li194 Linguistic Insights

Studies in Language and Communication

Susana Nicolás Román &

Juan José Torres Núñez (eds)

Drama and CLIL

A new challenge for the teaching
approaches in bilingual education
Peter Lang
li194 Content and Language Integrated Learning
(CLIL) has transformed the educational scene
and brought about a revolution of teaching
1

methods and principles in the bilingual education

environment. The major challenge in the imple-
mentation of a teacher education curriculum in
CLIL is the integration of different teaching ap-
proaches to promote content and language
mastery. What is certain is that there is no fixed
model for CLIL and that for resources to be
effective they have to be contextualized and
motivating for both teachers and students. The
four Cs (Content, Cognition, Communication
and Culture) proposed by Coyle (1999) as
framework for CLIL implementations find in
drama a powerful meeting point to develop
communicative skills and beyond. CLIL opens
new possibilities for the implementation of
drama in its multiple varieties: role-play, simu-
lations, drama activities, educational drama
and so on. This book proposes articles on the
possibilities of drama as a challenging learning
experience from primary to higher education.

Susana Nicolás Román is a Professor in the English

Department at the University of Almeria (Spain).
She holds a PhD in English contemporary theatre.
She has published several articles on educational
drama and two books about the female charac-
ters in Edward Bond’s plays.

Juan José Torres Núñez teaches English and

American literature at the University of Almería,
Spain. He is the author of bilingual plays (English/
Spanish), which grow out of his PhD on Theatre
Arts and the Teaching of Second Languages. He
is also the author of a novel and five poetry
books. A selection of his poetry has been trans-
lated into Russian.
Drama and CLIL
Linguistic Insights
Studies in Language and Communication

Edited by Maurizio Gotti,

University of Bergamo

Volume 194

ADVISORY BOARD
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PETER LANG
Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien
 Susana Nicolás Román & Juan José Torres Núñez (eds)

Drama and CLIL

A new challenge for the teaching

approaches in bilingual education

PETER LANG
Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien
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Drama is a tool of reality which makes reality
a tool of humanness
Edward Bond, Notebook, 6/ 2/11
Contents

Leni Dam
Foreword................................................................................................9

Susana Nicolas
Introduction..........................................................................................21

Susan Hillyard
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection........................................25

Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology.......................47

Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Theatre Acting in Second Language Teacher Education.....................77

Patricia Martín Ortiz

Developing creativity through the
Mantle of the Expert technique: A personal experience....................107

Nailya Garipova
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays.......125

Raquel Fernández
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom...........................................141

List of Tables and Figures..................................................................165

Notes on Contributors........................................................................167
Leni Dam

Foreword

Drama and CLIL – and Language Learner Autonomy:

A personal experience

When I was asked to write an introduction to this book, I immediately

accepted. Even though I am not a specialist, neither in CLIL, nor as
a teacher of drama, I am a strong believer in making use of these two
educational approaches when it comes to good language learning. The
chapters included here definitely support this belief. They provide the
reader with excellent examples of different ways of working with drama
and CLIL. They show that among many other positive effects “the two
approaches motivate students through engagement and connection, but
they are also connected in their holistic nature, engaging the whole
learner in the learning process” (Hillyard, in this volume). When looking
at the examples, though, I find it striking that a third approach – namely
language learner autonomy (LLA) – where learners are expected to “be
in charge of their own learning” (Holec 1981: 3) is almost lacking. In
most cases, the examples given and activities suggested are teach-
er-directed and lend themselves to a large extent to rather traditional
language teaching and learning methods. As neither drama nor CLIL
are committed to any methodological language learning approach, Di-
eter Wolff (Wolff 2011: 71) points to this possible tendency: “teachers
often tend to fall back on rather traditional language learning meth-
ods arguing, for example, that content subjects cannot be learned with-
out a terminology which needs to be acquired through learning lists
of words”. A possible solution could be to embed CLIL as well as
10  Leni Dam

Drama in a learner-centered concept of effective language learning and

teaching – autonomous language learning.1
In order to support this view, I will start out by defining learner
autonomy as well as describe the cornerstones in the development of
language learner autonomy. I shall then go on to mention points of con-
tact between these cornerstones and the examples of drama and CLIL in
the book – in order to make the suggestion of embedment feasible. The
example of Making a play in an autonomy class consisting of beginners
in a Danish comprehensive school hopefully underpins the suggestion.
I will finish with a few concluding remarks.

Defining language learner autonomy

The term learner autonomy was first coined in 1979 by Henri Holec
(Holec 1981: 3). Many definitions have since been given to the term,
depending on the writer and the context. For this introduction I have
chosen to use the so-called Bergen definition, which adds the social
aspect of (language) learning to Holec’s definition:

Learner autonomy is characterized by a readiness to take charge of one’s own

learning in the service of one’s needs and purposes. This entails a capacity and
willingness to act independently and in co-operation with others, as a socially
responsible person. An autonomous learner is an active participant in the social
processes of learning, but also an active interpreter of new information in terms
of what she/he already and uniquely knows (qtd. in Dam 1995: 1–2)2

The concept language learner autonomy stresses the view that the
learner’s agency is – as far as possible – channelled through the target
language in the autonomous language learning environment (cf. O’Ro-
urke / Carson 2010).

1 The LAALE project (Language Acquisition in an Autonomous Learning Envi-

ronment) provides evidence of the effectiveness of autonomous language learn-
ing. See for example Legenhausen 2003, 2009.
2 The Bergen-definition saw the light during a Nordic Workshop held in Bergen
in 1990.
Foreword 11

Developing language learner autonomy

In the process of making learners willing to take charge of their own

learning and capable of doing so (cf. the Bergen-definition above), it
has turned out that the following key-issues – or cornerstones – in the
organisation of the autonomy classroom are of utmost importance.3

Figure 1. Cornerstones in the autonomy classroom.

3 For more literature on developing learner autonomy, see for example Little
(1991), Dam (1995), Benson (2001).
12  Leni Dam

Points of contact between Autonomous Language Learning

(ALL) and Drama and CLIL

Even though the examples of drama and CLIL in this book do not incor-
porate learner autonomy as a general concept, most of the cornerstones
in the autonomy classroom:

1. engaging the learners’ identity and thus their interest and motiva-
tion,
2. authenticity when it comes to interaction and communication,
3. building on “old knowledge” and thus activating their pragmatic
competence,
4. giving learners choice in order to make them reflect and in this
way responsible for the choices made, and
5. social learning,

are well represented. The few quotes below are intended to illustrate the
points of contact between the three approaches. They are taken from the
chapter by Susan Hillyard, The Question of Connection: Connecting
Drama and CLIL as Motivating Forces in the Classroom and the chap-
ter by Nailya Garipova, Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary schools:
Bilingual Context Plays, but they could easily be extracted from other
chapters.
In her introduction Susan Hillyard points at the importance of
bridging real life with the classroom and thus give the learners a chance
to make use of old knowledge: “The word ‘connection’ in the title thus
refers to the connection between the two disciplines [Drama and CLIL]
and to the way in which both act as motivating forces for students in
language classrooms by helping them to make the connections they
need between their real lives and classroom life”. When it comes to
identity and motivation she refers to Hadfield and Dornyei (2010): “If
the person we would like to become speaks an L2, the ideal L2 self is a
powerful motivator to learn the L2”.
Naylia Garipova, among others, sees working with theatre as a
possibility “to create the working atmosphere needed to stimulate the
pupils’ motivation and cooperation”. When working with the type of
Foreword 13

theatre in question, bilingual plays, she adheres to a number of principles

– 12 in all – from which I will mention two dealing with choice: “All the
students of the group can take part in the adaptation and elaboration of
the plays. They will choose the parts voluntarily”. And: “The theme of
the play should be interesting and amusing and must be chosen by the
pupils” (Garipova, in this volume).
Under the heading ‘Classroom implementations’, Garipova
writes: “After having adapted and staged different plays, my students of
the fourth year of Compulsory Secondary Education talked to me and
showed the desire to create their own play”. From here on, she describes
her students’ creation of their own play – where the cornerstones of
the autonomy classroom, apart from integrated evaluation, are at play.
Therefore, why not start from the very beginning of learning English?
This is an example of the difference between a teacher-directed teaching
environment and a learner-directed and -centred learning-environment.
In the autonomy classroom the learners do not have to ‘learn’ to make
a play. Quite the opposite. In order to engage and activate the learners
from the very first day of learning English, the knowledge that they
bring to the classroom is made use of – in this connection their knowl-
edge about stories, plays and plots in everyday life as in the example
below.

An example of autonomous language learning

at beginners’ level

Getting learners actively involved in their own learning i.e. developing

learner autonomy in an educational context, is in many cases a long and
difficult process for learners as well as educators. It is difficult for learn-
ers who have been used to being spoon-fed in previous teaching/learn-
ing situations, but it is especially difficult for teachers who are afraid of
losing control of the learning process. For both parties it is a question of
accepting that ‘small is beautiful’ – of taking small steps of ‘letting go’
and ‘taking hold’ (Page, 1992).
14  Leni Dam

In order to cope with these difficulties, the teacher in her role as

the one to stimulate and support learning must gradually introduce pos-
sible activities – one at a time. These activities have, on the one hand,
to be within the curricular demands for the linguistic development of
her learners. On the other hand, they have to give scope for the corner-
stones in the autonomy classroom (cf. above). The learners on their part
will be asked to try out these activities and evaluate them according to
whether they like them or not and whether they find them useful for
their individual needs. At beginners’ level these evaluations are initiated
and guided by the teacher.
As regards the curricular demands for proficiency in expressing
oneself, some of the very first activities introduced at beginners’ level
in my classes were:

1. Questions and answers in pairs: student produced individual

questions that the questioner did not know the answer to and
which thus supports the notion of authenticity.
2. Picture + text: find a picture and make a text individually or in
pairs, giving scope for choice, L1-knowledge, cooperation.
3. Two minutes’ talk: small talk in pairs about topics chosen by
the students themselves and carried out in the target language
as far as possible. This allows the learners to bring in their iden-
tity apart from supporting social learning and genuine authentic
communication.
4. Make a play: self-created plot, story-line, and dialogue. In the
class in question (see below) this activity was initiated by one of
the learners. As can be seen, all the cornerstones are involved.
5. Make a game: learner-produced games to be played among the
learners themselves, such as dominoes, picture lotto, board-
games.

The activities were entered on a poster and extended with new ideas
either from the teacher or from the students themselves (cf. number
4 above) to choose from. These simple activities – simple in the sense
that the instructions were very easy to follow – continued to be used all
through the five years at secondary school as they had the characteristics
of a good activity i.e. everyone could add to the activity and everyone
Foreword 15

would gain from taking part in that (differentiation). Furthermore, all

the cornerstones are at play. In addition, the outcome – or the products –
of these activities were not at all simple, on the contrary, they were quite
complex. Over the years, the content and the format would change:
Picture + text would develop into newspaper articles, brochures, re-
ports. The two minutes’ talk would develop into long discussions; make
a play would develop into various forms for drama produced by the
learners themselves and make a game would develop into quite sophis-
ticated types of board-games such as Trivial Pursuit with rules set up
by the learners. Today they would probably produce computer-games.

An example of ‘Make a play’: a personal experience

The following example of a student-produced play, OH NO!!!!!, is tak-

en from the first year of English4. The work on the play started after
approximately eight weeks of English – four lessons a week of forty-
five minutes. The students, three boys and one girl, were all eleven years
old at the time and of mixed ability – L. being the weakest student in
class and K. the strongest. It was K. who came up with the idea and
from his logbook entries it can be seen that he had worked on the idea
at home, before sharing it with a group. On Wednesday, 21 October, he
entered into his logbook:

Wednesday, 21st October

1. Sing a song
2. Share homework
3. Make a play with: Helene, Morten, Lars, Lasse
4. Homework: Make a play
5. Comments:
det var drøngodt. Hvorfor? det ved jeg ikke. det var det bare.
[It was fantastic. Why? I don’t know. That is just how it was. – my translation]

Figure 2. Extract from K’s logbook.

4 For details about the work with this class, see Dam 1995: 8–32
16  Leni Dam

From that day on, the group developed the play together in class.
K. volunteered to be secretary as he had started the play and was the
best at writing at this point. When working with the play in class, new
words needed for the play were entered into the logbooks. Examples
of vocabulary entered were: towards, sudden, frightened, meetings,
teased5. From the logbook entries of the group it can be seen that they
considered new ideas for the play as homework – homework being de-
cided by the learners themselves. After a month, on Monday, 23 No-
vember, K. writes under comments: “It has been a good lesson because
we got finish with our play”. It is noticeable that by now the target lan-
guage is used.
It might seem a long time to produce a play. However, it has to
be taken into account that producing the play was only one activity out
of many during this period. During the lessons there would also be joint
activities for the whole class. Sharing homework with a partner was, for
example, a must; watching a video in class, sing songs, etc. would all
be part of lessons.
On Monday, 30 November, the play was shown to the rest of the
class as well as to another class. K. had as homework made a type-written
version which was distributed to the audience after the performance.

Comments on the product

The group has created a social reality which mirrors the daily lives of
11- year olds: school, friendship, relationship between boys and girls,
bullying, solidarity and humour. The topics emanate from what they
have experienced and find interesting. The learners have brought in
their identity in the constructive processes resulting in an L2 text (see
Garipova).
Furthermore, when it comes to language learning, then the pro-
cesses underlying the text, i.e. the interactions resulting in the text itself,
are of even greater value. It is in these interactions and negotiations that
the learners speak as themselves. Furthermore, while building up the

5 For the acquisition of vocabulary in an autonomous learning environment, see

Dam/Legenhausen (1996).
Foreword 17

text, a host of authentic speech acts are carried out: they come up with
suggestions, which are either accepted or rejected, the appropriateness
of vocabulary is discussed and plot structure and meanings are negoti-
ated. Even though the negotiations and discussions at this point – after
two months of learning English – take place in L1, then the result is an
L2 text.

Evaluation – the pivot of learner autonomy6

Whenever something was presented in class, peer-evaluation would

take place. After the performance at the end of a lesson, the peers there-
fore entered their evaluations of the play into their respective logbooks7.
Here are some examples from different peers:

• S: See a play called “oh no”. It has been a ggod Play for de de
var gode til det [- because they were good at it].
• J: Set [seen] a play call “oh NO” det var meget godt [it was very
good].
• M: See a Play called “Oh No”. Jeg syntes det var godt og sjovt
fordi M. og L. blev mobbet [I think that it was good and funny
because M. and L were bullied].
• N: See a play called “Oh NO!” Komator fra N. [comment from
N] Det var meget godt. Jeg forstod det meste af det. [It was very
good. I could understand most of it].

Admittedly, the evaluations are short; they are very often in L1, but they
are there! Furthermore, they show that learners are capable of setting
up their own criteria for a ‘good play’: “I could understand it, the actors
were good, it was fun, it showed real life (bullying)”. In the following
lessons it will be up to the teacher to see to it that these peer-evaluations
are made use of in the development of self-evaluation, peer-evaluation
and in the process of making a play.

6 See Dam 1995: 49.

7 Many of my learners left their logbooks with me when leaving school, saying:
“You can use them in your teacher education if you want to”.
18  Leni Dam

Concluding remarks

As described above, Making a play is an example of authentic language

use which has for quite some time now been considered the crucible of
language learning. When producing a play – also as described above –
language learning is taking place in an intensity which the mere perfor-
mance of a play cannot achieve.
When it comes to including CLIL in the autonomy classroom,8
it is noticeable that the product and thus the content of the learner-di-
rected activities derives and develops from the learners’ interests and
the knowledge that they bring to the learning environment at the time
of learning. One group at intermediate level would for example make a
small book on Hitler’s Childhood (history). Another group would create
a game of Trivial Pursuit with questions concerned with geography,
biology, history, etc. In short, the autonomous learners are active agents
of their own learning, not only when it comes to language.
It is my hope that this introduction will incite teachers, teach-
er-trainers, and researchers of Drama and CLIL to implement elements
and principles of learner autonomy (LA) and/or language learner auton-
omy (LLA) in their educational environments in order to combine the
blessings of the three approaches.

References

Benson, Ph. 2011 [2001]. Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Lan-

guage Learning. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman/Pearson.
Dam, L. 2014 [1995]. Learner Autonomy 3. From Theory to Classroom
Practice. Dublin: Authentik/ Karlslunde: Askeladden,
Dam, L. / Legenhausen, L. 1996. The acquisition of vocabulary in an
autonomous language learning environment – the first months
of beginning English. In R. Pemberton et al, (ed). Taking

8 For further arguments, see e.g. Wolff (2003, 2011).

Foreword 19

Control – Autonomy in Language Learning. Hong Kong: Hong

Kong University Press, 265–280.
Holec, H. 1981 [1979]. Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning.
Oxford: Pergamon.
Legenhausen, L. 2003. Second language acquisition in an autono-
mous learning environment. In D. Little/ J.Ridley/ E. Ushioda
(eds). Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language Classroom –
Teacher, Learner, Curriculum and Assessment. Dublin: Trinity
College Dublin, 65–77.
Legenhausen, L. 2009. Autonomous language learning. In K. Knapp/
B. Seidlhofereds. (eds). Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 6:
Foreign Language Communication and Learning. Berlin: Mou-
ton de Gruyter, 373 – 400.
Little, L. 1991. Learner Autonomy1. Definitions, Issues, and Problem.
Dublin: Authentik.
O’Rourke, B. / Carson, L. (eds). 2010. Language Learner Autonomy –
Policy, Curriculum, Classroom. A Festschrift in Honour of David
Little. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Page, B. (ed). 1992. Letting Go, Taking Hold. London: CILT.
Wolff, D. 2003. Content and language integrated learning: a framework
for the development of learner autonomy. In D. Little/ J. Ridley/
E. Ushioda (eds). Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language
Classroom: Teacher, Learner, Curriculum and Assessment. Dub-
lin: Authentik, 211 – 222.
Wolff, D. 2011. CLIL and Learner Autonomy: relating two educational
concepts. Education et Societés Plurilingues, 30/6, 69–80.
Susana Nicolas

Introduction

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has transformed the

educational scene and brought about a revolution of teaching methods
and principles in the bilingual education environment. The major chal-
lenge in the implementation of a teacher education curriculum in CLIL
is the integration of different teaching approaches to promote content
and language mastery. What is certain is that there is no fixed model
for CLIL and that for resources to be effective they have to be con-
textualized and motivating for both teachers and students. The four Cs
(Content, Cognition, Communication and Culture) proposed by Coyle
(1999) as framework for CLIL implementations find in drama a pow-
erful meeting point to develop communicative skills and beyond. CLIL
opens new possibilities for the implementation of drama in its multiple
varieties: role-play, simulations, drama activities, educational drama
and so on. The versatility of bilingual education enables teachers to
adopt a more holistic and inclusive approach to classroom practice. This
book proposes articles on the possibilities of drama as a challenging
learning experience from primary to higher education.
Susan Hillyard’s chapter looks at both Drama and CLIL as mo-
tivating forces in the English language classroom and analyses the
relationship between the two approaches. She analyses the relation-
ship between thinking skills development through Process Drama and
highlights specific models explored within a global context. Practical
activities, essential to drama, are shown to fit into a number of CLIL
dimensions, intrinsically embedded in the drama experience, and, there-
fore, leading to more effective language acquisition.
Kemal Sinan Ozmen and Cem Balnikali discuss the theory and
practice of integrating theatre acting theories to pre-service English
teacher education. In this chapter, in addition to a current review of
this field, specific practical tasks and suggestions are offered to teacher
22  Susana Nicolas

educators with no acting background but with the motivation to promote

a strong pedagogical variety and diversity for their student teachers.
Tomas Motos and Donna Lee’s chapter proposes Playback Thea­
tre as the clear embodiment of CLIL methodology. They introduce an
explanation and discussion of Playback Theatre, the components and
processes involved in a PT session, and the areas where it is used, all
with a special focus on education. They show two specific examples
of the use of this theatrical format, firstly with an adult audience, and
secondly with high school students, demonstrating the importance of
PT in the practice of mediation. Finally, the authors present PT as an
optimal application of the CLL methodology for the development and
promotion of interactive, communicative and creative key skills.
Patricia Martín presents a workshop devoted to the Arts and
Crafts subject through the Mantle of the Expert technique. Starting with
a children book, Katie Morag and the Wedding by Mairi Hedderwick,
She develops the complete outline of the activity and the final perfor-
mance in class. The strategies of this technique are displayed looking at
the teacher-in-role function and the creation of the plot by the students.
Different activity corners were created in order to manage a group of
thirty pupils performing roles in various scenarios. Creativity is encour-
aged all the time as the main objective. The atmosphere of ‘reality’ in-
herent in all Mantle of the Expert experiences provides also the oppor-
tunity to develop communicative competence and meaningful learning.
Nailya Garipova’s chapter proposes bilingual context plays start-
ing from the reality of the pupils today enabling teachers easier access
to adopt a communicative approach in the foreign language teaching
according to the CLIL methodology. The successful performance of the
works analyzed throughout this article highlights the real need for a dif-
ferent approach in a foreign language teaching. The chapter shows how
bilingual context plays encourage participation and communication be-
tween pupils from different nationalities and enhance their cooperation
and tolerance.
The final chapter aims at presenting Readers’ Theatre as a useful
tool in the CLIL classroom to pursue not only language aims, but also
educational goals. Through the discussion of its benefits and pitfalls,
Raquel Fernández justifies the use of RT in CLIL classrooms, taking its
Introduction 23

potential advantages as the starting point and supporting its use further
by connecting it with the 4 Cs stated by Do Coyle. She concludes with
a set of didactic guidelines and steps for further researchers interested
in studying the use of RT and those practitioners willing to implement
it in their classrooms.
Susan Hillyard1

Drama and CLIL: The power of connection

Introduction

This chapter regards both Drama and CLIL as motivating forces in the
English language classroom and analyses the relationship between the
two approaches. Both are defined for the purposes of this paper. The
five dimensions of CLIL are analysed through the eyes of Drama as not
only a content subject in itself but also as an appropriate CLIL tech-
nique. Practical activities, essential to Drama, are shown to fit into a
number of the dimensions of CLIL and are intrinsically embedded in
the Drama experience, leading to more effective language acquisition.
Not only do both approaches motivate students through engagement
and connection, but they are also connected in their holistic nature, en-
gaging the whole learner in the learning process. The word ‘connection’
in the title thus refers to the connection between the two disciplines and
to the way in which both act as motivating forces for students in lan-
guage classrooms by helping them to make the connections they need
between their real lives and classroom life.

As English moves from foreign language to basic skill

According to Graddol as “global English makes the transition from

‘foreign language’ to basic skill” (2006:6), a new world English language

1 Some of this material was previously presented in “Drama and CLIL: The
Power of Connection”, Humanity Language Teaching, 12 (2010) <www.hltm
ag.co.uk/dec10/sart10.rtf>.
26  Susan Hillyard

project will take shape and CLIL may well be part of that trend. He
sees global English as an innovation which follows innovation diffusion
theory and which will be taken up in different ways, through differ-
ent means, at different rates and with different measures of success. He
cites CLIL as “a significant curriculum trend in Europe” (2006: 8) and
admits that similar approaches are now used under different names in
many countries.
The interesting issue is to tie together all the approaches and
to find out what works best and where, according to the experiences
of each context. It is not necessarily a straightforward task. Marsland
(1998) indicates that CLIL is sometimes regarded in Finland rather too
simply as just ‘Teaching Content through English’ whereas Content and
Language Integrated Learning is really a sophisticated and multi-faceted
educational approach. Hellekjaer, (1999) agreeing with Marsland also
claims that experience shows that more than just ‘comprehensible in-
put’ is needed to attain competent levels in learners. The Canadian
researcher Merril Swain claims that ‘comprehensible output’, the oppor-
tunity to use the target language for demanding oral and written tasks,
is just as necessary and it is here where Drama can play a very relevant
part, since it is the production of meaningful language, both body and
verbal, in as near as possible real life contexts that is the essence of
Drama.
Thus it is that I propose that the question of connection, vital to
real learning, can be addressed through approaches envisioned within
the five dimensions and foci of Drama and of the CLIL compendium.

The question of motivation as a crucial factor

in the classroom

It has long been felt that motivation may be an important factor in the
acquisition of a foreign or second language and with the ‘World Eng-
lish Project’ as suggested by Graddol (2006) the issue may even be-
come crucial to successful EL teaching and learning. However much we
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  27

discuss its importance it is not always easy to pin down what motivation
actually is. Dörnyei pertinently quotes Martin Covington on this point:
“Motivation, like the concept of gravity, is easier to describe (in terms
of its outward, observable effects) than it is to define” (2001: 7).
Certainly, it is easier to describe the outward signs as we have all
registered them in their positive aspects and their negative aspects in
countless classrooms all over the world. Not only this, but the outward
signs of, for example, always doing homework on time and arriving
early and eager to be in class, compared with finding the lesson boring
and complaining about it, affect classroom dynamics. Individual and
group responses lead to successful or unsuccessful classroom practices,
no matter how diligent and experienced the individual teacher might be.
It has always been my contention, as an educational dramatist,
that Drama is a motivational force in the classroom, particularly in
language classrooms. Due to its essentially holistic approach to the
learners’ needs, Drama appeals to all students, no matter their learning
style, and regains the often lost playfulness of younger learners. It
employs practical, near to real-life role plays, developing comprehen-
sible output on the part of the students, deploying collaborative tech-
niques, and exercising thinking skills, often through problem solving
tasks and practising conflict resolution. It is true learning by doing. It
might be the nearest many students get to a real life/ first hand experi-
ence in school.
We are all cognizant with the theory of intrinsic or extrinsic
motivation, with Maslow’s pyramid, and perhaps also with Jarvis’ the-
ory of learning and Cambourne’s model of the Whole Language Ap-
proach, not to mention Cummins and Fisher, yet the concrete control of
motivational aspects still eludes us in practice. Dörnyei steers clear of
trying to pin it down concisely by saying that motivation is:

an abstract concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they
do. It is obvious that in this sense the term subsumes a whole range of motives –
from financial incentives such as a raise in salary to idealistic beliefs such as the
desire for freedom – that have very little in common except that they influence
behaviour. Thus, ‘motivation’ is best seen as a broad umbrella term that covers
a variety of meanings (2001: 1).
28  Susan Hillyard

More recently, Dornyei (2013) has developed a number of theories to

relate them to SLA, making a strong relationship between identity and
motivation. He has developed a tripartite theory:
a) The Ideal L2 Self, which concerns the L2-specific facet of one’s
ideal self: if the person we would like to become speaks an L2
b) The Ought-to L2 Self, which concerns the attributes that indi-
viduals believe they ought to possess to avoid possible negative
outcomes.
c) The L2 Learning Experience, which concerns situation-specific
motives related to the immediate learning environment and expe-
rience.

