results we hoped they would achieve. Clearly, this kind of involvement in the educational drama is not the teacher-in-role model that Heathcote has advocated for process approaches. We had decided that we would see how well the students worked in pairs for this first project, and then determine what kind of dramabased project would be appropriate for the television studio. The results of these first enactments were as follows. As I have described, the ability to improvise Spanish was very limited for most of the students. The students who were in the role of the interviewers had more responsibility to memorize their lines. A few of the students who acted as the interviewees did, in fact, react spontaneously to questions from their partners, but most stuck with their written scripts. Of the twenty-two students, only four pairs

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Page 147 made the effort to include some basic prop and original costume, which suggested the personality of the well-known interviewee. More importantly, after nearly two weeks of preparation time, only about half the students had actually made the effort to memorize their lines. The other half used note cards to varying degrees to remind themselves of their questions and responses in Spanish. In the final evaluation, the teacher and I concurred that only a small number of the students had done very well with their short skits, and unfortunately, a majority of the students in the class had performed rather poorly due to a minimal amount of effort. However, another reason for the weak showing was that many of the students had never worked closely with their partners before this assignment. Some of the learners had been placed in pairs with classmates whom they did not know very well, and the social cohesion that we hoped to establish failed to materialize in many cases. The second minidrama with the Spanish 2 class did not commence immediately after the first drama-based project, and it was not until the final three weeks of the school year that the teacher and I were able to get the students to work on their scripts and to prepare for their performances in the TV studio. For this project, we told the students that they could select their partners, and many did, in fact, choose to work with friends. Yet it was quite surprising to me, that even by the end of May, some of the class members still did not know one another by name, and this lack of social cohesion within the class undoubtedly had a strong impact upon the degree of ownership that the students made toward their collective work. As we had done with the scripted interviews, the instructor, the teaching intern, and I worked with each of the groups to assist them with the development of their original scripts. During the first week, as the groups composed their stories, we brainstormed ideas with each group, and attempted to foreground the importance of performance concerns, such as dramatic tension and character development. The students continued to work on their scripts during the second week, and some groups began to rehearse their scenes. At the end of the third week (at the beginning of June), we began our videotaping sessions in the television studio. It was when we were actually in the studio that a number of the students, in fact, gradually began to take a stronger interest in their dramatizations. Yet overall, the qualitative results of the television dramas were similar to the interview skits, for although some of the students had memorized their scripts, many others still relied on cue cards to recall their lines. Similar to the previous scripted role-plays, a large portion of the students in the class had put forth a minimal amount of effort, and only a few students had made a substantial effort to participate fully in the dramatic process.4 One reason for this was that the students had not gotten together to rehearse their minidramas outside of class time. Theater-asperformance requires that participants spend extra hours beyond regular class time to rehearse a text, and the teacher and I had only recommended that the students practice their scripted role-plays outside of class, rather than set up and

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Page 148 enforce extracurricular rehearsals. In addition, this last phase of the study was far too rushed to be as effective as it might have been. In hindsight, we should have spent more time rehearsing in the TV studio space, and we should not have waited until the final weeks of the school year to enact this project. All in all, any successful drama-based methodology requires focus from the participants, and many of the students did not give the project their full attention and dedication. As my investigation unraveled, I determined that the realities associated with this particular class and the structure of the investigation were impinging upon the optimistic goals that I had set for myself at the beginning of the intervention. First, I had hoped to use a range of educational drama approaches with the high school students, but I had to abandon improvisational process-oriented approaches and focus only on text-based approaches. Second, educational drama never was a central focus of the class, and the students never felt that their scripted role-plays and their final dramatizations were as important to the class as their grades on traditional quizzes and tests. Third, I must also concede that I did not provide enough structure and definition for the second drama-based project. I should have clarified from the very beginning of the term, for both the cooperating teacher and the students, what would be necessary for more successful TV productions at the end of the term. Furthermore, I should have spent more time in the TV studio with the students in order to call to their attention the potential of the electronic medium, to build trust, and to encourage them to apply one of the principles of essential play—namely, that they should have fun with the assignment. In some groups this commitment to the dramatic production was beginning to form, but in others it remained absent. Finally, the students’ problematic attitude toward foreign-language learning made it very difficult to involve them with either of the educational drama projects. This lack of motivation seems to exist in many foreign-language environments in secondary and elementary schools, and must, therefore, be taken into consideration by language teachers who aspire to use process- or product-oriented approaches. In this regard a key question remains: If students do not care about the target language and culture, how much effect can teachers with the best intentions and the most innovative drama-based pedagogy still have upon these kinds of students? It is absolutely crucial that the participants of any foreign-language learning situation must possess high motivation to learn the target language in order for a drama-based methodology, or any other pedagogical practice, to be effective. THE UNFOLDING OF A TEXT: THE INTERPRETATION AND PERFORMANCE OF A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SPANISH-LANGUAGE PLAY The Spanish Golden Age theater course occurred over a ten-week term, and the professor and I had determined prior to the start of the course that we

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Page 149 would collaborate together with the students to produce a shortened version of one of the full-length plays that was to be studied during the term. Throughout the project, we made no use of process-oriented approaches with the students. Our goal from the start was to rehearse and to stage a public performance of a play. The professor and I both wanted to present a work of dramatic art that not only would heighten the learning experience for the students enrolled in the course but would connect the department with the greater community beyond the classroom. During the first three weeks of the term, the professor and I discussed which play would be the best one to produce and what would be needed to stage the play. There was a great deal of preparation required to organize this theater-asperformance project.5 It is important to stress that the readings for the course were written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in Spain, and that, at first, these texts were extremely difficult for the students to understand. Consequently, at the start of the course there was a great deal of time devoted to lectures, as befitted the material. The professor shared a wealth of information that not only addressed the linguistic and aesthetic interpretations of these archaic texts, but also considered the cultural context of Golden Age theater in Spain at that time. The college students began to gain a much clearer understanding of the intricacies of the Spanish court of that era, of the ways of romance and the honor system that influenced the time. They also gathered knowledge on the historical background of the theater profession and of the playwrights who achieved success in their field. The students were also informed at the start of the course that they would be acting in a fully-staged performance of a play, a requirement that had not been included in the course description at the time of their enrollment. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, not one student chose to drop the course. Through later interviews with the students, I learned that there had initially been concern on the part of some of the students, because of the nine members of the class, only two had previous experience in the theater. The majority of the students were novices. However, their initial doubts or fears diminished as the group built an incredibly strong sense of social cohesion and worked together to embody and to perform the process of collective knowledge production that Sleeter describes (1995). Unlike the modest glimpses of effective educational drama at the high school I witnessed, these college students rose to meet the challenges of the negotiation and interpretation of a very complex text. By week three of the term we had determined that we would stage La Dama Duende ( The Phantom Lady) and that we would perform the play in the student center on a date that fell several weeks before the end of the term. This meant that we had only about four weeks to cast, rehearse, and stage the live performance of the play. It has been my experience that most theater-as-performance projects require at least six weeks to rehearse and stage, and therefore, we had to find a way to amend our production to allow us to prepare a performance by our opening. We knew that we had to condense the length

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Page 150 of the five-act play to three shorter acts, and the group decided that we should add the character of Calderón de la Barca, the playwright, to the cast, and that we present the play as a “rehearsal.” In order to fill in the missing sections of the full-length play, the actor who played Calderón read several introductions to the scenes for the audience, and was also present on stage the night of the performance so that the other student actors could receive any necessary prompts. In that way, both the flow and spirit of the play were kept intact. The professor had never actually directed a play herself, and therefore, the text unfolded in a variety of ways, as the opinions and experiences of the members of the group who had written and performed in theater contributed to the collective production of knowledge. This experience is what Lave and Wenger describe as situated learning (1991) and, in a sense, the class collective did undergo a process approach in an open learning environment, even though we never abandoned the literary text and we were working toward a product that would be shared with an audience. Moreover, although the class had been designed by the professor to consider the role of monarchy in seventeenthcentury Spain, the professor was not an absolute monarch in the role of the single director who exercised total power and control over her actors. The class was a highly democratic one, and the rehearsal process was played out in a variety of stages and subgroups who met for many hours outside of regular class time. Within a group of actors and a director, there is a great deal of questioning at each stage of textual interpretation. This kind of critical and collaborative interaction is at the heart of the rehearsal process. Language learners who do theater-related projects negotiate and create a new reality with their interlocutors, and the participants must always be concerned about their audience, who will ultimately view their constructed reality. As always, there are subtexts to consider beyond the text that the playwright composed in the lines of the play. There are the complex personalities of the characters that the actors must try to embody on the stage. There are the reactions that actors must incorporate into the dramatic dialogue, even when the characters do not always have spoken utterances. Students become aware of how facial expressions and gestures can present emotions and ways of communication to the audience. Theater performance forces actors to question every nuance of language. Calderón’s script says nothing specifically about what tone of voice the characters should use in their interactions, nor what props would be useful to include for the actors to manipulate. The language of this play can be translated and understood by the student participants and directors in a wide variety of ways. The context of each scene and the depth of the characters’ multifaceted personalities force the students to look much more closely at both the Spanish language and culture, and to make informed decisions about how to “unfold” the play script. Obviously, the script does contain some language that can be clearly interpreted as comedic or romantic, but this language is often obfuscated by the fact that the play was written in a style

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Page 151 of Spanish prose that is the equivalent of how distinct Shakespearean English is from modern English. The interpretation of the play text was therefore done by every member of the group, but special attention to amend our final version of the script was made by the professor and the student in the class who played the role of Calderón. First, the class as a whole read the play and discussed which were the most vital scenes that should be kept in order to maintain the integrity of the story, and also which would be most entertaining to perform for our audience. After these group discussions, the professor, “Calderón,’’ and I met on a number of occasions to discuss how to edit further these key scenes from the play. The professor and the student who played Calderón became our dramaturgs, and the other students from the class were busily rehearsing their scenes in smaller groups, finding the time in very busy schedules to run lines with each other and try out different movements and gestures. Thus, the process of interpreting our product unfolded. Clearly, there were many substantial differences between the abilities and performances of the college students and the high school students. Obviously, motivation was the primary distinction that separated the successes of the Golden Age play with the frustrations of the minidramas at the high school. Closely connected to individual student motivation is the importance that the development of group social cohesion has for effective educational drama. During the process of rehearsing and staging La Dama Duende, there were risks taken by the students, and a large degree of mutual trust was built between the student actors, the professor, and myself as we tested ways in which to interpret this difficult text. A very important factor in the process of creating good social cohesion is another crucial aspect of my notion of essential play—doing a play means playing. There is a tremendous amount of hard work and dedication that goes into putting on a play, but there is also a fair amount of fun and laughter that is an essential part of learning a foreign or second language through theater. Teachers who hope to use educational drama in their foreign-language classes need to present their students with a “no-penalty zone,” which allows for the correction of errors without the threat of getting graded (Heathcote, 1991). As the time rapidly approached for the final performance, the magic of the theater began to unfold in stages. Another professor from the Spanish department, who has a great deal of experience as a theater director, conducted a workshop with the students to begin blocking the first scene of the play. This term, “blocking,” refers to the process of experimenting with and deciding upon the physical movements of the actors’ bodies, and determining how these actions elucidate the language of the text. For the first time, many of the students could see how the two-dimensional script could be embodied by actors moving in the three-dimensional space of a stage and in relation to one another. The next important transformation occurred when the students had progressed far enough with the memori-

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Page 152 zation of their lines to get “off book.” An actor cannot really act as naturally if a script is still being held in that actor’s hands (though staged readings, where scripts are still used, can also be very effective stagings of productoriented dramas). Naturally, most people tend to use their hands a great deal when they speak. We also began to incorporate props into the rehearsals, because we knew that certain objects were necessary for certain scenes. For example, as the rehearsals developed, the actor who played Doña Ángela practiced using a fan as a prop to indicate her nervousness and to flirt with her suitor. The Spanish fan is also an object that is an authentic means of illustrating the time period of this play. The next stage of development came about when we began to hold rehearsals in a lecture theater that had an actual stage space for the student actors to move upon. Next, less than a week before their public performance, the students were fitted for their seventeenth-century costumes, which had been rented from a local costume shop. This factor lent a great deal of authenticity to the theater experience for the students, and from that moment on, and leading up to their final performance, the students began to inhabit their characters completely. Finally, the students were able to understand how life could be breathed into a Golden Age text when they viewed a visiting professional theater company, who had been invited to perform at the college on the evening prior to the students’ own production. This company also performed in Spanish, and enacted scenes and dances from other Golden Age Spanish theater works. As percipients of a professional product, the students found the experience both inspirational and educational. I believe that it was this final dialogue that occurred between the students as audience members and the professional actors on stage that helped to make the final performance so essential and engaging. It was only after a month of readings and rehearsals, which involved many extra hours beyond class time, that the participants became fully comfortable in their roles. We were not able to meet together on a daily basis, as the students had many other academic commitments that precluded their undivided attention to this project. However, in order to memorize their lines and the blocking, the student actors had to meet very regularly to be able to commit so many words and actions to memory. The amount of effort that they put into the play, especially in the final days leading up to the public performance, was remarkable. The professor and I had chosen not to act in the production of La Dama Duende as “teachers-in-role” during this product-oriented project. Our collective interpretation of the play script was, in many ways, led by the professor, but her role was more that of a facilitator of the development of the dramatic art form we were exploring, rather than as an absolute director, who mandated exactly what the actors must do on stage. Each scene of the play was elucidated by the collective that made up our Spanish-language theater group. In addition, another more practical reason that the professor and I did not act was because the professor was busy in her

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Page 153 role as dramaturg, and I was occupied with my roles as producer and artistic director. We not only wanted to maintain a democratic atmosphere, but we needed to delegate and share responsibilities in order to realize a successful theatrical production. Indisputably, the college students learned a tremendous amount about a very different culture and about a foreign language in much more profound ways than could have been achieved through a traditional literature course. Dramatic art and educational drama have the potential to do this. Our cultural membership is diverse and the forms with which we are familiar and which tell us who we are, are often contradictory. It is here that the dramatic aesthetic most powerfully engages, for it is able to connect us with history in ways which liberate our understanding, while simultaneously (and necessarily) connecting us to the communities of value and meaning by which we make sense of our lives. (Hornbrook, 1998, 131, emphasis mine) Hornbrook goes on to write that theatrical forms of the past “continue to provide us with the paradigms against which our lives are sorted, judged and given meaning’’ (p. 111). Interpreting a text is a complex process, and in a foreign/second language culture, it is rich with possibility for the teacher of language and literature. CONCLUSION: A PROCESS OF PRODUCTION Educational drama covers a range of approaches, and the specific concerns of each classroom will compel the use of certain methods to motivate specific groups of students. In my research, I found that an open process-oriented approach was not appropriate for the high school class. As I have explained, for many of the high school students I worked with, foreign-language studies were not their primary concern, and therefore, most did not possess an abundant sense of personal involvement with the drama-based activities. The curriculum of the class still focused on testing and drill-based activities, and although the drama activities were welcomed by the teacher, the drama remained peripheral to the instruction and for the students. All in all, there was not a strong sense of social cohesion within the group. As a visiting researcher, I determined that the best option for any educational drama intervention was to focus on scripted role-plays, in order to present the students with miniprocesses that led to the composition and the performances of their theater products. The college students, who worked very well as a collective of learners, underwent a process of interpretation that culminated in the play production. The class was not a completely open learning environment, which transpires in some process-oriented approaches, but the text of the play was the starting point for steps in an interpretation that involved theater games,

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Page 154 improvisation, and ultimately, a version of the play that the students themselves had cowritten. Thus, I believe that it is indispensable that product-oriented approaches are taken into serious consideration within the range of drama-based methods available to foreign-language teachers, not as a substitute for process approaches, but as a inherent option for drama-based pedagogy. It is important to advocate and make use of both process- and product-based approaches, but realistic concerns about the application and limitations of either approach must be admitted. Not all students in elementary and secondary schools are enthusiastic about their foreign-language (or other) classes, and of course, college students can also suffer from a lack of enthusiasm about their learning process. Sometimes the most imaginative drama-based method will run afoul of uncooperative and unmotivated students. At other times the structure of a curriculum will preclude the full implementation of any educational drama. The working conditions that I have described for the educational drama intervention at the high school were not optimal. Yet I should have sought more alternatives to emphasize the aspects of essential play that I espouse. Process-oriented approaches have been used to great success by other educators who have found ways to motivate and teach foreign language students. Yet in certain situations, product-oriented approaches may be more well-suited to the curriculum, especially when supported fully by the instrutor. It is very important to change approaches if necessary, as well as to combine these approaches where it is advantageous. Regardless of the degree of success that we achieved in the high school setting, I am convinced that the college students experienced many forms of fulfillment during the unfolding of the theater project in the literature class. This is because we were able to implement elements of essential play during our collective interpretation of the text. Central to the success of the college project was the way in which that group of students forged a sense of comradery, built mutual trust, and generally, “played well” with one another. There were a number of levels where this play happened, and there are many instances that represent a rich aggregation of learning experiences for analysis. Above all, in the earlier stages of the process, friendships began to form between the students who acted in scenes together, as the extra rehearsals were held and the students practiced the blocking of the love scenes, the fight scenes, and the comedic aspects of the play. Body and language were exercised regularly in the evolution of the text into the vivacious representation of scenes from the seventeeth century, as it was interpreted by the students and instructors from the twenty-first century, and presented for their contemporary audience. The students embodied the text with some of the essence of themselves—both individually and collectively. They looked deeply into the reasons for their characters’ motivations and relationships, and by doing so, gained a much more profound understanding of Golden Age theater and of themselves. During the last day leading up to the final performance, the entire

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Page 155 group worked together to arrange the theater space, paint set pieces, organize stage management duties, finalize costume and makeup preparations, and to embrace one another before the lights went up on the stage. Finally, a communal sense of pride and respect was established as the full meaning of the play was revealed in the enactment for the audience. As foreign-language teachers, we need to try to inspire young people with the magic that is present in the creation of dramatic art, and this can occur in the classroom, on a public stage, or through drama-based projects that use electronic media and present recordings and textual descriptions of performances to live or subsequent audiences (Sánchez, 1993). There are a variety of ways to connect educational institutions, and although face-to-face forms of collaboration in educational drama situations are ideal methods for collaboration, there are other very fulfilling foreign-language activities that allow secondary and postsecondary students to work together on creative projects. Advances in various electronic media, such as radio, video, television, and Internet-mediated communication, are also potential means for transmitting drama-based undertakings between foreign-language teachers and students.6 Moreover, we should strive to build bridges between secondary and postsecondary institutions so that foreignlanguage theater projects can become the common ground for a wide variety of students to share in the process of the production of educational drama (Bräuer, 2001). Augusto Boal describes how artists and teachers should be like magicians who share their knowledge of a process of transformation and a product of the imagination with their astounded audiences. He writes that these alchemists of transformation “should do their magic to enchant us, then they should teach us their tricks. This is also how artists should be—we should be creators and also teach the public how to be creators, how to make art, so that we may all use that art together.” (Boal, 1992, 29) Theater presents a social matrix that is “continuously being played out and reformulated by human agents on the multiplicious stages of the dramatised society” (Hornbrook, 1998, 124). Essential play and educational drama present possibilities for people to interact with and to interpret cultural and linguistic structures through both process- and product-based approaches to foreign-language acquisition. The process of drama is rich with potential for transformative learning through the living art of theater production. As educators who make use of educational drama, we continually need to find ways to motivate our students to be creators, and to instruct them by employing both the magic and the practicalities of these pedagogical approaches. NOTES 1. The high school curriculum was much less flexible than the college course, which is one of the situations that usually distinguishes secondary school from postsecondary educational settings. Literature was the first concern of the college professor, and not

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Page 156 language learning, although language and cultural acquisition go hand in hand with literature studies in a foreign language. Language learning was the primary concern of the high school teacher, though learning language in its cultural context was also very important to the Spanish 2 teacher, as well. As I was not the instructor of either class, I could not mandate any fundamental curricular changes that would require collaboration between the high school students and college students on a drama-based project that was interinstitutional. I believe that there is tremendous potential for this kind of collaborative learning situation, which would present opportunities for “situated learning” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and ‘‘scaffolding” (Bruner, 1996). The kind of “action research” that Wagner (1999) calls for is another way in which teachers who use educational drama in their own classrooms can publish their findings to advocate for the field of drama-based pedagogy. 2. Later in the academic year I observed a collaborative educational drama project that was made between members of the drama department at the college and a group of drama students at another local high school in the area. This project was conducted in the participants’ first language, English, and involved a process-oriented approach, which led to a public presentation of the students’ original minidramas. I was encouraged by what I was able to observe during that collaborative project, and believe that there is a great deal of potential for these kinds of interinstitutional learning experiences. These kinds of projects require the commitment of the teachers and students at both the secondary and postsecondary sites, and a great deal of preplanning, as well as the sharing of time and resources at both sites. Bräuer (2001) explains how Language Learning Centers have the potential to bridge the gaps that often exist between high schools and colleges, and he proposes practical ways in which the rich process of staging foreign-language theater at a postsecondary institution can be shared with secondary school students. The actual Spanish translation for the English metaphor of apples and oranges is: “ser como la noche y el día” (to be like night and day), although I believe that this does not quite capture the comparison that I wish to make between the two studies. Night and day are oppositional in many ways, and night is often associated with more negative images and may suggest fear or an absence of illumination. The “apples and oranges” metaphor is used to make a comparison between two things that are quite different in many ways yet share a basic similarity (they both are fruit). Moreover, apples and oranges are nutritious, contain the seeds of the plant, and when mixed together, make a delicious and refreshing nectar. 3. I will concede that, according to some advocates of process-oriented approaches to educational drama, writing scripts and using product-oriented approaches may seem contrary to the concepts of an open learning environment. However, Booth (1998) discusses the value of role-driven writing and describes how improvisational drama functions very well as a prewriting activity. These prewriting activities then provide opportunities for collective writing and collaborative work on scripts, along with revising and editing, all of which occur inside the context of the scripted drama. Cecily O’Neill has long been a supporter of process approaches to composition and foreign-language learning, and suggests that improvisation and writing are not mutually exclusive exercises (Kao & O’Neill, 1998). Although the high school students did not construct their scenes through a series of process-style improvisations, they did cowrite their original scripts and go through various stages of revising and editing their scripted dramas. As I describe in later sections of this investigation, there were different forms of improvisation that both the high school and college students produced after they had memorized and blocked the scenes of the rehearsed texts.