Maintaining that if the person, in our imagination, that we would like

to become, speaks an L2, the ideal L2 self and the ought to L2 self
combined with enjoying the learning experience also act as powerful
motivators to learn the L2 (2013: 2–3). Not only does CLIL support this
kind of analysis in its emphasis on learning to learn but Drama actually
promotes personal development in this field through the use of role play
and the mask of ‘the other’.

Motivation through connection

We need to harness the force of this motivation magnet to make the

best use of the restricted amount of time we usually have in the EFL
classroom. To do this, it may be more profitable to see motivation as
connection or engagement and try to develop our own theory from the
daily lived lives of our experiences within the classroom itself. This
connection relates to any relationship in real life and is crucial to the
desire to “stay beside”, to “spend time with”, to “inhabit”, or to the
notion of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1958) where one “lives IN the skills,
or where one indwells only that to which one is committed; it has to
do with passion”. Ian Tudor in his article in HLT, Pilgrims Magazine,
(Jan 2004), says that connection “involves students discovering a sense
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  29

of personal meaningfulness in their language learning in one way or an-

other”. Again, this is extremely abstract, but clearly obvious if it is seen
through the holistic lens of the CLIL approach and Educational Drama
teaching frames.

A definition of Drama

The definition of Drama used here is very broad and is more related to
such terms as Educational Drama, Applied Drama and Process Drama,
all pedagogical tools derived from theatre techniques. It is the enact-
ment of real and imagined events through role play, improvisation, or
play-making and uses the speaking body in the empty space to enable
individuals and groups to explore, shape and represent the human con-
dition in symbolic, metaphorical or dramatic form. In the words of the
DICE report it is concerned with “using dramatic art to connect thought
and feeling so that young people can explore and reflect subject matter,
test and try out new ideas, acquire new knowledge, create new values,
and build self-efficacy and self-esteem […] It derives from the Greek
word Dran – to do. Drama is something of significance that is ‘done’ or
enacted. It is action explored in time and space” (http://www.dramanetwo
rk.eu/).

How Drama is used in the classroom

It is important to stress that Drama is not the same as Theatre which in-
volves the reading of scripts and plays, written by a playwright, the ac-
ademic study of characters and their interpretation through acting on a
stage in front of an audience. Theatre always has a Director and a Stage
Manager. This type of work includes the production of a school play or
the end- of -year school concert with lighting, costumes, make up and
sound effects all rehearsed and repeated over a long period of time. It
30  Susan Hillyard

often implies the director holding auditions and selecting a small elite
of talented students. Drama, on the other hand, does not discriminate;
it is for everybody.
Through the quotations below I sum up how Drama relates to
the teacher’s work in the classroom. These quotations are adapted from
Heathcote’s work (1984):
Teacher
One who creates learning situations for others. A person whose
energies and skills are at the service, during the professional
situation of the pupils. Not one who tries to give away her
knowledge to someone else.

Education
The moment whereby all the understanding you had before is
sharpened into a new juxtaposition, because of what you have DONE.

Drama
Anything which involves people in active role-taking situations in which attitudes,
not characters, are the chief concern, lived at life-rate (that is discovery at this mo-
ment, not memory-based) and obeying the natural laws of the medium:
- a willing suspension of disbelief
- agreement to pretence
- employing all past experiences
- employing any conjecture of imagination
to create a living, moving picture of life which aims at surprise and discovery for
the participants rather than for any onlookers.

Theatre
The work of writing, producing and acting in plays where specialist actors rehearse
a script for a given period of time, following the director’s instructions with the aim
of pleasing and entertaining or educating an audience. It is a pure art form.
Figure 1.1. Some drama concepts.

Drama takes language and content and transforms it from the writ-
ten, viewed or heard word into action. It makes itself a learning me-
dium where the student becomes the doer of the language, taking
risks to both understand and produce. It uses the body, the mind, the
soul in combination where the student becomes the protagonist of the
speech act and actually experiences something of the role of the real
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  31

or the imagined speaker. It comes in many shapes and sizes such as

language games, role play, improvisation, puppet plays, mask making
and using, mime, movement, performance poetry, radio plays, singing
action songs, chanting, dancing and any other mode which uses the fac-
ulties of the human body to express meaning.
Drama has developed over the years to be seen by some edu-
cation authorities as an efficient learning medium for all levels, ages,
abilities and subjects. It is holistic and polysemic in nature and there-
fore uses all the channels of the learner rendering their learning deep-
er and more substantial. Neelands and Goode (2006) explain as many
as seventy two conventions of which around twenty are considered to
be the most popular (explained below) and it is from this great wealth
of classroom applications that the skilled Drama and CLIL teacher
can draw.

A definition of CLIL

There are as many definitions of CLIL as there are CLIL teachers and
contexts. We all know that the concept of CLIL is not new but the label
is indeed new, having been coined by David Marsh from the University
of Jyväskylä in Finland in 1994, and once something has a label then it
takes on new dimensions. Even as long ago as 1975 when the Bullock
Report, A Language for Life, was published in England the connection
between content and language was mooted. What Bullock said, in a nut-
shell, was that all content teachers had to be language teachers and as a
corollary, it could be added that all language teachers had to be content
teachers. The principal recommendations stated: “Each school should
have an organized policy for language across the curriculum, establish-
ing every teacher’s involvement in language and reading development
throughout the years of schooling” (1975: 137–139; 190; 89; 171).
Of course, there was not such a call for foreign language teaching
in those days. It was a matter of raising the level of language develop-
ment in first language English speakers. The label now, however, allows
the concept to be discussed in a variety of contexts. Each teacher can
32  Susan Hillyard

examine how the basic idea can be adapted, if indeed at all, to a new and
different context from the one in which it was born. Perhaps most inter-
esting is that the spread and shift of the English language throughout the
globalised world, at such an exponential rate, has prompted stakeholders
to question, analyse, compare, contrast and discuss just where we are
heading and what the acronym CLIL actually means. For the purposes
of this chapter I shall define it as an approach where school or university
subjects are taught through the medium of a foreign or second language
when both the contents and the language play a joint and equal role.

How CLIL is used in the classroom

Just as Drama has its own set of conventions, so too does CLIL. It con-
cerns itself, depending on the context, with teaching a language in an
integrated way through the five skills of that language: listening, speak-
ing, reading, writing and thinking and it does it by applying a multitude
of conventions designed to have the students DOING the activities rather
than listening to the teacher. It employs the watch/read/listen then DO
genre and relates specifically to the development of the HOTS (higher
order thinking skills) of Bloom’s taxonomy such as analyse, evaluate and
create, rather than stressing only the lower order thinking skills or the
LOTS (lower order thinking skills), such as remember, understand, apply.
CLIL also develops different but interconnected thinking skills
such as creative, logical, reasoning, quantitative, qualitative, and lat-
eral thinking skills through the techniques and activities that the stu-
dents actually perform either as individuals or in groups. It also stresses
metacognition and training students in learning to learn. These skills are
required by the new digital, 21st century learner. Again the motivational
aspects of CLIL are easy to understand as, once again, the student be-
comes the protagonist and the teacher a facilitator of learning situations
instead of a transmitter of information. Such conventions as visual organ-
isers/graphic organisers and aids such as diagrams and charts are used
to help learners remember new information by making thinking visual.
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  33

They involve writing down or drawing ideas and making connections. Or-
ganisers can be simple or complex, but all of them have connecting parts.

Conventions: The five dimensions of Drama

Drama may be said to be composed of five dimensions under the acronym

SPICE, all defining developmental processes within the growing person:
SOCIAL development
PHYSICAL development
INTELLECTUAL development
CREATIVE development and
EMOTIONAL development.
It is not to be confused with theatre as it is not prescribed by an author
or a director but is used for educational purposes rather than for enter-
tainment. It fits well into any education system and, in my experience,
into developing language acquisition in a more natural way than tradi-
tional ways in ELT

Conventions: The five dimensions of CLIL

CLIL’s original five dimensions are summarised thus through the TIXes:
ENTIX – dealing with the environment
CONTIX – the content or subject matter
LANTIX – the English language dimension
LEARNTIX – awareness of “Learning to Learn”, or learner training.
CULTIX – dealing with culture and intercultural communication and
understanding
I will endeavour to show how the combination of both Drama and CLIL
components can act as a compelling force for teachers to become part
34  Susan Hillyard

of this global movement in keeping our young learners motivated to

become competent bilinguals.

Connecting Drama and CLIL

The five dimensions of CLIL and the five dimensions of Drama show
clearly how both are motivating approaches for ELT practitioners and
their students. Both are the almost perfect holistic and humanistic ap-
proaches to language acquisition in that they deal with the whole person
in the big picture of life itself – not only in life in general, but life in a glo-
balised world where Ministries of Education are making huge reforms.
Both approaches have certain tenets at their core although they
concentrate on differing areas of the teaching and learning process. Dra-
ma approaches tend to concentrate on the growing person while CLIL
approaches relate more to the learning itself. Both are complex and
holistic in nature and feed into and from each other if viewed as parallel
as in the chart below. Both Drama and CLIL promote connection be-
cause the fundamental philosophy is holistic and appeals to the needs of
young learners. The five ‘tixes’ of CLIL overlap, intertwine, and weave
their way through the minds, the souls and the bodies of the students in
the charge of teachers worldwide. The Drama elements appeal to the
human condition and the needs of learners to grow and develop in all
five areas. CLIL may be considered a sophisticated extension of TBL
(Task Based Learning), of project work, of LAC (Language Across the
Curriculum), of bilingual immersion, of EIL (English as an Internation-
al Language), of EGL (English as a Global Language). Without a doubt,
for those who wish to move into a more global role as a teacher of EFL,
Drama combined with CLIL can be a solution.
CLIL deals with subject areas or content which can sometimes be
dry and technical, even when practised by an experienced teacher. Drama
can move that content into the affective and physical areas so necessary
for many young learners to find it at least meaningful. In comparing the
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  35

two approaches it becomes clear that Drama behaves in a way which fits
snugly into the CLIL dimensions as can be outlined in the chart below.

CLIL Component Drama

Cultix Embedded.
Culture Exploring other cultures/habits/behaviours/
stereotypes
Learntix Embedded
Learning Reflection /thinking skills esp. critical/creative/
analytical
/interpretative/ metacognition/
learning to learn
Entix Embedded.
Environment Exploring global issues/ environmental problems
Creating an artistic environment for all in schools/
institutions
Contix Embedded.
Content Literature of Drama/Stories
Cross Curricular e.g. History, Science
Mantle of the Expert
Lantix Embedded.
Language ESP through role play
Conversation/negotiation/
functions/ register/pronunciation/
modulation/diction
Engagement Embedded.
Personal experience/imagined experience/play/
SPICE/self exploration and development.
Learning Outcomes Embedded.
Scaffolding
Comprehensible OUTPUT
Published in the public forum of production ( written,
spoken, web)
Figure 1.2. Comparison of CLIL Component and Drama Forms.
36  Susan Hillyard

A comparison of thinking within the discipline

of Drama and in CLIL

Einstein saw more than a century ago the important link between the
imagination and thinking. If students can be encouraged to imagine,
they can begin to change their perceptions and understand that there
are other ways of thinking from their own boxes of culturally transmit-
ted values and norms. Thus, they can begin to think in an intercultural
manner and also understand the societal processes at work in their un-
derstanding of their own identity and eventually that of others. This also
contributes to citizenship and exploring community values.

Educational Drama and thinking skills

High quality thinking High quality drama

It is not routine – the path Drama is not just re-enactment of what is known. The
of action is not fully known children make decisions that influence the direction
in advance of the drama and they are given ownership, with their
ideas being used to develop the drama.
It tends to be complex – the Drama explores through role, the same situation
total path is not visible from from the viewpoints of different characters. It is not a
a single viewpoint linear process.
It yields multiple rather than Drama is “open”. Scenes can be reworked and re-
unique solutions played in many ways with a multiplicity of solutions
and outcomes.
It involves nuanced judg- Nuance is key to drama. Meanings are arrived at and
ment and interpretation communicated in a variety of ways, verbal, visual
and kinaesthetic. Each person in an audience and
each participant in the drama will interpret the dra-
ma somewhat differently, depending on their present
understandings and experience.
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  37

High quality thinking High quality drama

It can involve the appli- Drama involves problem solving and the resolution
cation of multiple criteria of dilemmas both within the drama and in the process
which may conflict with one of making the drama.
another
It involves uncertainty – not Drama in education develops. It cannot be known
everything about the task at what will emerge in the process as it is interactive
hand is known and dynamic by nature. It is not about re-enacting
what is known and certain, but about discovering and
exploring what is uncertain.
It involves imposing mean- Drama is all about finding, making and communicat-
ing – finding structure in ing meanings. It is structured, mainly by the teacher
apparent disorder initially, but as children become more experienced
and develop their drama skills they are more able to
take over responsibility for structuring their own dra-
ma and communicating meaning to others through
performance.
It is effortful – considerable Good drama is an active and interactive experience,
mental work is needed for which is both intellectually and emotionally demand-
the kinds of elaboration and ing for both participants and audience.
judgements required
Figure 1.3. A comparison of thinking skills and Drama.

Note. Right hand column: Baldwin P. Chair National Drama from Keynote Speech
National Drama Conference in Edinburgh (April 2002).
Left Hand column: Classrooms: a review and evaluation of approaches for developing pupils’
thinking” Dr Carol McGuinness, Queen’s University, Belfast, Crown Copyright, HMSO, 1999
(ISBN 1 84185 013 6).

Drama conventions suitable for CLIL classrooms

Superficially it may seem that Drama conventions cannot fit with sub-
ject classrooms although this was proved to be untrue, particularly
during the 60s and 70s in the U.K., when Drama was used extensively
in infant, primary and secondary classrooms particularly in the teaching
of Literature, Maths, Sciences and Social Sciences. Imaginative teach-
ers were able to transform the dry facts and figures into a living, moving
38  Susan Hillyard

re-enactment using the whole person within the present moment so that
all the channels of learning came into effect. Subject classrooms were
transformed into experiential artistic laboratories where concepts, pre-
viously dead on the page, began to stand up and live.
In primary classrooms it is particularly easy to turn the digestive
system or the rain cycle or the planetary system or atoms and mole-
cules into living representations of such concepts through improvisa-
tion (see N° 1 in the selected conventions below), role play, hot seating
(N° 10) and mime and movement. Likewise, any historical period, event
or figure can come to life by standing up the text through those same
conventions and others such as soundscape (N° 16) and role on the wall
(N° 13), meetings (N° 8), trials (N° 9), interviews (N° 11), thought
tracking (N° 4), eavesdropping (N° 21), decision alley (N° 17), stranger
in role (N° 2 – variation), tableau (N° 3), freeze frame (N° 3- variation)
and if this is combined with Teacher in Role (N° 2) then it becomes
even more compelling.
Even for University students at Masters level who are studying a
content subject e.g. Chemistry, Economics, Management, Physics etc.
through a foreign language, such conventions as the interview (TV or
Radio) (N° 11), meetings (N° 8), writing in role, (N° 7) mapping (N°
6), a trial (N° 9), a ceremony (N° 12), Forum Theatre ( N° 23) and Man-
tle of the Expert (N° 25) can be used to effect. In almost all subjects,
conventions such as Narration (N° 5) and Discussion (N°24) can be
used to enhance and deepen comprehension and productive expression.
Such changes in classroom dynamics lead to personal development and
therefore motivation for the students and professional development for
the teacher as she has to re-think her role and her style within the class-
room itself. These conventions often require few resources as they use
“the speaking body in the empty space” concept. The main requirement
is that the teachers are trained in this methodology.
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  39

Some useful process Drama conventions (a selection)

1. Improvisation: Unscripted, unrehearsed scene, co-created spon-

taneously, and not written down before being presenting. It may
be a whole-group scene (such as a crowd scene at the market-
place), or students may work in pairs and/or small groups, with
all groups exploring the same theme/roles simultaneously (such
as a family at the dinner table, where the parents intend to an-
nounce their plans to get a divorce). In whole-group scenes, the
teacher also may take a role (see convention N° 2, below).
2. Teacher in Role (TIR): The teacher takes on the role of a charac-
ter within the drama. In any given drama, the teacher may take a
number of different roles. Example: The teacher initiates the dra-
ma by taking the role of a messenger, coming to warn a group of
townspeople about a plague coming to their town. Later, he/she
takes the role of the Mayor; later another role within the drama.
The most effective roles tend to be mid-status roles (i.e.,
a messenger from the king, rather than either the king himself
or simply one of his subjects, along with the students.) Effective
roles for the teacher will also project an obvious attitude toward
the event taking place – curiosity, disdain, concern, disapprov-
al, excitement, opposition, etc. TIR serves many essential func-
tions, including helping students stay in role, building interest
in and commitment to the unfolding drama, providing needed
information from within the drama, and/or steering the drama
in a particular direction without reverting to teacher-in-front-of-
the-class mode.
* Variation: Stranger in Role – A friend or colleague of the teacher
appears in costume as a particular character within the drama. He/she
remains silent as long as possible, waiting for the students to draw him/
her out, define his/her character, and discover their own characters’
relationships to that character.
3. Tableau (Still Image): In a small group, students position them-
selves to create a picture expressing the essence of a certain situ-
ation, idea, or dynamic. (It helps to set a time limit, e.g., counting
40  Susan Hillyard

backwards from ten, then saying, ‘Freeze’) Tableaux can be

followed up with Thought-Tracking (see N° 4) to help students
extract meaning from the image and practice speaking.
* Variation: Freeze-Frame – A series of Still Images depicting an im-
portant event within a drama or a work of literature, from history, etc.
Example: Cinderella cleaning for her stepmother and stepsisters; Cin-
derella helping them get ready to go to the ball; Cinderella daydreaming
about going to the ball; the appearance of the Fairy Godmother.
4. Thought-Tracking: The teacher freezes the drama (or it’s already
frozen, as in Tableaux) and taps each actor on the shoulder, one at
a time, prompting him/her to speak aloud the character’s private
feelings and/or thoughts, or to answer a question in character.
5. Narration: Teacher narrates part of a story, while students
either…
1) listen (usually with eyes closed), or
2) pantomime the actions.
Example: Teacher narrates, while students pantomime: “The girl wakes
up. She puts on the magic hat. She goes outside. She sits in the garden.
She…”
Narration is a very effective way of beginning a drama, moving it
forward, creating atmosphere, providing needed information, focusing
distracted students, encouraging reflection, or maintaining control of an
unruly group of students.
* Variation: Guided Tour – A form of narration that provides the group
with a detailed mental picture of the environment in which the drama
is to take place.
6. Mapping: The teacher elicits from the class, together as a whole
group, the information and details needed to create a map or
floor-plan of an important area in the drama story, such as the
village where everything takes place or the scene of a crime. Ex-
cellent means for establishing a collective sense of place.
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  41

* Variation: Small groups make individual maps showing contextual

details or depicting their ideal visions for particular sites within the
drama story.
Example: In a drama involving a school, students draw a birds-eye-view
of their ideal campus, indicating the buildings, recreational facilities,
grassy areas, etc.
7. Writing in Role: In role as characters in the drama, students write
reflectively about a particular event or dynamic in the drama.
They may write journal entries, poems, letters or messages to
other characters in the drama, etc. Excellent tool for stimulating
student reflection and student practice of L2 writing skills, and
also for aiding the teacher in assessing student comprehension.
8. Meetings:
1) Whole class meeting, in which the teacher in role either im-
parts important information to the students in role, or gathers
it from them.
Example: The teacher in role as a private investigator asks questions of
community members about a missing person.
2) Small group meetings (or whole class meetings, if class is
small), in which the students in role may suggest strategies,
plan future action, solve problems, etc.
Example: Prisoners of war meet to determine how they will escape their
captors.
9. Trials: One or more people in role are interrogated (as in N° 10,
Hot Seating) by the other students in role as committee members,
examiners, jurors, or the like, with teacher in role as committee
chair or similar role.

10. Hot-Seating: A group of students questions one or more people

in role to gather information about his/her/their identity, prior
actions, or motivations; an event that he/she/they witnessed, etc.
Example 1: During a trial or a meeting (conventions N° 8 & 9), students
in role as members of a committee interrogate someone in role who
claims to have committed (or not committed) a particular action. The
42  Susan Hillyard

committee seeks to determine the truth and/or the motivation behind

his/her action.
Example 2: To begin a drama, the teacher sits before the class in role as
Copernicus, and students ask him questions about his life.
11. Interview: Students act as newspaper reporters, gathering infor-
mation about a scene. This can either be done in pairs or small
groups, each with one or two reporters and one or more inter-
viewees, or as a whole-group press conference with the inter-
viewee(s) in the Hot Seat (convention N° 10).
12. Ritual / Ceremony: Small groups devise special events to mark,
commemorate, or celebrate something of cultural or historical
significance.
13. Role on the Wall: The teacher draws a simple outline of a figure
very big on a long sheet of butcher paper to represent a particular
character from the unfolding drama. Inside the outlined figure,
students write what they think the character might be thinking
or feeling; around the outside of the figure they write what they
think other characters in the drama might be thinking or feeling
about that character, and/or their own thoughts or feelings about
the character.
16. SoundScape: Students use voice and/or percussion to suggest the
sounds of a certain setting within a story.
* Variation: DreamScape – same, but suggesting a dreamt or imagined
setting.
17. Decision Alley: Students form two lines facing each other. One
line agrees to favour one side of an issue; the other line agrees to
favour the other. One student walks down the ‘alley’, while the
students in the two lines take turns saying things to try to influ-
ence his/her opinion or decision. (First person in one line speaks,
then first person in other line speaks, then second person in first
line, etc.)
After ‘walking the alley’, the person announces his/her opinion or
decision.
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  43

* Variation: Each student peels away from the line-up and walks the
alley in turn. Then everyone discusses the experience, enacted conver-
sations and report them back to others.
23. Forum Theatre: One group of students enacts a scene. Observers
may stop the drama any time to try to help the protagonist ob-
tain his/her objectives via either replacing him/her or entering the
scene as a new character.
24. Reflective Discussion: Out of role, in whole group or small
groups, participants discuss what they did, saw, learned, thought,
and/or felt.
25. The Mantle of the Expert: The student researches the expert and
his discipline and his jargon and speaks through this mantle.

Conclusions: the “new” paradigms of Drama and of CLIL

These methods require the teacher to comply with a number of ap-

proaches which are not necessarily routine in the EFL classroom nor in
the subject classroom. Drama and CLIL principles come from a num-
ber of sources. As Steve Darn, Izmir University of Economics, Turkey
(Teaching English BC) says “all teachers are teachers of language” (The
Bullock Report – A Language for Life, 1975) to the wide-ranging ad-
vantages of cross-curricular bilingual teaching in statements from the
Content and Language Integrated Project (CLIP). The benefits of CLIL
may be seen in terms of cultural awareness, internationalization, lan-
guage competence, preparation for life itself, study and working life,
and, most crucially of all, increased motivation through the develop-
ment of the person as a whole, not just a language learner. The advan-
tage of putting CLIL together with Drama is that all of these elements
are magnified producing a dynamic, effective and enjoyable learning
experience for all.
From a language point of view, the CLIL ‘approach’ contains
nothing new for the EL teacher except in opening up horizons and deep-
ening the teacher’s role in the general language learning process. CLIL
44  Susan Hillyard

aims to guide language processing and support language production in

the same way as ELT, by teaching strategies for reading and listening
and structures and lexis for spoken or written language. Combine it
with Drama and it becomes even more powerful. What is different is
that the language teacher is also the subject teacher, or that the subject
teacher is also able to exploit opportunities for developing language
skills. This is the essence of the CLIL teacher training issue.
Thus CLIL, combined with Drama, offers opportunities for real
CLT and interactive communication between students and teachers,
moving them forward into the World English Project where they can
confidently take their place next to other non-native competent, knowl-
edgeable, expressive English language speakers. Parker Palmer perhaps
sums up my experience of using both Drama and CLIL approaches with
students around the world.

One student I heard about said she could not describe her good teachers because
they were so different from each other. But she could describe her bad teachers
because they were all the same: “Their words float somewhere in front of their
faces, like the balloon speech in cartoons”. With one remarkable image she said
it all. Bad teachers distance themselves from the subject they are teaching–and,
in the process, from their students. Good teachers join self, subject, and stu-
dents in the fabric of life because they teach from an integral and undivided
self; they manifest in their own lives, and evoke in their students, a “capacity
for connectedness”. They are able to weave a complex web of connections be-
tween themselves, their subjects, and their students, so that students can learn
to weave a world for themselves (1997: 11).

References

Bloom’s new taxonomy. <http://tinyurl.com/k2qrftb> Accessed 5 June

2014.
Bullock Report. A language for Life. Report of the Committee of Enquiry
appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science
under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office 1975 © Crown copyright material is
Drama and CLIL: The power of connection  45

reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and

the Queen’s Printer for Scotland. <http://www.educationengland.
org.uk/documents/bullock/bullock1975.html#01>. Accessed 30
May 2014.
Cambourne, B. 1993. The Whole Story. Australia: Scholastic Inc.
Covington, M. 1998. The Will to Learn: A Guide for Motivating Young
People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CLIL Compendium. <http://apise.org.ar/apise/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=77> Accessed 5 June 2014.
Cummins. J. 2001. Negotiating Identities. Los Angeles: California
Association for Bilingual Education.
Darn, Steve. CLIL A European Overview. <http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext
/ED490775.pdf> Accessed 5 June 2014.
DICE report on Educational Drama. <http://www.dramanetwork.eu>.
Accessed 30 May 2014.
Dörnyei, Z. / Chan, L. 2013. Motivation and Vision: An Analysis of
Future L2 Self Images, Sensory Styles, and Imagery Capacity
Across Two Target Languages. <http://www.zoltandornyei.co.uk/
uploads/manuscript-proofs-with-corrections.pdf> Accessed 20
June 2014.
Fisher, R. 1990. Teaching Children to Think. Cornwall, England: T.J.
Press.
Graddol, D. 2006. English Next. London: British Council. <http://www.
britishcouncil.org/learning-research-englishnext.htm>. Accessed
5 June 2014.
___. 1997. The Future of English. London: British Council. <http://www.
britishcouncil.org/learning-elt-research-papers.htm>. Accessed 5
June 2014.
Heathcote, D. / Johnson, L. / O’Neill, C. (eds). 1984. Collected Writ-
ings on Education and Drama. Illinois: Northwestern University
Press.
Jarvis, P. 1992. Paradoxes of Learning. Josey Bass, San Francisco.
Marsland, David/ Hellekjaer, Ole. 1998, 1999. Euroclic Bulletins 3 and 4.
<http://www.tieclil.org/html/links/EuroCLIC.html> Site under re-
construction.
Neelands, J. / Goode, T. 2006. Structuring Drama Work. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
46  Susan Hillyard

Palmer P. J. 1997. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Land-

scape of a Teacher’s Life. San Francisco: Josey-Bass. <http://
www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/heart-of-a-teacher>.
Accessed 20 June 2014.
Polyani, M. 2014. Tacit Knowledge. <http://infed.org/mobi/michael-
polanyi-and-tacit-knowledge>. Accessed 5 June 2014.
Tudor, I. 2004. Towards a Methodology of Motivation. Humanising
Language teaching 6/1. <http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jan04/mart2.
htm>. Accessed 20 June 2014.
Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

Playback Theatre: Embodying the

CLIL methodology

Introduction

The simultaneous education of the mind and body, the nurturing of

imagination, and the use of secular venues to foment education, has
been the practice of dedicated teachers since time out of hand. How-
ever, during the 1800s, the insatiable desire of the Prussian royalty for
absolute supremacy and compliant citizens, followed by the greed of
factory owners during the Industrial Revolution who saw rote learning
as the perfect venue to create mindless factory workers, derailed this
more holistic pursuit, and fostered the advent of the autocratic class-
room structure. Nowadays, as more and more educators eschew this au-
tocratic educational model in favor of that which honors the individual
student and caters to different learning styles, those didactic methodolo-
gies which foster the integration of content, stimulate an atmosphere of
shared learning, and focus on elements which make education relevant
to its audience, are becoming ever more in demand.
What we know today as Content Language Integrated Learning
(CLIL) has been alive and well in the educational sphere since time out
of hand, developed independently and informally by teachers who have
considered issues deeply and who have worked at finding ways to reach
out to their students when tried and true methods have failed. David
Marsh saw the value of formalizing these independent practices, and
dedicated himself to identifying the building blocks of a platform which
would lead teachers and students to a more integrated style of teach-
ing and learning. Through trial and error, insertion and clarification,
CLIL has become a seamless patchwork of competencies and language
acquisition, which outlines the theories, guidelines, and rational for the
48  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

design of a student-centered classroom, which encourages creativi-

ty and the empowerment of the learners, and which insists on lessons
steeped in authentic experiences.
The possibilities for the application of the methodology are in-
finite. Exploring the changing bio-systems of different countries in sci-
ence classes, using modern architecture to study geometric shapes in
engineering schools, visiting hospitals in medical studies, writing and
sending job applications in vocational training courses, studying the
billing history of thriving companies in economic classes – all of these
are ways of applying the core features of CLIL to make learning more
meaningful and personal. Nowhere, however, is the application more
harmonious than in the theatre, and in particular that form known as
Playback Theatre (PT). In this ingenious marriage of theatre, storytell-
ing, and psychology, the precepts of CLIL are embodied to their fullest
potential.