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Page 157 4. It is important to clarify that the high school students were not able to work consistently on the interview skits, nor did they focus solely on the TV studio minidramas. The teacher still had to spend a lot of time on the regular grammar lessons that she was required to cover in the curriculum, and there were regular interruptions to the educational drama interventions that precluded me from focusing solely on drama-based methods in either phase of the project. One of the greatest shortcomings of the study at the high school was this lack of consistency between the drama method and the content of the class. Changes to the structure of the curriculum and to the educational drama methodology could have been made. For example, grammar drills could have been used as part of the drama setting. The difficulty with the implementation of the second phase of the project proved especially problematic in the cable-access television studio when the end of the school year was approaching and the students’ sights were set on getting out of school and beginning their summer vacations. Adolescents in secondary school do not seem very focused on their academic work at the end of the school year. The second phase of the project should have been implemented earlier in the term. 5. A tremendous amount of time is required outside of the regular class time to prepare and stage a production. Smith (1984) has written about the process of staging ESL/EFL theater, and he underscores the fact that many hours are needed to rehearse and to present public performances of product-oriented drama. During the first few weeks of the ten-week term at the college, I was very busy in my role as producer and artistic director. This production was the first time in a number of years that the Spanish department had worked on a play, and I was developing connections with the drama department at the college. The student actors, the professor, and myself all worked extremely hard leading up to the final performance. Other members of the Spanish department assisted us with various elements of the theater process (publicity, lighting, sound). Collaboration occurred beyond the classroom, as well. One aspect of the project design that could have been done differently was that we spent too much time debating which Golden Age play would be the best to produce, and this was one nondemocratic decision that should have been made from the very beginning of the term. 6. I have also found that there is an inherent theatricality to electronic media, and through the wonders of technology, some aspects of theater can be made accessible in the digital form of a Web site. Perhaps the high school students’ motivation might have improved if they had been able to follow the progression of the college students’ production on line, and if specific tasks had been wedded to the digitized scenes. There are many ways in which collaboration can occur between schools and individuals through electronic media. Web sites also may serve to provide a record of a theater performance, which can be accessed by viewers who are able not to attend the live event. Theater is fleeting by its very nature, though some record of the ephemeral nature of live performance can be captured by videotape and revisited through digitized images and descriptive passages. Electronic text and images are a way of involving other kinds of audiences in the theater experience (Carson, 1997). Burk (1998) and Laurel (1993) have written about the theatricality of synchronous computermediated communication and have considered computers as theater. I was able to explore the concept of “digital theater” through a foreign language educational drama project that was sponsored by the Berkeley Language Center at the University of California at Berkeley. An archive of this theater-as-performance experience exists in the form of a Web site, and the URL for this BLC fellowship project is: http://www.itp.berkeley.edu/~sp109. In addition to radio and television (broadcast media), digital media present many other very

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Page 158 intriguing possibilities for educational drama and the dramatized society. On the internet, all the world’s a stage. At the college, our theater-as-performance experience certainly lived on in the memories of the audience members and most assuredly, the memories of the experience still resonate in the minds of the student actors and directors. Over time, however, these memories fade. Computers and video recordings have the potential to archive live theater experiences for future audience viewing. However, despite the intriguing potential of “digital theater,” a Web site is not able to convey to the (conceivably larger) audience the emotions and visceral interactions that are transferred between actors on a stage and the members of the audience who watch, listen to, and feel a performance. Live theater is completely dialogic in its scope. Therefore, although I believe that there are many benefits for language and literature instruction that can be derived from a Web site, no technology can replace the depth of human association that occurs when people interact with one another face-to-face, work on a creative project together, and then share that collaborative endeavor with a live audience. REFERENCES Boal, Augusto. (1979). Theatre of the oppressed. Charles A. & Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (Trans.). New York: Theatre Communications Group. ——. (1994). Games for actors and non-actors. Adrian Jackson (Trans.). New York: Routledge. Booth, David. (1998). Language power through working in role. In Betty Jane Wagner (Ed.), Educational drama and language arts: What research shows (pp. 57–76). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Bräuer, Gerd. (2001). Language learning centers: Bridging the gap between high school and college. In Gerd Bräuer (Ed.). Pedagogy of language learning in higher education (pp. 185–192). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing. Bruner, Jerome. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burk, Juli. (1998). The play’s the thing: Theatricality and the MOO environment. In Cynthia Haynes & Jan Rune Holmevik (Eds.). High wired: On the design, use and theory of educational MOOs (pp. 232–249). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Carson, Christine. (1997). Drama and theatre studies in the multimedia age: Reviewing the situation. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 12(4), 269–275. Courtney, Richard. (1999). A lifetime of drama teaching and research. In Betty Jane Wagner (Ed.). Building moral communities through educational drama (pp. 205–215 ). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing. DiPietro, Robert J. (1982). The concept of personal involvement in foreign language study. Los Angeles. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 227684.) Essif, Les. (1998). Teaching literary-dramatic texts as culture-in-process in the foreign language theater practicum: The strategy of combining texts. ADFL Bulletin, 29(3), 24–33. Fleming, Michael. (1998). Cultural awareness and dramtic art forms. In Michael Byram & M. Fleming (Eds.), Language learning in intercultural perspective: Approaches through drama and ethnography (pp. 147–157). New York: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, Howard. (1991). The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books. ——. (1982). Art, mind, and brain: A cognitive approach to creativity. New York: Basic Books.

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Page 159 Gaudart, Hyacinth. (1990). Using drama techniques in language teaching. Malaysia. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 366197.) Heath, Shirley Brice. (1993). Inner city life through drama: Imagining the language classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 27 (2), 177–192. Heathcote, Dorothy. (1991). Collected writings on education and drama . Liz Johson & Cecily O’Neill (Eds.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Heathcote, Dorothy, & Gavin Bolton. (1995). Drama for learning: Dorothy Heathcote’s mantle of the expert approach to education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. ——. (1998). Teaching culture through drama. In Michael Byram & M. Fleming (Eds.), Language learning in intercultural perspective: Approaches through drama and ethnography (pp. 158–177). New York: Cambridge University Press. Hornbrook, David. (1998). Education and dramatic art . New York: Routledge. Kao, Shin-Mei, & Cecily O’Neill. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama . Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishers. Kohl, Herbert R. (1998). The discipline of hope: Learning from a lifetime of teaching . New York: Simon & Schuster. Laurel, Brenda. (1993). Computers as theatre . Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Lave, Jean, & Etienne Wenger. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation . New York: Cambridge University Press. Maley, Alan, & Alan Duff. (1978). Drama techniques in language learning: A resource book of communication activities for language teachers . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Miller, Marsha Lee. (1986). Using drama to teach foreign languages. Texas. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 282439.) Moody, Douglas, Jeff Rusch, & Owen McGrath. (1999). SP109 Live Performance & Research Project , a Web site, URL: http://www.itp.berkeley.edu/~sp109, Berkeley: Berkeley Language Center, © University of California Regents. Redington, Christine. (1983). Can theatre teach? An historical and evaluative analysis of theatre in education . Oxford: Pergamon Press. Sánchez, Gilberto. (1993). This hard rock. In Randolph Jennings (Ed.), Fire in the eyes of youth: The humanities in American education (pp. 105–120). St. Paul, MN: Occasional Press. Slade, Peter. (1995). Child play: Its importance for human development. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Sleeter, Christine (1995). Reflections on my use of multicultural and critical pedagogy when students are white. In Christine E. Sleeter & Peter L. McLaren (Eds.), Multicultural education, critical pedagogy, and the politics of difference . Albany: State University of New York Press. Smith, S.M. (1984). The theater arts and the teaching of second languages. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wagner, Betty Jane. (1976). Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a learning medium . Washington: National Education Association. ——. (1998). Educational drama and language arts: What research shows. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. ——. (1999). Introduction. In Betty Jane Wagner (Ed.), Building moral communities through educational drama (pp. 1–13). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.

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Page 161 10 The Educational Potential of Drama for ESL Sarah L. Dodson INTRODUCTION Since the late 1960s, teachers and researchers have advocated using drama techniques and activities in foreign- and second-language classrooms (Via, 1976; Maley & Duff, 1982; Smith, 1984; Wessels, 1987; Porter Ladousse, 1987; Whiteson, 1996). Richard Via, perhaps the first pioneer in this area, went to Japan as a Fulbright lecturer in 1966 to teach acting. By 1967, he was teaching English as a Foreign Language and directing plays like Our Town with his students. Via and many other teachers, researchers, and students have found that the value of drama in language education stems from the opportunities it provides for students to express themselves in English for a meaningful purpose, going beyond vocabulary and grammar drills. As language learners take on new characters and adapt to new roles, they practice vocabulary and grammar in a sustained context that mirrors what they can expect when interacting in the target culture, they explore variations of register and style, and they also develop conversational skills such as turn-taking, topic-changing, and leave-taking.

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Page 162 Moreover, the benefits that students reap in theater are not limited to language skills. Increases in self-esteem, selfconfidence, and spontaneity often result from theater activities in the classroom, thus reducing inhibitions, feelings of alienation, and sensitivity to rejection (Via, 1976; Stern, 1980; Kao & O’Neill, 1998). Drama activities frequently increase students’ integrative motivation, instilling a desire to learn the language in order to interact with people of the target culture. This leads to longer and more enthusiastic study of the language (Stern, 1980; Kao & O’Neill, 1998; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991). Another benefit of drama is its use in teaching cultural appreciation (Byram & Fleming, 1998). (For a more in-depth review of the literature on the history and the benefits of drama for language learners, see Dodson [2001].) The process of using drama to teach languages has only increased with the popularity of the communicative approach, where students use language for a purpose, to convey real meaning and solve real problems. Recent research has shown that teachers are moving beyond asking students to read dialogues from the textbook or perform short role-plays in favor of more complex and lengthy activities like process drama (an extended roleplaying activity that uses integrated skills to involve the whole class) (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; Liu, this volume) and producing entire plays (Smith, 1984; Wessels, 1987). Second- and foreign-language (L2/FL) teachers seem to recognize the value of a classroom that encourages students to work together in the target language to improvise or role-play. However, the focus of these activities is usually limited to oral language production, and many teachers use drama only occasionally. In fact, an early proponent of drama in language teaching, Holden (1981), warns of the dangers of too much drama: “It should not be used too often or to the exclusion of other aids. If this happens, it will lose its effectiveness. Fifteen minutes once a week is far more effective than a full hour at sporadic intervals” (p. 29). This chapter, which describes an English as a Second Language (ESL) drama class, shows that four hours of theater instruction per week for an entire academic term is indeed effective and can integrate language skills to teach both oral communication and literacy skills in the target language as well as cross-cultural awareness. A DRAMA COURSE IN AN INTENSIVE ENGLISH PROGRAM With these ideas in mind, plus a love for the theater that I wanted to share with my ESL students, I developed and taught an integrated-skills drama class for advanced second-language learners at a midsized university in the western part of the United States. The course, an elective, was taught in the Intensive English Program, which prepares foreign students for academic study. Each IEP course lasts seven weeks; this class met eighty minutes per day, three times a week.

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Page 163 The overall goal of the class was to introduce these advanced language learners to elements of the theater and elicit as much spoken and written language from them as possible. Though the focus of the course was on the process of learning the language and learning about the theater rather than producing a polished play, the final project demonstrated that the students had assimilated the information from the course and were enjoying communicating in English. The course was given the name “Language and Pronunciation through Theater” in hopes of enticing students who might otherwise not have been interested in a class promising simply “drama.’’ In addition, this title highlighted the fact that the course would indeed improve students’ English, and not just be a “fun” elective. Many of the students in the Intensive English Program express a desire to improve their pronunciation, and even though native-like pronunciation was not one of my main goals for this course, I knew we would work on pronunciation regularly, so it seemed worthwhile to include it in the title. The six students in the class—one Kuwaiti, one Peruvian, one Chinese, one Korean, and two Japanese—were college-aged female ESL students, except for the Peruvian, an immigrant in her thirties. The students were all classified as “advanced” at the IEP, taking 300- and 400-level classes, and intending to enroll soon in university classes. The students, except for the Peruvian, knew each other and me fairly well from having had prior classes together. USING DRAMA ACTIVITIES TO MEET COURSE OBJECTIVES “Language and Pronunciation through Theater” offered the students as many choices as possible and provided them with new experiences that they might not have sought out on their own. I developed the following objectives for the class and listed these on the course syllabus: 1. To integrate reading, writing, listening, and speaking 2. To improve pronunciation 3. To learn about the history and conventions of theater in America 4. To read, discuss, and understand plays 5. To use computers and technology to enhance learning 6. To develop improvisation skills 7. To create a final project (a theatrical performance) for IEP students, staff, friends, and family This chapter briefly discusses the importance of the first six objectives and how they were accomplished using various drama activities, describes how

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Page 164 the students responded to these activities, and explains in-depth how the final project came to fruition. To Integrate Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking in English At many Intensive English Programs in the United States, these language skills are taught separately because students with such diverse backgrounds may be at different levels in the different skills—strong in grammar but weak in listening comprehension, for example. However, this separation of skills is not natural, for when we communicate, we are always using more than one isolated skill at a time. I wanted to help prepare my students for living and studying in this country, where they would be constantly calling upon their knowledge of all their language skills together. I also hoped to improve significantly their reading and writing skills, which are not always engaged in traditional acting classes. Therefore, each class and each assignment required that the students use elements of different language skills. Homework almost always involved reading an article about drama, reading a section of a play, or responding in writing to a play or class activity. Discussions the following day, then, were based on what they had read or written for homework. Pairs of students also wrote scenes; this activity required them to communicate in their common language, English, as well as express creatively in writing their ideas for the scene. Here the skills were naturally integrated for decision-making and problem-solving. Another major out-of-class assignment that integrated skills was to attend two live plays (a listening activity), write a report reacting to each, and then briefly tell the class about it. There were a variety of student and community performances taking place in town, with at least two plays per weekend. This sort of assignment not only exposed them to an unfamiliar aspect of American culture—live theater—but also meant that they didn’t sit passively while they watched the play, because they knew they would be writing and talking about it later. Writing activities also took place during class sessions, which kept them from being entirely devoted to oral communication. Most classes opened with a short writing assignment: When the students came in, there was a prompt on the board, asking them to reflect on a new idea, comment on what they had done or read for homework, react to a field trip, or preview a new activity. These prompts served several purposes: focusing the students on the material, promoting regular writing, allowing me to verify that the students had done homework without needing to quiz them, and preventing tardy students from disrupting a group activity that would otherwise already be in progress. Moreover, the writing led easily into discussions. Other types of reading and writing that occurred in the class happened during field trips, where the students were required to take notes. In addition, we followed along in the

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Page 165 script of a play while listening to it on tape and read poems aloud to practice pronunciation. These activities created various combinations of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. To Improve Pronunciation in English Many days, the daily writings were followed by a vocal warm-up that practiced the suprasegmental elements of pronunciation rather than discrete sounds. Because these students came from five different language backgrounds, they had different problems with English pronunciation. The week before they performed the play, therefore, I worked with them individually on sounds that were causing comprehension problems. Overall, they all seemed to need work on articulation, volume, intonation, phrasing, and word groups, so this became the focus of our regular vocal warm-up exercises. On the first day of class, I explained that actors must physically warm up their voices as well as their bodies before they rehearse in order to make their voices as loud, clear, and flexible as possible. I also pointed out that many of these exercises would help Americans understand them better. As a result, the students were motivated to practice this even though they felt self-conscious or foolish at times. Over the course of the term, we used tongue twisters, poems, and short speeches from plays that we were reading. I varied the approaches by sometimes asking for choral readings from the entire group, sometimes pairs, sometimes individuals. Sometimes the students stood in a circle; sometimes they were at the edges of the room. This variety affected how loudly they spoke, how much eye contact they made, and how confident they appeared. Instead of my telling the students where to stress a word or change the pitch of their voice when they read aloud, we used a copy of the poem or script on the overhead to mark word stress or to draw lines showing the direction of the intonation. Then we practiced. This enabled the students to find patterns and rules instead of just memorizing the stress or intonation for each line. The students were later able to apply some of these techniques on their own lines of dialogue in the play. We also worked on breathing, speaking from the diaphragm, and projecting without shouting, which are all traditional drama techniques to speak more clearly. Overall, the students seemed less anxious about speaking English aloud after these exercises, and their suprasegmentals improved. To Learn about the History and Conventions of Theater in America To give the students a background to drama, we took field trips to two theaters in town, interviewed a local playwright, and read articles about drama. In addition to providing new and interesting content information,

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Page 166 these activities also exposed the students to places and people they would not have encountered on their own. The activities also encouraged them to integrate language skills while communicating about what they learned. The first theater that we visited was very traditional. The tour guide, a drama professor, took the students through the lobby, green room, script library, scene shop, costume shop, dressing rooms, wings, light and sound booth, and onto the stage itself. He told stories about the theater’s history, briefly explained the processes that occur in each location, and answered the students’ questions as they took notes. The two main goals of this visit were accomplished: to familiarize the students with the insides of a theater and to provide them with the necessary vocabulary to talk about producing plays. The second field trip was to a small (forty-nine-seat) salon-style theater/art gallery. The house manager explained the history and mission of this theater, showed us around the cramped backstage, answered questions, and then brought us up on stage to play improvisation games. At this point in the course, the students had already participated in improv in class, so they were not surprised or uncomfortable about trying new activities—in fact, they seemed to really enjoy being on stage. And as the leader of these games was a professional in the field, he brought a number of great ideas and dramatic skill to the games. This manager, in fact, wore many hats: In addition to running the theater, he also acted, directed, and wrote plays. When he revealed the latter, the students became very excited to realize that they now knew a playwright, and asked many questions about the process of writing, about the plot and characters of his plays, and about the differences between writing novels and plays. As none of this had been planned, I could see that the students were using English spontaneously and communicatively. And for the most part, he understood their questions and they understood his answers well enough to ask follow-up questions. The students also learned about American theater through reading assignments. At the beginning of the course, the students read an essay from Taking Center Stage: Drama in America (Rathburn, 1997), an ESL text about drama. This article, “Origins of American Theater,” introduced major periods by explaining what typified these periods and showing pictures of performances. The students completed a worksheet about this reading, which was followed by a class discussion. The Japanese students talked about how Kabuki theater is very different from drama in America, and other students shared their love for musicals. After reading three plays later on in the class, the students were able to identify them as representative of a certain period. The students read another essay from Taking Center Stage after having finished reading the first play covered in this course. This essay, “The Structure of Drama,” explained terms used to describe how literature is structured, such as rising action, climax, and falling action. I drew an arc on the board, and the students marked elements of the plot of the play Stranger

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Page 167 in Town on the arc and labeled the different points with the proper term. For example, they correctly identified the arrival of the stranger, his meeting the waitress, and his finding a job as part of the rising action. We later did this with each of the plays studied. These various activities encouraged the students to use all their language skills to learn about theater as a content area. The topic engaged them, and they were motivated to learn the ideas and vocabulary about drama, because they knew they would be producing their own play at the end of the term. To Read, Discuss, and Understand Plays in English The students read three plays for this class, with the majority of the reading done at home. The first play, Stranger in Town by Lou Spaventa (1992), was written especially for intermediate ESL students. The play ends without resolving the problems presented so that the students can write the conclusion. The vocabulary in this play is limited and recycled throughout, and the plot and characters are not complicated. My students, who are considered “advanced” at the IEP, had no trouble reading it. Throughout the course, I encouraged them to read without referring to dictionaries or electronic translators unless a word or expression had appeared several times and interfered with comprehension. When a student would occasionally ask me in class what a term meant, I brought in the context of the character speaking to help them determine what he was conveying by asking the students what they thought would be realistic for him to say at that point in the play. In this play, a mysterious man moves to a small town and tries to befriend the people he meets without revealing what all of a sudden brought him there. He finds a job, coaches the school basketball team, and falls in love. Eventually the townspeople discover the truth—that he had been a professional basketball player until he got in trouble with drugs—when a drug dealer from his past shows up and demands that he start selling to the kids on the team, or else the dealer will reveal his past. Spaventa encourages the students to write an ending to the play that shows the townspeople’s reactions to this news and decides the stranger’s fate. My students read this play easily and enjoyed it; more importantly, they could identify with the feeling of being a “stranger in town” and having to decide how much to reveal, how much to change. This led to very productive class discussions. For example, at one point the protagonist is falsely arrested for assault. When I asked the students to imagine what he is feeling as he waits in jail overnight, a student from China shared that she too had been arrested by the police in America for something she had not done, and had to spend the night in jail until she spoke with a judge. Her story helped the other students make the necessary connections between what happens in texts studied in school and what happens in real life. Because she and other students

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Page 168 could understand what the characters were feeling, they were able to talk easily and comfortably about the play. Because this was the only play we read set in contemporary America, we spent more time discussing culture based on this script than with the other two plays we studied. We looked at how conversations are carried out, what makes different characters polite or impolite, and what small towns in America are like, among other things. The second play we read was The Romancers (in a prose translation), a one-act play in verse by nineteenth-century French author Edmond Rostand. This is a satire of Romeo and Juliet, where the young lovers are not really starcrossed at all: Their parents pretend to hate each other so that their rebellious children will secretly fall in love. Though the language of this play was harder for the students to understand, they still liked the plot and the characters, which inspired a lot of discussion about the characters’ motivations, falling in love, and disobeying parents. The final play studied was Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucile Fletcher (1948). This is a one-act play about a bedridden hypochondriac who spends much of her time on the phone, alone, while her husband works long hours. One night on a crossed telephone line she overhears two hit men planning a murder. The details about the apartment where the victim lives sound very similar to her own apartment. While she is on the phone to the police trying to convince them of the seriousness of the call, she is murdered—it was her husband who had hired the hit men. This play was performed on the radio show “Suspense’’ in the 1940s. We listened to this radio play as we read along in the script, pausing to discuss each scene. This is the only play we studied that was read entirely in class. The voices of the actors sounded unusual to the students because movie stars spoke differently sixty years ago and also because the cassette tape was somewhat scratchy with age. These elements presented the students with a listening challenge. Reading along in the script, of course, helped them understand what they heard, while having the context of voices and scary music helped them understand the mood and the tension. Also, not being able to stop and reread or look words up in the dictionary while they listened forced them to focus on the overall meaning of the dialogue and determine vocabulary through context. The discussion of this play was different from the previous discussions, because the students had trouble identifying with the protagonist. However, they were able to talk about what things frighten them and how they feel when alone in a dark house. In addition, they compared this play to modern horror movies. This play lent itself especially well to the analysis of the structure of drama because of its suspense and the actress’s increasing panic. Throughout the course, the students demonstrated their understanding of the plays and integrated their language skills in the daily in-class writings,

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Page 169 postings to the Web forums, in-class discussions, and also as they rewrote scenes or added new ones. To Use Computers and Technology to Enhance Learning A Web site (http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/ceilidh/ad440/forum.htm ) was set up for this class. It included a list of links to theater sites, chat rooms, a copy of the syllabus, and a Web forum for on-line discussions. In this Web forum, an asynchronous medium for the students and me to discuss class topics in writing, we “talked” about the plays we were reading. The students also posted their reports describing plays they had attended. In addition to using the Web forum, the students were required to type all their assignments, because the ability to type reasonably quickly on American keyboards is a skill that will serve them well if they plan to study at a university. The experience of posting to the forum allowed the students to write for a different audience—their peers, instead of just their teacher, and in fact, anyone else who might happen to see it—and in a very different medium. It was a chance for them to “publish,” for their postings could be accessed even after the end of the semester. (I encouraged them to give the URL to their friends and family back home to show what they were doing in this class.) It also offered them a greater chance to reflect on and respond to their peers’ ideas, without privileging the more outgoing students: On an asynchronous forum, even the shy students can say as much as they wish or take as much time as they need. Moreover, the back-and-forth quality of the postings forced the students to rethink and justify their earlier messages in order to respond to others’ questions, leading to valuable negotiation of meaning. The content of the on-line discussions, which took place regularly, was related to whatever scene of the play they had read for homework. Each student made comments and wrote or answered questions that the other students and I were supposed to respond to. Here is a typical exchange from the week that we read The Romancers: • Korean student: i thought the fathers were enemies before i read bottom of p99. but they are not enemies. they are friends and they want to combine their properties and families. so they want their children to get married. so they tried to make them be interested in each others. they thought if they pretend to be enemies, their children will have more interesting about each other. • Sarah (teacher): These fathers are pretty tricky! I think they have a good plan, though. I wonder how long they have been friends and how they met? The actors who play the fathers/mothers in the play will have to decide what their relationship is and what their history as friends and neighbors is.