What is Playback Theatre?

Playback Theatre is the spontaneous, instantaneous, and unscripted

presentation of vignettes, performed in conventional and unconvention-
al venues, working under the premise that the telling of oral stories is,
in fact, an art form when presented with specifically delineated ele-
ments and when performed in interactive ways. This improvisational
theatrical format strives to encourage dialogue and create connections
between the audience and a corps of actors and musicians. Members
of the audience volunteer to share personal stories which, filtered
through ritual, theatrical aesthetics, dialogue, movement, and music,
are immediately personified by the actors who give them artistic form.
A “conductor” functions as an intermediary between the actors and the
storyteller, gleaning the essence of the speaker’s tale and verbalizing
the core elements, with the intention of aiding the actors in augment-
ing their interpretations. The actors conscientiously present the stories
with empathy and care, using humor to help generate perspective for the
audience and the storyteller.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 49

Playback Theatre was created by Jonathan Fox and his partner,

Jo Salas, in the mid-1970s in a little town in the Hudson River Valley,
about one hundred miles north of New York City (Fox, 1994; Fox, 1999;
Fox & Dauber, 1999). Both educators, inspired by experimental theatre,
psychodrama and the oral traditions of indigenous cultures, by Pedago-
gy of the Oppressed written by educator and theorist Paulo Freire, and
Theatre of the Oppressed written by theatre practitioner Augusto Boal,
spent several years testing and developing their theories and practices.
Fox explains that their intention in establishing PT was to offer an inti-
mate forum in which the audience neighbours, family or acquaintances
could gather and share. “Many people have sad or dramatic stories that
others are unaware or unwilling to listen to [in other venues]. I wanted
Playback Theatre to be a place where everyone could tell their story and
be heard” (Friedler: 2006). He also insists that if we, as a human race,
are to actuate personal and social transformations, we need to listen to
each other on a deeper level. As such, this art form creates a space for
learning, healing, and creating bonds between people. Fox describes PT
as a force to preserve the social ecology by “transforming the lives of
people and forming groups” (1994: 12).
Early on, Fox and Salas decided to liberate the art form from con-
ventional forums. It is largely due to this move – to use the practice as
a wider application and offering actuations in less conventional venues
and audiences – that defines and has set PT apart from other theatri-
cal forms. The first participants in this participatory theatrical experi-
ence were schoolchildren, the elderly and disabled, foster-home support
groups, people undergoing rehabilitation, family therapy groups, and
community action meetings, all in their own environments. Its success
is credited, in part, to its format, its flexibility, the care and sensitivity
with which the tales are treated, and its limitless possibilities.
PT is now regularly used in educational environments, in com-
pany improvement plans, in psychotherapy groups, in prisons, hospitals
and at-risk youth centres, to name just a few of its venues. Its versatility
of form helps in its proliferation as it can take place just as effectively in
the conference rooms of a formal convention centre, as on a traditional
stage, and any alternative space in between. Today, this therapeutic art
form is gaining importance at an exponential rate. Not only is its global
50  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

value universal, but it benefits from the universal truth that wherever
there is a gathering of people – either planned or unplanned – there is
always a story.
Rasa Friedler, founder and CEO of the SaludArte Foundation, an
organization whose mission it is to demonstrate how the health of any
given population can be directly affected by art and humour, explains
that “PT is a major activator of the core potential of each person. It
wakes up the best of what is dormant in every society and promotes
integration amongst different artistic areas” (2006: 1). Today, this theat-
rical format is currently implemented in over 55 countries, helping tens
of thousands of individuals and groups develop direct communication,
and interconnect on an emotional level.

Components and the process of Playback Theatre

From its earliest inception, the scope and purpose of PT was

to reveal the form and meaning of any experience, even those that are ostensibly
formless and ambiguous in the telling. [PT] dignifies stories with ritual and
aesthetic awareness, and links them together so that they form a collective story
about a community of people, whether this be a group of people whose lives
are connected in an ongoing way, or one created in the moment such as that
found in most public audiences…[PT] offers an arena in which the meaning of
individual experience expands to become part of a shared sense of purposeful
existence (1993: 22).

Fox emphasizes art, ritual and social interaction as the essential ele-
ments of PT (1999: 127). The relationship between these dimensions
is interactive and over the course of any PT performance all three must
be continually balanced. As the story unfolds, it is the domain of the
conductor to weigh and adjust the tension in the dialectical flux of these
three dimensions, leaving the actors to be free to measure the balance
between the demands of their own performance and those of the social
demands – of listening and being present (Salas, 2005).
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 51

Figure 2.1. Essential elements of Playback Theatre. (Oivo: 6).

It is important to note that the element not given its fullest import in the
above model is the fundamental role the participation of the audience
has in the interaction; it is, in fact, of principal value and one of the un-
derlying precepts of a ‘good’ enactment. (Dennis, 2004: 20​​).

The three defining elements:

(A) the personal story (the content)

(B) a ritual aesthetic (the form)
(C) the context (locale)
are developed more fully below.
52  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

A) The story

Part of the intention of co-creators Fox and Salas in developing PT was

to create and present a space in which every voice and any story could
be heard, however ordinary or extraordinary, and in which any experi-
ence of life could be related, however frivolous or transcendent, comic
or tragic. It is intended to be a platform upon which narrators can ex-
press their repressed emotions and be heard; they can relate experiences
which, in any other forum they’d find difficult to share.
Through experience, Fox and Salas have deduced that, though
spontaneity is one of the cornerstones of this art form, the process is
most effective when the presentations revolve around a specific issue.
For this reason, part of the ritual of PT includes involving the audience
in choosing one theme which then serves as the impetus of each indi-
vidual enactment. Narrators are encouraged to be guided by this chosen
theme in chronicling their memories, fantasies, dreams, conflicts, and/
or feelings.
The following is an example of one session whose focus – select-
ed by the audience – was on family relationships.
Antonio, a 25 year old man, related the following story, devel-
oped with the aid of the conductor:
Antonio:  What do you think? Should I talk about friendships,
girlfriend, or family? I have conflicts with everyone.
Conductor: Whichever you want.
Antonio:  Well, the first one that comes to mind has to do with my
sister and my mother.
Conductor: What is your relationship with your mother? Can you
describe her with two adjectives?
Antonio: Well, my mother is a strong woman and extremely pos-
sessive.
Conductor: And what is your sister like?
Antonio: Very selfish. She’s self-centred and has no empathy for
anyone.
Conductor: What is the story you’d like to tell?
Antonio: Well, I want to be a pop singer. So, one morning my
sister came home. She and my mother started talking
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 53

about the gossip from the town. I was woken up by

their voices, but I was afraid to leave my bedroom.
When I finally did, both of them immediately started
harping on me about my job situation. They said that I
needed to look for a job, that I had to send out my CV…
and a lot of other things. After that I told my sister
that that night I was going to a competition for ama-
teur singers. My sister sings also. When I sang the song
I had written, she shot me down with: “Well, you don’t
have a good ear so why are you going to take part in
the competition?”
The actors represented the above story and then the narrator was asked
how he had viewed it as a whole. He responded that it was very well
done and true to his narration. He felt that the actors captured the true
spirit of his character and that of his sister. However, the mother was a
bit exaggerated, as his mother in real life is more distracted. In any case,
he did not take the option of asking the actors to redo any part of it, and
left the stage very satisfied.

B) The ritual

The aesthetic form of PT has a framework of expectations which can be

considered ritualistic in a secular sense. This strict adherence to defini-
tive steps honoured throughout the enactment, “symbolizes the repeated
structures in space and time that provide stability and familiarity within
which unpredictability can be found” (Salas, 2005: 117). Aside from
defining the shape of the art form, this ritualized process facilitates in-
teraction between the audience and the actors, and eases the former into
partaking in the process; in other circumstances participants may not be
so open or willing to expose themselves.
The physical arrangement of the venue is also considered part
of PT’s ritualistic structure, (though the corps of players can adapt the
sessions to virtually any setting). The only requirement of the locale is
that it has two defined areas: one for the actors and one for the audience
(See Figure 2). In the area designated for the enactment of the stories
54  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

(the stage), two chairs are placed to the side of the main arena. The chair
closest to the audience is assigned to the conductor whose role it is to
act as master of ceremonies, host, and companion to the narrator in the
story-making process.

Figure 2.2. Setup of a Playback Theatre.

The second chair is for the narrator – a member of the audience who
has volunteered to tell a personal story. Opposite the conductor is a mu-
sician who has at her/his disposition a variety of instruments. Towards
the back of the stage, four or five chairs or crates are set up upon which
the actors sit when they are not acting. These crates can also be used
as props. On one side is a ‘prop tree’ draped in materials and various
objects that can be used to embellish characters, indicate location, or
symbolically represent other elements of the narration.
The following is a list of the 12 steps of the art form followed by
a more detailed explanation of each:
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 55

Figure 2.3. Structure of a Playback Theatre enactment.

1. Prologue. The musician infuses the setting with melodies and

sounds. The conductor greets the audience and makes an intro-
duction, explaining the structure of the event they have come
to participate in, helping to establish a relationship between the
corps of actors and the audience. The goal of this initial interac-
tion is to create a warm and trusting environment in which each
member of the audience feels heard, accepted and respected. As
it is they who are the protagonists of the function, this is an essen-
tial step, as without the audience’s willingness to share stories,
there is no PT.
2. Presentation of actors. The conductor then gives the actors the
floor, asking them to introduce themselves. One by one, they en-
ergetically enter the scene, give their names, and offering a short
statement (1–2 sentences) either about something that happened
to them recently or about a dominant feeling that they are experi-
encing at that moment. Following these introductions, the actors
go to their crates (chairs) and take their seats.
3. Ice-breaking games with audience. The conductor proposes a
game or a short exercise designed to relax the audience and to
56  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

create an atmosphere of trust and respect. The nature of the game

is often related to the space chosen for the function.
4. Choosing the theme. As mentioned above, PT sessions work best
when the group is homogeneous and is focused on one specific
topic of interest that has been agreed upon by the members of the
audience. Though this template of conformity is the norm, equal-
ly viable are those sessions in which the stories of the narrators
do not share a common thread.
5. Fluid Sculptures. Before beginning the first narrative, the actors,
musician and conductor give the viewers a demonstration of what
they will experience by giving them an example of a possible
interaction between the audience and the corps of players. This
begins by the audience members, prompted by the conductor,
communicate a sentiment; this feeling is then duly manifested by
the actors and musicians using motion and sound. For instance,
the conductor asks the group: ‘How do you feel about coming
to a PT performance for the first time?’ A member of the au-
dience raises a hand, the conductor thanks the person, requests
the person’s name, and then asks for a response. The person’s
response may be: ‘I feel anxious’ for which the conductor turns
to the actors and repeats: ‘This is Sue and she feels anxious’.
The actors immediately construct a kind of sculpture with their
bodies, which personifies anxiety. In this way the public sees that
their participation will be received with ‘respect and aesthetic
attention’ (Salas, 2005: 46). At the same time, they intuit that
though their involvement is very welcome though they are under
no obligation to participate.
6. First interview. The conductor asks for a volunteer from the au-
dience. An audience member steps forward and is then invited to
take the seat on stage designated for the narrator. (The moment
that this first participant moves from the audience to the stage
is a defining and transitional moment for it breaches the thea-
tre’s traditional fourth wall.) The conductor then simultaneously
attends to three branches of the enactment: the shaping of the
story told by the narrator, the information necessary to incite the
actors into movement, and the audience’s reception of the tale
portrayed by the actors. It is the conductor’s job to filter through
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 57

the narration and identify key elements – how, what, when, and
where the event happened, who was present, how it ended, and
how the narrator felt in that situation – to help the actors identify
the core features of the story.
When this part of the process is complete and the con-
ductor feels that the actors have enough information to begin an
enactment, the conductor invites the narrator to choose actors to
play the primary and supporting characters. (One actor can repre-
sent more than one character.) The actor(s) selected stand up and
prepare themselves for the scene while the conductor continues
addressing questions to the narrator.
7. Setting up. As the actors (silently) choose places on the stage to
begin, the musician begins with tones and rhythm from different
instruments to introduce the scene. The music at this time is an
integral part of the ritual, serving a dual purpose of 1) creating an
atmospheric setting, and 2) giving the actors more time to reflect
on their assigned roles. As mentioned above, the crates these lat-
ter have been sitting on can be used and arranged in a variety of
ways to help emphasize tone. In the same manner, the material
and other objects hung on the ‘props tree’ can be utilized to help
bring characters to life and to manifest symbolic themes.
8. Enactment. The conductor now affects the transitory measures
necessary to move from the narrative to the dramatic state – the
enactment of the story. With the simple but dramatic phrase ‘Let’s
watch!’, indicating the change in role from passive ‘citizens’ lis-
tening to a narration, to co-creators in the transformational pro-
cess, the actors and the musician take over. (Dennis, 2004: A10):
the musician heightens the intensity of the music, the actors re-
move unnecessary props from the stage, and the conductor and
narrator remain seated and watch with the rest of the audience
members. From this point, the playes work together, presenting
improvisational scenes which emphasize the essential events, and
dilemmas, or conundrums, related by the narrator. As a rule, in-
stead of placing an emphasis on linear structure, the scenes are
more metaphoric than literal, the intention being to create a flow
of moments without necessarily showing realistic details. What
58  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

is essential is that, at the heart of the performance, there exudes

respect and understanding towards the narrator.
9. Acknowledgment. When the actors feel that they have fleshed out
the story as fully as possible, they regroup and acknowledge the
narrator with a gesture which symbolizes their objective of of-
fering their dramatization as a gift. This is an essential step in
honouring both the person and the story.
10. Returning to the narrator. With the actors still in position of hom-
age, the conductor questions the narrator to ascertain whether
the enactment has been true – if it has portrayed the fundamental
idea of the tale. If the narrator is unsatisfied with any element
of the performance the process continues: the conductor gleans
more details from the storyteller, and asks the actors to interpret
one or more parts of the story which will incorporate the clarifi-
cations. This replay is called ‘correction’.
Occasionally, when a story has been accurately represent-
ed but the narrator is left confused, worried or distressed, the
conductor may invite the actors to imagine and present an alter-
native ending. In the same vein, if the narrator herself requests a
different outcome to the story, this new ending is called a ‘trans-
formation’.
At the completion of these enactments, the conductor
thanks the narrator who is then invited to return to her/his seat
in the audience.
11. New interviews, enactments and acknowledges. A new audience
member is invited to take the stage, and the process is repeated as
often as time allows.
12. Closing sequence. To emphasize the value the corpus of players
place on the audience members, these former reprise echoes of
the elements of the dramatic sequences that were created during
the performance, in the form of four or five very short skits. Fol-
lowing this, the conductor thanks the audience for their participa-
tion and the musician plays a tune of farewell as the viewers leave
their seats.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 59

The Context

In the hands of an experienced group of actors, PT is fluid and energetic

and its effect magical; however, the structure of PT ignites change and
discovery, and so, even those corps of players with little or no formal
acting training will affect powerful results. Whether in prisons, at-risk
youth centers, hospitals, or on the stage of a traditional theater, PT’s
fundamental framework is designed to help audiences search within
themselves to resolve differences, to learn from the perspective of peers,
and to make peace with their past.
As mentioned above, bringing the art form to an established com-
munity (instead of a group of audience members formed arbitrarily),
is one of the key elements of PT. Offering an educational/therapeu-
tic experience to participants in a familiar setting provides a shortcut
in helping them become receptive to the process. It provides a door
through which the audience can enter the participatory framework of
the ritual and form of the art form. Aiding in establishing commitment
to the process is a strong identification to the context; it helps weaken
the resistance the audience might initially feel, and promotes a state of
readiness, which gives the actors more direct access to the emotional
threshold of the viewers.
Very often, Fox and Salas are asked about the importance of the
level of experience of the players. Their answer is that enactments have
been effective with actors of almost any skill level. The factor, which
carries the most weight is that the players always act with respect and
empathy, and are willing to be daring in the interpretation of the stories.
In fact, so important are the elements of empathy and intuition in the
interpretation that Salas cautions against enactments that do no more
than produce superficial versions of stories narrated.
Not only the importance of experience but the very existence of a
corps of actors in the process of PT has also been addressed – the ques-
tion of whether or not the players are essential in reaching a sufficiently
profound emotional level in the audience. Salas (2008) attests that when
she began using PT in childcare centres, the children themselves filled
the roles of both actors and spectators. The format was the same, as was
the intention – to provide a therapeutic platform; however, the emphasis
was on the process of breaking down barriers and helping the children
60  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

listen to each other rather than on artistic competence. In relation to

context, then, if the intention is to provide therapy to a community of
audience members, the model, which eschews the participation of a
professional corps of actors is viable and perhaps even recommended.

Fields in which PT is practiced

Since its inception PT has been practised in many different fields and
with several different purposes.

… [PT] is a versatile theatrical form that is equally at home in public theatres,

schools, hospitals, residencies, corporate settings, conferences, and in forums
for social change. It can be just as effective on the streets of southern India with
Dalit people telling stories about police brutality, as in an outdoor community
event exploring diversity in a small American town (Salas, 2009: 445).

Given its very nature PT conforms to the needs and concerns of every
kind of audience and any environment. The versatility of the locales is
reflected in articles published in Interplay (the quarterly review of the In-
ternational Playback Theatre Network). These locales include cooperate
offices (Hofman, 1997); prisons (Bett, 2000, Southard 2000); housing
estates (Murphy, 2001); disability meetings (Day, 1998); mental health
institutions (Muckley, 1998); youth centres (Wynter, 1998); refugee
shelters (Robb, 2002); and indigenous communities (Cox, 1996).

In education

PT is used in schools as a tool to help educators in their classrooms

and to confront various issues that are traditionally difficult to resolve
amongst many student bodies (Salas, 2005). The ways of adapting the
format are infinite: as a way of presenting or reviewing material, PT can
be used, for example, in a literature class. The students are given the op-
portunity to physically portray literary themes or historical characters.
In a science class, groups of students can be asked to demonstrate the
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 61

phases of the sun and cycles of the moon. In an art class, students can
be challenged to represent primary, secondary and tertiary colours with
their bodies and with materials taken from the prop tree. In higher ed-
ucation – in teacher training, for example – PT can be used as a way of
encouraging the development of democratic participation in language
and aesthetic education (Feldhendler, 2009). In social aspects of school
such as with bullying, participants can relate their experiences and ex-
plore how they can all create a respectful and safe environment. In all of
these modalities, the PT framework can be utilized either by profession-
al actors or by the teachers and students (Wright, 2002).

In social change

As mentioned above, part of PT’s missive is to open up pathways to

produce constructive social interaction, to promote social justice, and
to build community (Fox, 2007). Practitioners of the art form look for
places where communication and coexistence are damaged by inequal-
ity and injustice. Their goal is to help individuals share their values and
experiences while feeling supported by their neighbours, co-workers, or
peers (Park- Fuller, 2003). Once these communities are identified, the
players work with the members of a chosen community to find a space
in which they can host the enactment. The cooperation between these
two parties is an integral part of PT as it empowers the community to be
part of the process and so be more invested in its resolution.
On a more global scale, PT has been used as the framework for
forums in which victims of natural disasters, climate change, violence, or
immigration issues, can share their experiences (Feldhendler, 2009). In
the summer of 2008, for example, the Centre for Playback Theatre organ-
ised a program called ‘After the Storm: Mobilizing Playback Theatre for
Communities in Crisis’ in New Orleans, the city which took the brunt of
Hurricane Katrina which destroyed much of the city and its coast in 2005.
In relation to violence and immigration matters, PT players have
gone into prisons and have interacted with inmates, helping them find
methods of reconciliation, and have hosted sessions in immigration sup-
port groups in their host communities, aiding them in building bridges
across cultural misunderstandings and language barriers (Barreto, 2008).
62  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

In companies

The theatre company has also successfully donned the role of supervi-
sors and counsellors in a coaching format. Since the mid-1990s PT has
most frequently been used as an effective ongoing training strategy on
a variety of topics such as management and communication skills, and
awareness of diversity (Stronks, 2013). In some cases, participants have
described events that occur in the workplace on a regular basis which
gave rise to conflicts or feelings of dissatisfaction. The actors represent
the stories told and the conductor organizes a debate on the representa-
tion. In these sessions, participants later describe how they obtained
valuable lessons from the process (Dennis, 2004).

In psychotherapy, hospitals and mental health services

Though not a therapeutic technique per se, PT does have therapeutic

properties and can be adapted by specially trained therapists to use with
their patients with excellent results. In a more general forum, partic-
ipants obtain, among other benefits, self-awareness, opportunities for
catharsis, connection with others and personal expression development
(Salas, 2008). Presented always with an underlying lyrical and light
touch, the process helps participants improve their self-esteem, promote
relaxation, and connect with a greater sense of empathy (Moran and
Allon, 2011). It has also been used in mental health services (Larkinson
and Rowe, 2003).

The harmony of Playback Theatre and CLIL methodology

One of PT’s most valuable faces is as a straightforward educational

tool to help students learn with the benefit of reaching all their varied
learning styles that may not be addressed in the classroom. The tradi-
tional model is slowly being left behind and many teachers’ intentions
are to integrate lessons in all its senses – physically, philosophically,
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 63

logistically – that are geared not towards rote memorization but rath-
er to the different intelligences. This model is seen more and more as
the appropriate and desired framework of curriculum dispersion in the
educational setting. Formulized today under the acronym CLIL and
championed by educators world-wide, this student-centered classroom
is more a philosophy than a methodology. The classroom is not a space
surrounded by immutable walls which house straight rows of desks iso-
lated one from the other, facing an omnipotent and supposedly om-
niscient queen/king/managerial figure who lectures to submissive and
passive students. Instead it is one in which everyone has equal value,
and equal importance. The teacher serves as a facilitator and creates a
forum within which the students work together to assimilate the infor-
mation in their own way.
Yet, even though this structure and perspective towards education
has gained a dedicated following, and the benefits are undeniable, there
is still a dearth of materials and resources available for educators to pull
from. The result is that most CLIL teachers have to create most of the
materials themselves. This involves an enormous amount of work that
is, even in the best circumstances, overwhelming for even the most ded-
icated. As a result, teachers desirous of new, meaningful and authentic
ways of presenting curriculum, look for frameworks that they can use
and adapt in order to animate their students. PT is tailored just for such
inquiring educators.
The CLIL methodology is denoted in PT’s very platform. The
five elements that energize and bring a story to life in the theatre are:
the body, the heart, the head, the context and creativity. First, one has to
react with the body, next with the heart, and finally with reflection and
knowledge (the head). The last element – the combination of reflection
and knowledge, is enacted in a multicultural context, all in a creative en-
vironment (creativity) (Laferrière y Motos, 2003: 92), and so a teacher
seeking to fit to find a forum which will accommodate the CLIL meth-
odology into an educational forum, will find that the PT structure fits
effortlessly into each identifier.
The relationship between the six CLIL core features and the es-
sential PT elements, are elaborated below:
Scaffolding, credited as the key ingredient in helping students
ease into a new subject, builds on a student’s existing knowledge, skills,
64  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

attitudes, interests and experience, fostering creative and critical think-

ing, and challenging students to advance (Mehisto: 2014). This corre-
sponds to PT’s method of beginning each session with different forms
of ice-breaking techniques, and involving the audience in the choice of
topics that will be subsequently developed throughout the enactment.
A Safe and Enriching Environment – using routine activities and
discourse, guiding access to authentic learning materials – is reflected
in PT’s ritualistic approach to the artistic form, and of using personal
stories from the audience members themselves.
Active Learning, synonymous with the balance of the interaction
of the conductor and the rest of the participants in a PT event, the teach-
er acts as facilitator, while the stress during the lesson is on student in-
volvement. A CLIL teacher’s job is to inspire students to communicate,
just as the conductor’s role is to encourage the PT narrator to share; the
students in a CLIL classroom are given the opportunity to take part in
choosing the content of studies just as it is the PT narrator’s choice of
what story to share; the CLIL methodology encourages students to take
part in the evaluative outcomes just as it is up to the narrator to assess
the veracity of the enactment to the narrative. The CLIL teacher and
the PT conductor share the distinction of being seemingly background
players while being ultimately responsible for all the action and ex-
changes which occur during a class/enactment.
Authenticity, or the importance of maximizing students’ interests
in any subject and making regular connections to students’ lives, is fea-
tured in the instance of using real stories from the audience members.
Multiple Focus, or the importance of integrating several subjects
and reflecting on the learning process, is reflected in the different narra-
tions which are presented during the course of any enactment, plus the
opportunity PT gives to the narrator to reflect on whether unexpected
issues were resolved during the enactment and whether others had been
resolved.
Cooperation is the obvious component of the actors (students)
working and learning together.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 65

Linguistic elements of PT and CLIL methodology

The beauty of the CLIL methodology is its versatility and its focus not
necessarily on language but on the verbal expression of content – in any
language – and the importance of permeating lessons with multi-cultur-
al experiences. Although there are cases in theatre in which words are
non-existent, such as in the behaviouristic mime experiment Act With-
out Words by Samuel Beckett, or in physical theatre, the spoken word is
generally accepted as the key element in acting. Conceptually different
from one culture to another, theatre can be perceived with a stress either
on oral or visual senses. In native English-speaking countries, for in-
stance, audiences are listeners by definition, whereas in Spanish-speak-
ing countries, the stress is on the visual as an audience is called espec-
tador (spectator). Among others, Jonathan Fox (1994), Jo Salas (2005),
Daniel Feldhendler (2005, 2006 and 2009) and Janet Salas (2006) have
written extensively on the relationship between PT and some aspects of
verbal language.
The different linguistic roles within a PT group are relevant to
the subsequent verbal expression and subliminal learning. Janet Salas
(2006) delineates each member’s role with the following distinctions:

Conductor • invites group members to tell stories

• interviews the narrator (asks questions, makes com-
ments, asks for clarification, etc.)
• repeats, restates, summarises stories
• verbally guides, instructs, answers questions posed by
actors
Actor • listens and interprets conductor’s interview and narra-
tor’s story
• listens actively and responds to other actors’ stories,
conversations and commentaries
• listens actively and responds to statements made during
activities and forms such as the fluid sculptures, cho-
rus, iconography (tableau), etc.
• listens actively and responds to dialogue and comments
during scenes
• produces socially and culturally appropriate language
66  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

Musician • hears and interprets conductor’s interview and instruc-

tions, narrator’s story,
• listens actively and responds to other actors’ stories,
conversations and commentaries
• listens actively and responds to comments made during
activities, and forms such as fluid sculptures, chorus,
iconography (tableau), etc.
Narrator • relates a story, an experience, a dream, a memory, a
fantasy, etc.
• listens and processes the conductor’s questions
• understands the actors when they play the scene
• responds to/reflections on the enactment
• leads warm-up, trains corps of actors for activities,
Actors’ trainer/workshop directs the flow of the session
leader • comments
• offers feedback
• directs reflection processes
All participants • reflects verbally on their own and on the actions and
performance of others
• interacts verbally in the group on a team and social
level
Table 2.1. Linguistic Role of Playback Theatre members.