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Page 170 • Kuwaiti student: I absoultey agree with sarah too. They made a great job although they are friends . They made is seem real. This play reflects or tells us indirectely not to believe all what you hear, You may be wrong sometimes. With more time, I would also have had the students post reader reviews to Amazon.com on the pages where these plays were sold. This activity, which I’ve done in other classes, is popular, because the reviews appear on a nationally known Web site. Overall, I would say that the students were comfortable using computers in this class and did not question why they had to visit the computer lab so often for a drama class. With more time, I would have in fact increased the number of visits and done other types of computer activities: synchronous “discussions” in class chat rooms to vary the types of response, and Web “treasure hunts” where the students use search engines to find Web sites about drama and then use skimming and scanning skills to answer questions. To Develop Improvisation Skills in English As improvisation skills are especially necessary when living in a country where one’s native language is not spoken, I felt that the students needed practice communicating on the spot and negotiating meaning. Another reason that we spent class time on improvisation activities was simply because it was a lot of fun for the students, and it seemed to reduce their anxiety and self-consciousness. Therefore, once a week we spent at least an hour acting without scripts and using language spontaneously. On some of these days, we were joined by ‘‘Conversation Partners,” American students who volunteer in oral communication classes at the IEP. These students are frequently education, English, or anthropology majors who are interested in meeting people from other countries. Some of these students also receive extra credit in their academic courses for participating. The three conversation partners, whom I called “Drama Partners,” were female English majors in the same age group as most of my students, each with extensive experience in studying other languages but no theater background. They could identify with many of my students and were genuinely interested in working with them. The most popular improv games were Commercials, The Last Scene, Slide Show, and First, Middle, Last . These were all done spontaneously in class, frequently in groups of three: two ESL students and one American. I would give the directions, ask if they had questions, divide them into groups, and tell them how much time they had to prepare (usually five to ten minutes). Developing “commercials” to sell an item in the classroom is a low-stress way to introduce ESL students to acting. They have enough time—about eight minutes—to choose something to sell and to plan out what they’re going to

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Page 171 say, but not enough to script it word for word. They are encouraged to take an everyday object and find an unusual use for it (for example, one pair used a highlighter pen as an alien communication device). And because they don’t need to worry about creating a story with a beginning, middle, and end, this activity takes little time (only about a minute to perform each commercial) and produces little stress. After each commercial, the members of the audience would say whether or not they would buy the advertised item and why. A more elaborate improv exercise for small groups is The Last Scene (adapted from Maley & Duff, 1982). In this activity, the students must create the end of a story that involves props sitting on a table. The premise is that actors have just run out of a theater, leaving the audience wanting to see the end of the play. The students must perform the last scene with no information about the rest of the play. They look at the items on the table and must develop the scene from there. The structure provided by this activity means that the students don’t feel overwhelmed with the idea of creating a skit from scratch. When my class did The Last Scene, the props I included were the following: a Mardi Gras mask with purple feathers, a basket, a can of green beans, and a tape measure. The groups came up with skits that differed drastically. For example, one group created a story about a pregnant woman at a hospital whose mother didn’t want to believe her daughter was pregnant. The frantic mother fanned herself with the feathered mask; the doctor took the daughter’s blood pressure with the tape measure; and the daughter gave birth to the can of green beans, which the doctor placed into the basket. In another group, a bandit wore the mask and brandished the tape measure (with the tape extended) like a sword. I was very pleased with both their creativity and their ease with English in this game. Another activity, Slide Show, is structured differently in that it is a game where traditionally, all the actors work together, but not everyone actually speaks. I modified this so that all students had to communicate to make the activity work. In Slide Show, the actors (or sometimes the audience) choose a place and a relationship between two people who have been on vacation and are now narrating a slide show about their trip. The other students then become the slides themselves. While the two vacationers turn their backs, the others create a tableau (as complicated and amusing as possible). Traditionally, the tableau is created in seconds with no conversation among the actors. However, in my class, the students talked about how and why they wanted to arrange themselves; frequently they disagreed and had to rearrange. For example, during one slide of “Egypt,” some students wanted to depict belly dancing, but the others were trying to form a pyramid. This was a good exercise for improving language because the students had to convince each other of the merits of their ideas and come to a compromise very quickly. First, Middle, Last is another improv game that focuses on the language and not the acting. Actors take turns placing themselves in a row and saying a sentence. The next person must have a sentence that connects the people

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Page 172 before him to those after. In the end, the actors and their sentences have created a story. One of the stories my class created in this activity was about a flying elephant. When we tried this in class, we also practiced saying the lines in different ways—loudly, whispering, with actions, sadly, excitedly, and even in their own languages using body language to show what they were saying. The students looked forward to the days we devoted to improvisation games. They really enjoyed interacting with the American drama partners, and they laughed a lot on these days. The affective barrier had been lowered: They were more comfortable and less self-conscious speaking in English as a result. To Create a Final Project (A Theatrical Performance) Two and a half weeks before the end of the class, after having read the three plays, I presented the students with the options for the final performance: perform selected scenes, present a play we’ve read, present a different play, or write and present an original play. I was hoping for the latter, but I wanted to give the students a choice. I also stressed that memorization wouldn’t be necessary, because they could benefit from the play without the immense stress of needing to memorize lines in such a short time. And as stated before, my focus for this class was on the process of learning about drama in English, not on a professional-quality final performance. The students debated the pros and cons of the various options. They wanted to do a play, rather than a series of scenes. They wanted to do one they had already studied, rather than write one from scratch. Because Stranger in Town had so many characters and because it wasn’t a comedy, they decided against it. They liked Sorry, Wrong Number, which would work well as reader’s theater, since it was written for radio. However, they realized that this play has one main character and a number of very small roles. The students agreed that they’d rather have a play with equal roles for everyone. The Romancers worried them because of the language, which is flowery and poetic. The students feared that it would be too hard to pronounce and even harder for an audience of other ESL students to understand. When I told them that they could modify the language to make it more modern, they decided that they wanted to try it. However, more than just the language in The Romancers needed to be rewritten. Only five characters have speaking parts in the play, and there were six students in the class. Possible solutions to the dilemma of having an unequal number of students and roles include turning one character into two and dividing his lines; having one or more student take on backstage roles (lights, set, costumes, publicity), become the stage manager, or work as the assistant director; writing in extra characters to accommodate the number of actors; or eliminating characters or doubling up on roles when there are too

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Page 173 few actors. The students in my class wanted to write a sixth character so that everyone could participate as equally as possible. Therefore, we created a narrator who would introduce each scene and remain on stage in character throughout the whole play, reacting nonverbally to the dialogue around her: This student played the wall that divides the two families’ land. This was a very clever idea, for it is the fact that the two families are separated that draws the young lovers together—the wall is the reason for the play! And Rostand, the playwright, has the characters anthropomorphize the wall, talking about it as if it were human, which made it easy for the actress playing this role to blush and drop her eyes during compliments and get angry when the parents talked about pulling it down to get it out of the way. Another issue with characters that came up was that most of the female students didn’t want to play the male characters—but Rostand only wrote one woman into the play. So very quickly, the fathers turned into mothers and the kidnapper became a woman. The casting then was simple: The students wrote down three characters they would like to play, and fortunately the students didn’t scramble for the same parts. In the following class, we discussed how we wanted to rewrite the play. We first talked about the setting—where and when it should take place. I told them we could deviate from Rostand’s original old-fashioned France. There was no group consensus, so I asked them to act out the beginning in two ways—Shakespeare’s time and modern days— and then decide which they liked best. After the two lovers tried to make it modern, acting like slangy teenagers and talking about going to the movies together, the others decided that it didn’t work as well that way and that they should set it in olden days but modernize the language, keeping the ideas and the character motivations the same. At this point, the students had just finished reading the play for homework, so we had not yet discussed how the play ended. As we discussed Rostand’s happy ending, where the kidnapper hired by the fathers abducts the girl, the boy saves her, and the parents pretend to be so grateful they allow their children to marry, the students expressed dissatisfaction that it was so orderly and predictable. They had been expecting a funnier and more calamitous conclusion. So I suggested that as long as we were changing the language and the gender of most of the characters and writing in a part for the wall, we might as well rewrite the ending. They agreed, and after discussion, came up with an excellent idea—because the kidnapper is being played by a woman, why doesn’t she fall in love with the boy and kidnap him instead of the girl, which she has been hired to do? Then the girl must fight to save her boyfriend from the clutches of this villainous woman who wants to take him away from her. Pleased with the new outcome of the play, students started to work on modifying their dialogue. In pairs, they read through a scene and decided what they wanted to change. Rewriting in this fashion asked them not just to

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Page 174 integrate language skills but also to demonstrate comprehension and critical thinking. Each time they condensed a melodramatic paragraph-long speech, the students proved that they had understood it so well that they were able to summarize effectively. By using both a tape player and a video camera and with me working with one group at a time and taking notes, we were able to catch the changes orally; later I listened to the tapes and typed up the changes to the script, which I posted to the Web forum so that the students could access the most current draft without waiting for the next class period to get a paper copy from me. (See Appendix A for examples of the revision and http://lamar.colostate.edu/~sdodson for the entire rewritten script.) The next day that we met, the students read through the scenes that they had modified and then continued revising the rest. I met with the narrator individually to help her write her lines. In class, she worked with the lovers to help them with their lines. The integrated-skills theme of this class continued through the end, therefore, because the original reading assignment led to discussion and then to more reading and writing. Then, with eight days left before the performance, we were ready to run through the entire play. This was a day that our conversation partners were scheduled to work with the class, so we asked them if they would be our “extras” and play the nonspeaking roles like the messenger and kidnapper’s henchmen. They were very happy to help out (and fortunately, were also available the evening of the performance). The last week was spent rehearsing and revising and taking care of details like set, props, and costumes. The students did most of the work, shopping at a thrift store, loaning each other clothing and props. A volunteer made swords out of cardboard and aluminum foil. The university theater department loaned us fake ivy vines to decorate the sparse set. During the rehearsals, the students watched their classmates perform, suggesting other ways to move and to speak. We also did a “line-through” rehearsal, where the actors sit in a circle and read their lines from the script as quickly and loudly as possible. This helps to keep the energy up and to encourage the actors to pick up on their cues right away. The students also planned an extra rehearsal the day of the show and met by themselves in the room they were to perform in. The day before the performance, a journalist from the student newspaper interviewed the class and wrote a very enthusiastic article that was published in time for opening night. She interviewed some of the students, who commented on how much they were enjoying the experience: “This is exciting for us . . . None of us have been in a play that was in English,’’ explained the Peruvian, who continued, “The pronunciation is improving and it makes us feel more comfortable and secure when we are trying to finish our complete sentences. When people ask me questions, I feel more pressure, but now (after working on the play) I feel that I can do it, because we have fun; that makes it easier.”

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Page 175 The Chinese student explained that “ ‘You get more practice . . . you can speak and act at the same time.’ ” Approximately forty people attended the play, mostly IEP students and teachers. It took place in a large room at the student center. The two doors to the hallway served as exits and entrances for the “stage,” and the set consisted of a table covered with ivy, a stool for the narrator to sit on directly in front of the table, and a chair on either side of the wall. The students were nervous and excited. I had warned them before they went on stage that they would need to pause whenever the audience laughed, but they gave me looks that seemed to say that they didn’t expect that to happen. Therefore, when the audience did indeed start laughing, the students were first surprised, then delighted. Each burst of laughter from the audience seemed to boost the actors’ self-esteem, and they began speaking louder and more confidently. By this point, many of them had memorized most of their lines, even though it was not required. They still referred to their scripts on stage, but were familiar enough with the dialogue to also make eye contact with the other actors. The play was only half an hour long, and the time seemed to fly by. After the applause and the curtain call, audience members came up to the actors individually and congratulated them. The students were very proud of their final project and their overall performance in the drama class: They had demonstrated that they could understand and use English in a variety of communicative ways. CONCLUSION On the teacher evaluation forms, students expressed their satisfaction with the class. They felt as if they had learned a lot about the English language as well as the theater—and liked it. Additionally, they noticed improvement in their affective factors, such as self-confidence. The anonymous comments included: • I had fun in this class because I enjoyed using English through the theater. I think is the way I don’t feel shy. However, practice in this class helped me more in my daily life. • I really enjoyed this class. It is surprising that it is easier for me to play in English than in Japanese. • And this class has a lot of fun. We have improved our pronunciation and performance ability. • I really enjoyed acting in was a big step for me. I feel that I gained confident in Speaking and I am more enthusiastic and optimistic thanks to you. • I’m very satisfied with this class. Because all of us can participated in all activities together.

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Page 176 • At first I ashamed to act or to speak loudly, but the play was interesting. The teacher evaluations also included statements about the class and the instructor. Using a five-point Likert scale, the students responded to the statements with agreement or disagreement. Representative statements include “I made progress in my study of English’’ (average of 4.3 out of 5 possible points) and “Overall, how would you rate this course?” (4.7 out of 5). Some friends of the students in this class also approached me to ask when I would be teaching it again. I feel that this class was successful because it offered a different approach to learning English, and the content engaged the students. The frequent laughter kept the students comfortable speaking and in good spirits. Integrating the language skills allowed us to take off in many directions and prepare the students for real interactions with native speakers. They now have more knowledge of American culture and the conventions of communicating in this country. Their literacy skills also improved, which will benefit them greatly as they begin university study. Because the students so enjoyed the activities and were so proud of their play, they grew more confident in using English. The students also grew more appreciative of each other’s cultures and more cognizant of American culture. Class discussions about the themes and characters of the play were enlightening. The students and I clearly saw that we do not all approach the idea of a stranger in town or picking the right person to marry or even the genre of drama in similar ways, and we were able to talk about these differences without criticizing each other’s cultures. The students also learned how conversations happen in English, developing an awareness of social niceties and discourse that most had not studied explicitly before. Moreover, throughout the course we talked about various aspects of American culture (in the contexts of the readings, the field trips, and what the improvisations brought to light) as well as how Americans speak, including paralinguistic elements like body language, gestures, and proxemics, which are perhaps as important to communicating as the grammar, syntax, and lexical items themselves (Wessels, 1987; Black, 1999). Overall, then, I would say that my objectives for this course were met—even exceeded—and I will continue to incorporate drama and other communicative activities as I teach other language classes. After all, for language students to benefit from drama, they do not need to take entire courses devoted to theater. Drama also has a place in traditional language courses as well: I have seen that students enjoy pantomimes that elicit certain verb tenses in grammar classes, role-plays that demonstrate comprehension in reading classes, and improvisation activities that practice spontaneous speech in listening and speaking classes. (For more ideas on how to integrate theater techniques into language courses, see Dodson [2000].)

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Page 177 APPENDIX A: THE ROMANCERS, BEFORE AND AFTER Here are some examples of how the students rewrote the nineteenth-century play to make the language more accessible and the ending more engaging. Original Revised

Sylvette: Last month, when I came home from the convent, my father pointed out Sylvette: My mother always told your father’s park, and said to me: “My dear child, you behold there the domain me, “Never come to this wall, and of my mortal enemy, Bergamin. Never cross the path of those two rascals, never speak to the boy who lives Bergamin and his son Percinet. Mark well my words and obey me to the letter, or here.” I’m not allowed to see you, I shall cast you off as an enemy. Their family has always been at bitter enmity because my mother hates your with our own.” family! Original kidnapping scene: Sylvette: The hour has struck. He must be waiting. ( Sylvette is kidnapped .) Help! Help! Percinet: Great Heavens! Sylvette: Percinet, they are carrying me off! Percinet: ( Leaping to the wall) I am coming! (He fights the kidnappers and wounds them. Runs to Sylvette) Sylvette! Sylvette: My savior! Pasquinot ( Sylvette’s father): Bergamin’s son! Your savior? Why, then I give you to him! Sylvette and Percinet: Heavens! Revised and extended kidnapping scene: Patrick: I love sitting here at night. But I’m so nervous right now! I hope Sylvette comes soon. Sylvette: (appears on the other side of the wall) Patrick, I’m here! Susan (the kidnapper): (runs to Sylvette and puts a scarf over her head, gives her to Jacques, who holds a sword by her throat) Patrick, I’m here! Pat: Sylvette? Syl: Patrick! Help! Susan: (jumps over wall and runs to Patrick) Don’t marry her—marry me! Pat: Marry you? Who are you? Sus: I’m Susan, and I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. Pat: I don’t love you. I love Sylvette!

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Page 178 (Sylvette struggles with Jacques to try to escape) Sus: Give me a chance! I’m very talented. I’m a kidnapper! Pat: But do you like to read Shakespeare? Sus: No, but I can fight with my sword. (Sylvette escapes from Jacques, grabs his sword, climbs the wall to rescue Patrick) Syl: Give him back to me! Sus: No, first fight me. (Susan throws Patrick to Brutus, who holds him back) (Sword fight between Sylvette and Susan. At first Susan is winning.) Pat: Sylvette, save me!! (Sylvette wins the sword fight by stabbing Susan, who falls down. Sylvette and Patrick hug each other.) Sar: (comes rushing in to her side of the wall) Sylvette, what happened? Why are you on the other side of the wall? Pau: (Comes rushing in) What happened? Syl: That woman tried to take Patrick away! But I saved him! Pau: You saved him? Syl: Yes I did! Pat: Yes she did! She’s my hero. Syl: (to Paulette) Can I marry your son? Pau: Let’s ask your mother. Sarah, what do you think? Should we let them get married? Sar: Yes, we should. I agree because my daughter really loves your son. (Sylvette and Patrick hug and walk out, arm-in-arm. Sarah climbs over the wall.) REFERENCES Black, C. (1999). Dramatisation et gestuelle: Découvrir la culture-cible. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 55(4), 548–555. Byram, M., & Fleming, M. (Eds.). (1998). Language learning in intercultural perspective: Approaches through drama and ethnography. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Commack, F.M. (1975). Language learning via Via. In: The Art of TESOL: Selected articles from English Teaching Forum (pp. 167–169). Dodson, S. (2000). Language through theater: Using drama in the language classroom. Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education , 5(1), 129–142. Dodson, S. (2001). Learning languages dramatically. MA thesis, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

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Page 179 Fletcher, L. (1948). Sorry, wrong number. New York: Dramatists Play Service. Holden, S. (1981). Drama in language teaching . London: Longman. Kao, S.M., & O’Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama . Stamford, CT: Ablex. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Long, M. (1991). An introduction to second language acquisition research. New York: Longman. Lyle, L. (2000, April 27). All-female class overcome language barriers in reworked play. The Collegian, 3. Maley, A., & Duff, A. (1982). Drama techniques in language learning . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Porter Ladousse, G. (1987). Role Play . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rathburn, A.K. (1997). Taking center stage: Drama in America . Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Rostand, E. (1967). The Romancers. In Gassner, J., (Ed.). (1967). Reading and staging the play: An anthology of one-act plays (pp. 92–107). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Smith, S. (1984). The theater arts and the teaching of languages. New York: Addison-Wesley. Spaventa, L. (1992). Stranger in town . Brattleboro, VT: Pro Lingua Associates. Stern, S. (1980). Drama in second language learning from a psycholinguistic perspective. Language Learning , 30 (1), 77–97. Via, R. (1976). English in three acts. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. Wessels, Charlyn. (1987). Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whiteson, V. (Ed.). (1996). New ways of using drama and literature in language teaching . Bloomington, IL: TESOL.

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Page 181 III Practical Applications: Courses and the Curriculum

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Page 183 11 The Arts and the Foreign-/Second-Language Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Actively Engage Students in Their Own Learning Janet Hegman Shier At a time when interdisciplinarity and the need to address multiple intelligences are gaining attention and becoming a priority, arts educators are well positioned to take the lead in innovative practices. This chapter addresses the role of the arts in teaching a foreign/second language (L2)1 and shares examples of pedagogical approaches developed in the University of Michigan Residential College German Program that have modified the profile of an already successful language program and made it a model for interdisciplinary education.2 Interdisciplinary work teaches us to look at a problem from multiple perspectives. If we study the culture of a foreign country, for example, from the standpoint of connecting anthropology, history, and literature, we will pose different questions than if we approach it from any one discipline alone. Interdisciplinary work involving the arts offers students a new way of knowing, as they learn to discern abstract meaning and incorporate it into their own expression.

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Page 184 It is common for language (L2) learners to feel that they will never speak the language or never truly embrace a second language as they do their own. Not surprisingly, this feeling may be reinforced unless curricula are designed to specifically facilitate students’ desire or ability to engage actively in speaking activities. The range and scope of arts assignments described here address this by providing a real-life context for language learning that addresses different learning styles and promotes divergent thinking. The arts provide a framework to address cognitive and affective aptitudes of the learner. They involve students intellectually, emotionally, and physically and facilitate the development of skillful communication based on both knowledge and personal experience. The arts can provide an array of assignments to remove “blocks” that impede learning. Theater, in particular, with its built-in commitment to both process and product, provides an arena and model for learning that increases students’ confidence to reach beyond individual limitations. At the same time, it promotes students’ responsibility and desire to be actively engaged in their own learning process. GETTING STARTED WITH INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK Should individuals be engaged professionally in an activity outside their formal area of training? Quite understandably, language teachers may be reluctant to begin incorporating arts, writing, or theater activities into instruction, especially if they have little or no experience doing so. However, careful experimentation and deliberate integration of the arts can be as eye-opening and rewarding for the teacher as it is for students. If you are thinking about doing interdisciplinary work, you may want to consider certain issues. Who are the students? What are their needs and your goals for them? How might bumps in the road of interdisciplinary work affect individuals or the overall dynamics of the group, and how will you respond? How will you as the teacher maintain confidence as you enter into new territory? Teachers who take on the challenge of directing and producing a play often start out, innocently enough, believing that a reasonably talented and committed group can “handle’’ staging a play. These teachers might make the mistake of thinking that student theater is, by and large, a matter of (students) memorizing lines. Not surprisingly, this usually leads to a student project with mechanically recited text and little value added. Because the success of the endeavor grows mostly from the process students work through en route to the final performance, teacher preparation is an essential, and potentially daunting, component. However, working with available resources, participating in theater workshops, and attending rehearsals of a reputable theater

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Page 185 company can give teachers the confidence they need to get started.3 (See also Lys in this volume.) Colleagues are a particularly valuable resource in this regard. I strongly encourage a teacher who wishes to try foreign-language theater or arts assignments for the first time to collaborate with someone experienced. Collaborating is like putting on corrective lenses—it can be hard and frustrating at first (as you give up some authority), but ultimately it allows you to see things differently, and more clearly. Nothing prepares one for interdisciplinary work better than discussing with or working directly with an experienced colleague. INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE It is from within the unique context of the University of Michigan Residential College (U-M RC) that I first began branching out from teaching language and literature into theater, and eventually through multimedia theater to other arts. The RC is a liberal arts college that was established in 1967 as an alternative living-learning unit. RC classes, professors’ offices, and art and music studios are in the same building where students are required to live their first two years. The RC’s climate is conducive to interdisciplinary work. Cross-fertilization between fields is supported by the administration, and faculty members are encouraged to explore new directions that integrate collaboration, research, and teaching. My own experience teaching German through the arts to promote language learning and social responsibility has been enhanced by consulting and working with colleagues from the programs in Drama, Studio Arts, Music, and Social Sciences.4 Interdisciplinary arts activities make up an integral part of the RC German Program, applied in ongoing projects in classroom instruction and through our performance company, RC Deutsches Theater (DT). The Company has staged over twenty German-language plays since 1985, ranging from original student-written works to full-length multimedia productions of plays by twentieth-century playwrights.5 The first play project grew out of a long-standing tradition for RC second-year German students to stage a cabaret, just before the proficiency exam, to allay their fears of the exam and put their learning in perspective. In 1984, students presented a reduced version of Düerrenmatt’s Besuch der alten Dame (1956) to other students in the program in an informal manner, using minimal props. Although that first production bore little resemblance to the multimedia projects staged by DT today, it was that project that led to DT becoming an annual public event. What I share here grew out of years of trial, reflection, and adjustment.

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Page 186 PUTTING STUDENTS’ LEARNING CENTER STAGE: THE PROJECTS OF THE U-M RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE DEUTSCHES THEATER (DT) COMPANY The primary goals of DT are to improve the German of participants, enhance their awareness of German-speaking cultures and their literatures, and provide an opportunity for others to witness German in action. In all these areas the ongoing project has been successful. Through interpretation and performance of roles, students improve in areas of language mastery that are otherwise not easily addressed in foreign-language instruction. These include accent, intonation, expression of emotion, gesture, speech rhythm, and tempo. Beyond language mastery, intimacy with a text enables students to gain an understanding of aspects of the target culture, which is reinforced through the overall interpretation and staging of the play. One of the most important aspects of the projects of DT is the cooperation among students. Students from different levels and with different abilities work side by side. Typically, the cast is made up of approximately half veterans and half new ensemble members. Often a cast includes students whose experiences with the company were in four or five separate productions. This has made DT a learning forum for students that extends beyond the project at hand. THE REHEARSAL PROCESS: DEVELOPING AN ENSEMBLE The emphases in Deutsches Theater are on placing process over product and building an ensemble, in which students can learn to give careful consideration to social-political implications of their actions on stage. Plays selected for study reflect these emphases of the Company, ranging from epic theater of Brecht, highlighting contradictions in human behavior, to GRIPS Theater (children’s political theater) that advocates for children’s rights and is critical of German society’s “Kinderfeindlichkeit” (hostility towards children) (Hachfeld, 1971) to feminist plays by contemporary Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek (1980), which explore clichés and stereotyped gender roles. In order to better understand the anti-illusionist epic theater style of acting and performance of Deutsches Theater, students study montage, research twentieth-century European cabarets, and read and discuss Brecht’s writings on theater. They do several art assignments, such as mask-making, set, costume, and T-shirt design, and they keep a journal containing written responses to scenes and creative writing assignments. In class, students learn a variety of ways to present an idea on stage, including mime, use of music, and multimedia presentation. In recent years, DT participants have been guided through a series of workshops on story-tell-

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Page 187 ing, status games, exercises in image theater, and theater of the oppressed in order to help them become familiar with theater techniques (Boal, 1979, 1992). Participants also spend two months reading plays together (aloud) before there is any consideration of casting. The rehearsal process, rooted in repetition and experimentation with expression, helps make the L2 learner comfortable using the target language in the relatively uncharted waters of performance. I encourage students to use rehearsal to solve problems and make decisions based on their own experience and aesthetic judgment. Every class/rehearsal begins with a vocal and physical warm-up, which prepares the mind and the body for action and helps students rid themselves of stress that could make them otherwise unable to focus. Theater games, such as those found in Bernardi’s Improvisation Starters (1992), Scher and Verrall’s 100+ Theater Games (1975), and Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater (1963), help students develop self-discipline, concentration, trust, and the confidence to use the target language spontaneously. Acting becomes the main focus, with hours spent experimenting with the infinite ways to deliver a line or even a single word. THE METHOD Since the early 1990s, DT has followed Brecht’s Lehrstück (learning play) model for rehearsal, a sort of collective artistic exercise ( kollektive Kunstübung) in which actors rotate through all roles in a play. This gives students a chance to present and see different roles with a variety of interpretations. They experiment with their voices, socially significant gest ( Gestus) and critical attitude or stance ( Haltung) and then discuss what sense each demonstration of a scene lent to the presentation itself. Students sometimes request that the actors on stage repeat part of a scene, sometimes just to see it again, and sometimes to incorporate a new idea or insight that has arisen from the discussion.6 This puts the emphasis on process over product. Often, long segments of rehearsal are devoted to one small portion of text, demonstrated in a number of ways, with individual students jumping in to replace other students in order to try something new. By participating in such scene work with different ensemble members, students/actors become less dependent on a particular person’s interpretation, gestures, rhythm, and accent. When not on stage running through a scene, they become audience members, scribbling in their portfolios, sketching what they have seen, and learning to describe objectively how it looked. REFLECTIVE PRACTICE The use of portfolios7 in the rehearsal process helps discourage students from jumping too quickly to reach consensus with each other without first

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Page 188 struggling with ideas on their own. Much like artists, students rely on their portfolios as a safe place to explore current ideas and a way to return to old ideas that may resurface with a new meaning at some future time. Their portfolios contain notes, sketches, rough ideas, reactions, and also reflections on their own learning process that in turn provide me with insight into that process and a means to intervene.8 Students’ portfolios are a source for ideas about set and costume design, program cover design, or slides to project during scenes. Portfolio entries often spark discussions in class and inspire new scene work. A concrete example of the benefit of our theater laboratory is that students become more objective in their work. The words “I liked” and “I didn’t like” disappear from students’ critiques as they comment on what they have seen on stage and as they learn to articulate constructive criticism, which serves as a basis for further exploration in scene work. DEVELOPING IDEAS FOR THE PRODUCTION I have learned never to underestimate the importance of work leading up to play selection and production. Discoveries made in workshops and portfolio entries can often help determine what material is appropriate for performance. It can be difficult to find a play suitable for a given group of students and for a local audience. However, creative work can help overcome what might otherwise be perceived as limitations. Recently, Deutsches Theater’s limited group size (made up of six women and three men and several actors recruited for small speaking and nonspeaking roles, all of whom were easily recognizable in their roles) made it seem impossible to stage a scene that called for a massive army to burn down a town. Rather than abandon the play, we considered a number of possible solutions, including the use of shadow theater to create the effect of an army, using puppets. In the end, we decided to project graphic slides depicting poverty and war in contrast with slides of wealth and waste, as a solo performer danced slowly across the stage and through the audience waving two red silk cloths. The performance demonstrated the power of the scene and provided a poignant aesthetic interpretation of some of the seductive devices behind waging war to increase the wealth of a few. Innovations that grow out of the rehearsal process often find their way into final performances, a reminder that this is process over product. Another way of saying this is that although the final performance is a culmination of the process with its own value, parts of the process left behind are at least as important to the students’ experience toward L2 mastery. For example, in performances of Brecht’s Ausnahme und die Regel (Brecht, 1967) three actors rotated through the three major roles, establishing the role change by exchanging one costume element while in view of the audience. This helped reinforce the anti-illusionist nature of the performance

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Page 189 and drew the audience’s attention not to individual characters but, more generally, to demonstrated behavior. Experimentation at rehearsal with three actors simultaneously demonstrating the role of the judge in the same play led to all three playing the judge in performance, with each demonstrating a different aspect of that character’s behavior using exaggerated and grotesque gestures. These and other devices were used to make the audience pay close attention to the ideas presented on stage. Overall, the performance underscored Brecht’s desire that actors and audience learn to think critically and act on what they see. All this notwithstanding, we have assumed a more aggressive posture toward social awareness and made our productions over the last decade benefit productions. DT performances have attracted large audiences and raised thousands of dollars for charity and collected food for local shelters. I mention this because just as it is important for students to see relevance in what they are doing, so it is meaningful for students to see consequences of their efforts.9 THE ROLE OF THE INSTRUCTOR My role in the rehearsal process as a teacher/director becomes one of balancing between times when I lead and guide students toward a new way of thinking and acting and times when I just facilitate their own exploration and development. Each Deutsches Theater project grows organically out of the ensemble. This latter aspect of directing is perhaps the most rewarding and the most challenging. An ensemble effort has far greater significance and value on every level than a solo effort determined by a director’s preconceived production concept. The teacher/director must distinguish between product as L2 learning and product as performance. Ironically, by giving ownership of the latter to the student/actor, improved mastery of L2 becomes a result. Just as the student/actor must cast off constraints to become an effective speaker of L2, the teacher/director must be able to give up control to make the successful transition from guiding to facilitating. When and how to do this is a combination of instinct and experience, but a high regard for students’ abilities and talents is a necessary and almost sufficient ingredient. A teacher/director who is respectful of both process and performers will ultimately improve the product, both the performance and a successful student outcome. RESULTS OF THE PROCESS The method of inquiry used by DT leads to students having a sense of pride at how far they are able to develop their ideas as they work within an environment that fosters creative and critical processes as both individual

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Page 190 and collective events. By midsemester, all students participate as members of an ensemble who have become more discerning about their work, more technically adept as actors, more willing to take risks, and more capable of fitting all aspects of the production to suit the meaning of the performance on stage. By the end of the third month, they are ready to perform before an audience. It is up to Deutsches Theater participants to ensure that all aspects of the production (e.g., dramaturgical notes in the program, costuming, masks, set, properties, lighting, projected slides, music, movement, chanting, audience participation) are used appropriately as aesthetic means to promote greater awareness of social injustices presented on stage, without creating illusion. Both the rehearsal process itself (with inherent lessons on observation) and the attention students give to production details contribute to students’ level of performance and to their poise and ability to field questions and engage the audience in further discourse in postperformance discussions. The performance, in this regard, although important, continues to be just part of the overall learning process for its participants. By the time a play opens, students are eager to demonstrate their ideas, to spurn audience members, to recognize social contradictions, and to question the consequences of their own behavior. As Brecht envisioned it: “The theater becomes a place for philosophers, and for such philosophers as not only wish to explain the world, but wish to change it” (trans. Willett, 1974, p. 80). As one might expect, the experience of performing a play helps with pronunciation and spontaneity, and from what we have already seen, incorporation of nonperformance arts into the process enriches the experience by including elements of culture and history. As students’ awareness encompasses art, social awareness, and performance, their L2 skills are developing rapidly. What was unexpected, and most rewarding to me, is the degree to which students use L2 on the set outside of character and dialogue, but very much within the context of the rehearsal process. Through the paradigm of L2 theater, students often assimilate the target language and target culture, and use L2 spontaneously and purposefully, purely as a means of communication with each other about the project at hand. SCULPTURING When working on the scene “Das Mahnwort’’ from Brecht’s Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches (Brecht, 1967), a group of actors played teenaged Hitler Youth. Their characters were to discriminate against one member of the group (whose family, we surmise, did not support Hitler). In order to better understand how one character’s power over another can be demonstrated, we devoted some rehearsal time experimenting with ways to demonstrate high status and low status through gestures, behavior, and voice quality. We also

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Page 191 did some useful nonverbal work with group sculpture to get at different ways to physically demonstrate power and vulnerability. In the group sculpture exercise, one “sculptor” physically poses students in relationship with each other to demonstrate a theme such as “power” and then invites the last remaining student to make changes to the sculpture, before the two sculptors join in. Next, each student takes a turn at stepping out of the sculpture. As a final step, students discuss what they learned about power and vulnerability from the exercise and what they might try differently. MAKING TRANSITIONS These exercises were valuable in helping students to understand the scene intellectually, but their usefulness seemed to vanish as soon as we returned to performing the scene itself. Students were not able to incorporate what they had experienced in the exercises into their scene work. Each time they reverted to demonstrating their roles in the same caricature-like manner, demonstrating the behavior of SS men and not thirteen-year-old Hitler Youth. In this scene, the Hitler Youth ridicule the outsider, when suddenly a group leader enters the room. All rush to grab their gas masks (except the outsider who does not have one) and line up for roll call. We had done scene work on this many times, but on the day when I finally brought actual gas masks to rehearsal, a true alienation effect occurred. The students playing Hitler Youth grabbed the gas masks, put them on and began quite genuinely and naturally playing with them. They butted each other with their gas masks as if they were bulls whenever the ‘‘group leader” wasn’t looking, they stroked their masks affectionately and did anything to attract attention to themselves. (They were having so much fun that I actually had trouble getting their attention.) Suddenly, the entire group realized that, as repulsed as we all were (as individuals) at the atrocities that occurred during Nazi Germany, it wasn’t until the students caught themselves “playing” as youth in the gas masks that they understood the scene on a new level. Even more haunting were the feelings of the “outsider,” who said that, on that day, he felt truly excluded by the others and was aware of both himself and the character he was demonstrating. THE USE OF MASKS Speaking a foreign language, in and of itself, is like donning another mask. DT grew, in part, from an awareness that the “mask” of an actor can give the L2 student freedom to experiment with L2 in ways that would otherwise have been constrained. In Deutsches Theater, student/actors regularly experiment with masks (and in some semesters mask-making) as one way of understanding ways to demonstrate a role in the Brechtian sense. Masks can be an

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Page 192 important way for a student to experiment with a role from behind a “mask other than their own.” People are often surprised to hear that students participating in a play or doing an art assignment feel more encouraged to experiment in German than they would be in their native language. I see this when students write poetry in German and tell me that they would never have the confidence to do so in English. There is not the same degree of personal “self” at stake. There is safety in hiding behind a “mask,” knowing a that mask is temporary and can always be removed. The ultimate goal in participating in a foreign-language play or in doing any creative act such as writing a poem in a foreign language is to improve one’s language skills. The more one wears a mask to learn a language—I mean this both literally and figuratively—the more integrated with the mask one becomes. Ultimately, the mask itself may become only a metaphor for “making other.’’ BUILDING ON INTERDISCIPLINARITY As Deutsches Theater projects became more ambitious and involved more integration of visual arts, music, and movement, there was a change in dynamics in the play production seminar. We were no longer doing theater “just for language’s sake.” We were also doing theater for theater’s sake. I began experimenting more with theater in my other language classes and discovered that similar benefits could be achieved there, in both first and second year. Despite the relative inexperience and diversity of the first- and secondyear students, they responded to simple theater games and visual arts assignments (such as creating and/or describing something round or with holes or describing differences between two self-portrait paintings by an artist). Often I have students in lower-level courses do creative assignments that will familiarize them with vocabulary used in a play being studied by the Deutsches Theater ensemble. For example, students at all three levels (first, second, and third year) may study a piece such as the Brecht/Weill opera The Seven Deadly Sins , but each group will have different related assignments. Beginning students may create a collage of images and words related to one sin. More advanced students may each write a poem, a short prose piece, or an essay related to one of the deadly sins and draw or collage a self-portrait that exaggerates his/her own personal “favorite” sin. The theater production of RC Deutsches Theater became just one focal point toward which other arts-related activities in the program led. First- and second-year students’ activities in class have become the first step down a road toward involvement in the Deutsches Theater play production, but integrated arts assignments continue to be, first and foremost, geared to improving classroom dynamics (creating ensemble), freeing students up for

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Page 193 personal expression, making students more flexible as they approach tasks, and ultimately improving L2 mastery. Thus, despite an apparent shift in emphasis toward theater, and increased incorporation of arts in general, we remain focused on the original goal of language learning, and it has become an even more impressive outcome of our projects. For language teachers, the real value of introducing both nonverbal arts assignments (which can involve theater, movement, or visual art) and verbal activities that develop communication skills (e.g., theater games, art critiques, or writing assignments) can be in opening up a new way of getting at meaning that may ultimately free the learner to new or more sophisticated ways of expression through the target language. IMPROVISATION: EDUCATION FOR THE WHOLE BODY The first thing I do in any class is have students establish an “empty space” (Brooks, 1984). The empty space (often in the middle of the room) rids the classroom of the look and feeling of rows, which focus attention on the teacher instead of on the learners. This creates a small arena in which to develop an ensemble feeling unencumbered by desks. I start small, introducing physical and vocal warm-ups as early as the third week of first-year German. All participants can see each other, and the space is ready for action. The empty space becomes a meeting ground for students to embark on a cooperative learning exercise involving writing or analysis of a painting, or a space that allows me to better interact with individual learners. I have found that the process of physically entering the “empty space” becomes a ritual for actively engaging in learning. Often the empty space is used for improvisation activities, which keep students alert and ‘‘fit” for participation. An activity may take as little as two minutes, yet have a positive impact on the rest of the hour. It can be used to begin a class (to set the tone), in the middle of a class (to energize students and more actively engage them), or at the end of a class (to finish on a positive note). The unpredictable course of action and dialogue in improvisation challenges students to adapt their speech and actions to suit the context being created, yet it allows them to determine the direction of the improvisation at the same time. Improvisation gives students practice they need to develop spontaneous speaking skills and greater fluency, but it has value beyond this in its capacity to facilitate an environment for language learning. Many theater games are whole-group activities, and although some group members may not at first understand enough of the game or the language to participate fully, the nonrigid nature of improvisation exercises allows all students to engage at their own pace and on their own terms. Through frequent participation,

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Page 194 students develop the personal techniques and skills necessary for the activities themselves. Students are free to watch and listen to others and determine when and how they themselves will participate. The pressure is off the individual student, and the burden is on the group as a whole to make the activity successful. Unlike many other classroom activities, students cannot predict what will happen next. They give and get ideas from one another and gain confidence from taking small risks participating. Playing out an activity becomes as natural as being on a dance floor, watching others dance, and coming with one’s own new moves. In this regard, even nonverbal activities that allow students to explore meaning and express the “self” without being limited by the confines of language can be valuable as a context within which they can learn more about verbal expression. CURRICULAR STRUCTURES LEADING TO PERFORMANCE Over the years, I have developed a systematic approach to incorporate theater and the arts on a regular basis in first- and second-year classes that includes (1) improvisation, (2) imaginative writing, (3) guided rehearsal and performance of dialogues and dramatic texts, and (4) visual arts activities such as museum visits, critiques of fine art and art production (e.g., student-produced collages). Each of these aspects has its own set of goals and emphases, but it is through interconnecting all four that learners have the most to gain. Through improvisation (warm-ups and theater games), students increase their flexibility with the language. Improvisation forces students to concentrate, to improve their memory, and to stretch their imagination. In practicing imaginative writing (from Haiku to poetry to short prose to dialogue), students gain access to speech patterns and ways of expression that fulfill their own personal needs for communication, something which is often completely absent from traditional textbook or teacheroriented instruction. Through guided rehearsal and performance of original and existing texts, students are exposed to aspects of the target culture (e.g., history, appropriate expression of emotion) and eventually realize the range of linguistic benefits that are a focus in Deutsches Theater (Shier, 1995). Finally, the arts can provide a way of bridging the gap between classroom and culture, both the student’s own culture and the L2 culture (Shier, 1993). The 300-level play production seminar, from which Deutsches Theater projects stem, now has a context within which it can itself grow and which it in turn feeds. Because students/actors in Deutsches Theater have almost all gone through the first- and second-year RC German program, their attitudes and behaviors are now somewhat defined by the time they arrive in that course. Students entering the play production seminar approach that course with higher expectations more characteristic of seasoned and disciplined

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Page 195 artists. They are actually conditioned for the course (more fit for learning) when they begin. A DIFFERENT WAY OF KNOWING Research in the areas of drama therapy and arts therapy suggests that the body and physical sensations can provide a way of knowing that goes beyond what we verbally understand. However, drama therapists report that adult conditioning leads more and more to use of verbal language and less reliance on and comfort using the body for communication. They speak of “awakening” the body/self or of ‘‘recapturing” the expressive use of the body as a means of communication (Landy, 1995; Pearson, 1996). Ironically, this reported emphasis on verbal communication poses a serious challenge for the adult (college-age) student learning a foreign language. The adult learner has become increasingly reliant on verbal skills, but in the mother language. Worse yet, even if the learner seeks to break out of this constraint by recapturing the “body,” it is one no longer familiar. As Cooper (1996) reports, “We suddenly find ourselves inhabiting a body that we no longer understand” (p. 18). When discussing nonverbal expression, Cooper goes on to say: Our body is our self. We cannot run or hide from it, although of course we do and wish to. We strive to be like someone else. We don’t dare to look at ourselves. We wear many masks. By becoming aware of our bodies through movement we are able to slip off the masks and affirm our individuality. (p. 25) This is remindful of the association that students make between physical activity and comfort in the L2 classroom environment described earlier. However, in the L2 classroom, our objective is not to get away from verbal communication but to get away from being inhibited while doing so using a nonnative language. Indeed, activities like mask-making, arts activities, rehearsal, and performance, can provide a bridge to temporarily being the “other self” that Cooper alludes to, and thereby a bridge to L2 mastery. OTHER WAYS TO COME AT THE WHOLE BODY The whole person is addressed when students have an opportunity to learn through theater or visual arts assignments. For example, in a second-year German class, my students study autobiographical literary and visual work by German-speakers from a range of backgrounds in the twentieth century. After studying photomontages by Weimar artists, students try their own hand at making collages. When funding allows, we bring in a German artist to work directly with students on this project.10 As a follow-up to two class sessions

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Page 196 spent in the art studio, working on collages focused on issues of identity, we set up a gallery of the students’ work. Each student writes a poem, story, or essay based on the collage of another student on the first gallery visit. I provide side coaching (in German) as they work: “Think about posing some of your ideas as questions.” “Can you use more vivid adjectives?” “Can you come up with a metaphor for what you are saying?” “How about introducing another character who offers a different perspective?’’ Students submit their writing about another student’s work for me to edit, as well as a journal entry about their own work. On the second gallery visit, we hold a critique and discuss art works one by one, taking as much time as necessary to discuss each work. As a final step of each critique, the artist is invited to remark about what has been said and to share his/her own perceptions about the artwork. REACHING AND TEACHING ALL STUDENTS It may come as a surprise that highly verbal students seem to have as much to gain from arts assignments, if not more.11 Mark was a second-year German student who was bright, perceptive, critical, and always had something to contribute to class discussion. Whenever Mark learned that we were about to do an assignment requiring imagination, such as an in-class imaginative writing assignment, he groaned quietly by way of protest. As someone who was accustomed to being in control of anything that he was supposed to learn, Mark dreaded assignments that called for the use of imagination and feared that he would not succeed. For the collage assignment, Mark spent the entire time in the studio cutting out red lips. While other students were looking through magazines for photos and text, shouting out to each other (in German) when they needed something, laying out potential compositions, and consulting with me, Mark sat there silently, cutting out lips after lips. I couldn’t help thinking there was something cathartic about his cutting out mouths, since speaking was clearly his own preference over nonverbal communication. I never saw him working on his collage beyond this. Mark approached me with excitement when his collage was ready. He asked me to read his poem about it, adding, “I really like it.” It was a breakthrough for Mark to want to share something as threatening to him as original creative work. As vulnerable as he must have felt, he was now signaling to me how much his work meant to him. I read the poem and made a few suggestions. We negotiated some changes, and he improved the piece. Our dialogue helped Mark refine his work and express exactly what he wanted to say. Mark later told me that he had avoided doing anything remotely related to art since grade school, when everyone in his class except him was selected for the “gifted” art class. (He remembers how his teacher sent him away from the table where he had been working alongside the other students.) Mark is a

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Page 197 perfectionist who is beginning to take risks in his learning after years of “playing it safe.” As someone who is quick to judge, it is natural that he feared criticism and judgment of his own creative work. In working with Mark I was cautious, but direct. I promised him that he would not be humiliated. Mark’s experience working with the arts helped him release tension and ultimately freed him up. He appreciated and respected the work others did and learned that good work often takes time to develop. He experienced firsthand the importance of not trying to control the path creativity takes. Mark’s biggest fear remains fear of failure. As he gains confidence in his creative abilities, he will grow to understand that there is really no such thing as failure. The creative process teaches one that what may seem like failure is a point in a learning continuum that can lead to a much better solution. Creativity, in itself, is problem solving. At the other end of the learning spectrum from Mark in any given group are students who don’t seem to find a way to participate in class comfortably no matter what the assignment. Jo was a student who could only laugh nervously whenever she was called on in class. I discovered that Jo blossomed on creative assignments. She created a sophisticated, politically charged collage that stimulated lively discussion during the second class gallery visit during which students critiqued each other’s work. Whereas Jo was often distracted in class, she focused carefully on each word students uttered about her collage (in German). For the first time she spoke up in class, articulating slowly but surely her intentions with her art work; she was delighted that others had “seen” what she was trying to show in the work and relishing the recognition by her classmates that she could do something. She later felt comfortable making comments on works we had read and even commenting on points raised by others. Her experience in that class was a personal turning point. It was also a turning point for the class as her peers made a conscious effort to include her more in the group. One sometimes learns after the fact that students have a learning disability or personal problems, which prevented them from doing well in a given class or in a given semester. In such cases, arts assignments may provide a way to break from whatever prevents students from learning L2. The chance to work on an art assignment gives students license and even incentive to get back on track. The arts have the capacity to bring out aspects of personality and emotions that may have been buried after years of holding back rather than risking a “wrong’’ answer. RESULTS OF INCLUDING THE ARTS Students working on arts assignments learn to work cooperatively and become more comfortable with the teacher and with each other. Because they are physically involved, that is, using more of the body, in their own learning

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Page 198 process, they become more invested in their learning. They grow less self-conscious, yet more aware of what they do, and begin communicating with greater sophistication, confidence, spontaneity, and, ultimately, accuracy. The teacher who enters into a relationship with students as an artistic guide/mentor witnesses students enter a new world as they explore self-expression. Students in the middle of a creative process tap into depths of personal and emotional experience that can provide individual significance and value to their creative work. I have found that students never abuse days devoted to any form of art production or critique. Such activities rejuvenate a group and engage every learner. It takes both structure and flexibility to establish an environment in which students can learn the vocabulary of selfexpression. A teacher who uses creative arts assignments in language learning becomes increasingly aware of assessing individual students’ needs and designing assignments to best fit the learning needs of the group. I am careful to build art assignments into the syllabus, but I don’t hesitate to introduce an assignment that is not spelled out in the syllabus. I’ve learned that when a class is not productive, when faces are long or students appear disengaged, it is sometimes better to enter the “empty space” of improvisation described earlier. A three minute theater warm-up, a group critique of a painting projected by the overhead projector, a short imaginative writing exercise, or a nonverbal assignment in which a pair creates a sculpture out of clay based on a poem can refresh a group and get it back on task, working more effectively as an ensemble.12 BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN TEACHING AND LEARNING CULTURE When we experience the arts, we both understand and don’t understand (Silvers, 1978). What we “understand” is based on our subjective experience. What we don’t understand we begin to make sense of as time and our perceptions change, partly in response to the art we are experiencing. This correlates with the very process of language learning.13 An artistic product, although it has value in and of itself, is not finished when it comes into existence. The tendency for art to show and to exemplify, and the fact that we interpret art, make it rich with multiple references (Silvers, 1978). In the L2 classroom, these may bring out different points of view and serve as a springboard for lively discussion. All students can begin to interpret an artwork on some level. In a museum assignment, I often ask students to describe, in writing, a painting they like and one they dislike. In doing the latter assignment, I ask them to spend twenty minutes just looking at the painting without writing a word. They often describe the painting they disliked as one they “came to know’’ and grew to like. The very process of understanding seems linked to their acceptance of the artwork. It is important to note that as we look at art,

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Page 199 it is never just a matter of taste but rather a matter of increasing our understanding and informing our judgments. Liking is an important value in American culture and can be directly linked to understanding something. Liking is also related to what we think we do best. Just as a piano student practices pieces he/she knows best, so the language learner (and often the teacher!) tends to practice what he/she already knows best. Of course we know that it is the other areas that need the most practice. By establishing a comfortable setting that is geared to promoting participation of all students, pressure is off the individual students to accomplish this on their own. Students become accustomed to switching gears and learn to accept that they will like some activities more than others. They are able to stay on task in areas they like and areas they don’t like, sustained by the energy of the group. In coming to know a language, students must become accustomed to thinking and communicating “on their feet.” Students’ experience in school is fragmented, and they often sit as isolated learners in their classes. When we ask students to share ideas about an artwork or ask them to enter into performance with others or to create their own artwork, we open the door for personal expression. In doing so, we invite students to participate in different ways and on different levels of learning. If critiquing a painting, for example, some students will prefer to discuss formal aspects of an artwork, others will invent a story, and yet others will comment on emotions invoked.14 It is important to provide content and strategies that encourage students to emulate the different possible ways of expression found in art in their own responses using the language they are learning. DIRECTING STUDENTS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN LEARNING There is a potential pitfall in any cross-curricular L2 teaching approach involving the arts if the arts are integrated only peripherally with no consideration of the curriculum. In such a case, the arts may serve only as a pleasant diversion, and they will likely provide little more than the Pygmalion effect (people will perform better if they know they are being watched) or the Hawthorne effect (people become more productive if any variable in their work changes (Ley and Kauschansky, p. 107). It is important to integrate arts assignments in a way that is purposeful and deliberate and reflects awareness of standards and priorities set by arts educators. Many arts educators believe that there are four disciplines that should be included in an arts curriculum: Art History, Art Criticism, Aesthetics, and Art Production.15 Ideally, it is through study of all these that one can truly begin to get at the meaning of art. These four disciplines provide a fertile intersection of theory and practice and the impact of including them in L2 instruction can be profound.