The integration of content and verbal language is the core principle of

CLIL methodology – the fluid exchange of language and content. The
CLIL teacher creates occasions for the students to interact within the
language as much as possible using curriculum content as the impe-
tus. These linguistic opportunities are built in to the PT framework and
the teacher need only follow the established steps set forth in the PT
structure to be able to present an extraordinary environment in which
students can practise and dramatically improve their linguistic skills.
There are, of course, certain linguistic elements which need to
be at the students’ disposal to ensure their ability to communicate in a
foreign language. On a general scale, the students need to have learned
the appropriate vocabulary in any given subject to be able to: describe,
explain, evaluate, and draw conclusions. On a more specific note, stu-
dents participating in a PT enactment need to be actively developing
aural comprehension as much of their work is listening and interpreting
stories from the narrator and receiving verbal cues from the conductor.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 67

In the context of second-language learning, whether as a student

participating in a classroom adaptation, or as a member of the corpus
players, the effectiveness of PT has been proven to be overwhelming-
ly effective. Janet Salas (2006: 3–4), whose mother-tongue is English
(New Zealand), is a teacher of German and EFL, and conducts a group
of PT using German in their performances. As part of her ongoing anal-
ysis of the PT effectiveness, Salas collected her students’ opinions on
participating in PT in a second language, related to whether their ex-
perience helped their language learning or not. The following is one
example: “The learning of the foreign language by doing PT is much
more effective than learning with books or other methods. It is learning
with all senses and emotions. When I, as a German speaker, trained for
a PT enactment with an English-speaking (American) audience, it was
such an intensive experience that that night I dreamt in English” (Salas,
2006: 4).
There are essentially two options in applying a second language
in a PT enactment. The first is that the conductor and actors use their
native language (L2) which would be the targeted language of study of
the audience members (L2). The second possibility is that the actors
and the conductor use L1, which would be the native language of the
majority of the audience members, but not that of the corps of actors.
A high level of concentration is necessary on the part of an audience
which attends a function of PT in a second language (L2) to be able
to understand the stories told and to follow the course of the drama.
Salas lays out the necessary skills students would need in more detail
(2006: 7).
The students would need to be able to:

• listen and understand not only the narration of the performances

but also different accents, slang, idioms, etc.
• talk to strangers or acquaintances about personal matters
• speak in front of strangers
• participate in an interaction which includes comprehension of
questions and the ability to respond appropriately.

Daniel Feldhendler, a professor of French at the Goethe University in

Frankfurt, is considered one of the leading advocates and experts of
68  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

PT in L2 teaching. He considers PT as a practical and comprehensive

approach to language training and as a tool for innovation in alternative
methods of teaching and learning for both initial studies and advanced
studies.

Playback Theatre actively trains the skill of reflection as a mode of enhanced

perception of self and others in communication. An integration of the underly-
ing Playback skills which is a great significance in verbal communication takes
place: active listening, hermeneutically deepened understanding of a message,
transposing through a variety of modes of expression (body, voice, etc.), learn-
ing of appropriate verbal and non-verbal interactive response, dealing with feel-
ings, learning as a transformative process and deepening of awareness, adoption
of integrative feedback methods, building a pool of shared experience through
process analysis, and perception of interpersonal and thematic connections
(Feldhendler, (2007: 4).

Moreover, he states that conflict can be explored through the stories of

the tellers and the group’s life stories. He emphasizes that PT contains
very useful tools for mediation and sensitization in multicultural and
educational settings. The fact that the stories told are personal is an
incomparable experience for the students as they are expressing things
relevant to themselves and so, are empowered.

Models of PT in the CLIL classroom

Theory aside, teachers need specifics and not just the framework when
applying new methodology to their classrooms. It is the intention of the
authors of this chapter, not only to present the theory of the symbiot-
ic relationship between CLIL methodology and that of PT, but also to
present concrete PT structures which CLIL teachers can use to adapt
and apply in their classes. The following are two such examples1:

1 These lessons which mention ‘different intelligences’, refer to those multi-in-

telligences outlined in Howard Gardner’s ‘Theory of Multiple Intelligences’,
which are an integral part of a student-centered classroom.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 69

Social Sciences:

• The Narrator: The teacher chooses student who is strong in lin-

guistic intelligence.
• Actors: The teacher chooses four or five students who have
demonstrated difficulties in the subject.
• Conductor: The teacher.
• Musician: A member of the student body with strong musical
intelligence.
• Prologue: The teacher explains the format of the lesson.
• Presentation of Actors: The chosen four/five introduce them-
selves.
• Ice-breaking games with audience: The teacher (now the con-
ductor) might ask the “audience” questions about a chapter that
they have been studying, keeping the tone light, always with the
intention of helping the students relax.
• Choosing the theme: The teacher can let the students choose the
chapter/issue that they will elaborate on during the session. In
this example, the students have chosen to focus on World War I.
• Fluid Structure: If the ‘actors’ are very comfortable with each
other, the teacher ask them to enact this part of the process; if
not, this step can be overlooked until such time as the teach is
confident that no one will be uncomfortable in its attempt.
• First Interview: The ‘conductor’ asks the ‘narrator’ to speak
about world leaders leading up to World War I and their role in
the events that caused the war’s outbreak. The ‘actors’ pay close
attention in order to be able to personify one of these leaders
and to know what to focus the dialogue on. In true PT style, the
‘conductor’ repeats the key points related to the ‘narrator’ (subtly
correcting or clarifying any points that may have been related in-
correctly or ambiguously) so that the ‘actors’ and the ‘audience’
have the benefit of hearing the information a second time. (This
would be at least the third time they have been presented with this
information, the first time being during class time.) The ‘conduc-
tor’ then asks the ‘narrator’ to choose which ‘actor’ will play each
world leader.
70  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

• Setting up: The ‘conductor’ will have provided props that the ‘ac-
tors’ can use and at this time the ‘actors’ who have been assigned
roles choose any objects that will aid them in personifying their
character.
• Enactment: The ‘conductor’ uses the transitory phrase ‘Let’s
watch!’ and the ‘actors’ work together to portray her/his char-
acter’s involvement in the events leading up to World War I. For
those teachers who have concerns about the ‘actors’ forgetting
events or facts, the PT framework has a built-in safety guard: if
the scene begins to lose focus or begins to portray facts errone-
ously, the ‘conductor’ simply asks the ‘actors’ to pause and then
asks the ‘narrator’ if there are parts of the enactment that need
clarification, elaboration or change. This gives everyone time to
get back on track and portray the facts faithfully.
• Acknowledgement: Once the bulk of the information has been
acted out and if the ‘actors’ do not pause, the ‘conductor’ can
step in to determine whether they have reached a natural stop-
ping place, at which time the ‘actors’ will assume the gesture of
acknowledgement towards the ‘narrator’.
• Returning to the narrator: The ‘conductor’ will direct the ‘narra-
tor’ to report on whether any inconsistencies have been noticed,
giving everyone one more opportunity to repeat sections that
need adjustments. The ‘conductor’ will then address the ‘actors’
and ask them to readdress those areas.
• New interviews, enactments and acknowledgments: The ‘con-
ductor’ will choose a different ‘narrator’, different ‘actors’ (pref-
erably others who need a review in the subject using physical
intelligence), and will again ask for suggestions of another unit
to focus on. The process then begins again.
• Closing sequence, review, and a farewell: At the end of the ses-
sion, the ‘conductor’ can ask each group of ‘actors’ to return to
the stage and repeat key points of the unit that they have brought
to life. The ‘conductor’ can also use this opportunity to elaborate
or clarify certain points of each unit covered.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 71

Maths

• The Narrator: A student who is strong in logical intelligence.

• Actors: Four or five students who have demonstrated difficulties
in the subject.
• Conductor: The teacher.
• Musician: Same as in the first scenario.
• Prologue: Same as in the first scenario.
• Presentation of Actors: Same as in the first scenario.
• Ice-breaking games with audience: The teacher (now the conduc-
tor) might present some logic or critical thinking problems, keep-
ing the tone light and helping the students break down whatever
resistance they may have towards the subject.
• Choosing the theme: The teacher can let the students choose the
mathematical function to be focused on. In this case, the focus is
on geometric shapes.
• Fluid Structure of Verbal Stimulus from Audience Members:
Same as in the first scenario.
• First Interview: The ‘conductor’ asks the ‘narrator’ to give the
definition of various geometric shapes. The ‘actors’ pay close at-
tention in order to be able to physically present each one. The
‘conductor’ repeats the definitions (subtly clarifying any that may
have been related ambiguously), so that the ‘actors’ and the ‘au-
dience’ have the benefit of hearing the information yet one more
time. The ‘conductor’ then asks the ‘narrator’ to assign roles
(shapes) to the ‘actors’.
• Setting up: The ‘conductor’ will have provided props which the
‘actors’ can use and at this time those who have been assigned
roles choose any objects that will aid them in manifesting the
shapes.
• Enactment: When the ‘conductor’ feels that the scene is set, the
transitory phrase ‘Let’s watch!’ is spoken. In this case, the in-
teraction between the ‘actors’ is a bit different. Each ‘actor’ has
been assigned a geometric shape and so that person will direct
the others in how to form it on the stage. Once one shape has
been formed and the definition given, the next ‘actor’ takes
charge and another geometric shape is presented. At any time
72  Tomás Motos Teruel / Donna Lee Fields

the ‘conductor’ can intercede if a shape or definition is forgotten

or presented incorrectly, but in general, the actors work together,
clarifying and adjusting each shape.
• Acknowledgement: Once all the shapes named and defined by the
‘narrator’ have been presented, the ‘actors’ face the ‘narrator’ and
make the appropriate posture of acknowledgement.
• Returning to the narrator: The ‘conductor’ will then direct the
‘narrator’ to report on whether the shapes have been accurately
formed and defined. If there are any inconsistencies, the ‘nar-
rator’ will repeat the definition and the ‘conductor’ will ask the
‘actors’ to readdress those areas.
• New interviews, enactments and acknowledgments: The ‘con-
ductor’ will then choose a different ‘narrator’, different ‘actors’,
and will ask the ‘audience’ to decide on another unit, which will
then be developed.
• Closing sequence, and a farewell: The ‘conductor’ asks each
group of ‘actors’ to return to the stage and repeat the mathemati-
cal functions that they have brought to life.

Conclusion

This chapter has expounded on the components and framework of a

Playback Theatre session and how it can be used quite effectively by
teachers who follow the CLIL methodology. Included are specific ex-
amples of the use of this theatrical format with adult audiences and high
school students, both with the goal of creating community and with a
stress on demonstrating the importance of PT in the practice of being
able to express oneself and in being heard. Explanations of the suitabil-
ity of PT in the educational format have been presented with concrete
ways of applying the structure in a CLIL classroom. PT is an optimal
application of the CLL methodology for the development and promo-
tion of interactive, communicative and creative key skills.
Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology 73

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Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Theatre Acting in Second Language

Teacher Education

Introduction

The idea of teaching foreign language teachers basics of acting and

stage competence may trigger a thought-provoking question: Do we
have enough time and energy to focus on yet another competence for
teachers in second language teacher education (SLTE)? It is indeed
quite reasonable to claim that SLTE programs have already been loaded
with many different sorts of courses to cover and competences to imbue
teachers. The incentive behind this chapter is to provide teacher train-
ers with ways of teaching theatre acting to student teachers in SLTE
programs. Therefore, at the end of this chapter, we will together decide
whether it is a burden or a must for a SLTE program to equip student
teachers with basic skills of an actor.
Acting in teacher education is based on the viewpoint of ‘teach-
ing as a performing art’, which is also the broadest name given to this
field of inquiry. For at least four decades, teacher educators and train-
ers have discussed the similarities of acting and teaching (eg. Sarason,
1999). Most of these discussions have contributed to the literature in
which the phenomenon was analysed and systematized in various ways.
Educational researchers add to the literature, usually through research
studies, action research, and personal narratives, as well as essays and
books detailing the similarities and differences between the qualities
that mark the highly effective teacher and the distinguished performing
artist (Hart, 2007). Given the vast amount of variables involved in shap-
ing student teachers’ experiences, it is not surprising that most of the
studies in ‘teaching as a performing art’ are qualitative (Eisner, 2002a,
2002b; Freidman, 1988; Griggs, 2001 Hart, 2007; Javidi, Downs &
78  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Nussbaum, 1988; Sarason, 1999; Taylor, 1996; Van Tartwick, Brekel-

mans, & Wubbels, 1998).
Although the analogy of acting and teaching has never been a hot
area of research and practice in the last decades, taking teacher as a per-
formance artist is not a currently suggested innovation for the literature
of teacher education. The art has played a role in general teacher educa-
tion since John Dewey and the beginning of the progressive education
movement. For several decades, many educational researchers have ac-
knowledged and examined the common grounds of performing artist
and the teacher (Dewey, 1934, Eisner, 1979; Freidman, 1988; Griggs,
2001; Hart, 2007; Sarason, 1999). However, the artistic aspect of teach-
ing profession merits attention from teacher educators and trainers to
unravel dynamics of teaching profession related to performing arts, to
improve our understanding of creating and supporting the teacher iden-
tity in both pre and in-service teacher education, and to develop the
performance-related competences of teachers, such as effective use of
voice and body language and nonverbal awareness, just to name few.
Nevertheless, there is still a need for practical and doable tasks and
activities for trainers’ classroom use.
The studies on teaching as a performing art may be grouped un-
der three dimensions. The first and second dimensions were suggested
by Freidman (1988) in which he categorized the scholars who take the
teacher as an actor and classroom as theatre analogy as a general di-
mension. These studies generally focus on the artistic nature of teaching
profession by addressing metaphors and analogies. The second is the
specific dimension which refers to studies providing a detailed picture,
rigorously analysing these two professions in terms of both philosophy
and practice to reveal specific similarities and differences. We can add
a third dimension to categorize studies of acting and teaching profes-
sions, which we can call instructional dimension. Those are the studies
which actually borrow specific knowledge and skills from acting liter-
ature to equip teachers with critical competences such as use of voice
and body language, nature of improvisation and an animated communi-
cation or conscious coding of the nonverbal behaviour, and so forth. As
a matter of fact, teacher education lacks the insights of the instructional
dimension, and it is hardly possible for a teacher trainer to find a book to
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 79

learn about how to teach student teachers acting. For example decades
ago, Lessinger and Gillis (1976) produced some materials to be utilized
in teacher education for improving the acting skills of the teachers. Sim-
ilarly but years later, Griggs (2003) suggested some acting activities
which can be used in teacher training. Hart (2007) designed and applied
a syllabus for the ‘Teacher as a Performing Art’ course. Finally, Ozmen
(2010) prepared a complete acting course for English language teacher
education programs with the syllabus, readings and all materials to be
exploited by the trainer. In addition to providing the contemporary the-
oretical frame of ‘teaching as a performing art’ literature, this chapter
also offers tasks and activities for teacher trainers to use in both pre-ser-
vice and in-service courses.

Teaching as a performing art

The literature of teaching as a performing art may first appear to be

an extreme theoretical proposal or a fun but shallow area for practice.
However, artistic aspects of teaching have been articulated by the out-
standing figures of teacher education, who are widely recognized as
influential scientists. To give examples, Barzun (1945) believed that
teaching was artistic because effective teaching performance could
produce aesthetic pleasure. Taylor (1954: 55) stated that teaching was
an art to the extent that it was done imaginatively and stimulated “the
young to explore the world of the imagination”. James (1958: 23) as-
serted that “psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences
never generate arts directly out of themselves”. Taylor (1960) lamented
that artistic aspect of education is neglected in both theory and prac-
tice. Similarly, Sanford (1967: 123) pointed out that the art of teaching
had been ignored in education and “effective teaching is an art, one of
the highest and most important arts we have”. Taking the claim and
discussion some steps further, Shamos (1970) mentioned that teaching
was a mostly form of art. Other scholars of the field have discussed
the teaching as an artistic profession by addressing aspects, such as
its performance-based nature, improvisational aspects, its dynamic
80  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

domains in terms of classroom interaction and aesthetic aspects in

terms of verbal and nonverbal communication (Axelrod; 1973; Broudy,
1985; Dawe, 1984; Eble, 1977; Nisbet, 1977; Griggs, 2001; Hart, 2007;
Özmen, 2011a).
Among all these supporters of idea of teaching as an artistic per-
formance, Eisner (1979) made the strongest argument that teaching was
purely an art. He underlined that teaching was artistic since the results
of the teaching were often created in a process, and since it could be
described as aesthetically when performed effectively: “It [teaching] is
an art in the sense that teaching can be performed with such skill and
grace that, for the student as well as for the teacher, the experience can
be justifiably characterized by aesthetic” (Eisner, 1979: 151). Accord-
ing to Lowman (1984), classrooms are arenas where the teacher is the
focal point, just as the actor or orator on a stage, teaching is undeniably
a performing art. Similarly, Highet’s (1958) remarks on the issue give
us not only the heart of teaching profession, but also the vital aspects
of teaching that are purely artistic: “I believe that teaching is an art, not
a science […] Teaching is not like inducing a chemical reaction; it is
much more like painting a picture […] You must throw your heart into
it, you must realize that it cannot be all done by formulas, or you will
spoil your work, and your pupils, and yourself ” (1958: 8).
To articulate some well-grounded analogies, it was commonly
accentuated that both teachers and performing artists realized their
work by utilizing their selves and communicating with a group of peo-
ple (Burns, 1999; Dennis, 1995; Hanning, 1984; Jarudi, 2000; Lessing-
er & Gillis, 1976; Rives Jr., 1979). Also effective teachers and artists
were claimed to need to capture and hold the attention and interest of
their audiences (DeLozier, 1979; Hanning, 1984). Both professionals
also follow and perform a script, which is the play script for the actor
and the lesson plan for the teacher (Rives Jr., 1979). Both teachers and
actors perform their job on a setting as a primary performance area:
mostly the stage for the actor and the classroom for the teacher (Rives
Jr., 1979; Van Tartwick et al., 1998). Finally both professionals must
achieve a communication which should result in an interactional pro-
cess to fulfil the outcomes of the play script or the lesson plan (Burns,
1999; Rives Jr., 1979; Rose & Linney, 1992).
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 81

The theoretical discussions can be expanded but to offer a down-

to-earth study of ‘teaching as a performing art’ literature, Hart (2007)
reported on a study in which student teachers were taught some tech-
niques and principles of acting. This was a promising attempt as Hart
(2007) designed a course entitled ‘Teaching as a Performing Art’ and
worked with some student teachers and teachers throughout the course.
In addition to designing an acting course for student teachers, Hart
(2007) found that theatre-based competences might be used to develop
new teacher identities and to help student teachers overcome perfor-
mance obstacles in teaching. Developing a strong teacher identity and
overcoming problems and flaws in teacher communication will lead us
to develop effective teaching strategies in the classroom. Various studies
on entangling the nature of the effective teaching found that the dynam-
ics of effective teaching resemble those of performing artists (Jarudi,
2000; Justen, 1984; Tauber, Mester, & Buckwald, 1993). It is essential
that student teachers do the work of performing artist to be effective
performers (Tauber & Mester, 2007).
Research by Javidi, Downs and Nussbaum (1988) on the utiliza-
tion of the dramatic devices by award-winning teachers revealed that
“A teacher who is dramatic within classroom leads his or her students
in identifying relevant material presented during lectures” (Javidi et al.,
1988: 279). The results indicated that:

• Award-winning teachers use dramatic behaviours (humour,

self-disclosure and narrative) in a fifty-minute lecture, primarily
in parallel with the content of the course;
• Non award-winning teachers use humour less frequently than
award-winning teachers;
• Although award-winning teachers use self-disclosure and narra-
tive more than non award-winning teachers, it must be under-
lined that the award-winning teachers on the high school and
college levels utilized this sort of behaviour remarkably more
than award-winning teachers on the mid-high school level (Javidi
et al., 1988).

This research illustrates that acting techniques exploited to support

the course content and purposes are among the elements of effective
82  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

teaching. However, the question of how these award-winning teachers

came to that level of teaching performance still needs a scholarly an-
swer. Were they aware of the specific techniques they utilized? Were
they dramatic outside the classroom? How many of these dramatic de-
vices leading them to become effective teachers were the outcome of
the teacher education they received? The current zeitgeist of the field at
least informs us that a teacher with basic competences of an actor can
operate following critical classroom behaviours that promote learning
(Özmen, 2010):

• Using body language and voice as an instructional tool;

• Being able to observe learners’ nonverbal communication flow
effectively;
• Coding nonverbal messages consciously to promote learning;
• Establishing a consistent teacher identity to perform;
• Securing the attention of their audiences;
• Encouraging students (audience) to participate actively,
• Trying to create an atmosphere which is necessary for the
instruction of the course content.

There is no doubt that the task of the teachers is far heavier than that
of the actors owing to the fact that actors face a specific audience once
or twice. However, teachers are to perform their ‘teacher self ’ with the
same group of people sometimes for months, or even for years at under-
graduate level of instruction. This is a persuasive indicator of the need
for a strong and a consistent ‘teacher identity’, which will establish a
ground for turning all the efforts spent for successful classroom per-
formances to beneficial and meaningful ones. From a different point of
view, teachers are not as lucky as actors in their training in that most of
the input provided for the student teachers concerning their performance
stay at a feedback level; that is to say, even if a reflective practice (Wal-
lace, 1991) is adopted in a given SLTE program, student teachers are
not educated about how to use their body language and voice effectively
(Özmen, 2011b). If you are a teacher trainer, it is most likely that you
have already read some suggestions in the teacher training books, such
as ‘use your voice and body language effectively’ or ‘look confident but
not threatening’, or ‘establish a vivid, friendly atmosphere’. However,
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 83

the problem is that if student teachers are not trained about how to use
their voice and body language effectively, how are they going to do so?
How can they possible reach awareness in nonverbal communication
without any training about it? Here a solution to such problems may be
found in the literature of teaching as a performing art.
In this respect, most of the teacher’s work in the classroom is all
about establishing the right atmosphere with full awareness of nonver-
bal communication flow and with effective utilization of teacher’s voice
and body language for an animated communication. To give an exam-
ple of what we mean by classroom atmosphere, let’s recall the famous
experiment known as ‘The Dr. Fox Effect’. An actor was introduced to a
conference audience as Dr. Myron L. Fox, and he presented a very enthu-
siastic lecture which contained little or no content by using double-talk
and by giving incongruous and irrelevant examples (Perry, 1985). This
professional actor delivered three lectures to three separate audiences as
Dr. Fox. The results revealed that the audiences highly rated the lecture,
claiming that, besides other impressive aspects, the lecture stimulated
their thinking (Tauber & Mester, 2007), and simply no one realized that
it was a fake presentation (Clark, 2005). Even some of the audience
claimed to have read Dr. Fox’s previous studies. This experiment should
be analyzed from two different aspects. First, the results clearly illustrate
that an effective teaching performance can have a very strong effect on
the attention, motivation and participation of the students. Remember
that Dr. Fox is a professional actor trained to communicate a group of
people by using his voice and body language skilfully and aesthetically.
Moreover, he was also trained to observe the reactions of the audience
and to shape his verbal and nonverbal messages accordingly. In addition
to all these, he can consistently perform the role of a conference pre-
senter. Second, whether a teacher, an actor, or a conference speaker, the
acting skills of a performer are precious when used to make the content
and purposes of the course accessible and learnable for the students.
The thin line between ‘fun for the sake of fun and ‘fun for the sake of
learning’ should be established by the acting teacher very carefully. This
can be done only when the consistent and autonomous teacher identity
is set up by the teacher. Only then, can the attention of the students be
secured and maintained for the course content.
84  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Acting methods in teacher education

The pursuit of designing acting activities for teacher education is

generally based on the studies of Stanislavski, who constructed the con-
temporary methodology of acting (Griggs, 2001; Hart, 2007; Lessinger
& Gillis, 1976; Travers, 1979). Apart from the works of Stanislavski,
many other theoreticians of acting literature have been referred in the
teacher education research. American theater director Anne Bogart and
famous acting teacher Viola Spolin are some of the artists. In addition,
another eminent figure is Eric Morris, an American actor and an act-
ing coach, whose books on acting are widely used in teacher education
(Özmen, 2011a).
Contributions of Stanislavski to contemporary theatre acting are
invaluable on the grounds that he constructed a theory which has had
a great impact on all actors and directors not only on stage but also on
silver screen as well. His acting methodology is known as ‘The Method’
and still acknowledged as the major methodology of acting. We strongly
believe that his acting methodology may contribute to teacher education
in many ways. Essentially, what Stanislavski created as a theory was a
sound way of ‘creating an identity’. Although his studies were centred
on theatre acting, it is for sure that teacher education can benefit from
his principles and certain techniques (Travers, 1979).
Travers (1979: 16) noted that “Stanislavski had essentially a
complete theory of how a personality can be created in the adult”. The
process of creating a personality was defined as “a part of our organ-
ic natures. It is based on the laws of nature” (Stanislavski, 1949:279).
Stanislavski (1972) believed that the primary task of an actor was to
understand the inner mechanics of the target role. The process of ana-
lysing and understanding the inner mechanics, or the psychological
structure, leads the actor to construct an authentic version of the role.
The choices on voice and body language codes come at a later stage
at which the actor has established the emotional bonds with the tar-
get role. Therefore, Stanislavski’s proposal was not to create a super-
ficial imitation of the role to be performed, but the actualization of a
possible authentic and believable version of the role by analysing and
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 85

internalizing the emotional dynamics and nature of the target character.

“Superficial displays of anguish would be unconvincing to others if they
were not accompanied by corresponding inner feelings” (Travers, 1979:
16–17). In this sense, he does not offer pretending, but becoming and
being. In order to reach this level and mastery of acting, Stanislavki de-
veloped some certain techniques such as ‘action’, ‘as if ’ and ‘emotional
recall’ (Stanislavski, 1972). Now let’s scrutinize student teachers in a
typical English language teacher education program: Are they aware of
the similarities and differences between their personal and professional
selves? How much do they practice and think about how to establish an
emotionally healthy and consistent professional identity? How much do
teacher education programs invest in classroom selves of the student
teachers? It is ironic to share the following remark of Travers these days
when defining teacher and teaching in terms of competences is popular:

Much of the so-called competency-based teacher education involves attempts to

copy the superficial features of a role. Programs that teach the teacher to walk
around the classroom and to hand out verbal equivalents of M&M’s represent
attempts to copy superficial features of the role. Stanislavski long argued that
superficial features of a role do not have to be learned, for they appear automat-
ically once the deeper structures have been developed (1979: 17).

Özmen (2010) conducted a study on using Stanislavski’s acting method

in English language teacher education in an experimental design and
revealed that an acting course designed for student teachers facilitated
1) the use of nonverbal communication, nonverbal immediate behav-
iour, 2) awareness and control in using voice and body language in mi-
cro teaching demonstrations and 3) the emergence of teacher identity.
The further studies on the same acting course also revealed that learn-
ing about the basics of acting contributes to changing beliefs about lan-
guage learning and teaching (Özmen, 2011b). In another study, Özmen
(2011a) offered a model of teacher identity development for teacher
trainers to sequence the acting tasks in a rational order in their courses.
BEING Model (Özmen, 2011a) was investigated in a qualitative study
in which 3 student teachers were followed throughout an acting course
in English teacher education program via narrative, observation, inter-
view and simulations. Based on the acting methodology of Stanislavski
(1949), the BEING Model is an acronym of five-stage model for teacher
86  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

identity development, through which student teachers approximate to

their teacher identities by practicing teaching and acting tasks. The stag-
es of identity development via practising acting are given in Table 1.

STAGES OF ROLES OF THE TRAINER EXPECTED ATTITUDES OF

BEING THE TRAINEES
BELIEVE Giving feedback for emotional Identifying an identity which
preparation one wishes to become
EXPERIMENT Monitoring and eliciting Creating own version of the
rehearsed identity role
INVENT Shaping the identities by Analyzing oneself carefully to
reflections and feedback discover required qualities
NAVIGATE Providing group discussions Rehearsals in a practical
and feedback for problem situation
solving
GENERATE Feedback for identity that is Constructing a flexible,
developed, and identifying democratic teacher identity
personal dispositions. that is open to change and
innovation.
Table 3.1. Developmental stages of Being Model.

The first phase, BELIEVE, is a self-observation process during which

student teachers discover their target professional identity and believe
they can achieve it. It is important for student teachers to observe their
resources and the requirements of their target teacher identity so as to
identify a reasonable and realistic target. This phase is an emotional
grounding period depicted as a critical one for the actors (Stanislavski,
1949). EXPERIMENT is the second phase, and as the name suggests,
the student teachers practiced acting tasks, activities and improvisations
that are designed for teacher education. The third phase, INVENT, is
a transitional one during which student teachers are asked to synthe-
size their acting knowledge with teaching and discover their own way
of speaking and behaving in the classroom. This phase is the techni-
cal one for Stanislavski (1949) in which actors invent a unique voice
and codes for body language. Therefore, in the INVENT stage, student
teachers are led to discover their body language and voice so that they
can actualize their target teacher identity not only at an emotional state
but also at a physical state. These three phases are based on a cyclical
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 87

relationship until the student teachers NAVIGATE the problems they

encounter and move to the GENERATE phase, in which they display
the evidence of an emerging teacher identity. The navigate phase is not
based on any acting method, but added on purpose to offer a process for
the classroom so that student teachers can solve the problems they come
across and overcome any challenges while developing a strong teach-
er identity. For instance, a student teacher may experience difficulties
about using voice, or controlling her emotions under some tense condi-
tions. In such cases, the NAVIGATE phase offers student teachers extra
tasks to overcome these problems likely to occur during the rehearsals
of teacher identity. As stated above, the GENERATE phase is the result
of these four initial phases and the first evidence of emotional and per-
formance-related materialization of the target teacher identity are estab-
lished by the student teacher. GENERATE phase is not a monolithic or
a stable phase, but more like a dynamic process constantly interacting
and negotiating with the experiences of student teacher. The Figure 1
shows how those phases are interrelated and function with regard to
student teachers’ identity construction process (See Özmen, 2011a for
more information).

Figure 3.1. BEING Model in action.

One of the reasons why trainers do not use acting tasks in their teacher
training courses is that it requires training on how to exploit such tasks
and how to order them reasonably so as to yield an effective result in
student teachers’ development concerning both affective and perfor-
mance-related issues. In this respect, the major objective of BEING
Model is to help teacher trainers without any acting background to se-
quence the acting materials in their training courses and to offer the
right material at the right time.
88  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Practical acting tasks for training courses

The following 10 acting tasks and 5 rehearsals have been exploited

for more than five years in drama courses given by the teacher train-
ers at Gazi University, English Language Teaching program in Turkey.
These tasks are designed to provide pre-service teacher trainees with a
14-week and 4-hour course on acting. Developing main acting skills
enables student teachers to use their body language and voice more effec-
tively and to construct their professional identities in a context in which
this identity is analysed and rehearsed as a role. The major pedagogical ob-
jectives of the tasks are: effective communication skills (body language,
use of voice and nonverbal communication), sensory awareness which
is necessary for managing nonverbal communication and perform-
ing the target professional identity, emotional preparation necessary
for realizing an effective teacher identity, nonverbal immediacy and
finally a rehearsal process of teacher identity by blending these above-
mentioned all. These objectives will be fulfilled by practising some
actor-preparation activities, learning some major acting techniques and
some various rehearsals on the teacher that student teachers are aspired
to become. The following 10 tasks are given in detail along with their
objectives and procedures. One should note that none of these tasks
require any unusual materials, and what is more, most of them do not
require any materials or accessories at all. Following these ten tasks,
five tasks are called Rehearsals and described for the trainers as out-
side-the-class work for the individual student teacher’s rehearsals for
establishing a teacher identity.

Task 1: Masks Off

The aim of the activity, as a warm-up, is to create an atmosphere in the

class in which the student teachers may take risk and get rid of the usual
atmosphere of a typical classroom. Also, this activity is used to increase
the emotional sensitivity and empathy of the student teachers. Three
chairs or any kind of three seats are required for the task.
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 89

Three chairs are placed in front of the class. Each chair repre-
sents an emotion: fear, anger and laughter respectively. A student teach-
er stands behind each chair, and her/his aim is to help those who will
sit and try to act out the character of the chair. After the chairs and
responsible trainees are ready, the class lines up and each trainee sits
each chair at least one, as quickly as possible, so as to experience a
sharp transition between emotions. Chair responsible whispers in their
ears about possible occasions which may help the sitting student teacher
catch the right feeling. The activity may continue until the trainer de-
cides that the trainees break their usual trainee role.

Task 2: Light in the Blindness

The aim of the activity is to raise awareness on the other people’s exist-
ence and energy so that the requirement of ‘cooperation’ and ‘feeling
of us’ may be created, and is used to help actors trust each other. This
is also a cooler activity. Soft music may be useful for the necessary
atmosphere.
The student teachers should be told that there are many things
around which they can see only by closing their eyes, walk around slow-
ly and by trying to focus. They are told to mingle in the classroom slow-
ly, listen to the peers’ footsteps, and their breathing and to pay attention
to the existence of others. The more they get concentrated, the less small
crashes they will face. At the end of the activity, the teacher asks about
the experience: Whether they feel safe at first or not, or whether they
feel different emotions.
Some space is needed for the student teachers to mingle in the
classroom. The trainer uses soft music. No talking and interaction is
allowed. The student teachers close their eyes and mingle in the class-
room. They sometimes bump into each other, naturally laugh and talk.
However, after a while, if a concentration reached, the participants will
begin to feel people around them and even identify their friends. The
trainer should be cautious about a possible accident because trainees
will be mingling in the classroom without seeing their environment.
Encouraging slow movement and monitoring them will be helpful for
both aims of the activity and safety.
90  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Task 3: A Slow Motion Life

The aim of the activity is to raise awareness on the observation skills of

the student teachers on both themselves and others. The student teachers
are also given the opportunity to practise body language and use
voice skills. Preferably, the trainer divides the class into group of four
or five, and assigns the same story, which the trainees will act out. This
can be a very easy story, or improvisation, like you find yourself in
a fight in a bus. During the activity, the improvisation will switch to
a slow motion one with the signal of the trainer. There may be some
certain levels of slow motion, like LEVEL 1 which is slow, LEVEL 2
very slow, and LEVEL 3 which is the slowest one. Assigning the same
task to all groups may help the learners focus on the body language, and
nonverbal communication, not the story and the anxiety of the creating
a drama, say, in three minutes.
The trainer groups the class the way she wishes. The same im-
provisation theme is given to all groups and the activity is described to
them. A signal for level transition is identified, like a bell or so on. Five
minutes for preparation is given to each group for discussion and prepa-
ration. The trainer may act out level 1, 2 and 3 when giving instructions.
The first and second group should be given detailed feedback for the
body language used in slow motion phases of the activity so that the
remainder groups may develop an insight and perform more effective
activities.

Task 4: Silence of Mirrors

The aim of the activity is to observe and reflect the body language of
others. This is also a powerful ‘trust’ activity. Pairs of trainees stand in
the class and imitate each other in detail. One of the trainees imitates,
and the other is the mirror. The mirror has to be as accurate as possible.
The task of the imitated trainee is to exceed the limits of the mirrors by
using an unusual body language. As a second step, the trainer assigns
some emotions to imitated trainee, but basic and doable ones. Silence is
very important to lead trainees to observe each other’s body language.
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 91

The trainer pairs the classroom. She identifies the mirrors and
imitators. The trainer states the rules of the activity: the mirror need
to behave exactly like the imitator. She also mentions that it is very
important for the mirrors to observe the body language of the imitators
and reflect them as accurate as possible. After a 5 minute of exercise,
pairs change their roles. At the end of the activity, the trainees discuss
the activity and reflect upon what they felt. For making an effective use
of this activity, the trainees should be informed that this activity is not
a fun activity like a break-state game. The imitator and imitated should
move in a harmony so that observation and bodily reflection skills may
be practiced.

Task 5: Work Your Fingers

The aim of the activity is to observe the body language of others and
synchronize the movements with a peer. The need for guessing the fol-
lowing movement of a partner may lead to a development in one’s ob-
servation skills. Pairs of trainees stand in the class. Just by touching
each other’s fingers, one leads the other in the classroom as she wishes.
The other trainee has to keep following her and never lose the finger
contact. When the trainer observes that the pairs can synchronize with
each other, she may use music to lead the pairs and make the process
more complicated. Also, trainer may use some certain signals to make
pairs move faster or more slowly.
The trainees work in pairs. In the teaching space, pairs touch each
other’s finger tips. They are told that they never lose the fingertip con-
tact. One trainee is the leading partner, who can independently move.
The other partner has to follow his movements without losing the finger
contact. The trainees should be explicitly told that the aim of the activity
is guess the following behaviour of the leading student.

Task 6: Happening

Happening activities are heart of actor preparation courses. In happening

activities, actors create a scene, a frozen photograph, which tells a story.
92  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

The story can be very complicated or a simple one. Mostly, this depends
on the creativity and ability of the actors. If the trainees are taught what
a happening is and its endless possibilities, they may be more creative
and successful. Happenings should be used as much as possible. The
aim is to be a part of a whole as an actor; both observe yourself and
others by carrying an emotional burden by acting. At the same time
trainees become conscious of the place of their part in the whole, which
generally enables actors to raise awareness on personal resources.
Groups work for creating a story of their ‘photograph’. The story
of the happenings may be given to the groups by the trainer so as to save
time. However, if the story is created by the groups it is much better for
some hundred reasons. Then they use teaching space to show their hap-
pening. The rest of the classroom works in pairs to decode the message
in the happening and figure out the role and story of each character.
The trainer asks the groups to prepare a photograph from a sto-
ry, a film or etc. They are supposed to prepare in such a way that the
audience should observe different characters, flow of the story, and
other details like before and after this moment. The groups are given
five minutes to get prepared. Then they come in front of the class and
compose their photograph by freezing. The rest of the classroom may
walk in the picture, try to understand the situation and feel the atmos-
phere the happening group has created.

Task 7: Walking in the Dwarf Village

The aim of this activity is to develop the skills of observation, cooperation

with the others, creative thinking. Creating an imaginative setting and
sticking to it while moving may develop observation skills. The teach-
ing space is a dwarf village, but these dwarfs are not taller than a finger.
A trainee begins walking in the dwarf village, very carefully and silent
since it is night and they are sleeping. Aim of the trainee is to walk across
the village, from one back of the class to the board. Trainer signals
when the trainee is about to step on a house. When the trainee reaches
the board, another trainee begins crossing the village, but remember-
ing the exact place of the imaginary house. As the trainees reach the
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 93

board, the number of imaginary houses increases and the crossing task
becomes complicated and hard.
The trainer explains to the class that they have to walk over a
dwarf village. Every trainee has to add a new detail to the village by his
movements. This detail can be a bridge, a small carriage in front of a
house and so on. As the details increase, it gets difficult to walk through
the dwarf village. The key point is to observe each and every trainee
carefully not to make a mistake.

Task 8: Home Sweet Home

The aim of this activity is to develop the skills of observation,

cooperation with the others, creative thinking. The teaching space is a
house. The trainer enters the imaginary house and creates some parts
of the house and exists. No talking is allowed. Then, one by one, each
student teacher enters home and creates yet another part and possible
probes in the house. However, they must be very careful with the
previous imaginary parts and probes. The activity can be more challeng-
ing and fun if conducted as a competition. The trainees are told that they
need to create an imaginary house. Each student teacher enters the
imaginary house and creates at least one new detail in the house. As the
number of trainees increase, the details of the imaginary house become
complicated to follow and remember. If a trainee forgets or violates any
component of the house, s/he is dismissed. Each trainee should be given
no more than 30 seconds in the house so that the class may walk into
the house more than once. Also time limitation will make the activity
more challenging.

Task 9: Say What You Mean

The aims of this activity are to be able to observe personal body lan-
guage, and practice acting skills. As for the observing students, it is also
an acquisition to watch what others perform in their parts. A small bell
is needed for the task
94  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Student teachers perform a language teaching activity in the class-

room. This activity can be any of the activity that trainees have used in
their previous micro and macro teaching attempts. In other words, they
do not need to prepare an original teaching demonstration. When they
hear the bell ringing they try to be inconsistent in terms of verbal and
nonverbal communication they convey when teaching or simply talking
with the classroom. When the teacher rings the bell again, they try to
be consistent in their communication in terms of nonverbal and verbal
messages.
The trainer describes the activity. S/he can demonstrate the activ-
ity to the students to make it clear for them as it is not a usual activity
they have performed up to now. Then each student performs their teach-
ing for 3 or 4 minutes at most. At the end of the activity, the experiences
of the performing trainees are discussed in the classroom. The trainees
are also warned not to exaggerate their performance. Their only aim is
to perform consistency and inconstancy in their nonverbal communica-
tion deliberately and consciously.

Task 10: Talk to Your Other Self

Trainees come in front of the classroom and make us hear their inner
self, how they feel, what they think and so on. Also the trainees can talk
about how they look in terms of the nonverbal messages they convey.
The trainer asks a trainee to perform one of her/his previous teaching
demonstration, but this time the trainee will also talk about how she
feels when she performs the activity. Trainee may talk about her feelings,
her observations and any other relevant issues. This can be done
by immediate shifts between usual utterances of the teaching demon­
stration and reflections of the trainee.
Surely some of the trainees will make fun of this activity.
However, as the activity keeps performed in the classroom, it is likely
that trainees will empathize with each other and pay more attention
to the activity. That is why trainer should be patient. Also this activity
may not be a suitable for some of the teacher trainees who display lack
of self-confidence and esteem. Therefore, it may be wise to encourage
those who are willing to perform the activity.
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 95

Rehearsal 1: A writing task for teacher identity

This is an emotional preparation task, offering student teachers a

metacognitive and an affective observation and questioning process.
Student teachers are asked to write a reflective paper by answering
these questions:
1. What are the similarities between your professional and personal
selves?
2. What are the differences?
3. Which aspects of your teacher identity are admirable?
4. Which aspects of your teacher identity need some practice to
make it better?
5. What kind of practices do you need to shape your teacher identity
more effectively?
6. What strengths do you have to perform your teacher identity
more effectively?
7. In what ways does your teacher self-communicate and interact
with the students more skilfully?
8. In what ways does your teacher self-resolve conflicts and solve
unexpected situations in the classroom?
9. How would your students define you?
10. How would your colleagues define you?

Rehearsal 2: Observing Personal and Professional Selves

This task is designed to lead student teachers to observe the target iden-
tity (their teacher identity in the future) and analyze it in terms of the
personal resources, desires and motivations. Student teachers work in-
dividually on the chart provided below. They should be informed that
they will be thinking about their professional identity as a role to be
performed. Before the writing task, student teachers are to write short
responses to the table, then they are invited to write a paper based on the
leading questions provided below:
96  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Characteristic Personal Identity Professional

Identity
1 Similarities
2 Differences
3 Admirable aspects
4 Strengths
5 Some aspects needing practice
6 Communication and interaction skills
7 Strategies for problem solving
8 Define yourself
9 Your students’ definition of you
10 Your colleagues’ definition of you
Table 3.2. An analysis of personal and professional identities.

1. What are the similarities between your professional and personal

selves?
2. What are the differences?
3. Which aspects of your teacher identity are admirable?
4. Which aspects of your teacher identity need some practice to
make it better?
5. What kind of practices do you need to shape your teacher identity
more effectively?
6. What strengths do you have to perform your teacher identity
more effectively?
7. In what ways does your teacher self-communicate and interact
with the students more skilfully?
8. In what ways does your teacher self-resolve conflicts and solve
unexpected situations in the classroom?
9. How would your students define you?
10. How would your colleagues define you?

Rehearsal 3: Identifying Personal Sources and Motivations

This task is designed to lead student teachers to identify the personal

sources, strengths and motivations so as to construct their teacher
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 97

identity to be performed in their professional lives. Student teachers are

invited to work individually on the questions below and prepare a paper.
They will be reflection on what aspects of their personal identity will
be the infrastructure and pillars for their professional identity. Then the
papers will be separated to pairs of students and will be discussed in the
classroom. The leading questions are as follows:

1. What are your personal resources to be used for the effective con-
struction of the teacher identity or the role that you will perform?
1.1. Physical resources: body language, voice, appearance, unique
gestures and postures you have invented, or any other accessories
teaching materials that will assist you to perform your role.
1.2. Emotional resources: What is your source of motivation for con-
structing your ideal teacher identity and act it out? Think about
your reasons.
1.3. Intellectual resources: What intellectual resources do you have
apart from your field knowledge? Think about the books, poems
or anything relevant that have an impact on constructing your
teacher identity.
1.4. Outer resources: What opportunities can you take in your depart-
ment, or in your school in the future that may contribute to your
teacher identity? Think about your education on teaching, profes-
sional development opportunities in the future and so on.

Rehearsal 4: Identifying the Teacher Role

This task is designed to lead student teachers to decide on their teacher

identity by referring to their work on the previous three rehearsal activ-
ities. They are asked to describe their attitudes, reactions and general
mood in the various teaching context in terms of the 15 variables. Those
variables are based on observable teacher behaviours in the classroom,
and student teachers are expected to provide their DOs and DONTs in
such cases in the classroom. The task can be conducted in the class-
room as a brainstorming activity, and then student teachers can write a
response paper to describe their attitudes in each case.
98  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

1. Conducting an activity
2. Responding to students’ questions
3. Listening to students.
4. Warning students about an important case
5. Lecturing
6. Monitoring
7. Talking pairs and groups
8. Talking individuals
9. Reacting to an unexpected and unusual situation
10. Talking privately after the class
11. Giving feedback about assignments
12. Using voice
13. Using gestures and mimics
14. Managing nonverbal communication

Rehearsal 5: Rehearsing the Teacher Identity

This task is based on performing various rehearsals on the teacher iden-

tity, the target role student teachers have decided best and most suitable
for them. After completion of the previous four rehearsal activities, stu-
dent teachers will do some experiments on the teacher identity they
have identified in the demonstrations and teaching attempts they have
performed.
The student teachers may have their various teaching demon-
strations video recorded to be utilized as a source in the acting class.
If a video is provided by a student teacher, that will be an invaluable
resource for the trainer and class to discuss the differences between
what the trainee performed and what s/he aimed to perform. Therefore,
trainer may ask to bring in their video recordings to the acting course.
Apart from giving feedback to previous rehearsals on video, trainer
assigns some small scale teaching attempts in which the focus will
be on the performance of the trainee. Also trainers will assign pairs
a drama teaching practice. Please see the lesson plan provided below.
All the phases of this macro teaching practice will be prepared by the
pairs of trainers, and this demonstration will be the actual and final
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 99

performance of their teacher role/identity. The criteria for the drama

teaching practice are as follows:

1. Both trainees will act out their teacher identity; thus, they will
wear and look accordingly.
2. Both trainees have to perform a different character in their drama
activities such as a king or a princess and so on.
3. All parts (Pre, While and Post) of the lesson plan will be de-
signed as a drama activity.
4. No unrealistic or extreme materials will be used.
5. During the micro teaching, the peers will act out the age group
and they will behave as natural as possible.
6. Student teachers bear in mind that this teaching attempt is real-
ized for the performance of the teacher roles/identities. There-
fore, pedagogical content is of secondary importance.
7. The micro teaching will be video recorded and as a follow-up
task, the class will watch it and discuss.

Preferably student teachers prepare demonstrations in a long period of

time and report in about their studies to the trainer regularly. Giving
adequate time for this final task is important in that they will be doing
a lot of rehearsals as well as thinking about their teacher identity, which
is a complete awareness process. Also this assignment will be the major
production of the trainees; therefore, it merits more attention. After the
completion of the drama demonstrations, the student teachers watch the
demos once again on video and discuss.

A Sample of Integrated Drama Lesson Plan

DRAMA ACTIVITY: After the murder of Mr. Whiskas Catmund

Level: Pre – Intermediate to Advanced

Age : Adolescent/Adult
Skills: Integrated Skills
100  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

Materials: Some accessories for actors and actresses, Pictures of a

cat, (1) National Anthem, (2) Oath in the court, (3) Top secret letters,
(4) Life saver notes

Story:
Democratic Dictator General Atkinson’s dearest cat Mr. Whiskas Cat-
mund was murdered. While General was having milk bath with his
brave soldiers between 09:00 and 10:00 in the morning, those who in-
tended to hurt General ate Mr. Whiskas Catmund. However, “No crime
shall be tolerated!” said General. Having identified some miserable sus-
pects, he immediately established an independent military court and
devoted his precious time to uncover the masks of evil criminals. Only
then, perhaps, Mr. Whiskas could rest in peace.

Procedure:
Military court has started questioning the suspects immediately after
the murder. Now, suspects are in front of the jury, trying to answer the
questions of General and the jurors.
Steps:
The teacher will act out General Atkinson so that s/he can conduct the
drama activity effectively. The role cards will lead students to know
their part and act accordingly in the activity. Before the drama activity,
the students are introduced to the story of the activity, and also they will
be briefly introduced to the utterances to be utilized by the suspects.

1. Character & Story intro: General Atkinson enters. Trial begins

with the National Anthem* (See Materials) National Anthem is
repeated (at least 3 times) until General Atkinson is satisfied.
2. General summarizes the situation and gives top-secret let-
ters*(Role cards. See materials) to the citizens who has a duty in
the trial.
3. Welcoming suspects to the front.
4. Suspects vows (Vows are repeated by the class also, at least 3
times) with the help of the jurors and General.
5. Trial Begins. General, advocators and jurors ask questions.
6. Finding the murderer.
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 101

Language & Skills involved:

• Certain utterances are used in the drama activity in a controlled
sense, mainly by focusing on pronunciation and speaking skills.
• Production /Free speaking activity mainly aiming at revising
“Past Progressive Tense”
• Can be used as PRE or POST of a lesson plan.
• The level of the activity can be adapted at any language learning
level.
• The aim of this revision activity can be adjusted by the teacher:
any kind of Past tense, Past modals can be revised.

MATERIALS (Role cards, Flash cards, some probes)

1. National Anthem
I don’t like to know
I don’t like to hear
I don’t like to see
This the way we’re happy
General Atkinson is the key
He can make us free
Living in this country
is our lovely destiny!

2. Oath in the Court

Here to l swear my service to General
In peace or war
In living or dying
I’ll be living with this code
Until our General releases me
Or death takes me
102  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

3. Top-secret letters
3.1 Letters for Jurors
You are chosen as a jury member. No! Do not cry until you finish your
holly task. Your duty is to observe the suspects carefully and guess the
murderer. Do not forget! Somebody has eaten Mr. Whiskas Catmund.

3.2
You’re a suspect! Somebody saw you playing with Mr. Whiskas Cat-
mund between 09:00 and 11:00. You used to have a cat but it deserted
you, so you hate cats.

3.3
You are a suspect. Somebody saw you playing with Mr. Whiskas Cat-
mund between 09:00 and 11:00.You love cats so much, but you are
allergic to them. Between 09:00 and 11:00, you were having brunch
with your friends.

3.3
You are the murderer. You were enjoying your barbecue. Suddenly,
Mr.Whiskas Catmund fell over it from a tree. Its death was just an acci-
dent. You can ask for mercy from General Atkinson.