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Page 200 Art History, Criticism, and Aesthetics provide meaningful content in the classroom. They are mediated by language, and their study might include assignments involving listening comprehension, reading, speaking, and writing. Assignments in Art History help develop research skills and deepen students’ appreciation of civilization and cultural differences. Art Criticism, Aesthetics, and Art Production refine students’ skills at interpreting and push students to go beyond initial reactions. Study of Aesthetics raises philosophical questions about the meaning of art (i.e., What is Art?, How is Art?, and even Why is Art?) and make students feel intellectually challenged. When I pose the question “What is Art?” to students at the first-year level, following several short oral assignments critiquing paintings, I am often amazed by the sophistication students display in their attempts at answers. The process of searching for a way to express what they want to say gives students practice stretching their minds and improvising in a way that develops discourse strategies. Art production is particularly useful as a medium for language learning. Through the production of art (as image, text, sound, movement, or any combination thereof), students have the opportunity to direct some of their own learning. Assignments involving art production invite students to let their personal talents come to bear in the learning process. Creative work makes room for style, an important component in personal expression that is often sacrificed in language learning. I have found that awareness of the four disciplines of arts education described here can help structure drama and visual arts assignments to improve reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills at all levels of the curriculum. The four disciplines of arts education also reinforce emphases in our theater company, Deutsches Theater. Through studying plays and becoming familiar with major theater journals, students learn about art criticism, theater history, and aesthetics, all of which are critical to dramaturgy. Through rehearsal, technical work (set and properties design, costuming, slides for production, T-shirt design, and program design), and performance, students’ focus is on aesthetics and art production. The range of possible emphases for arts education and the potential for designing and implementing an array of assignments related to the arts promise access to learning for students with a variety of learning styles, natural abilities, and preferences (Shier, 1993). When meaningful communication takes place in the context of L2 learning, students feel that they are invited to share their thoughts. Their focus is no longer on learning language, per se, but on using language as a tool. COOKING WITHOUT A RECIPE: USING WHAT WORKS FOR YOU AND YOUR STUDENTS My work in theater and the arts has converted me into a teacher who facilitates students’ first attempts to take responsibility for their own learning.

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Page 201 I believe that this is the single most important factor in my students’ success. It is also what allows their learning to continue long after their days in my classroom have passed. Students’ enthusiasm about our projects and the change in the classroom environment prompted me to start giving workshops and presentations. I found that language teachers were hungry for what really works in the classroom, but they wanted a recipe (for a product) they could take into the classroom on Monday morning. At workshops, I always give plenty of recipes, but I know that recipes don’t work unless the right ingredients are there, starting with the attitudes and expectations of both the teacher and the learner. Students and curricula vary, so before ‘‘recipes” were copied and passed around, it became equally important that teachers had a chance to “cook” with what they already had on hand, modifying recipes, as needed. Of course, the only way to show this to teachers was to have them follow a general recipe so that they would have a starting point. My workshops quickly gained a reputation of being physical and intense, full of group “Ahas.” I have heard from individual teachers that my workshop made them stop and think about their role in the classroom. They wanted to change, for themselves and for their students. It is important to cook at least occasionally without a recipe, so I challenge teachers in my workshops to take something new into the classroom every day, because this, in itself, will guarantee that learning will take place, for teachers as well as students! Teachers who learn to skillfully integrate interdisciplinary arts and language assignments can make students (and themselves) aware of the value of moving beyond what they already “know” or feel comfortable with. SUMMARY Interdisciplinarity has a wealth of virtues relevant to providing a learning environment that will foster student success. These include increasing student interest and motivation, encouraging multiple perspectives in approaching challenges, and a better framework for addressing multiple intelligences. The arts as a discipline provide a uniquely rich set of attributes in this regard, especially when combined with second language learning. The significance of integrating the arts into the L2 curriculum goes beyond making students familiar with the visual, literary, or performance art of a second culture and extends to pedagogical strategies to reach all students. Interdisciplinary work in the arts has given me values that have been useful for working with students at all levels of the curriculum. From working in the arts, I have learned how and why it is important to get students to just start doing . I give them a framework and support for their work and allow them time, space, and sometimes their own way to approach problems. They use

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Page 202 their portfolios (as an artist would) as a testing ground and a place to reflect on their work and their learning. I encourage them to be serious and honest about their work, and I try to remove any sense of threat that they will be judged harshly as they are taking risks exploring new ways to express themselves. By expanding the language curriculum to include interdisciplinary work in the arts, we provide meaningful content and a context for learning and we model the type of risk-taking we wish to encourage in our students. A curriculum that integrates the four disciplines of arts education in a coordinated program will find that study of each discipline supports understanding of the others and that any and all combinations of these areas merit exploring. Teaching a language through the arts can get students (and teachers) moving intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and quite literally, bodily, to more holistically facilitate learning. NOTES 1. In this chapter, L2 stands for foreign and second language. 2. Many of the ideas here are refinements of ideas presented in workshops, at conferences, or in previous publications. See J. Shier (1990, 1993, 1995). 3. For resources on directing second-language plays, see A. Maley and A. Duff (1979); J. Shier (1995); S. Smith (1984). For excellent resources on improvisation and directing, see Bernardi (1992); Boal (1979, 1992); Brooks (1984); Johnstone (1992); Rosenberg (1990); Scher and Verrall (1975, 1987); Spolin (1963). 4. This includes team teaching with members of the Drama Program, Martin Walsh and Kate Mendeloff; working on two bilingual productions of plays (staged in German by Deutsches Theater and in English by students in the Drama Program, under the direction of Martin Walsh); developing collage projects in collaboration with Ann Savageau and students enrolled in Design, and consulting with Jane Heirich (Music) about original music compositions (my own and students’ in Deutsches Theater). In addition to this, funding from the Goethe Institut has made it possible to bring in experts to give workshops and provide training in movement, mask making, and speech performance. As an extension of this, DT has been involved in outreach efforts with area elementary and high schools, giving workshops and performances off campus. 5. For more information about the RC German Program and RC Deutsches Theater, visit our Web site at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jshie. 6. The 6 musical Lehrstücke written between 1928 and 1930 were intended as a sort of experimental laboratory for actors learning methods of epic theater. There is often an assumption that conveying a moral was Brecht’s goal with the learning plays. Suvin (1990) points out: “(Brecht’s) enmity toward Weltanschauung, a systematized doctrine, and his insistence on a learning that, using theatrical means, engages the whole body uniting emotion and reason. . . . ‘Learning’ meant a critical appropriation of a way of thinking, of a method, incarnated in the players’ Haltung ” (p. 23). Though the plays are didactic in nature, the real instruction (Lehre) comes from the experience students gained from experimenting at rehearsal. The play Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis (Brecht, 1967), for example, features chanting, choral response, a clown’s act, ritual, slide projection, audience participa-

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Page 203 tion, and a dance of death. Working on the play provides training for the actor both as actor and as audience member. 7. See Bräuer (2000, 167–80) for more information on the use of portfolios in the foreign language classroom. 8. The use of portfolios in our program reaffirms findings at Harvard and elsewhere on teaching and assessment. For over thirty years, Harvard’s Project Zero has conducted research on art education and its relationship to development and learning. Developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, a codirector of that project, has challenged currently accepted standards for measuring intelligence, which recognize only verbal and numerical intelligences (or “academic” intelligences). According to Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences, which have served as a basis for demanding curriculum reform since the mid-1980s, standard measurements of intelligence are often inadequate, because they fail to recognize “non-academic” intelligences. Arts PROPEL, a spin off of Project Zero, studies students’ portfolios to trace how the integration of production, perception, and reflection (three processes that are critical to artistic creation) can provide us with clues to help erase differences between teaching and assessment. The findings of these initiatives and others suggest flexibility in addressing the needs of students (Camp and Winner, 1993; Davis, 1993, 1994; Winner and Simmons, 1992; Wolf, 1989). 9. It is appropriate for language programs to promote awareness of global issues beyond those covered in textbooks and beyond those directly related to the language of study, in this case, German. Fundraising efforts of DT are often directly linked to themes in productions. A benefit production of antifascist scenes by Brecht, for example, raised funds for war victims in Bosnia. A DT production that focused on man’s destruction of the environment raised funds to help stop the slaughtering of endangered Eastern Plains Lowland Gorillas in the Congo. 10. Funding received from a Year of the Humanities and the Arts (YoHA) grant made it possible for students to work with Berlin installation artist Rolf Wojciechowsky. Wojciechowsky demonstrated special trompe l’oeil techniques using photocopying, gave a public lecture on the beauty of the ordinary found object, and led students on a tour of an installation by himself and local Ann Arbor Artist and RC Fiber Arts Instructor Ann Savageau at the Washtenaw Community College Art Gallery. He then worked with students on their own collage boxes. This is an example of how to integrate art production into a series of related assignments. 11. I have found this to be true in the play production seminar as well. In that course, students literally learn to walk and speak German at the same time. In movement workshops, the most verbal students try to hide in the back row, which incidentally makes them more noticeable. By not drawing attention to them, I find they grow more comfortable and less self-conscious during the workshop and ultimately work their way more towards the front line. The process of moving freely seems to have the effect of oiling a frozen machine. Students not only loosen up physically, but seem to simultaneously open up their voice. Perhaps the way to view this is that they come with their own voice but learn through theater and movement to speak with an “other’’ voice, which ultimately opens up choices for expression with their own voice. In many separate instances, I have witnessed healing that occurs with working in arts. Whether working with students on theater, art, or imaginative writing assignments, it is sometimes useful to share research on learning styles or on creativity with them if they seem to resist the creative process. There are several good resources in English for this. Some of the best I’ve found are Nachmanovitch (1990), Lamott (1995), and Goldberg (1990, 1998).

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Page 204 One of the most useful books I’ve found to help students understand their own learning style is K. Butler (1987). 12. Experience gained from directing develops one’s skills in teaching and assessment. The director’s task to get actors to communicate effectively in performance directly parallels the task of the L2 teacher. Just as I have learned subtle ways to get students to perform better on stage, I have been able to apply that skill in the classroom and better reach individual students. In terms of assessing, directing gives teachers practice discovering wherein the problem lies (when students/actors are not communicating effectively) and finding a way to address this. 13. Several studies of the visual arts have dealt with the languages or symbol systems of art. They have stressed the cognitive nature of art and have identified specific features of the way the arts communicate knowledge and feelings. Art historian Rudolf Arnheim’s (1969) writings contain some of the first and most detailed discussions of how art provides a different way of knowing. See also Goodman (1976). 14. Art historians refer to emotions involved in the aesthetic experience as “tempered” or “denatured” (because the emotion is intellectualized) or even as “inverted” (i.e., we welcome some works despite their arousal of emotions we normally shun). For good discussions about emotion and cognition in art, see Broudy (1978, 1983); Goodman (1976); Parsons (1986); and Silvers (1978). 15. The movement that pushed for inclusion of these four disciplines in arts education is known as the disciplinebased arts education movement. It started up in an effort to bring about curricular reform in arts education in order to rid the arts of their second-class status in the curriculum due to their relegation to affective learning. The type of struggles the arts have had in establishing a permanent place in the curriculum is one all too familiar to language programs and, as such, language educators have something to gain by looking at how arts educators have fought to keep their status in the curriculum. See Dobbs (1992), Smith (1987), and Clark, Day, and Greer (1987). REFERENCES Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bernardi, P. (1992). Improvisation starters. Cincinnati: Betterwood Books. Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Urizon Books. Boal, A. (1992). Games for actors and non-actors. London and New York: Routledge. Bräuer, G. (2000). Portfolio learning. In G. Bräuer (Ed.), Writing across languages (pp. 167–180). Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing. Brecht, B. (1967). Gesammelte Werke . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Brooks, P. (1984). The empty space. New York: Atheneum. Broudy, H. (1978). On cognition and emotion in the arts. In S. Madeja, (Ed.), The arts, cognition, and basic skills. St. Louis: CEMREL, Inc. Broudy, H. (1983). A common curriculum in aesthetics and fine arts. In G. Fenstermacher, & J. Goodlad (Eds.), Individual differences and the common curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Butler, K. (1987). Learning and teaching style. Columbia, CT: The Learner’s Dimension. Camp, R., & Winner, E. (1993). Arts PROPEL: A handbook for imaginative writing . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Project Zero and Educational Testing Service. Clark, G., Day, M., & Greer, W.D. (1987). Discipline-based art education: Becoming students of art. Journal of Aesthetic Education 21(2), 129–193.

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Page 205 Cooper, D. (1996). Beginning with the body. In J. Pearson (Ed.), Discovering the self through drama and movement: The sesame approach (pp. 17–26). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Davis J. (1993). The Co-Arts assessment handbook. Cambridge, MA: Project Co-Arts. Harvard Project Zero. Davis J. (1994). Beyond school walls: Challenges to collaborations between public schools and community arts centers. Arts Education Policy Review 95(5), 12–14. Dobbs, S. (1992). The DBAE handbook: An overview of discipline-based art education. Santa Monica: Getty Center for Education in the Arts. Dürrenmatt, F. (1956). Besuch der alten Dame. Zürich: die Arche. Gardner, H. (1973). The arts and human development: A psychological study of the artistic process. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Goldberg, N. (1990). Wild mind: Living the writer’s life. New York: Bantam Books. Goldberg, N. (1998). Writing down the bones: Freeing the writer within. Boston: Shambhala. Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art. An approach to a theory of symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Hachfeld, R. (1971). 3mal Kindertheater. München/Frankfurt: Verlag Heinrich Ellermann. Jelinek, E.(1980). Ballade von drei unwichtigen Männern sowie dem Personenkreis um sie herum. In Die endlose Unschuldigkeit (pp. 16–48). München: Schwiftinger Gallerie Verlag. Johnstone, K. (1992). IMPRO. Improvisation and the theatre. London: Methuen. Lamott, A. (1995). Bird by bird. Some instructions on writing and life. New York: Anchor Books. Landy, R. (Ed.) (1995). Essays in drama therapy. The double life. London and Bristol, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Ley, R., & Kauschansky, M. (1985). The 4 Rs: Readin’, ’riting, ’rithmetic, and the right hemisphere. A review of the application of the brain hemisphere. A review of the application of the brain laterality model to education. In A. Sheikh & K. Sheikh (Eds.), Imagery in education (pp. 89–112). Farmingdale, NY: Baywood Publishing. Madeja, S. (Ed.). (1978). The arts, cognition and basic skills. St. Louis: CEMREL. Maley, A., & Duff, A. (1979). Drama techniques in language learning: A resource book of communication activities for language teachers. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nachmanovitch, Stephen. (1990). Free play. Improvisation in life and art. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher Inc. Parsons, M. (1986). The place of a cognitive development approach to aesthetic response. Journal of Aesthetic Education 20(4), 107–111. Pearson, J. (Ed) (1996). Discovering the self through drama and movement: The sesame approach. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Rosenberg,C. (1990). Praxis für das Bewegungstheater . Theater Spiel, Bd. 7. Aachen: Meyer & Meyer Vlg. Scher A., & Verrall, C.(1975). 100+ ideas for drama. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Scher A., & Verrall, C. (1987). Another 100+ ideas for drama. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Shier, J.H. (1990). Integrating the arts in the foreign/second language curriculum: Fusing the affective and the cognitive. Foreign Language Annals 23(4), 301–316).

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Page 206 Shier, J.H. (1993). The arts for language’s sake: Bridging the gap between classroom and culture in the foreign and second language learning experience. Perspectives in foreign language teaching , Vol. 6. Keynote address, Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and Literatures, pp. 21–39. Shier, J.H. (1995). From the page to the stage: Creative speaking in foreign and second language instruction. Perspectives in Foreign Language Teaching. Vol. 8. Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and Literatures, pp.145–167. Silvers, A. (1978). Show and tell: The arts, cognition and basic modes of referring. In S. Madeja, (Ed.), The arts, cognition, and basic skills (pp. 31–50). St. Louis: CEMREL, Inc. Smith, S. (1984). The theater arts and the teaching of second languages. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing. Smith, R. (1987). The changing image of art education. Theoretical antecedents of discipline-based art education. Journal of Aesthetic Education 27(2), 4–36. Spolin, V. (1963). Improvisation for the theater: A handbook of teaching and directing techniques. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Suvin, D. (1990). Brecht: Bearing, pedagogy, productivity. (Paper abstract). Communications from the International Brecht Society 19(1), 25. Willett, J. (Ed.). (1974). Brecht on theatre . New York: Hill and Wang (2nd ed). Winner, E., & Simmons, S. (Eds.) (1992). Arts PROPEL: A handbook for visual arts. Cambridge: Harvard Project Zero and Educational Testing Service. Wolf, D.P. (1989). Portfolio assessment: Sampling student work. Educational Leadership 46(7), 35–39.

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Page 207 12 Performing Brecht: From Theory to Practice Franziska B. Lys, Denise Meuser, John Paluch, and Ingrid Zeller INTRODUCTION In a time when interdisciplinary, cooperative, and project-oriented learning is promoted as a better way of engaging and teaching students (Bräuer, 2001), this project allowed us to incorporate current pedagogical thinking into our teaching practices. The production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Der Ozeanflug’’ (1967, pp. 407–409, 565–585) in German was a collaborative project between the Departments of German and Theatre at Northwestern University.1 Our goal was to provide foreign language instructors and students with a multidimensional academic teaching and learning environment that would not only help unfold an interest in reading drama but would encourage the use and production of language in a meaningful and culturally significant way.2 The Brecht project was divided into two parts: In the classroom portion of the project, students read Brecht’s Lehrstück (didactic play) “Der Ozeanflug.” They discussed the social and cultural background of the play and learned

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Page 208 about Brecht’s ideas and writings concerning theater. In the hands-on portion of the project, students focused on the stage production of the play. During an intense five-week rehearsal, they experienced firsthand not only the process of theatrical practice but also how to work collaboratively and supportively with each other and with their instructors. The result was a unique artistic effort, aptly illustrating Langham’s (1983) premise that a drama has to be experienced, not just read and analyzed. There is all the difference in the world between literature and drama. A play’s sound, music, movement, looks, dynamics—and much more—are to be discovered deep in the script, yet cannot be detected through strictly literary methods of reading and analysis. (p. 8) The following sections illustrate how this interdisciplinary theater production came about. We begin by describing the main collaborators and proceed to outline the pedagogical reasons for undertaking the project. Then we explain why we chose the Brecht play and chronicle the day-to-day work, which is divided into classroom tasks and hands-on production tasks. Aspects that are discussed include the structure of the project within the context of a course, the specific topics that were covered in the class, and the experience of being immersed in theatrical practice. An important part of performing is the audience and its reaction to the play. We therefore describe our outreach efforts to the university community, to the community at large, and to other German classes and schools. We also provide a description of the techniques we employed to make a German play accessible to a largely English speaking audience. Finally, we describe the budget and fundraising efforts, and we conclude with evaluative and summarizing remarks. PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE PROJECT Recently, perhaps provoked by the many advances in technology, there have been interesting discussions about new approaches for teaching and learning that emphasize interdisciplinary, collaborative, and project-oriented tasks. In an article entitled “From Teaching to Learning—A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Barr and Tagg (1995, 16–17) challenge American colleges to redefine their goals and shift from an “instruction” to a “learning” environment. In a “learning” environment, they continue, the mission is not to ‘‘transfer knowledge from faculty to students,” but to “elicit student discovery and construction of knowledge”; it is not to “offer courses and programs” but to “create powerful learning environments.” The primary responsibility for faculty, then, is to take on the role of designers of learning methods and environments and to work in teams with students to create collaborative and supportive tasks. We felt that incorporating theater into the

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Page 209 foreign-language classroom helps promote a shift toward creating a learning environment where the emphasis is on interaction, cooperation, and language use. Firstly, theater makes the text come alive when students begin physically interpreting the action, choosing one gesture over another or solving a synchronization problem. Secondly, theater challenges body, spirit, and mind and heightens determination and enthusiasm. Thirdly, theater provides intense language practice. And finally, theater provides language instructors and students alike with infinite options for extensions and variations to start a dialogue, to continue a discussion, or to determine a new perspective. In designing this project, we outlined specific objectives to maximize language exposure and practice. • Provide an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach for students and instructors. Interdepartmental ties between instructors and students were created during the entire course of the project. There was not one instructor responsible for the classroom work, but seven: Some were specialists in pedagogy and language instruction, some in Brecht’s work and theories, and some in theater production. They all shared their knowledge and worked together to plan the course, to present lectures, as well as to advise and assess students. A secondyear MFA (Master in Fine Arts) directing student directed the production. Other graduate and undergraduate students from the Theater Department were in charge of lighting, scenic design, costume design, and video and music production used for the staging. The actors were German and Theater undergraduate students. The play brought instructors and students together. Students supported one another in their attempts to master the text or to define a role. They were learning by doing and creating lasting relationships at the same time. The director made a point of eliciting and incorporating suggestions from both students and instructors in staging decisions. In order for the project to meet our objectives, it was crucial to include the vision of the entire group. • Provide a multidimensional approach to learning. In planning the course, we took a multidimensional approach. Language students at the elementary and intermediate levels rarely have the time to cover one text or cultural topic in detail. As instructors strive to teach all the grammar points and give students a sampling of the literature and culture, there is little time for in-depth explorations. Staging the play provided the course with a context in which students could discover the multifaceted nature of the play. Communication channels were left open; the students were not simply being lectured to but were actively involved. In this way, students had the opportunity to move beyond the text, to live the language, and to respond to it intellectually and emotionally.