Conclusions

It is time to answer the question posed at the beginning of this chapter: Is

it a burden or a must to teach basics of acting to foreign language teach-
ers? However, just like an artist would do, we will not offer you a deduc-
tive answer, perhaps rhetorically portraying the literature of ‘teaching as
a performing art’ as an indispensable part of second language teacher
education. Rather, it would be wiser to discuss why foreign language
teachers need to learn some acting techniques in terms of what is gener-
ally missing in their pre-service and in-service education and what they
really need in front of their learners. To this end, a perspective based on
Theatre acting in second language teacher education 103

what researchers offer and what practitioner trainers say about this issue
will help us make right choices of content and methodology for teach-
ing acting to student teachers as well as teachers on the job.
In determining the value of borrowing certain techniques and
philosophy of acting for teacher education, two major aspects of teach-
ing a foreign language and teacher education seem critically impor-
tant. One aspect is the need for providing student-teachers in STLE
programs with a context of learning in which they can ponder over who
they are, what recourses they have and who they want to become as a
teacher. The following step of such an atmosphere of teacher educa-
tion is to find opportunities to rehearse the target teacher identity un-
der supervision and mediation. This brings us to the idea of developing
teacher identities in pre-service education (Özmen, 2010). Eschewing
from the acrimony of academic debate and fallacy of generalization,
it is our observation that novice teachers encounter many problems in
their classrooms due to lack of an established teacher identity, the de-
velopment of which is mostly left to the mercy of socialization process
in the given institution and experiences without reflection and feedback
in a broader sense. The other aspect is the technical dimensions of the
teacher communication in the classroom, which are the use of body lan-
guage and voice, awareness of nonverbal communication and compe-
tences required to manipulate nonverbal codes used in instruction and
observation skills including self-observation. Those technical aspects
of teacher communication are well known to be influential in learners’
motivation, affective learning and cognitive learning (Özmen, 2010).
In this respect, the tasks and rehearsals offered in this chapter aim at
both of these aspects, both affective development process of teacher iden-
tity and acting practices that help develop a control over body language,
voice and nonverbal communication. Although it may be quite confusing
for a teacher trainer to bring in some acting tasks in their training class-
rooms, those tasks provided in this chapter are well-ordered in a way to
lead student-teachers as well as teachers on the job throughout the basics
of acting. In addition, the rehearsals are designed to create an experiential
learning process, including affective and cognitive development processes
of an emerging teacher identity. We are quite sure that teacher trainers can
use those tasks and rehearsals to expand the repertoire of their teaching
104  Kemal Sinan Özmen / Cem Balçıkanlı

menu. Therefore, trainers who cannot offer a complete course on this issue
can easily use those tasks individually in their regular courses.
The content and context of SLTE programs all around the world
vary dramatically and accordingly the need for an instruction on acting
cannot be similar for each of those contexts. However, the extent to
which a given SLTE program feels a need to develop teacher identi-
ty or an animated communication for its graduates depends on certain
questions: ‘Can our SLTE program offer a set of courses in which our
student-teachers think about and practice their professional identities?’,
‘Except from advises and feedback, do we really practise body language
and voice for instructional purposes in our methodology course?’, ‘Do
our student teachers really know how to use their dramatic devices to
teach English?’ Answers to these and similar questions will determine
whether and to what extent a STLE program should teach acting in their
courses.

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Patricia Martín Ortiz

Developing creativity through the Mantle of the

Expert technique: A personal experience

Introduction

The young child who is totally open-minded, who adores drawing and painting
and who colors all things, who asks incessant questions, and who can imagine
that the bow in which his birthday present came is an infinite variety of things,
including an airplane, a house, a cave, a tank, a boat, a spaceship gradually
becomes trained to write notes in only one color, to ask very few questions
(especially not “stupid” ones- that is, the most interesting ones!), to keep the
millions of lusting-for-action muscle fibers still for hours on end, and to become
increasingly aware of his incompetences in art, singing, intelligence and physi-
cal sports. In time the child thus graduates into an adult who considers himself
uncreative, and who has ´progressed` from being able to think of millions of
uses for a bow to being able to think of hardly any uses for anything (Buzan
2001: 39).

In the context of teaching a course for student teachers taking a degree

in English, one of the main objectives I look for is to develop their
creativity, to encourage them to be as imaginative as they were in their
childhood and not just follow the points mentioned in the curriculum.
The purpose of this chapter is to present one of the workshops which
I carried out devoted to CLIL, specifically in Arts and Crafts, where
I decided to use The Mantle of the Expert technique created by Dorothy
Heathcote which was an experience which went beyond language.
In the first part I will deal with the concept of creativity; empha-
sizing its importance in all fields of life and not only in the school en-
vironment, showing the vision of several authors and also the different
ways of stimulating learning in a creative way, revising the Multiple
Intelligences theory by Gardner and also considering the prevalence of
one or the other brain hemisphere and their link with the different skills
108  Patricia Martín Ortiz

according to Sperry and Ornstein. I will show drama as a fundamental

technique in the field of teaching, making reference to some writers
who focus on this topic and we will also remember the birth of drama
companies in the Anglo-Saxon educative context from the thirties.
Secondly, we will revise the use of drama in the teaching of foreign lan-
guages, analysing the work of Alan Maley and his novel proposal of ac-
tivities which stimulate students’ creativity. Finally, we will focus on the
innovative and outstanding figure in the education field that is Dorothy
Heathcote and her Mantle of the Expert technique. In the second part
I will describe a practical experience carried out with students where we
got involved in the preparations of an unexpected wedding which took
place in Struay, a fictitious island of Scotland.

Theoretical basis

What is creativity?

Creativity to me means mess, freedom, jumbled thoughts, words and deeds each
fighting to claim their own space in my mind, and deciding, given even small
amounts of free time, whether I shall write, paint, draw, take off to the beach
with a camera, run outside, turn my house upside down to create a new envi-
ronment, plant a garden or plan a new business. Or in a more formal sense it is
the original thought, the spark, the ignition, the original design concepts or the
blueprint (Thorne 2007: 17).

Creativity is basic in all the processes of human beings. Everybody is

creative during childhood. We have our invisible friends, we can im-
agine dozen of uses for a cardboard box and the thousand forms a cloud
in the sky may adopt. But then we are made, time and again, to colour
the roof of the houses red and the sun yellow, to study the dates of bat-
tles instead of making a paper sword and fighting against our classmate
sitting behind us living the battle, to quickly sum two plus three apples
without giving us time to imagine the market stall where they are dis-
played: the yellow Golden Delicious apples, the redder Granny Smith,
the wrinkled Bramley apples or the small Coxes. And later, when we
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 109

read Hamlet and, instead of imagining ourselves in his place, feeling

his doubt, crying for Polonius’s death or saying our favourite sentence:
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that are dreamt of
in your philosophy’, we have to write a commentary according to the
model of the textbook, answer the questions as we are expected to do,
without expressing our opinion and our feeling towards the play. Or we
have to count the nouns or adjectives which appear in the text. Then
many start to weaken and follow the adult world, so boring and offering
so little place for fantasy and imagination.

Developing creativity

In the last decades, there has been an increasing interest from authors to
promote creativity in children. Kaye Thorne in her book Essential crea-
tivity in the classroom (2001) presents us with a passionate view about
the issue of creativity in our lives. She focuses specially on the school
environment, how we can help children to express their creativity, how
to create a world of learning which is inspiring and motivating, and
what teachers can do to stimulate creativity in the classroom.
On the other hand, we find many authors who consider it neces-
sary to respond to the needs of the different kinds of children and show
us the different types of teaching which may be the most appropriate
depending on the nature of the person and on the different types of
intelligence.

We know through the work of Paul Torrance, David Holb, Honey and Mumford,
Daniel Goleman and Howard Gardner that people respond positively to differ-
ent learning stimuli; but despite progress there is still much work to do to help
organisations, whether they are schools, further or higher education establish-
ments or places of employment, become somewhere that individuals enthusias-
tically want to attend (Thorne 2007: 87).

As teachers, we must promote creativity in the classroom. We have to be

a bit odd and eccentric, we should carry out different and funny activ-
ities with our pupils, walk barefoot or wearing our pullover inside out.
Tales and stories give us a great opportunity to present creativity in the
classroom, to give wings to children’s imagination.
110  Patricia Martín Ortiz

Take a story like Kate Morag and the Wedding, written by Mairie
Hedderwick, which takes place on an island in Scotland. At the begin-
ning, it seems to be incomprehensible. Who had the idea to create a
story where a grandmother decides to celebrate a wedding and the other
grandmother, whose old boyfriend comes back after years of absence
and takes her for a tour ( by helicopter!)? The book acts as a wonder-
ful springboard to carry out a CLIL workshop using the Mantle of the
Expert technique designed by Dorothy Heathcote. We adopt the plan
proposed by Wyse and Dowson (2009) and the class becomes the is-
land. Around Katie we realize multiple activities for the students and
each one may choose the activity he prefers to develop, the one which
is closer to his personality, skills and interests.
We take into account Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory
where he differentiates between:

1. Linguistic intelligence
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence
3. Musical intelligence
4. Spatial intelligence
5. Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence
6. Interpersonal intelligence
7. Intrapersonal intelligence

As each student develops in a different rhythm, in this way we respond

to the needs of all the children and all of them can feel fulfilled. So we
wonder, who will write the invitations and the menu for the wedding
feast? The one who possesses linguistic intelligence. Who will be the
postman who organizes letter? A child who has logical-mathematical
intelligence. Who will compose the fanfare for the bride or the music
for the dance? A child who has musical intelligence. Who will draw the
map of the island based on the children’s interpretation of the story?
A child who has spatial intelligence. Who will play the grandmother’s
boyfriend who flies the helicopter or the postman who cycles all over
the island visiting the neighbours? A child who has bodily-kinaesthetic
intelligence.
In short, moving away from the traditional approach to literature,
where a story was told and the children were asked for a summary and
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 111

an analysis of characters, we pursue more ambitious aims. It is the chil-

dren who star in the story, who give life to the characters. They develop,
interact with the others, and solve problems. They do not summarize but
expand the story and they may even change the end if they wish.
Authors like Sperry and Ornstein focus on the right and left brain
hemispheres and how they are linked with different skills and abilities.
On the right hemisphere we find rhythm, colour, imagination, day-
dreaming, intuition, spatial awareness and music. On the left we find
logic, lists, linear, words, numbers, sequence and analysis.

Left brain Right brain

Logic Rhythm
Lists Colour
Linear Imagination
Words Daydreaming
Numbers Intuition
Sequence Spatial awareness
Analysis Music

Figure 4.1. Functions of brain hemispheres. (Ornstein 1974)

So students with dominant right hemisphere would be responsible for

preparing the hall, elaborating the garlands and decorating the wedding
cake – made of modelling clay – and those with prevalent left hemi-
sphere could write the list of guests, set the price of the menu in the res-
taurants of the island or write the information leaflet for the helicopter
tour Kate’s grandmother’s enjoys.
The Mantle of the Expert technique as a vehicle to develop cre-
ativity in the child is suitable because it is an open and flexible activity
where all the abilities and skills can be integrated, not only intellectual
but also motor skills, in such a way that everybody will feel fulfilled
when participating in this workshop. Plenty of times we find students
who have a special gift for music or drama, but there are also many
others whom we cannot see. Sometimes in the fast pace of the class, it
is not easy to look for a space and a time for them to show their art and
share it with their classmates.
112  Patricia Martín Ortiz

When we use the Mantle of the Expert technique, we plan in

advance a session of several hours where we set a dramatic context.
Students are given some time to adapt to this new way of working, to
believe in it, feel confident and lose their inhibition, so they can devel-
op their role of expert. The classroom becomes a channel of creativity
and authenticity where teachers do not create the rules but each pupil
freely and spontaneously makes his original contribution to this ficti-
tious world. Mantle technique turns into an enriching activity enabling
children the responsibility to grow as individuals.

Drama in foreign language teaching

In the thirties in Great Britain and USA, a trend starts where drama
companies visit schools and present their plays to children – compa-
nies such as Fen Players, Playmates or Junior Programs Inc. After
the war these companies came back led by powerful figures like Pe-
ter Slade or Brian Way, who developed Theatre-in-Education or TIE
to use drama techniques with educative aims. Belgrade Theatre, in the
city of Coventry (United Kingdom), is the theatre where the first group
of teachers-actors was trained, and it promoted the creation of many
others. In 1986, the group declared as their main aim to present com-
plex drama conflicts that children should solve through questions and
decision making. Ideas which would link with those of the actress and
teacher trainer Dorothy Heathcote who published her essential Drama
for learning (1967, 1994). The techniques used by TIE have been an
enormous influence in the development of children and youth drama in
Great Britain and in modern education. She developed resources such
as teacher-in-role where the teacher/actor addresses the audience to ask
for some advice about acting and hotseating, where the audience asks
the characters.
In North America there was also a huge interest in the use of
drama in Education. Winifred Ward, professor from Northwestern Uni-
versity in Evanston (Illinois), distinguishes between creative dramatics,
making reference to the ludic and educative activities, realized at school
through drama and children’s theatre, which refers to drama as an aes-
thetical activity. Other authors like Geraldine Siks (1958) and Nellie
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 113

McCaslin (1968) from the University of New York, have also written
about the use of drama in education.
Since the publication of books like Handbook for Teaching
in 1937, there was a great interest in training teachers in the use of
drama activities in Great Britain. From the 50s and 60s, writers such
as Peter Slade (1954), Brian Kay (1967), Dorothy Heathcote (1967)
or Gavin Bolton (1979) researched about drama in education and its
possibilities to be exploited in the national curriculum. Similarly, the
Canadian Richard Courtney (1968) qualifies educative drama, the total
experience, as a discipline which includes all branches of knowledge.
He indicates that the role of the teacher will be to help students in their
personal fulfilment.
While some authors like Slade (1978), Heathcote (1967), Court-
ney (1968) or Bolton (1979) have stated that the main objective of dra-
ma in education is the intellectual, social and emotional development
of students, others like Moffett (1967), Seely (1976) and O’Neill and
Lambert (1988) consider drama as an ideal resource for the acquisition
and development of linguistic skills. Pérez Gutiérrez (2004) presents
drama as the most perfect technique for the development of linguistic
skills. Likewise, O’Neill and Lambert (1988) say that the most impor-
tant contribution drama gives to education is to provide a suitable en-
vironment for the development of several kinds of language. Through
the realization of drama activities, students develop and acquire
communicative competences and basic attitudes towards the world
which surrounds them. Drama activities stimulate creation of language
and the assimilation of linguistic models.
From the publication of the manual of Drama Techniques in Lan-
guage Learning by Maley and Duff in 1978, many other works on the use
of drama activities in the foreign language class have been published.
The book presents a compilation of more than a hundred activities to
carry out in the English class. Later, a revised edition entitled Drama
Techniques in Language Learning. A resource book of communica-
tion activities for language teachers (1982) would expand introduc-
tory techniques, observation interpretation, creation and invention,
wordplay, problem solving, the use of literary texts, poems, songs
and a day’s work. Maley’s book is based on his long experience using
114  Patricia Martín Ortiz

drama techniques in the English classroom. It includes a wide selection

of activities which provide authentic reasons to express feelings and
personal opinions. Intellect seldom functions without an emotional
element, however teaching materials very often lack it. Maley (1978)
states that many of the skills we need when we speak a foreign language
are not considered when elaborating text books, such as adaptability
(the ability to match one’s speech to the person one is talking to), speed
of reaction, sensitivity to tone, insight, anticipation, in short, appropri-
ateness. People we face every day are not flat characters and not all of
them have such common names such as Smith or Brown. People may
be happy or angry, tired or worried. They may speak fast or slowly, and
they may repeat phrases. But this is the interesting thing; they are alive.
Drama tries to give this emotional content which has been forgot-
ten back to language. That is to say, we have to pay attention to mean-
ing. Alan Maley states that linguistic structure has to be taught always
and from the beginning with meaning. Regarding the role of the teacher,
he “sues how some foreign language teachers behave like the owners of
language estates, putting up high walls round their territory and signs
saying ‘No trespassin’” (1978: 10). The activities Maley proposes make
us take life as a starting point: situations and daily conflicts. Drama
includes a wide range of aspects such as music, history, painting and
maths: “Drama is like the naughty child who climbed the high walls
and ignores the ‘no trespassing’ signs, skiing, photography, cooking”
(Maley: 1978: 10). There are no barriers. Just then, when children find
out that there is a world beyond the shrivelled characters who live in
the textbooks, Peter, Jane, Mary, they will start to feel really interested.
To be able to use these drama techniques successfully, it is essen-
tial to make a radical change in the relationship between teacher and
students. These activities cannot work unless there is a relaxed atmos-
phere in the classroom. The main function of the teacher will be to set
things in motion, and be sure that students understand what we want
them to do.
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 115

Teacher training

After having reviewed some theories related to the use of drama in ed-
ucation and when it is time to draw conclusions, everything leads us
to the figure of the teacher, to the role that he/she plays in this new
approach to language teaching. The teacher must support students in all
their statements, giving a greater priority to fluency than to accuracy in
the language used.
In Spain, the adoption of the Anglo-Saxon model should be ad-
justed to a different reality. Educational context and differences in the
curriculum are clearly displayed between both countries. For example,
music is essential for the complete development of children in United
Kingdom and Ireland. Children from the very beginning receive vocal
training. They are taught music and how to play an instrument. How-
ever, in Spain, most of the times music is conceived just as one more
subject and only those children who join a choir or study in a school of
music are the ones who learn to sing.

Dorothy Heathcote: The Mantle of the Expert approach.

Mantle of the Expert: definition

First of all I have to express my belief that drama, role-play and simu-
lation play an essential role when developing creativity. The technique
named Mantle of the Expert, designed in the 1980s by Dorothy Heath-
cote, a drama teacher and later lecturer at the University of Newcastle-up-
on-Tyne, uses an approach to learning known as Community of
Research, where children are responsible for running an enterprise in a
fictitious world. Heathcote has trained many generations of English
and American teachers. She proposes the teacher-in-role as a partici-
pant who lives the educative problem. Dorothy’s technique consists of
posing a conflict over which children have to think to be able to solve. It
is in this process of debate, negotiation and acting, where the enormous
pedagogic potential of drama lies.
In this technique, drama is used as a starting point for a pedagogy
based upon the belief that children learn better when they feel motivated
and involved in their task and children are treated as if they were experts
116  Patricia Martín Ortiz

in a particular field. This technique requires that teachers cease to rely

on their memories and their knowledge, and instead, rely on what they
are, where they are in their thinking and how they communicate their
ideas rather than what they say to their students via the traditional con-
versations which form such a large part of our school and college sys-
tems. They metaphorically wear the mantle of the expert in a context
which provides the basis for learning. Children are engaged with dif-
ferent tasks in the classroom such as reading, sorting of information,
writing, arts and crafts, maths… just the type of activities students are
invited to do by every teacher.
The use of the Mantle of the Expert technique offers us not only
a vast world of creative possibilities but also a particular occasion for
children to develop their imagination and empathy. Life in a Mediaeval
Monastery? Sceptical teachers may wonder how a nine-year-old child
can be interested in the way monks live in the medieval epoch. The
Bishop Letter? Children do not even know what a bishop is, they cannot
write a proper letter. Too complex! A Monastery Floor Plan? They
absolutely ignore this issue!
However, reality is far different. We have to trust children and
never undervalue them. That is what Heathcote thought in designing
and putting into practice the Mantle of the Expert approach across the
curriculum. In her book Drama for Learning (1994) she presents the
technique introducing us to life in a mediaeval monastery where she
involves children in its running in medieval times. The argument put
forward by Dorothy Heathcote is “that because the students are to be
in role in a fictional context, they will bring a sense of responsibility to
their learning, with the result that the teacher is able, through the drama,
to make greater demands on the students than if this alternative trigger
to learning were missing” (Heathcote, D. & G. Bolton 1994: 48).

Role of the teacher

Regarding the role of the teacher in Heathcote’s mind, to be an excellent
teacher means to see students as they are, without labels or stereotypes.
It means taking a risk, leaving aside the traditional role which is more
comfortable and fully participating in the process of learning. It means
pushing yourself and your pupils to the limits of their capacities – the
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 117

teacher participates in the class aiming to establish with his pupils the
shared experiences through subtlety and challenging their traditions.
Although Dorothy was continuously teaching children, most of
her time was devoted to teacher training and proposing alternative ideas
for the courses taught in the School of Education of Newcastle. This
was due to the fact that she did not agree with the traditional teach-
er training programmes which were designed to widen the knowledge
of university students without giving the same priority to the transfer
of this academic learning into practice in the classroom. According to
Heathcote, we could define a teacher as one who creates situations of
learning for the others. A teacher’s reward comes because this energy
flows in the two directions. It is a return ticket.

Guidelines

Regarding the guidelines proposed by Heathcote, teachers have to take

into account the following to present the Mantle of the Expert.
– Preparation: drama context has to be presented in an effective
way.
– Fiction: specific language structures which show we are in a ficti-
tious reality must be used, such as Suppose that…; if we could…;
If people would let us…; I bet If we tried we could…
– Dynamics of action: the frame of action has to be presented in a
clear and direct way.
– A past history and an implied future: children participate in a
specific event. They have to know all about it, what has happened
before and what is expected to happen afterwards, to be able to
develop the task successfully.

Practical experience

Romance has been brewing on the island between Neilly Beag and Granma
Mainland and everyone is thrilled when they announce that they are to be
118  Patricia Martín Ortiz

married. Everyone, that is, except Grannie Island. For some reason that Katie
Morag can’t fathom her island grandmother is not happy at all (Hedderwick
1995: 27).

At the beginning of the course I always ask students to write an auto-

biography in English about their background, knowledge of the foreign
language and also about their hobbies and interests, and it has to end
with the sentence: “and the most remarkable feature of my personality
is…”. This activity is very useful because it gives me information about
their standard of English and it also helps me to design activities and to
make work groups.
The following workshop reconciles CLIL with Arts and Crafts,
taking as a starting point a children’s literature book, Katie Morag and
the Wedding by Mairi Hedderwick, inspired by Dominic Wyse and Pam
Dowson’s (2009) proposal. It is a story which takes place on a Scottish
Island where one of Katie’s grandmother is getting married. This is the
plot. In the class we perform the whole story, playing the different char-
acters – main and secondary- who appear in the book.
The story begins in a post office building. There is much activity.
Customers send letters, receive parcels, make phone calls, buy enve-
lopes and stamps. Also, the postmen prepare their mailbags and start
delivering. After reading the book, students have to choose the charac-
ter they are now performing, or better, living! They are on their worksite
and have started their tasks. I, of course, stop my role as teacher and
also participate in the story. I choose to become a customer who must
make a phone call to a friend. I live the role. Likewise, students play
their role and become involved in the story. They forget they are per-
forming. I ask them to adopt other sexes and ages and I suggest they act
individually and also in groups, so we find loving couples, a family with
twin children, etc. Once the context is established, a range of activities
follow. There are different tables with activities from which students can
choose. They include the following:

• Inventing a board game based on the story.

• Creating maps of the island based on the children’s interpreta-
tions of the story or from the book’s endpapers.
• Composing some music for the wedding celebration.
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 119

• Writing postcards.
• Creating a menu for the café on the island.
• Designing wedding invitations.
• Writing letters between the two grannies.
• Making a menu for the wedding party.
• Writing something to go on the village notice board.
• Making small cakes and decorating them like a wedding cake.
• Making wedding decorations.
• Making a plan for the wedding, outlining the events of the day so
everyone knows where to be, and for what!
• Designing a leaflet for a helicopter flight over the island.

The time comes when we have to prepare the Wedding Hall. I have
gathered information from reading the autobiographies and I name a
student –who seems adequate for the role – as Decoration Manager, whose
task was to decorate the hall. The result was amazing. She was really an
expert. She prepared flowers with tissue paper, made delicate garlands
for the walls and made an impressive wedding cake. She showed her
skills as artist and designer. Other students were cooks. They made
delicious recipes with modelling clay. They were involved in the activity
discussing the different shapes, sizes and tastes.
The time for the religious ceremony came. I already knew one of
the students had studied Music and I asked her to bring the violin to the
class. She was choosing tunes to accompany different points in the cere-
mony. She started to play the soundtrack of the film The Mission by Ennio
Morricone. It was such beautiful music that all of us were really touched.
She was an expert. The rest of the students had not studied music and
nobody else was able to play an instrument. The pupil felt proud when
we applauded her performance. Later, in the ceremony, she played the
Pirates of the Caribbean tune and filled the event with joy and magic.
This activity, carried out by English student teachers, may be
adapted for children, encouraging them to adopt those roles which are
appropriate for them. Sometimes children are shy and it is hard for
them to show their abilities. But one of the most surprising revelations I
found was the reaction of the students when I, the teacher, was involved
in the story. We were in the Church after the priest had blessed the bride
and the bridegroom and I asked them to kiss each other, clapped my
120  Patricia Martín Ortiz

hands and the other students joined in. The bride and the bridegroom
were bewildered, they were thinking the teacher was crazy and they
were really embarrassed, despite of the fact that the bridegroom was
thirty years old!
The same scene took place in a restaurant. We were having
dinner at a wedding where they had designed the invitations. They had
written the menu and had decorated the hall. We were really celebrating
Katie’s Grandmother’s wedding. But there were still more surprises in
the story. An old man, the missing boyfriend of the other grandmother,
turned up. And there was the student pilot describing the sky from his
helicopter (chair).
We lived this reality in the class, postmen running because they
were late, post office employees working with their toy tills to get the
price of the product, customers waiting patiently or (some) impatient-
ly in queues, designers and illustrators, decoration managers, cooks,
waiters serving the wine and the different dishes, the priest giving his
improvised homily, tourist agents designing the itinerary for the honey-
moon. Thirty people living their role, having fun or getting angry or sad
because they haven’t been invited to the event. The whole group was
living a unique and unforgettable experience, enjoying the pretence, the
illusion, suspension of disbelief, or as Dorothy Heathcote would say
the big lie; speaking English, living in English, being experts in various
skills.
I think one of the most important elements to make students be-
lieve in the story, be involved in the wedding, forget it is an English
class, is the fact that the teacher has played the same game. There is
a risk. They may think the teacher is a bit weird, but who cares? It is
such a small price that I am happy to pay if in this way I can teach my
students, show them that they are also able to do it, and that they will
be able to do the same in the future when they work with children in the
English class.
In line with Dorothy Heathcote’s thoughts: Do we need a space
with a specific size for my class? No, as long as it has a roof. Do we
need special materials? No, just some pencils, some sheets of paper and
a pair of scissors. How many people can participate? Everybody. What
age? It is not relevant. This is possible when we have our own energy
and creativity. We do not need any external help.
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 121

Dorothy Heathcote warns us that maybe the teacher/technician

threatens to replace the teacher/artist and maybe society which already
undervalues good teachers. Creativity in teaching will allow the quest
for excellence and effort for quality in teaching extinguishes. This
possibility leads us to the main objective of her teaching and writing
which is to seek to challenge, shatter and reform ideas.
We definitely agree with Johnson and O’Neill’s belief that it may
not be possible to imitate with the same success her style of teaching
but it is possible to learn from her skills and experience to join her in the
demand for better and more vigorous and relevant teacher training. This
will produce committed young teachers capable of pursuing excellence
and authenticity in our schools (1984). The first step may be to create a
suitable environment, decorating the cold walls of the classroom which
– as the white walls of the hospital or the dark bars of the prison – do
silence our imagination, shorten our freedom and make impossible the
development of creativity. That is a bright idea but not all the teachers
are ready for the development of creativity in the world of teaching.

Conclusions

Concluding these ideas on the way of awakening students’ creativity

through different techniques with the aim of improving learning, CLIL
and drama show a lot of connections in the process of teaching and
learning:

• The teacher has to leave his role of authority and pull down the
wall which separates him from the students.
• He has to stop being an observer. He has to be close, accessible
and participate in the educative experience with pupils.
• He has to help to create the relaxed atmosphere necessary to car-
ry out the Mantle technique.
• We have to enter into a suspension of disbelief. The teacher has
to act within the story which is built by the whole group, where
each person chooses his role and his responsibility; each one
122  Patricia Martín Ortiz

carries out his corresponding tasks and really this is about living
an exciting experience where once they have accepted the game
and its rules, actors are fully involved in the situation. They flow
with the story and they speak English, maybe with some gram-
matical mistakes or some word mispronounced but the most im-
portant thing is the fact that students interact, ask questions and
answers and offer solutions. It is relevant that they may express
their creativity in the field they find more attractive according to
their abilities and interests.
• A teacher has to be an artist, at least at the beginning, while
students accept this change in the process of learning. The
teacher has to be the liveliest guest in the party, the customer
who complains loudest in the queue in the post office, the chef
who chooses the most delicious ingredients for the menu or the
postman who spends more time in the delivery of parcels.

Maybe students are not used to this function. As it happened in the Ka-
tie experience, where students seemed to be really puzzled when I got
involved in that world of fiction. At the beginning it was hard for them
to enter into the story, believe in their characters, but at the end of the
session I think the result was much better than expected. Students could
display all their creativity in different ways. They expressed themselves,
developing their skills, their gifts and for some hours, when we decorated
the ceiling with garlands, made a toast with plastic glasses, listened to
music and danced around the bridegroom, we were the guests invited to
the wedding feast in the island of Stray.
Welcome to the Mantle of the Expert technique where each stu-
dent finds his tone, his voice. Welcome you, teacher, for being accom-
plice in this adventure.

References

Aymerich, C. & M. 1974. Expresión y arte en la escuela [Expression

and Art at School]. Barcelona: Teide.
Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique 123

Bolton, G. 1979. Towards a Theory of Drama in Education. London:

Longman.
Buzan, T. 2001. Head Strong. London: Thorsons, 2001.
Cook, C. 1917. The Play Way. London: Heinemann.
Courtney, R. 1968. Play, Drama and Thought. London: Cassell &
Co.Ltd.
Coyle, D. / Hood, P. / Marsh, D. 2010. CLIL. Content and Language
Integrated Learning. Cambridge: CUP.
Gardner, H. 1993. Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books.
____. 2006. Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Goleman, D. 1998. Working with Emotional Intelligence. London:
Bloomsbury.
Heathcote, D. / Bolton, G. 1994. Drama for Learning. Portsmouth:
Heinemann.
Hedderwick, M. 1995. Katie Morag and the Wedding. London: Red
Fox.
Jenkins, H. (ed).1993. The Arden Shakespeare. Hamlet. London & New
York: Routledge.
Johnson, L. / O’Neill, C. (eds). 1991. Collected Writings on Education
and Drama. Dorothy Heathcote. Evanston, Illinois: Northwest-
ern University Press.
Maley, A. / Duff, A. 1978. Drama Techniques in Language Learning.
Cambridge: CUP.
____. 1982. Drama Techniques in Language Learning. A resource book
of communication activities for language teachers. Cambridge:
CUP.
McCaslin, N. 1984. Creative Drama in the Classroom. New York:
Longman.
Moffett, J. 1967. Drama: What is Happening? The Use of Dramatic Ac-
tivities en the Teaching of English. Illinois: National Council of
Teachers of English.
Norton, D. 1993. Through the Eyes of a Child. An Introduction to Chil-
dren’s literature. London: Prentice-Hall.
O’Neill, C. / Lambert, A. 1982. Drama Structures: A Practical Hand-
book for Teachers. London: Hutchinson.
Ornstein, R. (ed). 1974. Nature of Human Consciousness (A Book of
Readings). New York: Viking Adult.
124  Patricia Martín Ortiz

O’Toole, J. 1976. Theatre – in- Education. London: Hodder & Stought-

on.
Pérez, M. 2004. La dramatización como recurso clave en el proceso de
enseñanza y adquisición de las lenguas [Drama as key resource
in the process of teaching and acquisition of languages]. Glosas
Didácticas 12/Autumn, 70–80.
Seely, J. 1976. In Context: Language and Drama in the Secondary
School. Oxford: OUP.
Siks, G. B. 1958. Creative Dramatics: An Art for Children. New York:
Harper & Row.
Slade, P. 1978. Expresión dramática infantil [Children Drama Expres-
sion]. Madrid: Aula XXI Santillana.
Thorne, K. 2007. Essential Creativity in the Classroom. Inspiring Kids.
London & New York: Routledge.
Torrance, P. 1962. Guiding Creative Talent. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
____. 2002. Manifesto: A Guide to Developing a Creative Career.
Westport, CT: Ablex.
Way, B. 1967. Development through Drama. London: Longman.
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& New York: Routledge.
Nailya Garipova

Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools:

Bilingual Plays

A play in English is a success. We all need successes,

for these encourage us to strive for further success
(Richard Via).

Introduction

A growing number of studies focused on the content and language inte-

gration (CLIL) has been recently conducted in the field of teaching for-
eign languages. The fundamental principal of CLIL is to serve a double
purpose: to help students develop their target language skills through a
linguistic immersion and make the target language a tool to learn other
school subjects.
This chapter explores the advantages of using theatre in a CLIL
approach. Theatre is an excellent pedagogical resource for exploring
the theoretical and practical aspects of a foreign language teaching. It
is a very useful tool for the CLIL methodology too. The combination
of theatre and CLIL offers a different approach in the teaching of a
foreign language in Spain, since most of the teaching is based on a
course textbook. Both theatre and CLIL break with the traditional
classroom routine of working with the texts, such as reading, listening,
answering questions or doing grammar and vocabulary exercises. As
Drew (2003) points out, “CLIL provides the context for using the target
language functionally to learn about something else”. Theatre becomes
the tool for communicating that something else.
The type of theatre proposed here is aware of the reality of our
pupils and enables teachers to adopt a communicative approach in
foreign language teaching according to the CLIL methodology. Here
126  Nailya Garipova

we propose the teatro de entorno1 recommended by Juan José Torres

Nunez (1996). The objective is to create the working atmosphere need-
ed to stimulate the pupils’ motivation and cooperation. With the imple-
mentation of this kind of theatre in the classroom we propose the fol-
lowing specific objectives of teaching-learning, based on the principles
developed by Torres Nuñez (1996: 40–45):

1. To adapt a bilingual play to the socio-cultural context of the pu-

pils and to show how such a play can be created.
2. To promote the coexistence of languages and cultures.
3. To provide the pupils with a real communication.
4. To develop the five basic competences: linguistic competence,
learning to learn, social and citizenship competence, competence
in mathematics, digital and information processing competence,
cultural and artistic competence, autonomy competence, and the
competence in the knowledge about and interacting with the en-
vironment.
5. To use theatre as a motivational tool in the foreign language
classroom.
6. To help the pupils to understand accents of different non-native
English speakers.
7. To develop the pupils’ imagination and creative power.
8. To understand the pupils’ reality and to promote their coopera-
tion with the teachers.
9. To introduce learning CCTs.

Theatre and CLIL in foreign language teaching

Using theatre in foreign language methodology is one of the most

studied and exploited strategies in the classroom. Although many studies
have been conducted on this topic, here we are going to mention only
those we consider important for our proposal. For example, Alan Maley

1 J.J. Torres Nuñez (1996: 44) used the term “teatro de entorno” to refer to a kind
of theatre rooted in the socio-cultural setting of the students.
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays 127

and Alan Duff (1982) enumerate the benefits of using theatre techniques
in the foreign language classroom. Sam (1990) comments on the peda-
gogical value of theatre in teaching and identifies main advantages and
disadvantages of its use. Kao (1998) points out the qualities the teacher
must have in order to implement theatre successfully. Juan Jose Torres
Nuñez (1996 and 1997) shows the pedagogical value of theatre in the
classroom. Apart from establishing a theoretical framework for thea-
tre in the foreign language teaching, this author also created bilingual
English-Spanish plays for Spanish students with staging instructions.
Susana Nicolás Roman (2011) published an article where she proposed
to use theatre to develop the basic competences of the students. The re-
cent contribution of Anna Corral Fullá (2013) discusses various theatre
practices in the language classroom and analyses one of the primary
teaching materials designed for teaching Spanish as a foreign language.
Web materials are also worth commenting since the Internet offers a
wide range of drama and plays in English.
All these authors consider theatre a universal and integrating re-
source. To them, theatre offers many advantages for the language class-
room. Above all, it enhances development of the basic competences, as
we have stated in the objectives proposed. It helps the learner to acquire
new vocabulary and structures in a fully contextualized and integrated
manner (Wessels, 1987); it serves to improve students’ pronunciation
and intonation (Smith, 1984 and Wessels, 1987). When acting, students
learn to link language to other forms of communication, like gesture,
facial expressions, body language; and they increase their fluency
(Hayes, 1984: 9). Theatre is a well-known motivating tool as well
(Boudreau, 2010 and Burke & O’Sullivan, 2002). Furthermore, it has a
positive effect on “classroom dynamics and atmosphere, thus facilitating
the formation of a bonded group which learns together” (Maley and
Duff, 2005: 67). It helps to overcome shyness and the lack of self-
esteem (Hardison & Sonchaeng, 2005).
Despite the pedagogical power of theatre (Torres Núñez, 1996), it
has been scarcely exploited in the foreign language classroom in Spain.
This is due to the problems that teachers have to face in their schools.
One of the biggest problems is the lack of an appropriate material. As
a rule, secondary school libraries have drama sketches, role-plays and
readers. But these are usually used as mere graded readers. Drama
128  Nailya Garipova

sketches do not have many characters; this creates many difficulties if

we want to work with a large group in the classroom. Although theatre
companies such as Face to Face or IPA Productions have appeared late-
ly, we should bear in mind that most of these plays are either written by
native English authors or adapted from the classic plays. In any case, as
a rule, they do not correlate with the students’ linguistic level nor with
their socio-cultural background.
Most of secondary school textbooks for learning English pres-
ent drama tasks, among which two types can be distinguished: open-
dramatization tasks and those supervised by teachers. In open-drama
tasks students create their own dialogues having simple instructions
as a starting point. Whereas in supervised tasks these instructions
include particular linguistic structures that students must use to create
their dialogues. Although both types of drama tasks require creation
and staging of a particular communicative situation, they also share
the same disadvantage: they do not always appeal to the students, as
generally, they deal with outdated topics (this problem is increasing if
we take into account that secondary school pupils have to study with
the same textbooks for more than eight years due to the policy of free
textbooks in Spanish secondary schools).
The difficulty concerning suitable material becomes even more
evident if we consider the last instructions and recommendations elabo-
rated by the Andalucian regional government (June, 19, 2013) for bilin-
gual schools. According to the current legislation, authorized bilingual
schools must offer bilingual education with the CLIL approach, using
their own materials or those provided by the Andalucian regional gov-
ernment. These materials should promote students’ active participation
and develop the four communicative skills: listening, reading, writing
and speaking. However, the so-called “recommended” materials for the
bilingual education exclude theatre.
In foreign language teaching, the pedagogical value of theatre
and drama is obvious. They also seem useful for the CLIL approach.
Over the last years, CLIL has become a well-established part of the
education system in Spain. The CLIL methodology focuses on learning
that requires an acquisition of concepts, skills and attitudes. As stated
in the Royal Decree 231/ 2007 and in the Order from June 28, 2011, the
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays 129

specific objectives of the bilingual schools programme are the following

(quoted from Casal and Moore, 2009):

1. The learning of some content areas will be carried out in a lan-

guage other than the L1.
2. The methodology implemented at secondary levels will be based
on communication, interaction by means of language immersion
and the balanced development of oral and written skills.
3. From a linguistic point of view, the goal is general skills
development embracing the L1 as well as the L2, and at later
stages an L3. This implies not only an increase in partial linguistic
competences in different languages but also the development of a
pan-linguistic consciousness.
4. Learners will be confronted with different codes which will lead
them to reflect upon linguistic behaviour. This approach should
foster a special development of learners’ metacognitive skills and
a natural use of languages as distinct from an explicit knowledge
of linguistic codes.
5. Students will manipulate language in relation to different areas
and academic content, multiplying the contexts wherein they will
be able to efficiently use languages linked to academic and pro-
fessional fields.
6. Students will need to manipulate diverse linguistic codes in order
to ‘do things’, developing cognitive flexibility towards analysis
and observation of learning processes.
7. From a cultural viewpoint, students in bilingual sections will be
in touch with other realities at an early age, being able to draw
comparisons with their own surroundings and increasing their
interest in different cultures with different traditions, customs,
institutions and techniques.

As different authors have stated (Lagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe,

2010; Juan Rubio and García Conesa, 2012, and Bret Blasco, 2012,
among the others), CLIL teaching may open doors to a student-cen-
tred, function-focused, task-oriented, authentic and constructivist class-
room; it may even serve as a means of promoting learner autonomy. To
quote Baetens Beardsmore, “it would appear that bilingual skills lead to
130  Nailya Garipova

greater development of creativity both on verbal and non-verbal levels

of activity” (2008: 6).
Leaving theoretical considerations apart, in bilingual Second-
ary Schools in Spain, we can face a different reality. Depending on the
methodological approach taken and the teaching materials used, CLIL
classes can also be turned into a less valuable experience when dealing
with traditional, repetition targeted, form focused on exercises. Further-
more, according to Susan Hillyard (2010), “CLIL deals with subject
areas or content which can sometimes be dry and technical, even when
practiced by an experienced teacher”.
As Drew (2013) suggests, “theatre research into CLIL has shown
that the approach leads to both affective and cognitive aims on learners”.
There is a connection between CLIL and theatre that can be beneficial
for educational purposes in many perspectives. According to Muszyn-
ska (2012: 237), the connection between these two mainly consists of
two aspects. On the one hand, they are both seen as motivating forces
in the language classroom. On the other, they are both characterized
by a holistic nature that engages the whole learner in the learning ex-
perience. Hillyard (2010) identified the following benefits of combing
theatre to CLIL:

The benefits of CLIL may be seen in terms of cultural awareness, internaliza-

tion, language competence, preparation for life itself, study and working life,
and, most crucially of all, increased motivation through the development of the
person as a whole, not just a language learner. The joy of putting CLIL together
with drama is that all of those elements are magnified producing a dynamic,
effective and enjoyable learning experience for all.

Having established that both theatre and CLIL are equally relevant in
current education and that both lead to affective and cognitive gains
in learners, the aim of the following section is to show how the two of
them can be combined in foreign language teaching.
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays 131

Towards a different type of theatre for the CLIL approach:

bilingual plays

As stated before, the type of theatre proposed here is aware of the reality
of our pupils. It also contributes to the meaningful learning, key aim in
the CLIL approach. It stimulates the pupils’ motivation as it combines
such techniques as creation and repetition. This type of theatre fulfils
the following principles (developed from the principles provided by
Wessels, 1987 and Torres Nuñez, 1996):

1. Students will adapt a bilingual play to their socio-cultural sur-

rounding. Then, they will create an original play. Teacher will
supervise the creation of the play and correct its final draft.
2. All the students of the group can take part in the adaptation and
elaboration of the plays. They will choose the parts voluntarily.
3. One or more Spanish speaking characters (who will not speak
any English) will be introduced in the play in order to create mis-
understanding.
4. These plays will reflect local socio-cultural setting of the stu-
dents. The Spanish characters will speak with the local accent.
The introduction of the Spanish speaking characters will help
listeners to understand and follow the play; it will also serve as
practice for students whose mother tongue is not Spanish.
5. The theme of the play should be interesting and amusing and
must be chosen by the pupils.
6. The play should be written in contemporary English, without
witty puns.
7. The lexical richness should correlate with the contents of the
syllabus.
8. There should be as many characters as possible in the play.
9. The play must have female and male characters.
10. Apart from dialogues, there must be action.
11. The sets should be simple. Bearing in mind school’s budget,
school material should be used when possible.
12. The play should be either one-act play or a very short-full length
one (30–60 minutes).
132  Nailya Garipova

When adapting and creating our bilingual plays, teatro de entorno,

these criteria were followed.

Classroom implementations

Our bilingual theatre project started in February 2011 and went on until
the writing of this article (April 2014). The setting is a state secondary
school in Albox, in the Almeria province. At the beginning, it was a
part of the school project carried out within the CLIL track. Two years
ago, this original activity was included in the Reading Promotion Plan
implemented by the regional government of Andalusia. As regards the
practical background of the proposal, it is designed for the second cy-
cle of Secondary Compulsory Education (3º–4º ESO), for pupils aged
14–16.
The idea of using theatre had its origin when I had to teach
English in the bilingual group of the third year of Compulsory Secondary
Education and I was the CLIL project coordinator of our school. The
group was quite heterogeneous; there were pupils from nine different
nationalities. As a teacher, I faced the problem of cultural co-existence
among the pupils, as some of them made up inflexible groups accord-
ing to their nationality and did not mix with the rest of the class (this
happened with British students and Pakistani girls). The level of English
was heterogeneous as well, and it was not all the students’ foreign lan-
guage or L2 (being the mother tongue for the British pupils and a second
foreign language for the pupils from Asia and East of Europe). English
was a shared communicative tool among the pupils of this group. After
having obtained the results of the first term and analyzed the problems
of the group I decided to use theatre to increase cooperation and to
improve the learning process. I believe that new, innovative and
non-traditional activities often appeal to students in the foreign lan-
guage classroom.
The first play that was adapted and staged by this group was The
Barber of Almeria, written by Torres Nuñez (1997). Although the stu-
dents worked with other plays in the following years, and taking into
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays 133

account that the methodology of implementing different plays is similar,

I am going to illustrate how we worked with this play.
The first thing we did was to read the play in class. This reading
activity is a good option to be introduced in the weekly reading sessions
(as stated by the Instructions from June 11, 2012 and Instructions from
June 23, 2013 for the Andalusian Secondary Schools). When reading
the play, we provided the students with while-reading activities to work
on the unknown vocabulary and grammar structures. Then the adapta-
tion of the play took place. We changed the original title The Barber
of Almeria, for The Barber of Albox and substituted proper names that
appeared in the text (the characters’ names and the names of places
were adapted to our setting). We modified dialogues in Spanish, intro-
ducing the expressions from the local speech. We added five characters
more (at the end there were 14 characters in the play) and added one
extra-scene. After that, the students chose their parts and began to learn
them. The rest of the pupils were in charge of sets and the stage props.
They searched for pictures of people from different nationalities on the
Internet; then, in the sessions of drawing, they drew portraits of the
people to decorate the hairdresser’s. Other students were responsible for
looking for the suitable furniture to decorate the stage. Several pupils
were in charge of video recording and taking pictures during rehearsals
and the final performance. In this way, the students without parts be-
came active listeners.
When rehearsing and staging the play, we had the opportunity
to exploit its linguistic contents. The pictures the students drew were
used in warm-up activities to practice vocabulary related to people’s
appearance, parts of the body and clothing. Students were also provided
with information and extra-practice on intonation. Some of the grammar
structures that appeared in the play were explained and reinforced with
practical exercises. Foreign pupils had an opportunity to learn express­
ions from the local speech, the so-called “Albojense”. It was fun to
hear Spanish students teach their foreign classmates how to pronounce
typical expressions of their hometown. Students could also listen to
different non-native English speakers speak English. Some of the tasks
derived from the play were proposed to enhance students’ intercultural
communicative competence. For example, some of the sessions were
134  Nailya Garipova

devoted to the study of body language of people from different national­

ities; in other lessons, the foreign students made presentations on ce-
lebrities of their countries. In the sessions of computer science students
learnt how to give PowerPoint presentations, using photos and videos
they recorded during the play’s performance. In the Spanish language
sessions, students were provided with tasks to work on formal and in-
formal registers of the Spanish language.
As to the timing, it took three months to carry out the activity. At
the beginning, the play was read in the sessions devoted to the Reading
promotion (once a week). Then, the students rehearsed the play in the
sessions of English workshop under the supervision of the language
assistant. Some of the rehearsals were introduced as warm-ups in the
sessions of the English language, whereas the final rehearsals took
place in the evenings. The play was performed in the Intercultural Festi-
val, which is celebrated every year, for the school students and teachers.
After the successful performance, we were invited to put the same play
on again, in the concert-hall of the town-hall. Then, it was not the usual
school play.
As has been mentioned, the activity was carried out during the
second term. Using this kind of theatre was my way to solve the prob-
lems of this particular group. During the third term I could see that with
the implementation of the bilingual theatre, the communication and
cooperation among the students from different nationalities improved
considerably. Most of the students improved their pronunciation and
fluency in English, whereas some foreign pupils seemed to be more
motivated to learn Spanish as a L2.
We also provided the students and their families with question-
naires to get their feedback of the theatre project. The results were
positive and most of the parents encouraged us to continue with our
work. As a result, during the following years, bilingual plays adapted
from those written by Torres Nuñez were also used in other groups of
our school.
After having adapted and staged different plays, my students of
the fourth year of Compulsory Secondary Education talked to me and
showed the desire to create their own play. They were already familiar
with the experience of the bilingual theatre. The first thing we did
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays 135

was to have a brainstorming session in which the students proposed

different topics that they were interested in. The most popular were
the following: the financial crisis, unemployment, and studying and
working abroad. These lead to the creation of the play, “Albojenses
in the World”. The play is the story of two families from Albox who
emigrated to England and the United States of America. The students
proposed different scenes and settings for the play and chose the parts
(there were 16 characters). Then, they worked in groups writing the
dialogues and structuring the scenes. At the end, the play had two stories
within the same plotline: the Martinez family (the father, the pregnant
mother and their daughter; she was the only one who could speak
English). They go to England because the father has found a job there
and the cousins (three female cousins and their friend, Antonio, who
does not speak English at all) go to the USA to study at the university
and work in the natural stone industry. Each of these stories had three
short scenes. Because of the switches in the plot from one family to the
other, there was a narrator who presented the scenes and the characters.
Since the play had six scenes, the sets were complicated. Finally, we
opted for a bare stage and created a video support for each scene. Eight
students were in charge of research and selection of pictures from the
Internet and they worked on a PowerPoint presentation to be projected
during the performance of the play.
The educational contents of this play presented a rich material
to be explored in the classroom. We had British and American English,
so the students learnt the main differences between these two varieties
of English. There were many tasks to work with the vocabulary and
pronunciation. We did many exercises working with different registers
of spoken English (formal-informal). One of the scenes was set in an
American airport, so students learnt some vocabulary used in airports.
Another scene was at the doctor’s so we used it to prepare exercises
to revise vocabulary on “health problems” and other questions.
We encourag­ed the pupils to create their curricula and formal letters
of application for a job in Spanish and English. In some biology
sessions, students could reinforce their knowledge of health problems
and parts of the body. At the same time, they were provided with the
new vocabulary on meat and dairy products and learn about the ones
136  Nailya Garipova

that are not allowed to be brought into the USA. Some of the sessions
of the subject of social science were devoted to the study of education
systems and political organizations of the United States and England. In
the subject of computer science the pupils learnt how to combine visual
and sound materials to give PowerPoint presentations. As to the timing,
it took more than four months to write, rehearse and stage the play. The
methodology of the performance is similar to the one described before.
The results were positive and encouraging.
It will be unfair not to mention the difficulties we faced during the
implementation of the project. On the one hand, both in the adapted and
written plays there were some grammar structures that students found
difficult. Some sessions were devoted to the practice of these structures.
These activities were used as an extension material within the syllabus
of the English subject. Another problem was the English pronuncia-
tion, and, especially, the difference between American and British oral
English. Some of the pupils had problems to understand other foreign
classmates speaking English. This difficulty was overcome by working
on the pronunciation in small groups with the help of language assistants.
The most obvious obstacle was concerned with the time the teacher had
to spend on correcting and writing the play, preparing activities to work
on the plays’ content and to modify the syllabus. Needless to say, that
this kind of project requires an extra-effort from the teacher’s part. In
spite of this, the result shows that it is very rewarding especially for the
empathy created between the teacher and the students.
It is also important to mention the assessment process. We chose
formative assessment because we were interested in the process and
not in the final product. In order to evaluate the students, we used daily
observation, taking into account their participation, interest and coop-
eration. We also considered how the students adopted their classmates’
ideas in order to modify their parts and how they showed respect to-
wards them. We checked also if the pupils used the grammar struc-
tures from the play to improve their output in oral and written English.
Apart from this, the theatre activity was assessed as being part of the
term activities. We assessed the pupils then, in accordance with their
achievement of the basic competences. As it was mentioned before, we
also had a feedback from the students and their families through the
Linking theatre to CLIL in Secondary Schools: Bilingual Plays 137

questionnaires. The teachers of other subjects gave their opinions on the

theatre project and their further suggestions were collected in the report
of the integrated syllabus, within the school’s CLIL project. We are still
working on bilingual theatre project. The results we get at the end of this
school-year will be used to improve future projects.