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Page 210 • Combine culture, literature, and drama. The project clearly expanded the boundaries of a traditional literature course. The classroom segment included lectures, films, slide presentations, and discussions with guest speakers that sought to provide the students with important historical background information. Covering the culture and society of the Weimar period and the biographies of Bertolt Brecht and Charles Lindbergh established the base from which the students could approach the play as a text. It was, however, in the studio space that the students’ interpretations of the text were questioned and discussed anew. They were encouraged to find gestures and to use the intonation that they believed conveyed the meaning of their words. They soon realized the challenge of depicting and conveying the meaning of a scene. They learned how to interpret the play’s action in various ways, to improvise, and to emote, but perhaps most importantly, they learned that a written text had a life of its own that went far beyond what can be seen on a page. • Use German in a meaningful and communicative context. Certainly the most pervading of reasons for the project was engaging all participants, students and faculty alike, in speaking German. German served as the language of communication for all lectures, discussions, and rehearsals. Not only were students constructing a knowledge base of Brecht and the traditions of theater practice, they were at the same time using their German language skills in productive and meaningful interactions. For example, students learned the German terms used in stage direction not simply as part of a vocabulary list but because they needed to know how to approach the stage and where to stand. CHOOSING AN APPROPRIATE PLAY One of the main difficulties involved in such a project is the selection of an appropriate play. Not only were we limited by the time frame given to us for the staging (rehearsal time including the technical week in theater is usually five weeks), we also had to take the skill levels of our students into consideration and the makeup of our audience. Students in the class had little or no acting experience and were intermediate-mid or intermediate-high speakers of German according to the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) scale. This meant that the length of the play could not be much more than an hour and the language would have to be at or near the level of proficiency of the actors. We expected that many of the people in the audience would not be German speakers. In order to entice them to attend a German production, we had to carefully consider the content of the play: a subject the audience would be familiar with and a playright they could identify. We chose Brecht’s didactic play “Der Ozeanflug.” The version of the play “Der Ozeanflug” as it is performed today first appeared in the year 1949. Since its initial publication in 1929, it had

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Page 211 undergone a series of decisive changes. Conceived originally as the radio-play “Der Lindberghflug,” it was written for the chamber music festival in Baden-Baden in 1929 with the motto: “Music for the Radio in the Age of Technology for the Masses.” Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith, both of whom shared Brecht’s interest in experimental art forms and his fascination with the newest achievements through technology, composed the music for the ‘‘cantata.” Set for four voices (tenor, baritone, bass, alto), chamber choir, and chamber orchestra, the piece was based on Charles Lindbergh’s historic, first nonstop, solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 21, 1927. It drew specifically on Lindbergh’s personal account of the flight in his book We (1927) describing the flight as a feat not accomplished by only one man, but with the help of a machine and a community of people.3 In addition to the musical performance on May 27, 1929, Brecht staged a memorable scenic concert during the course of the festival. He intended to illustrate pedagogical uses of the radio by making a representative listener part of the performance and having that listener ”repeat" the flight by singing the pilot’s part himself/herself. The radio as communicative device was meant to open new possibilities for mediated experiences and to facilitate the cooperation between the group and the individual. The final version of the play was produced in 1949 when the “Süddeutsche Rundfunk” asked to produce the piece and Brecht agreed, but on the condition that all references to Lindbergh, who had become known as a Nazi sympathizer, be erased. Brecht also wrote a prologue to be read before the play to remind the audience of Lindbergh’s fate and the fact that despite his courage and competence he would not be proclaimed a hero in this play. Recent performances of the work have focused on its pedagogical aspects for the radio and its possibilities for productions on television and theater with and without music and in the context of using multimedia. In choosing the play, we foremost liked its accessibility. The play is comprised of short scenes that are introduced by titles that announce the action. Thus, actors and audience know what to expect of each scene. Within each scene, the text is straightforward. The vocabulary used in the work is, for the most part, readily understood. The language used in Scene 3 presents a good example of the linguistic complexity of the play. In this section, the pilot introduces himself and lists the items that he will carry with him on the flight (translation provided by the authors). Vorstellung der Flieger und ihr Aufbruch in New Introduction of the pilots and their departure from York zu ihrem Flug nach Europa. New York upon their flight to Europe. Die Flieger The Pilots Mein Name tut nichts zur Sache. My name is not important.

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Page 212 Ich bin 25 Jahre alt. I am 25 years old. Mein Großvater war Schwede. My grandfather was a Swede. Ich bin Amerikaner. I am an American. Meinen Apparat habe ich selbst ausgesucht. I chose my machine myself. Er fliegt 210 km in der Stunde. It flies 210 kilometers an hour. Sein Name ist “Geist von St. Louis.” Its name is “The Spirit of St. Louis.” .... ... Ich wage es. I will risk it. Ich habe bei mir: I have with me: 2 elektrische Lampen 2 flashlights 1 Rolle Seil 1 length of rope 1 Rolle Bindfaden 1 ball of string 1 Jagdmesser . . . 1 hunting knife . . . Because the play does not pose a great linguistic challenge, the student actors were able to quickly memorize their parts with accuracy and fluency. The play also has a limited number of roles and, as in many Brecht plays, incorporates a chorus. This fact was vital from a practical standpoint as it allowed flexibility in casting. We did not expect a large number of students to enroll in the class because such a performance project called for a great time commitment on the part of the students and required a solid background in German. The director took Brecht’s goal of involving every actor literally; each of the students played the role of the pilot as well as other characters, and all made up the chorus. The flexibility of the play and the few directorial guidelines allowed the director a great amount of freedom of expression in her artistic interpretation of the work. ORGANIZATION OF THE PROJECT Once the play “Der Ozeanflug” had been chosen, the question remained how to integrate the preparation for the performances into a context that would be most beneficial to the students. We decided to offer a 300-level seminar for students in their third or fourth year of language study. The course was divided into two sections. During the first four weeks, we emphasized literature and language in order to familiarize students with the author, work, and time period. In the remaining five weeks, the focus was on theater and on the preparations for the actual performance.4 Brecht in the Classroom The first four weeks consisted of two ninety-minute classroom sessions per week. Our teaching methodology included lectures, discussions, video pre-

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Page 213 sentations, and language practice by following pedagogical suggestions we found in writing on Readers Theatre.5 We covered a variety of topics (biographical background on Brecht, the Weimar Republic, media theory, the theory of epic theater, Charles Lindbergh and his life, and Brecht in American theaters), and we read the play. The teaching was conceived of largely as a collaborative effort. All instructors involved were responsible for organizing one session or preparing one specific topic. Not only did this give the instructors the chance to focus on a subject that they had expertise or special interest in, but it also allowed for a welcome distribution of the teaching responsibilities among a group of people. In addition, two guest speakers delivered talks, one from the Department of German, and one from the Theater Department. The students responded positively to this arrangement and appreciated hearing several perspectives or viewpoints. • Session 1: Introduction and Auditions. During the first class session, the project was presented and the structure and expectations were explained. The director discussed her objectives regarding the play. She had taken a number of third- and fourth-year German courses, spent the summer in Germany with a Goethe-Institute program in Dresden and Berlin, and had expressed an interest in directing a play at Northwestern University in German. We felt that she was fully capable of conducting rehearsals in German. She had also observed some significant differences between the theater tradition in Germany and the theater tradition in the United States, and one of her goals was to make one tradition aware of the other and thus to enrich the way theater is approached in each respective country. In the same week, we held regular theater auditions. The students who had registered for the course knew simply that they would be involved in the performance of the play, but not what form their participation would take. The auditions were held to give the director an idea of how much experience the students had and who could potentially be cast in which part. In preparation for the auditions, the students had practiced a selected monologue in English, which they were required to perform during the audition. They were then asked to read a scene from the actual play in German while being given specific directions by the director. On one occasion, the director asked a student to expand his acting range by asking him to read the line from the play in which the pilot introduces himself as a very shy person, then to read it again and to pretend to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. The results were striking and impressive. Changes with regard to pronunciation, gestures, volume, and confidence were immediately noticeable. These techniques were representative of the additional dimensions that working with theater professionals opened up for language students.

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Page 214 • Session 2: Biographical Background on Brecht and Historical Background. The next session was used to determine the students’ knowledge of the history and politics of the first half of the twentieth century and to relate this knowledge to biographical information about Brecht. Together with the instructor, the students constructed a time line of historical and political events in the twentieth-century. After a general discussion of the period, students added information about Brecht to the time line. The information was taken from two short biographies of Brecht. During the session, students were also asked to present very short excerpts from Brecht’s biographical statements, letters, and interviews (1968, 1979).6 These statements were given to the students without context. Students read the texts and, in discussion with the group, attempted to determine what the context of the statement was and how it fit into the overall historical and biographical framework, which they had just discussed. The session ended with a short video, which presented Brecht and his literary accomplishments.7 The following discussion centered around the city of Weimar and its history. Because the idea for “Der Ozeanflug” was first conceived in 1927, information on the historical and political background of the Weimar Republic was particularly emphasized. The students became acquainted with this complex and rich period through textual accounts ranging from diary entries and reflections by Käthe Kollwitz (1968), to tables of the rate of inflation (Schulze, 1982) and texts describing the activities of Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht (Schulze, 1982). In addition, slides of the city of Weimar and of the many significant personalities who shaped its cultural history were shown. Because Weimar was also the cultural city of Europe in 1999, the year our project took place, the discussion on Weimar culture was charged with particular relevance for German history. • Session 3: Media Theory. A further topic for discussion was media theory and technology. One reason why we had found the idea of producing ‘‘Der Ozeanflug” intriguing was because the media, new technology, and its power played a most important part in it. This, in turn, also left a lot of room for creative experimentation with technology during the production. In the center of the play is a man who tries to conquer nature and the elements through technology and through the power of the machine. In 1927, the radio as well as the airplane were still relatively new inventions and were the targets of great fascination, expectation, and reflection. To understand the latter context is vital to an interpretation of the play, as symbols such as the airplane and the radio abound and represent decisive aspects of the piece. During the lecture, students learned about the media during that time and about Brecht in the context of media theory. They also learned about the play

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Page 215 and its history and its initial function as radio play, musical cantata, and as a performance experiment in the context of a media revolution. Slides were shown to illustrate these points, including a photograph of the initial performance of the radio play “Der Lindberghflug” as well as paintings by German artists of the time period such as George Grosz. • Session 4: Readers Theater. At the beginning of the third week, students and instructors read the piece for the first time together in the forum of a Readers Theater presentation. Readers Theater is a technique used in support of greater awareness of literature. There are many styles of Readers Theater, but nearly all share the following characteristics: • There is no full memorization as students read from the script. • Student actors wear no or only partial costumes suggestive of the role they are playing. • There is no stage, no sets, merely simple props to aid in performing. • The narration provides the framework for the dramatic action. Readers Theater is frequently used to serve as a key tool for creating interest in reading. We used Readers Theatre techniques as a convenient and effective means to present “Der Ozeanflug” in dramatic form. This highly productive session was also a crucial one in the context of an interdisciplinary course. It provided an effective bridge between literature and theater, between reading the play and acting in it, and between theory and practice. Students and instructors were given cards designating which parts they were going to read, and proceeded to read the play. This first reading helped develop an understanding of the content and action in each scene and also created a unique sense of community. In addition, the techniques employed in Readers Theater were also representative of Brecht’s vision for creating a communal performance experience that is characterized by limited advance preparation on the part of the readers. It is meant to inspire a unique awareness in the individual in that it allows for a surprise factor and a distancing element regarding what one is presenting. • Session 5: Epic Theater. During the third week of instruction, students were introduced to Brecht’s concept of epic theater and his didactic play or “das Lehrstück.” The lecture began by briefly presenting the themes and key characteristics of Brecht’s early plays. Students then read short selections of Brecht’s writings concerning Epic Theater (Brauneck, 1982; Raulfs, 1983). These excerpts allowed students to understand how Brecht’s stage changed and became instructive. Some time was spent on defining significant terminology such as “Verfremdungseffekt” (alienation effect) and ‘‘Dialektik” (dialectic). The students learned about

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Page 216 Brecht’s new approach to theater in which the spectator becomes less empathetic and more critical. A comparison between the traditional dramatic form of the theater and his concept of the epic form helped students understand the theories related to didactic plays and the artistic decisions made by their director concerning the production. • Session 6: Radio Theory and Early Versions of the Play. In the subsequent session, the students were further engaged with Brecht’s ideas regarding radio theory and were introduced to different versions of the play. A brief overview of the history of “Der Ozeanflug” since its conception in 1927 included a presentation of decisive changes regarding the media involved in each version as well as variations in content. The lecture emphasized the circumstances surrounding the first performance of the play as the radio cantata “Der Lindberghflug” with music composed by Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill. Activities during this class included listening to and comparing the Weill and Hindemith settings of the original musical performance. The students were provided with musical scores of the cantata and sang selected parts the way Brecht had intended for his audience. This gave them the chance to experiment with the piece as a radio play in the context for which it had been composed and to develop a clearer understanding of Brecht’s motivation behind “Der Ozeanflug.” Thus, it acquainted the students with Brecht’s experimental approaches involving the media, the radio, and the music, which also targeted a collective awareness in accordance with Marxist convictions. Finally, a video of an operatic TV-production of the play ( Der Lindberghflug: Eine Rundfunkoper, 1993) was shown as an example of a production of the play. • Session 7: Charles Lindbergh. In this class session, students were introduced to the Lindbergh family starting with Lindbergh’s ancestors who had emigrated from Sweden in 1859. The presentation continued with a chronicle of Lindbergh’s life from his birth in 1902 to his nonstop flight to Paris in 1927, to his death in 1974 at the age of 72. We discussed Lindbergh’s fame, his personal tragedy marked by their first child’s kidnapping and death, and his controversial ideology as an isolationist during World War II that cast a black shadow on his accomplishments throughout the rest of his life. Most of the material presented in class was based on Scott Berg’s biography Lindbergh (1998) and on information on various Web sites.8 Students were also introduced to quotes and relevant passages from Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life by Susan Hertog (1999) and from Under a Wing: A Memoir by Reeve Lindbergh (1998). Some of the passages in Brecht’s play, notably the list of items Lindbergh carried with him on the transatlantic flight, can be found in Lindbergh’s personal account of his experience called We (1927). Stu-

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Page 217 dents had a chance to compare Brecht’s version with the original text. The lectures were also accompanied by excerpts from various documentaries detailing Lindbergh’s preparation for the flight, the flight itself, his arrival at le Bourget Field near Paris, and his triumphant return to the United States.9 • Session 8: Brecht in American Theaters. As a transition from the focus on the history of the play to the rehearsal process and the actual preparation for the performance, a faculty member from the Theater Department discussed the staging of Brecht in Germany and the United States. He illustrated the previously introduced concepts of epic theater by providing insights into acting methods. He also showed slides of Brecht productions and talked about set design. This allowed the students to understand the theories in context and served to reinforce them through examples of actual practice. At this point, the director of the play was able to share her interpretation of the play and the artistic decisions that had been made up to that point with regard to stage design. She explained that, in accordance with Brecht’s theories, the individual and the hero would be deemphasized. All of the actors would play the role of the pilot at one point or other. She also showed a model of the set, which included a cloud design in various shades of blue on a white background, a model of the airplane “Spirit of St. Louis” hanging from the ceiling and a chair with a radio on it in the middle of the stage. Based on the information introduced during previous sessions, the students were now able to understand the function of each of these symbols and were ready to move from the classroom to the rehearsal space. Brecht on Stage During the remaining five weeks, the goal was to engage the students intensively with theatrical practice and to provide a forum for the acquisition of a basic performance vocabulary. The group met four times a week for three hours in the rehearsal room or the theater. The rehearsals typically consisted of a warm-up phase that lasted approximately half an hour, a run-through of selected scenes, and specific work on individual scenes. It was during this time that the students worked actively with the language, became comfortable with their lines, analyzed respective meanings, and worked creatively on expressing the contents of the play. Each rehearsal began with the warm-up activities. They were a substantial part of the process as they provided dimensions that are important for any language learning activity, but are not generally considered an integral part of a language class. They were geared to stretch the body, to work on coordination and on breathing, and to dispense with inhibitions. These exercises lowered the affective filter and transitioned the students into using their whole body as they began interacting with the text.

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Page 218 In order to work on the individual scenes most effectively, one of the German instructors was always present to help with pronunciation and questions of language use. Sometimes the intonation of a certain scene inspired additional interpretative questions about nuances and potential meanings of the linguistic structure. By participating in the rehearsal process, the instructors were able to experience the effectiveness and versatility of theater techniques. Much of the action of the play consists of the pilot’s dialogue with forces of nature such as water, fog, snowstorm, and sleep and his struggle to survive the encounters with them. The director encouraged the students’ creativity by asking them to pretend that they were among these forces. One student was asked to pretend that she was the force ‘‘sleep” and to think of gestures she would use while reading the respective lines to make the pilot sleepy. This activity encouraged her to use the language in a very specific context and to associate it immediately with certain movements of her body and with appropriate and meaningful gestures. We found that the intensive work on individual scenes as part of a whole provided an effective means in allowing students to develop a clearer grasp of the complete work. Technical Week Technical run-throughs of the production began one week before the first scheduled performance. The technical crew spent two days installing and cueing the lights, setting up the projector and stereo equipment, and generally preparing the stage for the production. The project presented many technical challenges as it incorporated moving slides, video, music, and even a dry ice machine. Over the course of the next two days, the director and the stage managers walked the actors and the technical crew through the play minute by minute, so that the light, sound, and video cues could be coordinated. The students by this time had not only internalized their lines but had even memorized the lines of their fellow actors. Their work was not complete, however. The actors fine-tuned the timing of their entrances and exits, practiced with microphones, and adjusted to performing under the spotlights and to moving around the stage in the dark. The three evenings leading up to the actual performance were spent in dress rehearsal. The students received their costumes, and the set was complete. The final dress rehearsal was performed in front of an audience of the students’ close friends and family. Three performances followed—the play was sold out each night; we had about 400 spectators. OUTREACH: PREPARING AND INVOLVING THE AUDIENCE As the project developed and took form, it became increasingly clear that it would provide numerous opportunities for a broad range of students and

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Page 219 faculty at Northwestern and at other schools in the Chicago area to contribute to and to profit from this theater production. The next two sections detail our outreach efforts and how we made the play more accessible to our audience. Department and Other Schools From the outset, we saw the project as an integral part of the departmental curriculum, complementing the interests and strengths of faculty who have worked with Brecht, the culture of the Weimar period, and literary theory. A number of colleagues contributed significantly to the initial discussions of possible texts and eventually were involved in presenting lectures and preparing material for the final stage production. By the end of Spring Quarter, the course existed in an outline form so that we were able to begin looking for student performers and participants. The course was listed in the Fall timetable and also posted with the rest of the classes on the departmental bulletin board. It was unclear as to which students might find this project interesting, so the description was kept as wide open as possible. On the one hand, we expected students seriously involved in the language and already far along in their studies to be interested in performing Brecht on stage. On the other hand, we saw additional opportunities for students who might have little or rudimentary knowledge of German to be involved in support activities. We felt that each student would acquire a base knowledge of Brecht along with his position within German cultural history, and, of course, a clear familiarity with the text. During the production phase, there would be a group of students involved with preparing themselves as actors for production, but there could also be nonactor students who would work with the scenery, lighting, sound, or the production of the printed program. In the end, the students enrolled in the course were all well prepared linguistically to participate as actors. The students needed to produce scenery and provide the stage support came from the school of theater, which requires that its students be involved with a certain number of shows in different production capacities. In our language classes, Brecht and “Der Ozeanflug” also became a focus of interest immediately prior to the production of the play. The play was incorporated into the curriculum of our general intermediate German course, our more advanced intermediate conversation course, and our introduction to literature course. By incorporating this material into our coursework, we were providing an impetus for the students to attend the play. The work in class allowed the students to better understand the play and to situate it in a broader cultural and political framework. The Chicagoland area, which now reaches into Indiana and almost to Wisconsin, has a very active group of language instructors at the high school and college levels. From discussions at professional meetings and conferences, we knew that our colleagues were very interested in finding special

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Page 220 projects, performances, and exhibitions that they could work into their own curriculum, thereby offering their students a more multidimensional exposure to the language and culture of the German-speaking countries. Very early in the planning of this project, we decided that it would be to everyone’s advantage to open this theater performance to outside groups. By doing so, we would ensure that our performances were well attended and that teachers in other schools would be able to offer a theater performance as a complement to work done in class. We informed members of our local Northern Illinois chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) of our intention to perform a Brecht piece in our spring newsletter and at our spring meeting. At our fall meeting in September, we were able to advertise the date of our performances and also offered to provide material on Brecht, Lindbergh, and the play that could form the basis for work in an advanced high school class or intermediate college course. About fifteen teachers called to request information and copies of the texts and play. Nine teachers made reservations for the play through the department and brought groups of students as small as four and as large as eighteen. Our local AATG chapter also provided the means for us to publicize this project using e-mail messages to members and advertising on the chapter’s home page. Beyond offering the students and teachers a unique German language performance, we felt that this project was also an opportunity to introduce high school students to a college setting and to provide motivation for continuing on with their studies of German at the next level. Most students will eventually enroll in a college or university, and contacts with specific colleges provide them with more information on which to make an ultimate college choice. In German, we are most concerned with finding ways to encourage students to continue on with their study of German at the college level. We hoped that this special project would provide a challenging and yet satisfying interaction with the language that might lead to further contacts with German. Chicago is also home to a significant population of adult speakers of German who were potential audience members. The Goethe Institute publicized this event on their home page and in their newsletter and allowed us to advertise with flyers in their lobby. For future productions, we envision more active solicitation of this group of potential audience members. Our public radio station would be a logical focus for advertising the play, as would local German newspapers. Making the Play Accessible to the Audience We hoped that this production would attract a significant number of people to our small theater. At the same time, we knew that a good percentage of the audience would not have a detailed background knowledge of Brecht, Lindbergh, the play, or the German language. From the beginning, our decisions were guided by the desire to provide the spectators with a worthwhile

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Page 221 experience, and thus we felt it necessary to provide the audience with significant support. First, we translated the play and prepared a German-English script for any member of the audience who wanted to read along during the performance. Second, we designed, together with the actors, a detailed bilingual program that included the following: a description of how the project came about; a paragraph written by the director in which she explained her ideas for the play; a list of the cast; the prologue to the play; the titles of the scenes; biographies on Brecht and Lindbergh; a short history of the play; and short biographies of the student actors. This detailed program allowed the spectators to familiarize themselves with the play and its background before the performance started. Third, we translated the prologue written by Brecht into English and French and had a student recite it in three languages at the beginning of the play. Fourth, we prepared video footage that became part of the staging. The footage contained all titles of the play in written and spoken form in English, German, and French and visual graphics to accompany the play. The appropriate video footage was played at the beginning of each scene to guide the audience. Finally, following the play, the cast remained on stage to speak with the audience and to answer questions about the project. Twenty to forty audience members remained each night. The ensuing thirty-minute discussions allowed the audience to hear about the inner workings of the theater production and the special problems related to producing a play in German. These techniques were tremendously helpful for the comprehension of the play and allowed us to involve a broader audience. BUDGETARY CONSIDERATIONS AND FUNDING This production was a cooperative work of two departments. This meant that some of the normal expenses associated with a production were absorbed through the regular budgets of both departments. We did not have to worry about costs for rehearsal space, the renting of theater space, and the workshop space for building the set, as the theater department allowed us to use their facilities. The instructors involved in this project volunteered their time, and the director directed the play as part of her work towards her MFA. The remaining production budget was estimated at $8,350. We allotted $350 toward the purchase of texts, videotapes, slides, film rental, and additional cultural realia for classroom use. These materials were primarily employed for researching and preparing lectures, and for the preparation of reading materials for the students. We budgeted $2,500 for production supplies. This included set material, costumes, lighting and sound rental (such as remote microphones that the actors were wearing), stage props (such as the fog machine and the dry ice), and the printing and printing materials for posters and programs. Finally, we budgeted $5,500 for additional personnel: set designer, costume designer, lighting designer, sound designer, stage manager,

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Page 222 production manager, production labor, front of the house staff, graphic designer, and video designer. Most of these positions were held by advanced undergraduate and graduate students from Northwestern University. The costs were covered by the Hewlett Funds, an internal fund located within the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. EVALUATION OF THE PROJECT In order to receive specific feedback from the students, we devised a list of questions that the participants were asked to fill out upon completion of the course. Many of the questions targeted goals that had initially inspired us to undertake the project, such as the potential for effective use of active German, the unique option for student discovery and construction of knowledge, and the collaborative effort as a positive impulse. The responses to the questions were highly positive. When asked whether the project helped improve their language skills, some students responded: • I became quite fluent with German theater terms and I had great practice with my conversational German. • It definitely increased my speaking skills. • I learned a lot of new vocabulary as well as how to better enunciate. • Getting corrections and advice on minute details in grammar and pronunciation helped a lot. Another question focused on whether the act of performing the play helped the students to better understand the text and its author. Some relevant feedback included: • I think I understood what Brecht was trying to say much better after we delved into the text more deeply. • By acting in the play we had to interpret the text and guess Brecht’s intended meaning—this took the play to a much higher level. • One gains a very deep understanding of both the author and the text through its performance. We also asked the students what they enjoyed most about the project, and the more or less unanimous verdict related to the team approach of the project. Here is what they said: • The fact that we all spent so much time together made us really close and this closeness made everything fun. • The fresh points of view each day were a big help. • I enjoyed the rehearsals with the people. The final result turned out incredible.

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Page 223 REFLECTIONS As has been established, we find that there are infinite reasons for using theater in the language classroom and many contexts in which the use of theater can be motivating and also have immense pedagogical benefits. This particular interdisciplinary collaboration between the Departments of German and Theater at Northwestern University in producing Brecht’s play was inspired in part by the following factors characteristic to the staging of literature: By studying a work in depth over a longer period of time, by memorizing it, and by experimenting with how to express its contents, the participants reach a new level of understanding of the work of art. Further, when using a foreign or second language, a new awareness regarding the language that the work is written in is achieved. By preparing for a performance and practicing their lines, students are able to improve their language skills, and, in the process of staging a play, are also introduced to countless other dimensions that they wouldn’t otherwise be likely to be exposed to in the same hands-on context. Such dimensions range from the acquisition of theater terminology, working in a team, being involved in stage design and lighting, putting together a program, all in addition to studying the literature and historical background relevant to the work. APPENDIX 1: COURSE OUTLINE Part I: Study of Language and Literature Tuesday and Thursday 2:30–4:00 Week • Course introduction • Brecht biography 1 • Introduction of director and teaching • Historical and political background of the Weimar Republic staff • Announcement for auditions Week • Brecht in the context of media theory • First reading of play in class (Readers Theatre) to work on 2 pronunciation and content Week • Epic theater • Biographical information on Charles Lindbergh 3 • Radio theory and different versions of the play Week • Brecht and theater in America • Introduction to rehearsal process and vocabulary 4

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Page 224 Part II: Rehearsal Process Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 6:00–9:00 Week Warm-up; Acts 1, 2, 3 Warm-up; Acts 6, 7, 5 Warm-up: Acts 13, 14, 11, 12 Warm-up; Acts 1–4, 10, 9 5 Week Warm-up; Acts 4, 15, Warm-up; Acts 1, 4, 6, 7, Warm-up; Acts 8, 11, 12, 13, Warm-up; Acts 15, 16, 17, 8 6 16, 17 2, 3, 5 10, 14 (4), 9 Week Warm-up; Acts 1–8 Warm-up; Acts 9–17 Warm-up; Acts 1–8 Warm-up; Acts 9–17 7 Week Run-through Run-through Run-through Technical run-through 8 Part III: Technical Week (Week 9) Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 12:00–5:00 1:00–3:00 Rehearsal6:00– 6:30–11:30 6:30–11:30 6:30–11:30 7:00–11:30 7:00– Performance 7:00– 10:00 9:00 9:00 Technical rehearsal Technical Dress Dress Last Premiere Performance rehearsal rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal APPENDIX 2: IDEAS ON THEATER IN THE CLASSROOM The following activities are based on experiences in the classroom and also draw on ideas presented at the workshop at the Goethe-Institute in Chicago by Manfred Schewe in March of 1999. In this workshop, a pedagogical approach to teaching language based on drama was introduced and illustrated. This approach goes beyond simply “playing” parts in the classroom, but rather integrates and works with the awareness that we can learn from the dramatist how the text doesn’t remain banal, from the director how to create atmosphere, from the actor how to live in one’s role, how to articulate clearly, how to communicate with gestures, and how to mimic signals. It is an approach that actively and consciously uses body, mind, and emotions in order to facilitate the acquisition of language. Some of these exercises are very straightforward and can be used independently, but they can be built upon depending on how much of an emphasis the instructor would like to have on drama in class and to what degree it can be a center of the course work. 1. Reader’s Theater Context: • Use parts of a drama • Use parts of a short story with direct quotes

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Page 225 How?

• Variation: use parts of story with indirect quotes • Read from text unprepared • Prepare ahead of time • Infuse text with expression Pedagogical benefits: • Very simple • Makes reading of text more interesting • More lively and memorable • Pronunciation practice • Low pressure, no preparation • Informal • Can conform to dramaturgical theories of author Example: • First run-through of Brecht’s “Der Ozeanflug” 2. Use Quotes without Providing the Context Context: • Choose ambiguous quote from any text based on level of students that lends itself well to a dialogue How? • Have students guess context • Have them read it expressively according to guessed context • Add additional dialogue to beginning and to end • Change characters and read it again • Write responses if not given initially Pedagogical • Pronunciation practice benefits: • Inspires imagination • Makes students aware of context • Makes them think before they act out • Forces them to be expressive Examples from ‘‘Der Ozeanflug”: Jetzt ist es nicht mehr weit. Now it isn’t far anymore. Jetzt müssen wir uns noch zusammennehmen. Now we have to pull ourselves together. Wir zwei. We two. Hast du genugÖl? Do you have enough oil? Meinst du, das Benzin reicht dir aus? Do you think you have enough gas? Hast du kühl genug? Are you cool enough? Geht es dir gut? Are you feeling well?

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< previous page Page 226 3. Brief Mimes Context: How?

Pedagogical benefits:

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• List of verbs or objects to be mastered • Inspired by context Variations: a. • Give students pictures or verb • Acting out of a certain activity • Rest of class guesses what it is b. • Have students think of an object • Mimic the object • Rest of class guesses what it is c. • Incorporate dialogue regarding items • Integrates new vocabulary • Very strong visual associations • Involves gestures • Also grammatical structures can be integrated • Very flexible and adaptable

Examples from “Der Ozeanflug”: • List of objects Lindbergh brought onto the plane Variation: • List of different items • Who is carrying this? • Where are they going? • What would you take if you were going? • Exchanging objects and repeating 4. Frozen Images (Standbilder) Context: • As warm-up (to loosen up body and mind) or coordinating activity • As preparation for role play • As introduction to more advanced exercise How? • Choose context (picture, story, adjective) • Have students remain in a frozen position • Then they live that moment deeply and create more of that identity • Others ask questions: • Who are you?

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• Where are you from? • How old are you? • What are you? • Are you happy? • What just happened? Etc. Variations: • They imitate each other • Provide them with part of an identity Pedagogical benefits: • Become aware of body • Have immediate physical associations with actions and words • Inspires imagination • Functions as starting point for more involved acting • Prepares for a role Examples from “Der Ozeanflug”: Acting out of concepts like fear, bliss, fog, sleep, motor, etc. 5. Role Plays Context: • Depending on class topics How? Variations: a. Provide complete model • Perhaps have students listen and answer questions first • Have students read it • Have students personalize and change information in it • Have students vary identities of people speaking b. Provide part of a dialogue • Have students finish it or find responses c. Provide situation • Students come up with their own dialogue • Write it out • Play it d. Improvisation • Give situation

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• Students react on the spot e. As part of illustrating a text • Use ambiguous point in a text and have students act out what these characters could be saying to each other Pedagogical • All benefits mentioned in other activities benefits: • Opportunity to use language in elaborate dialogues within culturally relevant and significant contexts APPENDIX 3: SELECTED SOURCES FOR CLASSROOM MATERIAL Works by Brecht Brecht, Bertolt. (1967). Der Ozeanflug: Radiolehrstück für Knaben und Mädchen. In Gesammelte Werke . Band 2 (pp. 407–409 & 565–585). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. ——. (1977). Erläuterungen zum Ozeanflug. In Brecht Versuche 1–12U. Reprint. (1959). Heft 1–4. Berlin und Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. ——. (1979). Bertolt Brecht: Leben und Werk im Bild . Frankfurt am Main: Inseltaschenbuch. ——. (1992). Junges Drama und Rundfunk, Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat, Rede über die Funktion des Rundfunks. In Bertolt Brecht: Werke, Band 21 (pp. 189–190). Grosse kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe: Suhrkamp Verlag. Bertolt Brecht on stage; Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic work on the stage of the Federal Republic of Germany, Brecht performances at the “Theater am Schiffbauerdamm’’ Berlin, Brecht publications and Brecht studies. (1968). Frankfurt am Main: Erich Imbescheidt. ——, and Kurt Weill. (1930). Der Lindberghflug: Klavierauszug mit Text. Wien and Leipzig: Universaledition A.B. Secondary Literature on Brecht Knopf, Jan. (1980). Der Ozeanflug. In Brecht-Handbuch: eine Ästhetik der Widersprüche (pp. 71–72). Stuttgart/Weimar: J.B. Metzler Verlag. Rösch, Herbert. (1996). Bertolt Brecht—Stückeschreiber. In Grundlagen, Stile, Gestalten der deutschen Literatur: eine geschichtliche Darstellung (pp. 403–406). Neue Ausgabe. Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag. Vergnügungstheater oder Lehrtheater? (1987). In Die Stücke von Bertolt Brecht in einem Band (pp. 985–987). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Völker, Klaus. (1972). Brecht-Chronik. In Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.), Text und Kritik Band I: Bertolt Brecht. München: Richard Boorberg Verlag. Selected Sources for Information on the Weimar Republic Kollwitz, Käthe. (1968). Ich sah die Welt mit liebevollen Blicken: Käthe Kollwitz: Ein Leben in Selbstzeugnissen . Hans Kollwitz (Ed.). Hannover: Fackelträger-Verlag. Schulze, Hagen. (1982). Weimar: Deutschland 1917–1933 . Berlin: Siedler Verlag.

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Page 229 Selected Sources on Charles Lindbergh Berg, A. Scott. (1998). Lindbergh . New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Hertog, Susan. (1999). Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her life. New York: Doubleday. Lindbergh, Charles A. (1927). We . New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. ——. (1920). Wir zwei: im Flugzeug über den Atlantik. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus. Lindbergh, Reeve. (1998). Under a wing: A memoir . New York: Simon & Schuster. Musical Recording Weill, Kurt. (1930). Der Lindberghflug. First digital recording and historical recording. The Ballad of Magna Carta. “Pro Musica Köln.” Seventy-three minutes. WDR. Kölner Rundfunkorchester, Jan Lathan-König, Hermann Scherchen. 1990 CAPRICCIO—a product of Delta Music GmbH. Readers Theatre and Drama in the Language Classroom Coger, Leslie Irene. (1982). Readers theatre handbook: A dramatic approach to literature. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman. Kleinau, Marion L. (1980). Theater for literature: A practical aesthetics for group interpretation . Sherman Oaks, CA: Alfred Publishing Co. Maley, Alan. (1982). Drama techniques in language learning: A resource book of communication activities for language teachers . New York: Cambridge University Press. Plourde, Lynn. (1990). Learning language dramatically: Acting out stories in the classroom . Tuscon, AZ: Communication Skill Builders. Ratcliff, Gerald Lee. (1981). Beginning Readers Theatre: A Primer for Classroom Performance. Urbana, IL: Eric Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills. Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association. Schewe, Manfred, and Peter Shaw. (1993). Towards drama as a method in the foreign language classroom. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Video Material Great writers of the 20th century: Bertolt Brecht. (1997). Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Fifty-three minutes. In English. Der Lindberghflug: Eine Rundfunkoper. (1993). Director: Jean-François Jung. Forty minutes. TV production. Produced by Gloria Filmverleih. In German. Der Traum vom Fliegen, Teil 2 (Von Lindbergh bis zum 2. Weltkrieg) . (1995). Production of SunWest Media Group in collaboration with Wisconsin Public Television. Fifty minutes. In German. KOMPLETT VIDEO, München, Tel. 0 89/6492277 ISBN 3-86148. Bestellnummer 941. Lindbergh’s great race “Are there any mechanics here?” (1996). Cameron Richardson. Distributed by Goldhil Video. Ninety minutes. In English. Lucky: The Story of Charles Lindbergh . (1994). Producer / Director: Robert W. Foster. Biography. A & E Television Networks. CAT. # AAE 10483. Fifty minutes. In English. NOTES 1. This project would not have been possible without the help and support of many colleagues and friends. We would like to express our gratitude to Géza von Molnár, Rainer

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Page 230 Rumold, Eva Stonebraker, and Kristine Thorsen in the Department of German for their counsel, advice, and participation throughout the planning and implementation of this project. We are also very appreciative of the contributions made by Margaret Sinclair, Vinay Swamy, and Claude Tournier in the Department of French. Very special thanks to the entire faculty in the Department of Theatre and especially to Ed Bevan, Bud Beyer, Paul Brohan, Barbara Butts, Jonathan Darling, Melanie Dreyer, Craig Kinzer, and Joseph Tilford. We would also like to recognize the significant contributions made by Jim Ferolo, Lars Hubrich, and Janine Spencer in the MultiMedia Learning Center at Northwestern University, who provided the expertise necessary to integrate a broad range of multi-media into the final production. The project was supported by the Department of German, the Theatre Department, and a substantial grant from the Hewlett Fund at the Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. 2. A further impetus for the development of the project was the participation of most of the instructors in a drama workshop at the Goethe-Institute in March 1999. This workshop was led by Manfred Schewe and focused specifically on the use of theater in the German classroom (Schewe and Shaw, 1993). It inspired us to become aware and to take advantage of the infinite possibilities that the implementation of theater offers as a valuable tool in the context of language acquisition. A more detailed list of activities based on our experiences in the classroom as well as on the workshop can be found in Appendix 2. 3. A translation of the book was published under the title Wir zwei: im Flugzeug über den Atlantik in Leipzig in 1929. 4. A more detailed syllabus including rehearsal times and performance schedule can be found in Appendix 1. 5. For a more detailed description of Readers Theatre, see ‘‘Session 4: Readers Theatre.” Appendix 2 contains a summary of activities related to Readers Theatre. Additional works describing Readers Theatre are listed in Appendix 3. 6. We used material from Bertolt Brecht on stage (1968) and from Bertolt Brecht: Leben und Werk im Bild (1979). 7. We found the Great writers of the 20th century: Bertolt Brecht (Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1997) very helpful. Although the film was in English and fairly easy to understand, we only selected excerpts from the fiftythree-minute long video. 8. More material on Lindbergh’s historic flight can be found in Appendix 3. 9. During class we showed excerpts form Der Traum vom Fliegen, Teil 2 (Von Lindbergh bis zum 2. Weltkrieg) (1995) because it allowed students to practice their German at the same time. We showed the full version of the A & E Television Networks documentary Lucky: The story of Charles Lindbergh during an evening film session. REFERENCES Barr, Robert, & John Tagg. (1995). From teaching to learning—a new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change . November/December, 13–25. Berg, A. Scott. (1998). Lindbergh . New York: G. P. Putnam’s Son. Bertolt Brecht on stage; Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic work on the stage of the Federal Republic of Germany, Brecht performances at the “Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.” Berlin, Brecht publications and Brecht studies. (1968). Frankfurt am Main: Erich Imbescheidt. Bräuer, Gerd (Ed.). (2001). Pedagogy of language learning in higher education. Stamford, CT: Ablex.

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Page 231 Brauneck, Manfred. (1982). Theater im 20. Jahrhundert: Programmschriften, Stilperioden, Reformmodelle . Reineck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Brecht, Bertolt. (1967). Der Ozeanflug: Radiolehrstück für Knaben und Mädchen. In Gesammelte Werke . Bd. 2 (pp. 407–408 & 565–585). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. ——. (1979). Bertolt Brecht: Leben und Werk im Bild . Frankfurt am Main: Inseltaschenbuch. Der Lindberghflug: Eine Rundfunkoper. (1993). Director: Jean-François Jung. Forty minutes. TV production. Produced by Gloria Filmverleih. In German. Der Traum vom Fliegen, Teil 2 (Von Lindbergh bis zum 2. Weltkrieg) . (1995). Production of SunWest Media Group in collaboration with Wisconsin Public Television. 50 minutes. In German. KOMPLETT VIDEO, München, Tel. 0 89/6492277 ISBN 3-86148. Bestellnummer 941. Great writers of the 20th century: Bertolt Brecht. (1997). Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Fifty-three minutes. In English. Hertog, Susan. (1999). Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her life. New York: Doubleday. Kollwitz, Käthe. (1968). Ich sah die Welt mit liebevollen Blicken: Käthe Kollwitz: Ein Leben in Selbstzeugnissen . Hans Kollwitz (Ed.). Hannover: Fackelträger-Verlag. Langham, Michael. (1983). Foreword. In David Ball, Backwards and forwards: A technical manual for reading plays (pp. vii–viii). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Lindbergh, Charles A. (1927). We . New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. ——. (1920) Wir zwei: im Flugzeug über den Atlantik. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus. Lindbergh, Reeve. (1998). Under a wing: A memoir . New York: Simon & Schuster. Lucky: The story of Charles Lindbergh . (1994). Producer / Director: Robert W. Foster. Biography. A & E Television Networks. CAT. # AAE 10483. Fifty minutes. In English. Raulfs, Joachim. (1983). Deutsche Literaturgeschichte in Beispielen. Rinteln: Merkur Verlag. Schewe, Manfred L., & Peter Shaw. (1993). Towards drama as a method in the foreign language classroom. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Schulze, Hagen. (1982). Weimar: Deutschland 1917–1933 . Berlin: Siedler Verlag.

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Page 233 Instead of an Afterword Magic on Stage: Urfaust and Other Great Plays for Educational Pleasure Karla Schultz and Penelope Heinigk The house lights in the Pocket Theater go black. The audience—eighty-some students, faculty, and community visitors—sit hushed. On stage, a mysterious blue liquid swirls in a bulbous vial, seemingly suspended in the dark. We hear a sigh of satisfaction, then the down lights fade up. A lanky, gray-wigged Faust in cap and gown is holding up the vial, the blue has paled to clear. He puts it on a shelf in the wings, walks behind a chalky-white lectern propped onto a garden column (bought cheaply from a hobby shop), and commences to recite Goethe’s immortal introductory monologue, “Hab’ nun, ach, die Philosophie und leider auch die Theologie durchaus studiert mit heißer Müh. . . .” Shortly thereafter, there is another splashy display: The Earth Spirit appears. He’s been standing, shrouded in a dark cape, upstage center on a tall, black wooden cube, motionless and invisible against the black back curtain. When the lights dim and the moon begins to shine (a spotlight up high), there comes a flicker, a rumble, then the blinding sheen of a fluttery mass of green-golden polyester as he drops his cape and turns with outstretched arms and booming voice toward Faust: “Wer ruft mir?” More flickers, more

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Page 234 rumbles until he vanishes, that is, until the spot fades and he scrambles, in the dark, backstage through the opening in the curtain. When we produced Urfaust on the occasion of Goethe’s 250th birthday, we pulled the stops, using the lighting design of a Theater Arts graduate student, all sorts of “magic” tricks learned from the Chemistry Department, the dueling choreography of a fencing instructor, and the unending resourcefulness of the fifteen undergraduates enrolled for our course. They were delighted to be hamming things up, but only at the end, when they really were on stage. The student who played Mephisto, for instance, underwent a veritable transformation over the course of the rehearsals. Starting out rather shyly and stiffly, he became the star of the show with sinuous, suggestive moves, red-painted fingernails, a goatee expressly grown for the play, a truly evil, mephistophelian smirk, and—next to Faust—the best intonation yet for the Knittel verse in which the lines of the text are written. One of the students (playing a student himself in the scene, ‘‘Auerbachs Keller”) researched and painted five huge, circular magical signs (taken from an encyclopedia of medieval magic), which became our backdrop for all scenes except the one in the Cathedral. In that scene, plenty of dry ice set the tone, as did the chanting of the choir in the fashion of Gregorian chants. By contrast (and in keeping with Faust’s and Gretchen’s rendezvous in the garden), the music for the intermission was taken from the German rock group, Einstürzende Neubauten (“I shall meet you if you need me in the garden”). The garden scenes sported a wire arbor (from the same hobby shop) wound with colorful paper flowers, and the last scene (“Kerker”) showed strands of straw lit in the pattern of prison bars thanks to the filter in the amber spot above. And Gretchen, played by two different young women each night because we had too few female roles for the group, rose to the light in absolute madness, sweetness, and dignity. In the end, Faust was a louse—or at least that was our critical assessment. THEATER ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES As will be clear from these remarks, our “German Play Performance” is not just a course to enhance language learning. It is a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts theater experience that involves cultural and historical research, an enormous amount of team (or better, troupe) building, and the bodily enactment of classic and modern German drama in two public performances before an educated audience. We also put great emphasis on studying and interpreting each play. Last year’s Urfaust (1773) has been our “oldest” play so far; this year’s Die Physiker, and several years ago Voll auf der Rolle, drew performers and audience into the present. In Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen and Brecht/Weill’s opera, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, we put the emphasis on social satire as it pertains to conventions today and, in class,

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Page 235 discussed at length Freud’s theories of sexuality as well as Brecht’s critique of capitalism. For the latter production we received substantial support from the School of Music. The students were taught how to sing by a professional, and a doctoral student who was writing his dissertation on musicals accompanied the cast on the piano—carted over from his office across campus to our stage. Of course the stage, The Pocket Theater, is not really ours but part of the Theater Arts Department, which is kind enough to lend us the space each fall for a week. All preceding rehearsals take place in a regular classroom. By design and sheer luck, the students are thus embroiled in a thoroughly cross-disciplinary endeavor. They appreciate it, because they are by no means all German majors but come from various disciplines: any of the humanities, business, computer science, international studies, art, architecture, psychology, chemistry—to name just a few. The only requirement is that their language skills meet (roughly) third-year proficiency, and that they commit to a considerable amount of time inside and outside of class (initially about ten hours per week, then five hours every night during the last week of dress rehearsals). THE PLAY’S THE THING How do we mesh dramatic performance and language learning? After all, the students enroll in a German class and rarely have any background in theater. Learning a foreign language consists of recognizing and manipulating a nonnative system of symbols, signs, and behaviors in order to communicate. In both theater and language learning, communication is a principal component. Actors as well as language students must know what they wish to convey and how they intend to deliver the message. They must have the skills and confidence necessary to perform the communicative act. Drama maximizes the opportunities for foreign-language students to work toward such proficiency, especially as concerns diction, gestures, and cultural awareness. Furthermore, their interaction on stage encourages them to flavor the production with their own interpretations, which improves their analytical skills while tapping their creativity. Involved in a play, they learn about a particular author, work, and historical period in depth while discovering new talents and gaining confidence in their own performance. They also become closely acquainted with each other and their instructors on a level that usually does not occur in the regular academic setting. Most important, dramatic activity fosters multiple yet distinct language learning objectives. We must have a specific goal in mind when utilizing drama. If the primary purpose is to practice spontaneous speech or display cultural awareness (such as employing jokes, showing emotions, or practicing various forms of address), then role-play or improvisation are best. Objectives such as improving pronunciation or articulation, on the other hand, are often

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Page 236 better accomplished by direct imitation. Likewise, drama may be the means for a single classroom activity, or it may be the focus of an entire term. Drama tasks completed within a larger unit as a means of practicing and improving language skills tend to be more process-oriented. Here drama is a medium for language learning. Conversely, a unit that focuses on one particular play or series of plays produces a product-oriented environment, in which drama becomes the reason for language learning. SHINING IN THE SPOTLIGHT Our productions here at the University of Oregon are very much product-oriented. Giving two full performances before a sizable audience, most of whom are well acquainted with the language and even the work performed, is ultimately the motivation that keeps the process of language learning and play production rolling. It is certainly not the only source of inspiration, though it does encourage the extra hours and effort necessary for an impressive show. When the students experience the electric anticipation in the house as they prepare for their entry, the sense of pride and accomplishment as they take their bows (almost always to thunderous applause), and the celebration among the closely bonded cast afterwards, they are truly pleased. Their improvements in diction, new skills in interpretation, higher awareness of a particular author, work, culture, and time period—though the objectives of the class—seem almost side effects to their triumph on stage and the ten-week arduous process that brought it about. Still, at the beginning of the class, many of the students cannot yet imagine the experience of performing in a foreign language in front of an audience. They are uneasy about such prospects, and unsure of themselves as performers. In order for theater to be a successful learning tool, it is extremely important to put the students at ease and safeguard against failure. They must be given tasks as well as confidence to complete their responsibilities. They must also understand that the quality of the performance is dependent upon their efforts as individuals and as a group. Hence each rehearsal must have structure while at the same time allowing flexibility. The students must become comfortable with each other and themselves. THE TASKS OF THE DIRECTOR(S) Although the process of play production is a group effort including group interpretations, problem solving, discussions, and decisions, it will not function properly without a director or codirectors who are responsible for the overall coordination and for making the final decisions. At Oregon, we usually have a senior professor who is officially responsible for the course, including ongoing liaison to the Theater Arts Department, selecting and

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Page 237 editing the script, setting the budget, providing the overarching concept, and signing for the grades. We call her the dramaturgue. She is closely assisted by a doctoral student who works as codirector and fields all practical matters that make a play come about, such as blocking, scheduling, stage-managing, and delegating tasks. In their daily collaboration the two codirectors work as equals and make decisions throughout the rehearsing process jointly. Both explain to the students that a show cannot come about without a well-thought-out schedule and a certain hierarchy. This hierarchy serves several purposes. First, the director in charge of dramaturgy is responsible for preliminary work such as selecting a fitting play, editing it into a script, and conceptualizing the messages that are to be communicated. Second, it is rather easy for the director in charge of production to become sidetracked with too many time-consuming details. We need to keep the students on task and on schedule by quickly addressing problems, finding solutions, and pushing for scheduled results. All scenery, costumes, makeup, and special effects are planned and put together in Arbeitsgruppen who report to the production director. Third, as directors (and certainly as teachers) we need to tease out the best in each student in performative areas such as diction, intonation, gestures, and movement, in interpretive areas such as character analysis, pacing, and interactive dynamics, and in the psychological dimensions of motivation and commitment. We try to achieve this through group rehearsals, private sessions, and various exercises, both mental and physical. We also schedule a couple of evenings at the dramaturgue’s house for soup & bonding. Our office hours are packed with coaching, problem-solving, counseling, brainstorming, telephone calls, and errand lists. Our own enthusiasm seems to inspire the students—or is it the other way around? We delegate readily but provide a pretty tight organization while allowing the students to take full credit for their accomplishments. CASTING: EASY IF YOU KNOW YOUR STUDENTS One factor that makes our plays so successful is careful and attentive casting. During the first three class sessions, students are given a thorough orientation to the play and the demands of the class, and multiple readings of the text are performed. It is during this time that we pay particular attention to each and every student, not only during their production of the text, but also during casual interaction, always keeping the characters of the play in mind. It is vital that the entire class becomes acquainted on a personal level as soon as possible. Through this process we are able to note students’ individual personalities and strengths, and work toward assigning the roles accordingly. At the end of the third session the students are asked to give their first three preferences

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Page 238 for roles and first two preferences for work groups in writing, which, in combination with personal strengths, we use to make our final decision. Surprisingly, nearly every student receives either their first or second choice; only occasionally has it been necessary to discuss roles with students that they had not considered, emphasizing the reasons they would be best for that part. For the work groups, most students have an area of expertise that proves to be most helpful. For instance, those who can sew or are interested in clothing work in the costume and prop group, those who have access to tools or are artistically inclined do well in the stage craft group, those with makeup skills are in the makeup group; computer knowledge and layout experience are helpful skills for the poster and program group. There is no question that students perform best when they are comfortable with their roles and feel that they are able to put their talents and abilities to use. LEARNING THE WORDS, DOING THE MOVES Once the roles are cast, production of the language begins. Students are required to come in for diction coaching, where they are able to work one-on-one with an instructor. Proper diction is much more than a matter of being able to pronounce each word correctly. First, students must understand the contextual meaning of the words they are saying, otherwise they are merely mimicking a sound. Once the text and its subtexts are understood, proper pronunciation and enunciation are learned, which involves both the practice of individual sounds and their syntactic arc. Similarly, body language must be rehearsed. From blocking the characters’ movements to enacting fitting facial expressions and gestures, body language is at least as important in theater as is verbal language. We also teach our students the importance of silence—the artful pause. They learn how to convey their characters’ thoughts and emotions through speech and movement, but also through silence and holding still. Though we try to re-create a specific nonnative cultural sphere, we also enjoy transgressing it occasionally; it gives the students a chance to tweak the play in accord with their own cultural spheres. Through accuracy comes fluency. When students truly understand what they are communicating, when they have learned how to transmit it convincingly while acting out the cultural and historical framework of the piece, they are able to perform with confidence. They even achieve the freedom to invent—that is, most are able to invent a line when one is dropped, or improvise when an entrance is missed, or keep their nerve when some other mishap occurs. The audience, most likely, will not notice the mistake. Or they will appreciate the ingenious patch-up. Although our students may not realize the extent of the speaking skills and communicative awareness they have

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Page 239 developed throughout the term, it becomes apparent in the confidence they display on opening night. THEATER AS CULTURAL EMBASSY Why do we do what we do? Our plays take a lot of time and are labor-intensive for both students and instructors. But they also provide a great deal of pleasure. Our first reason thus is personal. There are few courses that provide as much dynamic interaction, visible accomplishment and sheer fun. The second reason is pedagogical. Learning by doing is at the core of any lay theatrical production, and ours is no exception. Though the students must memorize their lines, they bring them to life in the actual context of the rehearsal. They perform what they know, and continually polish what they perform. The third, overarching reason is cultural. While the students study and rehearse, they also get to know the culture and history in which the play was written and become, as performers of the text, ambassadors of this culture to the United States today. Our audiences, from both campus and the larger community, seem to appreciate this representation of German language and German-speaking cultures, because they keep flocking back. When we performed Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Die Physiker, they were delighted by this eminently stage-worthy, macabre spoof of the murder mystery, a genre well-established in the Anglo-American tradition. But they also kept breathlessly still as the actors playing the spies playing the physicists—in typically Brechtian Verfremdung —delivered their concluding remarks on a theme that concerns cultures across the globe: the rift between the progress of humanity and its salvation.

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Page 241 Index Action-site of learning, 33–34 Activity: blocking, 151; clown, 101–104; collage, 44, 48; frozen picture, 61–62; improvisation games, 170–72; in ESL, 161–62, 175–76; in preparation of a play production, 225–28; masks, 191–92; nonverbal, 79, 99–100; sculpturing, 190–91: shadowing, 80; still image, 86–88, 90; tableau, 61–62. See also frozen picturee Actors, preparing students to act, 225–228 Alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt) , 215 Arts assignments, and drama, 196–98, 201–02; and language learning, 198–99; purposefulness of, 199–200. See also activity Audience, text accessibility, 220–21 Audition, 213, 237–38. See also casting Ausubel, D. P., 56 Axtmann, A., 21, 26 Banking concept of education, 128. See also Freire, P. Barr, R., 208 Bartenieff, I., 46 Behaviorism, 8 Blocking, 151 Boal, A., 138, 155 Body language, 61–62, 238–39; culturally specific, 78–80. See also gesture; non-verbal language Body sensation, as a way of knowing, 195 Bolton, G., 138 Booth, D., 156

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Page 242 Bräuer, G., 141, 155–56, 207 Braun, E., 97–98 Brecht, B., 88–89, 187, 190, 207, 210–12, 214–16 Brook, P., 60, 97, 108 Bruner, J., 8–9, 12, 14, 110 Carlson, M., 45 Casting, 213, 237–38. See also audition; ensemble Clown workshop, 101–105, 107; activities, 101–104; pedagogy, 103–105, 107 Collaboration, among teachers, 184 Collage, 44, 48 Constructivist theory of learning, 8–9 Cooper, D., 195 Critical incident, 88. See also tension Culture, 40, 239; cross-cultural, 38, 40–42, 44; intercultural, 38, 40–42; intracultural, 41–42; multicultural, 41–42, 44; transcultural, 39, 41–43, 48–49 Curriculum, for drama in the foreign language classroom, 194–95. See also drama course Day, R., 110–11 Dewey, J., 8 Di Pietro, R. J., 55 Dialogue, authentic, 132–33 Didactic play (Lehrstück), 207, 215–16 Director: improvement of teaching, 189, 204; tasks, 236–37. See also curriculum; drama course Discipline-based arts education movement, 204 Dodson, S., 162, 176 Doughty, C., 53 Drama: and oral language development, 6; and reading skills, 7–8, 12, 14; and thinking, 6, 8, 15; and writing skills, 7–8, 12–13; emotional component, 9. See also curriculum; drama course Drama course: in Englisch as a Second Language (ESL), 162–70; in the foreign language classroom, 223–24. See also curriculum Drama in education, 138. See also drama-based education; educational drama Drama in foreign language teaching: college-level, 141–43, 148–54; high school-level, 141–42, 144–48, 153–54; process-oriented approach, 136, 138; process vs. product approach, 135–39, 153–55, 188–89, 236; product-oriented approach, 135–36, 138 Drama methodology: approach to language learning, 74, 138, 153–55; problems in language teaching, 106–107; benefits, 108–109 Drama-based education, 5–6; intercultural perspective, 89–90. See also drama in education; improvisational drama Dramatic (re)play, 27–28 Dramatic interventing, 8 Dress rehearsal, 218 Duff, A., 65–66 Educational drama, 5, 7–8, 12, 139, 153; social cohesion, 147, 151, 153.

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See also improvisational drama Ehlers, S., 86 Ellis, R., 75 Embodied play, 22, 28–30, 32. See also language of experience English as a Second Language (ESL), drama activities: benefits, 161–62, 175–76; limitations, 162. See also activity Ensemble, developing an, 186–88. See also audition; casting Epic theater (Episches Theater), 213, 215–16. See also didactic play; Brecht, B. Essential play, 136–37, 139 Evaluation, of play productions, 222 Fleming, M., 144 Freire, P., 128, 132. See also banking concept of education Funding, of play productions, 221–22 Galda, L., 10

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Page 243 Gardner, H., 11, 38–40, 44, 74, 203. See also multiple intelligences Gesture, role of, 11–12, 97–98; activities, 99–101, 109; as a means of text interpretation, 218; culturally specific, 80. See also body language; clown workshop; non-verbal language Green, J. L., 64 Griffin, H., 10 Guided case study, 126–27, 132 Hall, E. T., 40–42, 46 Harker, J. O., 64 Harpur, T., 97 Heathcote, D., 65, 138 Hierarchy, and equality in the production team, 236–37 Holistic language learning, through drama, 193; addressing the whole person, 195–96 Hornbrook, D., 139–40, 153, 155 Improvisation, 193–94, 198; during play performance, 238; final project, 172–75; games, 170–72 Improvisational drama, 4–5, 8, 10. See also drama-based education Inderstanding, 23, 25–26, 30–31, 33 Interaction, ecological, 25–26 Intercultural learning, 22, 27–30. See also culture Interdisciplinarity, and drama, 184, 201–202; approach to play production, 208–209; curriculum, 199–200; in language education, 183–84, 192, 201–202; institutional setting, 185; theater across the disciplines, 234 Intertextuality, 32 Kao, S. M., 54–55, 58, 60–61, 63–66, 98, 105, 107, 138, 156 Kluckhohn, C., 40 Koch, G., 77 Kroeber, A. L., 40 Laban, R., 47 Langer, S., 9 Langham, M., 208 Language exposure and practice: objectives to maximize, 209–10 Language learning and drama: approaches, 52–54; setting goals and choosing appropriate techniques, 235–36 Language of experience, 22, 32; embodied presence, 21; embodied understanding 20–21. See also embodied play Lave, J., 141, 150 Learning environment, creating a, 208–10, 237 Lightbown, P., 108–109 Liu, J., 65 Long, M., 53 Maley, A., 65–66 Malinowski, B., 39 Marranca, B., 61 Masks, use of, 191–92 Maturana, H., 25 Mediation, 42–44, 48 Meyerhold, V., 97–98 Misunderstanding, intercultural, 95–96. See also culture Moffett, J., 8 Moreno, J. L., 59 Morgan, N., 60, 101, 103, 108 Motivation, learner, 148, 151, 154; for a play production, 236.

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See also ensemble Multiple intelligences, 38–40, 44–45, 48, 74–75, 89; learner types, 75; bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, 75–76. See also Gardner, H. Neumann, G, 77 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 40, 43–44, 48–49 Non-verbal approach to literary texts, 81–85; pedagogical reflections, 85–87 Non-verbal language, 95–96, 105, 195. See also body language; gesture O’Neill, C., 54–55, 58, 60–61, 66–67, 98, 105, 107, 131, 138, 156 Ortiz, F., 39 Outreach, to other schools, 218–20

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Page 244 Pantomime, 77–78, 80–81, 86–88, 90 Papas, W., 78 Pellegrini, A., 10 Performance, 38, 41, 45–46; as a mode of learning, 24, 33 Performative inquiry, 21–28, 30; risk to entertain performative inquiry, 26 Piaget, J., 6, 8, 12 Play production, ideas for production concept, 188–89; organizing, 212–18, 236–37; place in the foreign language curriculum, 219–20. See also curriculum; drama course Pleasure, educational, through drama, 233–34, 239 Pre-text, 57–58 Preparation of play production, sources, 228–29. See also actors Process drama: affective function, 56–57; challenges for language teachers in using it, 63–67; cognitive function, 56; its nature, 54–55; social function, 56 Project Zero, 203; Arts Propel, 203 Readers theater, 213, 215, 224–25 Redington, C., 138 Reflective practice, 62; of teachers, 125–26, 128–29, 131–33; portfolios, 187–88, 203 Rehearsal, 217–18, 238–39; and language learning, 150–52, 186–87; didactic play as a rehearsal method, 187; inquiry as a rehearsal method, 189–90; line-through, 174 Representations of the world: enactive, iconic, symbolic, 12–14 Resistant learner, and drama, 143–44 Responsibility for language learning, 199–201 Roach, J., 45 Rohd, M., 110 Role drama, 31–32, 34 Role–taking, 6, 10 Rose, D., 12 Saxton, J., 60, 101, 103, 108 Schewe, M., 83, 90, 224–25 Schmidt, R., 53 Sculpturing, 190–91 Selection of a play for production, 210–11; accessibility, 211–12 Silvers, A., 198 Situated learning, 150, 156 Slade, P., 138 Smith, S. M., 157 Social awareness and drama, 188–89, 203 Space, 38, 41–43, 45–48, Space-moments of learning, 24–25, 27, 30–31, 33-–4, Third space of presence, 21, 32, 34 Spada, N., 108–9 Spolin, V., 60 Strain, J., 51 Suvin, D., 202 Swain, M., 53 Symbolic behavior, 5–6, 11, 13 Symbolic play, 9–10 Tableau, 61–62. See also activity Tagg, J., 208 Tarlington, C., 31–32 Teacher-in-role, 59–60, 130 Teacher, role of the, 200–201, teacher-driven pedagogy, 107 Team teaching, 213, 219.

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See also collaboration among teachers Technical run-through, 218. See also rehearsal Tension, in the dramatic process, 60–61. See also critical incident Texts of our lives, 138–40 Theater in education, 138 Time, 38, 41, 43, 45–48 Transcultural performance 37–39, 42, 44, 47 Transculturation, 38–39, 48 Vanier, J., 96–97 Varela, F., 24–25 Vaßen, F., 77 Verhovek, S. H., 129 Verriour, P., 31–32 Via, R. 161–62 Video project,115–21

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Page 245 Video recording, 114–15 Vygotsky, L. S., 8, 10, 12, 141 Wagner, B. J., 8, 98, 109, 138 Waldrop, M., 26 Wenger, E., 141, 150 Whirlwind Program, 6, 12 Willet, J., 88–89 Williams, J., 53 Williams, R., 40–44 Wilson, R., 76 Wolf, S., 80–81 Wringe, C., 89 Zone of proximal development (ZPD), 10, 141. See also Vygotsky, L. S.

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Page 247 About the Contributors Ann Axtmann teaches and writes about performance, multiculturalism, and Native American issues. A former dancer and choreographer in the United States and Mexico, Dr. Axtmann is currently on the faculties of The Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University and The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York City. She has published in The Mid-Atlantic Almanack, The Dance Historians Newsletter , The International Encyclopedia of Dance , STUAP: Organo de Información y Análisis del Sindicato de Trabajadores Académicos de la Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Transpositions (forthcoming), and Dance Research Journal (forthcoming). Gerd Bräuer is associate professor of German studies at Emory University. He taught German as a foreign language in Prague (Czech Republic), and Eugene and Portland, Oregon. At the University of Oregon he held a post-doctoral fellowship sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). He is currently (2001–03) DAAD Professor at the Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg (Germany). His major research interests are writing

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Page 248 pedagogy, second-/foreign-language pedagogy, and institutional development in secondary and higher education. Most recent publications include Writing Across Languages (2000), Schreiben als reflexive Praxis ( Writing as Reflective Practice ) (2000), and Pedagogy of Language Learning in Higher Education (2001). Timothy Collins is assistant professor of English as a second language at National-Louis University, Chicago, and has taught ESL, EFL, and Spanish in Spain, Morocco, and the United States. His research interests include theater arts in elementary ESL, ESL in adult education, work force ESL, and school-to-work initiatives in ESL. Cameron R. Culham, as a museum theater performer, children’s entertainer and cofounder of Théâtre Cabale, a francophone Victoria theater company, Cameron has seen firsthand the potential of the arts in language teaching. He currently teaches ESL at the English Language Centre at the University of Victoria. Sarah L. Dodson is pursuing an M.A. in TESL/TEFL and an M.A. in French at Colorado State University, where she has taught ESL, French, and composition. She has also taught English in France. Lynn Fels teaches and writes about performance, teacher education, and curriculum theory. A former humor columnist, performing arts educator, and corporate writer and researcher, Lynn is currently writer in residence in the Centre for the Study of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Penelope Heinigk, as a graduate teaching fellow at the University of Oregon, has taught the first-, second-, and third-year German language sequences, and codirected three German plays: Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen ( Spring Awakening), Goethe’s Faust , and Dürrenmatt’s Die Physiker ( The Physicists). Her research focuses primarily on the complex relationship between technology and gender, especially the technology of the early railroad as portrayed through the texts of Naturalism. Other interests include mythology, modernism, and language pedagogy. Jun Liu is assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Arizona. Growing up during the Great Cultural Revolution in China, Jun was trained in Beijing Opera and local drama. He studied under one of the foremost authorities in the field of drama in education, Cecily O’Neill, at The Ohio State University. Jun was a member of the Ohio Drama Education Exchange, and has taught English for more than fifteen years in both ESL and EFL contexts by using dramatic activities including Process Drama, Readers’

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Page 249 Theater, story-telling, and improvisation. An author of several books and numerous articles, Jun is the recipient of the 1999 TESOL Newbury House Excellent Teaching Award, and serves on the TESOL Board of Directors as Director at Large (2001-2004). Franziska B. Lys is currently the director of undergraduate studies at Northwestern University. She has taught all levels of German language instruction, as well as courses on Swiss culture and second-language acquisition theory. Dr. Lys has lectured throughout the United States and in Europe on a variety of topics, ranging from the teaching of Swiss culture, the adaptation of authentic videos for the language classroom, to computer-assisted language instruction. She is the coproducer and author of numerous educational documentaries and CD-ROM multimedia software. Dr. Lys is the recipient of numerous awards from Northwestern University, and state and national professional organizations. Lynne McGivern is a doctoral student in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her areas of research include language policy, identity in second-language learning, and critical language testing. Her current work follows a career in theatrical design. Lynne’s extensive experience in theater coupled with her ESL teaching experience has resulted in her strong commitment to the potential of the arts in second-language learning. Denise Meuser has been teaching elementary and intermediate German courses at Northwestern University since January 1991 and began coordinating Intermediate German in the fall of 1997. She is interested in topics concerning language acquisition, bilingual education, and second-language teaching methodology. Douglas J. Moody is an adjunct professor at Dartmouth College who teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of English. He is involved in second-language acquisition and technology and education, as well as educational drama. He is the cofounder of the ¿Why Not? International Theater Group and has directed, performed in, and produced foreign-language theater in many settings on three continents. The educational applications of essential play that he has used range from product- and process-oriented approaches to educational drama, to radio and television broadcasting, to multimedia digital technologies. John Paluch is a lecturer in the Department of German and has been teaching beginning and intermediate German at Northwestern University since 1990. He also serves as the study abroad adviser in the department. John Paluch is an active member of the Northern Illinois Chapter of AATG and works with

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Page 250 other teachers to organize immersion weekends and workshops for students and teachers. Manfred Lukas Schewe was a lecturer/teacher trainer at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in the area of language teaching methodology and is currently lecturer in the German Department, National University of Ireland, University College, Cork. He has widely published in the area of drama-based language teaching/learning, including the third edition of Fremdsprache inszenieren (1993), Towards Drama as a Method in the Foreign Language Classroom (1993) and Pädagogische Konzepte für einen ganzheitlichen DaF-Unterricht (2000). His primary interest in research and teaching has been to develop holistic approaches to the teaching and learning of language, literature, and culture by building bridges between different but complementary disciplines: German as a foreign language, applied linguistics, language pedagogy, drama pedagogy, and drama and theatre studies. Karla Schultz, professor of German and Comparative Literature, teaches at the University of Oregon. She has published widely on Adorno and Critical Theory, literary modernism, and love poetry. Each fall she tries her hand at a theatrical production. Janet Hegman Shier (University of Michigan residential college German program lecturer and program chair) is founder and director of the Residential College Deutsches Theater, a company that has staged German-language plays since 1985. An invited member of the Goethe Institut Netzwerk (Trainers of the Trainers), she gives theater, art, and writing workshops and speaks on interdisciplinary education and learning styles. Shier has received several teaching awards from the University of Michigan and numerous grants for interdisciplinary work, including several grants from the Goethe Insitut, a Marion and Henry Bloch Award, a YoHA (Year of the Humanities and the Arts), and an Interdisciplinary Faculty Associates Award. In addition to teaching German and German Theater, she teamteaches a performance course to promote women’s health awareness and coordinates a service-learning project, ‘‘PALS” (Partnership in Academic Learning through Service), which links U-M students with at-risk high school and elementary students through a literacy corps. Philip Taylor was recently appointed associate professor of educational theatre, New York University. Previously, he was Director, Centre for Applied Theatre Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He is well known for his work in reflective practice and drama education. His books include Researching Drama and Arts Education: Paradigms and Possibilities (Falmer Press), Redcoats and Patriots: Reflective Practice in Drama and Social

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Page 251 Studies (Heinemann), and The Drama Classroom: Action, Reflection, Transformation (RoutledgeFalmer). Betty Jane Wagner is a professor in the College of Education at Roosevelt University and director of the Chicago Area Writing Project. Internationally recognized as an authority in the educational uses of drama in the classroom and in composition instruction, she received two awards in 1998: the Judith Kase-Polisini Honorary Research Award of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, and the Rewey Belle Inglis Award for Outstanding Woman in English Education from the Women in Literature and Life Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English. Her most recent publications are Building Moral Communities through Educational Drama (1999); Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium , (2nd ed., 1999); Educational Drama and Language Arts: What Research Shows (1998); Situations: A Case Book of Virtual Realities for the English Teacher (1995), co-authored with Mark Larson, high school teacher; and the fourth edition of Student-Centered Language arts, K-12 (1992), co-authored with the late James Moffett. Wagner has published several sets of curriculum materials, including Books at Play , a dramatic approach to language arts (1997). Ingrid Zeller is a lecturer in the Department of German and has been teaching first, second, and third year German courses at Northwestern University since 1995. Her projects include the use of technology and different media in foreign language acquisition and exploring the integration of film, music, and drama into the foreign language curriculum. She has published and presented on those topics at local and national conferences.

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