Conclusions

The successful performance of the bilingual plays in the foreign language

class shown in this article highlights the real need for a different approach
in foreign language teaching. We have achieved the specific objectives
of the CLIL methodology for foreign language teaching-learning,
thanks to the implementation of the theatre techniques proposed here.
Combination or integration is a key concept that links theatre and
CLIL, since both combine and integrate oral and written language in
a natural way. We have seen that with theatre we can find many of the
skills involved in the communicative act: grammatical, socio-linguistic,
discursive and strategic. The performance of the plays has shown that
it is very effective for improving the four communicative skills. We
have experienced that the bilingual plays encourage participation and
communication among pupils from different nationalities and enhance
their cooperation and tolerance. This type of theatre helps pupils to
overcome learning difficulties. The level of participation is very high
and, as we have seen, pupils enjoy both adapting and creating their own
plays. The performance is good for the actors and for the audience.
The combination of theatre and CLIL has a great potential for the
explicit and implicit learning of a foreign language and its vocabulary,
in addition to learning the content of a subject. The performance of
these plays in the foreign language classroom provides also an interdis-
ciplinary approach in such areas as drawing, computer science, Spanish
language, social sciences, and biology. This approach takes us back to
the main objectives of the CLIL methodology.
138  Nailya Garipova

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Raquel Fernández

Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom

Introduction

When Professor Amos Paran asserted that “literature” did not have a
defined role in the post-communicative EFL classroom, the situation
of literary texts in the classroom was more than unclear (2000: 75).
However, with the advent of bilingual education, and the emergence
of CLIL as a pedagogical approach, literature is faced with the
opportunity of making a fresh and renewed comeback to the classroom.
In Hillyard’s words: “Not only do both approaches [Drama and CLIL]
motivate students through engagement and connection, but also both
approaches are connected in their holistic nature, engaging the whole
learner experience” (2010: 1).
One of the best ways to help our students to learn any content is
to get them involved in experiential learning which is meaningful for
them, and helps them to contextualize the content and language they are
acquiring. If there is a genre that can get students active and participative
while exploring learning individually and/or collaboratively, it is
drama. From the myriad of techniques available, such as role-plays,
improvisations, tableaux or freeze frames, narrative pantomimes, etc.,
Readers’ Theatre stands out for its associated benefits as demonstrated
in research, which go beyond linguistic goals, and also for its simplicity,
as it does not require complex or expensive materials to be implemented.
Also, Readers’ Theatre gives students the possibility to work on oral
interpretation, scriptwriting and/or staging.
This chapter aims to present Readers’ Theatre as a useful tool
in the CLIL classroom to pursue not only language aims, but also
educational goals. To this end, Readers’ Theatre will be introduced by
comparing and contrasting the available definitions. The second section
142  Raquel Fernández

of the chapter will be devoted to discussing its benefits and potential

pitfalls by exploring experiences which have been carried out using
Readers’ Theatre around the world. In the third section, the author
will justify the use of Readers’ Theatre in CLIL classrooms, taking its
potential advantages as the starting point and supporting its use further
by connecting it with the 4 Cs stated by Do Coyle (1999). Therefore,
Readers’ Theatre will be considered under the light of Content,
Cognition, Communication and Culture. To end with, a set of didactic
guidelines regarding the use of Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom
will be given, and steps for further research will be described to aid both
those researchers interested in studying the use of Readers’ Theatre and
those practitioners willing to implement it in their classrooms.

Defining Readers’ Theatre

To begin with, there is no consensus about how to write its name, and
many authors (see Shepard’s website) consider it useful to use the ini-
tials (RT) to avoid misunderstandings. For the purposes of this paper,
Readers’ Theatre will be preferred rather than other options such as
Reader’s Theatre or Readers Theatre, as it implies that readers have a
sense of belonging in the process and production of a drama activity
which also requires them to work in group.
Readers’ Theatre is based on the oral interpretation of a script.
Students do not need to memorise the lines, as they can have the script
in front of them, but their reading should be dramatic and meaningful,
as the interpretation of the script given relies on the students’ voices.
The teacher acts as a facilitator of the discovery of the text by the reader,
and the reader gives ‘life’ to the text. Students do not need any special
scenery, costumes or props to perform their lines. However, they need
to have time to “work together to produce a meaningful and entertaining
performance for an audience” (Dixon 2010: 3).
Even if oral interpretation is a key component of Readers’ The-
atre, students may be encouraged to get involved in the creation of
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 143

their own scripts. Scriptwriting can thus be incorporated as an optional

element in the use of Readers’ Theatre. These types of writing activities
are especially useful once students know the nuts and bolts of Readers’
Theatre as interpreters, as they will easily come to grips with the
necessary knowledge and skills to put a script into practice. Also, it will
require them to develop their negotiating skills by working in groups.
One of the main characteristics of Readers’ Theatre is the absence
of elements which otherwise would be common to any theatre play,
such as costumes, scenery, props, etc. Even if students are not required
to go on stage, it is possible to prepare Readers’ Theatre staging using
imagination and creativity, rather than relying on expensive materials.
For instance, students can use colours to identify different characters, or
change the position of their chairs to illustrate the type of relationship
between the characters. They may also use digital tools to improve the
creation of a dramatic atmosphere in the classroom. Even if Readers’
Theatre has commonly been associated with literature and literacy
development, efforts have been made to demonstrate its effectiveness
when used in content subjects in monolingual settings, as demonstrated
by Flynn (2004) and Mackay (2008). This trend originated the term:
Content-based Readers’ Theatre to refer to scripts dealing with topics
included in school official curricula.
To sum up, Readers’ Theatre goes beyond the idea of simply
reading a script aloud in class. Quite the contrary, it involves students’
active participation in class, and it demands them not only to understand
the text, but also to have a sense of ownership when interpreting their
lines. To do that, students need to experience what Rosenblatt (1938)
defined as Transactional Reading, as they are involved in a reciprocal
and mutually defining relationship. Transaction is not only individual
and private, but also public and shared, as students are working in
their groups to create their performances. Therefore, using Readers’
Theatre in the classroom gives teachers and students the opportunity to
go beyond mere decoding to explore areas such as “[…] interpreting,
discussing, writing, assessing, and performing their own creative
responses” (Kennedy 2011: 71).
144  Raquel Fernández

Benefits of using Readers’ Theatre

This section is devoted to discussing the benefits and potential pitfalls of

Readers’ Theatre by exploring experiences which have been carried out
using this method around the world. Readers’ Theatre is not a new area
of research, as it has been widely used in the English-speaking world for
many years now. Accordingly, there exists abundant literature dealing
with studies carried out to prove the benefits of using Readers’ Theatre.
However, most of these studies have been performed in monolingual
contexts where students were not confronted with an additional
language in the classroom where Readers’ Theatre was used, or other­
wise, they focus on ESL contexts. On the other hand, studies which
analyse the benefits of Readers’ Theatre in CLIL are scarce, although
some timid advances working on the Norwegian context have appeared
in the last few years (see Drew and Pedersen 2010; and Pettersen 2014),
and valuable theoretical works are pointing to the same direction (see
Hillyard 2010 and Nicolás 2011).
As has been explained in section 2, one of the main characteris-
tics of Readers’ Theatre is its interest in oral interpretation. In this light,
research literature on Readers’ Theatre indicates that the most obvious
learning gain is reading fluency and comprehension (see Millin 1996;
Rinehart 1999; Millin and Rinehart 1999; Carrick 2000; Kozub 2000;
Tyler and Chard 2000; Rasinski 2003; Trainin and Andrzejczak 2006;
and Visser 2013). In an EFL context, Martinez, Roser and Strecker
(1999) worked with second-year Primary school children offering them
the chance to work with Readers’ Theatre every day for a period of
10 weeks. Results of the study show that students improved their oral
reading fluency probably by use of “direct explanation, feedback and
effective modelling” (1999: 334). These results reinforce the idea that if
students are given the opportunity to rehearse their lines, use meaning­ful
repetition, and are shown how to improve their interpretation, it seems
coherent to find that they improve their oral fluency.
In the case of children with learning disabilities, Readers’
Theatre also shows positive results in terms of reading comprehension
and fluency. Corcoran and Davis (2005) studied the impact of Readers’
Theatre on twelve 2nd and 3rd Year School Children with learning
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 145

disabilities. The study demonstrated that not only did they improve
their reading fluency scores, but also their reading attitudes and confi-
dence level. In the same line, Caluris (n.d.) carried out a study with 35
3rd Year School Children, 5 of which had moderate to severe learning
disabilities. Her study demonstrated that when children are presented
with opportunities to observe modelling and repetition in a meaning-
ful context, they improve their comprehension scores. Also, Tyler and
Chard (2000) supported the idea that struggling readers feel more
comfortable when repetition is part of the task. In the same line,
Rinehart (1999) indicated that Readers’ Theatre can make all children
feel comfortable, regardless of their reading level. Doherty and
Coggeshall (2005) tested the use of Readers’ Theatre and storyboard-
ing using two groups of students, one regular education and one special
education. Their work demonstrates that Readers’ Theatre encourages
team-teaching inside groups, thus benefitting students with different
profiles and learning gains. As will be argued later in this chapter,
Readers’ Theatre may be used as a scaffolding technique for students
of all levels to enhance their reading comprehension.
Therefore, it appears that fluency gains are the first clear advan-
tage of using Readers’ Theatre in the classroom. According to Trainin
and Andrzejczak (2006), there are three possible benefits we can iden-
tify as part of teaching language fluency. First, motivation, as texts are
motivating and support repeated practice. Second, the “creation of a
meaningful context” (2006: 2), which helps students to complete a task
which may serve as a challenge for them. Also, they will strive for the
best when working on prosody, including “intonation, phrasing, and at-
tention to punctuation as the text comes to life” (2006: 2). Finally, group
work, which helps students grasp meaning of the text by discussing it
together.
Also in the linguistic and communicative area, Readers’ Theatre
has offered a number of advantages for students’ writing and listening
skills. Students can be involved in the rewriting of published scripts or
in original scriptwriting, thus exploring their writing abilities both indi-
vidually and in groups, (see Stewart, 1997; Liu, 2000; Forsythe, 1995;
and Latrobe, 1996). Concerning listening, Prescott and Lewis (2003)
conclude that this skill could be enhanced by using Readers’ Theatre.
146  Raquel Fernández

Readers’ Theatre has also shown clear advantages regarding the

learning of literature. Literary learning gains have been presented by
Kennedy, who claims that Readers’ Theatre helps “to bring a literary
text and student closer together than what is possible with silent reading
alone” (2011: 76). Kabilan and Kamaruddin (2010) designed an experi-
ment to be carried out with 14-year-old students in Malaysia. Their aim
was to determine whether students perceived that they had improved
in areas such as comprehension, interest, and motivation in learning
literature as a result of introducing Readers’ Theatre into the class. The
study revealed that students benefitted from Readers’ Theatre in their
understanding and motivation to learn literature.
The use of Readers’ Theatre has also been proven to make a
positive impact on students’ attitude towards reading and on reading
habits and motivation. Casey and Chamberlain (2006) demonstrated
that Readers’ Theatre not only improves reading fluency and oral ex-
pression, but also motivation. Worthy and Prater (2002) recorded inter-
mediate students’ conversations while preparing for Readers’ Theatre.
They discovered that the students were engaged in analysing the text
and discussing key elements, and sometimes literary components when
preparing their performance. The students’ engagement was benefitted
by the use of Readers’ Theatre. Also Uthman (2002) indicated that stu-
dents carried out one of the activities that causes them most concern
and potentially fear, that is, reading aloud in a calm and collected way.
Social and cultural benefits have been highlighted by Kennedy
(2011), and a core component in Zambo’s (2011) didactic proposal,
which highlights the role of Readers’ Theatre in working on stereotypes
and cliques regarding girls’ self-image. Her main purpose was to im-
prove the classroom atmosphere and the relationship students had with
their peers. Readers’ Theatre is in this case a tool to develop tolerance
through empathy. For this purpose, the author insists on the importance
of choosing the correct texts. Improvement in students’ self-esteem
has also been reported by Drew and Pedersen (2010), in a study with
secondary school students learning English as an additional language,
which proved cognitive and affective benefits for them. Also, Pettersen
(2013) reported on self-esteem gains in a case study on the use of
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 147

Readers’ Theatre in content based subjects in 8th Year Secondary School

in Norway.
According to Dixon (2010: 5), Readers’ Theatre also offers clear
advantages for teachers. Teachers are helped to enhance active learning
in their classroom without having to worry about money, as Readers’
Theatre doesn’t require the use of any expensive materials. Also, it
demands teachers to leave the role of instructor and adopt the role of
facilitator, which is challenging but more interesting. Readers’ Theatre
can incorporate the use of good-quality reading material of any genre.
Besides that, teachers can help students to develop their problem-solving
and social skills, by encouraging them to make group decisions. It also
helps teachers to see their students’ progress in a very short time.

Readers Theatre and CLIL

One of the main concerns of this chapter is to demonstrate that Readers’

Theatre can become an effective catalyser of learning in a CLIL class-
room. To support this view, it is necessary to define what CLIL is and
what its main components are. CLIL has been defined as a “dual-fo-
cused educational approach in which an additional language is used for
the learning and teaching of both content and language” (Coyle, Hood,
and Marsh 2010: 1). CLIL is divided into 4 main components which act
as a sort of conceptual framework, these areas are Content, Cognition,
Communication and Culture (Coyle, 1999).

Content

CLIL works with a curriculum where language is integrated. Con-

tent learning is a top priority, and language should not be a barrier for
students to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes, and
also it should not prevent students from being involved in the process
of creating new knowledge. Content should be meaningful for stu-
dents, who need to be provided with enough opportunities to develop
148  Raquel Fernández

cross-curricular contents. Thus, collaboration between content teachers

and English language specialists is key to the successful implementa-
tion of CLIL. This also has an impact on students’ literacy development,
which should be taken into consideration in all CLIL subjects.
In the case of Readers’ Theatre, scripts used can deal with any
topic included in students’ curriculum and/or any topic of their interest.
One of the main advantages of using Readers’ Theatre is that if there is
not any material available, the teacher or students can create their own
through creative scriptwriting.

Communication

Rather than studying language in the traditional sense, students develop

their linguistic skills by actually using it. A context-embedded approach
is adopted, in which the students use the additional language in a variety
of contexts and situations. Communication involves the development of
the 4 communication skills: speaking, reading, listening and writing,
through real interaction and practice. Students will cater for the three
areas of the language triptych, as developed by Coyle Hood and Marsh
(2010: 9–10), which includes: language of learning, for learning and
through learning.
Readers’ Theatre involves language in different levels. First, stu-
dents need to express their opinions and negotiate meaning in the pro-
cess of planning their reading performance and/or when involved in
scriptwriting. Second, they are required to understand the text that they
will represent in different levels. On the one hand, students need to be-
come acquainted with different reading, which is focused on the literal
meaning of words. On the other hand, they will pay attention to those
nuances which make their reading a unique transaction with the text, as
they are also dealing with representational language (see Rosenblatt,
“Continuing the Conversation: A Clarification” for a discussion about
this continuum). Third, when involved in scriptwriting, the students are
allowed to explore the associations of speech and characters. For exam-
ple, they need to come to terms with what type of vocabulary, specific
prosodic features or set phrases a given character will have. In some
cases, this will lead them to go back to the text given as a primary
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 149

source. For instance, if they are developing a script from a literary text,
they will probably pay attention to recurrent expressions used by the
characters. In other cases, they will need to come up with ideas from
scratch, above all when they are creating new characters. Finally, there
will be some cases in which they need to pay attention to metaphorical
meanings, for example, the way in which a cloud will talk.

Cognition

Cognitive development is a key issue in CLIL. As students will not have

their contents watered down just because they are taught using an ad-
ditional language, cognitive work needs to be addressed appropriately.
Students will be faced with managing cognitively challenging work just
as they do in their mother tongue. To do this, teachers should use
scaffolding appropriately. Scaffolding is understood as “a process of
‘setting up’ the situation to make the child’s entry easy and successful
and then gradually pulling back and handing the role to the child as
he becomes skilled enough to manage it” (Bruner 1983: 60). Also, it
is important to foster students’ divergent thinking, and their work on
High-Order Thinking Skills, as proposed by Bloom and revised by An-
derson and Krathwohl. In this sense, it is also important to help students
to reflect on their own practice to be able to recognise achievements and
suggest improvements.
Readers’ Theatre also responds to the different learning styles of
children. In light of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory (1999),
Readers’ Theatre has the potential to develop every type of intelligence:

– Musical-rhythmic: students can explore prosodic features: into-

nation, pronunciation, pitch, which may influence how we con-
vey meaning and also our construction of characters.
– Visual-spatial: students have a strong visual memory, and it is
easy for them to imagine the scenes which are part of the dia-
logue while writing the script or during the performance. They
also incorporate spatial elements into the performance.
– Verbal-linguistic: students with this preferred learning style
feel at ease working with words. They will pay attention to
150  Raquel Fernández

vocabulary and grammar use, and will be actively involved in the

scriptwriting activities.
– Logical-mathematical: due to their high abstract and critical
thinking, they tend to value their peers’ points of view and try to
reach an agreement. They are also good at making sequences and
developing plots.
– Bodily-kinaesthetic: even if scripts are not thought to be repre-
sented on stage, bodily-kinaesthetic students will add movements
and gestures, sometimes even inadvertently, to enhance under-
standing.
– Interpersonal: most Readers’ Theatre techniques are based on
cooperative learning and group work. Students will need to cope
with a variety of situations, from negotiating meaning from the
text to reaching agreements on the roles to play.
– Intrapersonal: students who prefer this type of intelligence tend
to use introspective techniques and are self-reflective. This will
help them foresee the emotions and feelings of the characters that
they are going to play. Also, they will consider which of their own
personal skills could be useful both in the group work and in the
performance.
– Naturalistic: natural explorers will feel at ease adding contex-
tualising elements to the performance and further investigating
characteristics of the roles they have to perform. They will also
be aware of a more global understanding of their piece of work.

One obvious cognitive advantage of using Readers’ Theatre is that it

can be used as a support for the six main types of instructional scaf-
folding as identified by Walqui (2006: 170–177): modelling, bridging,
contextualisation, building schema, re-representing text and developing
metacognition. If Readers’ Theatre is to be applied effectively, students
involved in the task must be offered with plenty of modelling, usually fa-
cilitated by guided rehearsals and meaningful repetition. Also, students
need to connect their previous knowledge with new knowledge, often
by transferring the information they know to a different format. This
involves bridging, building schema and re-representing text. Thus, stu-
dents reading a text about ‘The Water Cycle’ may write a script in which
all the implied elements are engaged in a dialogue which describes this
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 151

process. Students need to have prior knowledge of the subject, agree on

what they know, share it with the rest, and convert this knowledge into
words which will form the lines of each character. Also, they will be
involved in the process of analysing and evaluating their performances
to improve the script and the performance, thus developing their meta­
cognitive skills. Finally, Readers’ Theatre facilitates the best conditions
to promote long-term learning by giving students the possibility to
contextualise what they know and getting them active in the creation of
their own knowledge.

Culture

Culture is sometimes identified as Community and/or Citizenship. It is

an area which requires students to develop tolerance, understanding and
empathy with other cultures and points of view. It promotes multicul-
tural awareness and understanding by reinforcing “global citizenship”.
Culture takes a step beyond reading about English traditions to explore
beliefs, customs and concerns in a pluricultural society.
Drama is an invaluable tool to encourage students to put them-
selves in others’ shoes. Students are required to adopt a role and
perspective which can be very different from the one they have in real
life. They are faced with different contexts and settings in the past,
present and future. Students will then be faced with situations which
require them to think critically and manage all the variables involved.
By giving students the opportunity to get to know other points of view,
we are enriching their cultural awareness and promoting understanding.
One important issue which is important to cover when dealing
with CLIL is literacy development. This key area should form a core
part of the curriculum of English language subjects developed in
CLIL programmes. The language teacher should also be involved in an
English language curriculum with matches the needs and progress of
the students in the content subjects (see Halbach 2014: 1–14).
152  Raquel Fernández

Implementing Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL Classroom

In this section a set of didactic guidelines regarding the use of Readers’

Theatre in the CLIL classroom will be given. Readers Theatre can be
implemented in the classroom in a variety of ways, from which I have
distinguished three main implementation models: traditional model,
CLIL teacher-guided model, CLIL student-centred model.

Traditional model

The traditional model is what many teachers already do intuitively in

their classes. They start the lesson by saying that a performance will
be prepared in the lesson. They have photocopies of the script which
are handed out. The students read the script in silence, and the teacher
nominates roles. The teacher gives some time for students to rehearse
and the performance is carried out. In some cases, the topic of the
Readers’ Theatre script can be related to the curriculum but emphasis
on this point is not made.

CLIL teacher-guided model

For a Readers’ Theatre to be CLIL one essential point is that the contents
included in the script should be related to a topic in the curriculum or
a cross-curricular element. The teacher starts the lesson with an activa-
tion of prior knowledge activity, depending on the topic they are dealing
with. Then, the students are asked to imagine what would happen if
X and Y (aspects, elements, animals, people, etc.) met in a specific
place, thus defining the context of the Readers’ Theatre script. Then, the
students are told that the teacher has the lines for each character, and a
list of characters participating in the dialogue is read out. The students
decide which role they would like to be, giving their justifications
accordingly. The teacher gives the script to the students, leaving
dictionaries, laptops and other language aids at hand to solve their
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 153

questions regarding vocabulary and pronunciation. The teacher can

limit the number of words she can help with to ten, for example.
Later, the students are given time to rehearse their lines
individually. They can change places, work with a partner if they feel
it is more comfortable, or they can use other places in the school (if
possible). Once this is done, the students undertake their first group
rehearsal. It is very important for the teacher not to intervene in this first
rehearsal (unless it is a complete disaster), as the students will negotiate
how to create the performance. They will ask each other about the
meaning of words, their pronunciation, and will discuss how to say
them properly. They will give suggestions to each other to improve the
performance. The students are then given time for a second rehearsal in
which the teacher should monitor that everybody is participating. Then,
time for a third group rehearsal can be given, suggesting students to go
to another place or use a corner in the room. When they are ready, they
perform the dialogue sitting down, in a circle. This is very important
because they can see each other’s faces. They comment on the perfor-
mance and how it can be improved. Some time is given for them to
practise alone and polish up these aspects. A second chance to represent
their script is given. This time it can be recorded, if they agree.
Once this has been considered, the main differences between the
first model and the second are that:
• Students are working on a script related to a topic in the curricu-
lum.
• Students are experiencing this drama activity as part of the
planning for a content topic.
• Students are given time to explore the text individually or in
pairs.
• Students are given time to negotiate meaning and give feedback.
• Students are given opportunities to rehearse and improve their
first version.
154  Raquel Fernández

CLIL student-centred model

This is an enhanced model of implementation of Readers’ Theatre.

In this case, it is advisable to previously train students in the use of
Readers’ Theatre with models 1 and 2. If students feel at ease practising
Readers’ Theatre script, it will be much easier to carry out this activity
in the classroom.
There are many ways in which students can receive the input
they will need to create their scripts. You can extract a text from a text-
book, you can show them a picture, you can give them just the first line
of the script, you can give them the setting, you can create the setting
physically in class, you can play a sound or sounds in class. Input can
be multimodal, it can be new or already known by the students. The
most important thing is that it encourages students to activate their prior
knowledge, and that the focus quickly on the task.
Once the input or prompt is given, the students are asked to brain-
storm about the characters which may appear in the dialogue. If the stu-
dents already have the characters, they can talk about the setting and the
main plot. Once this is done, they will have time to think about which
character they would like to perform and justify why. The students will
decide who will play which character, and will then start creating their
dialogues. To do this, the teacher will remind them about the plot, the
setting and the characters, and will leave textbooks, laptops, and dic-
tionaries at hand.
Students will devote one or two sessions to the writing of the
script. Once this is done, the script will be given to the teacher or to
another group in order to produce feedback. Students will take their
recommendations into account and start working on their roles. The
number of group rehearsals needed will vary according to the students’
experience in using Readers’ Theatre. Normally, they will require three
rehearsals to be ready for their first performance. An audio recording
can be made so that students can listen to and improve upon the per-
formance. If the students are experienced, or if there are many bodi-
ly-kinaesthetic students in the group, they will suggest adding gestures.
You can give the students the possibility of standing up and making
gestures to back up meaning. Not all of them will feel comfortable with
this idea, therefore, let them explore this possibility and reject it if they
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 155

do not want to do it. It is very important that they find their way in acting
out Readers’ Theatre. The last Readers’ Theatre representation can be
videotaped and used as input material for this or other groups.
During the process of creating a Readers’ Theatre script, teachers
and students can be aided by ICT, thus integrating its use in a natural
way. This can be done from the early stages in the preparation, for
example, the teacher can use padlet.com to organise students’ ideas dig-
itally. Students can have access to their classmates’ ideas instantly by
using laptops, tablets, mobile phones or the IWB.
Times have also changed for video and audio recording in class.
Years ago, teachers had to buy expensive cameras and tape recorders,
and after all the effort, the quality was not very good. Today we can re-
cord using mobile phones. Students can show their friends and parents
what they have been doing in class that same morning. In the case of
audio recording, the audio files can be edited and stored using Audacity.
Also, students can use the audio recordings to generate comics or rep-
resentations by using websites such as Animoto.
Audio can also be a good addition to a Readers’ Theatre per-
formance. Students can download sound effects and add them while
they are performing their role play. This will increase the importance of
audio input while representing. Some students prefer to use some back-
ground music to get their audience inspired. For example, a group of
primary students decided to use a The Lord of The Rings’ piece to rep-
resent the Water Cycle, as the music gave them the feeling of adventure.
Regarding visuals, it is true that Readers’ Theatre is famous for
not needing any special props. I have seen how a group of students have
created props for a Readers’ Theatre in order to get into role simply by
using head scarfs and elements found in class. It is also possible to use
the Interactive Whiteboard to recreate the setting of the story. Children
enjoy this activity immensely, and it gives the teacher the chance to
brush up on their knowledge of both content and language.
Tablets can also be a great way to support students’ scripts. They
can use them instead of paper if they feel more comfortable. It can also
be used as a way to jot down any symbols or lines that they come up
with. Digital tools can also be used to create Powerpoint presentations
where the script has been previously recorded, to which, the visuals are
156  Raquel Fernández

then added. Another alternative is to use programmes which help you

to create stories very easily, such as PuppetPals or ZooBurst, which
enables you to create a four-dimensional book.

Useful resources to get started with Reader’s Theatre

This section intends to provide a brief bibliographical guide of useful

resources which can help teachers and researchers to implement
Reader’s Theatre in their classrooms. In order to facilitate their access,
only digitally available resources have been compiled.

• Aaron Shepard’s Readers’ Theatre Page is one of the most com-

prehensive sites devoted to the use of Readers’ Theatre. It con-
tains an introduction to the use of Reader’s Theatre, tips, exam-
ples of performances carried out with scripts, scripts that you
can download and use in your classes, and useful downloadable
materials to start scriptwriting in your lessons. Also, Shepard has
compiled a useful bibliography for teachers and researchers to
further explore the use of Reader’s Theatre in their classes. The
website can be visited here: http://www.aaronshep.com/rt/index.
html
• Fiction Teachers claims to be the Number One Site for Fiction
Teachers on the Web. It includes sections on poetry, fiction
and theatre (classroom theatre). Here you can find tips and
recommendations on how to use theatre in your lessons, and
lesson plans and scripts available to be used in class. They are
classified according to the educational levels they are directed at.
The website is: http://www.fictionteachers.com/classroomtheater/
theater.html
• Stories to Grow By is a fantastic site for teachers interested in
working with stories in their classrooms. It contains a specific
section on Readers’ Theatre where you can access a variety of
scripts, most of them adapted from traditional folktales and fairy-
tales from around the world. Each script indicates the number of
people needed to perform the story. The website can be visited
here: http://www.storiestogrowby.com/script.html
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 157

• Reader’s Theater Scripts and Plays is a website which supports

the use of Reader’s Theatre as a valid tool to help children gain
reading fluency. They encourage the use of scripts in classrooms,
and have created them for use at Key Stage 3 level. You can
access their compilation of scripts here: http://teachingheart.net/
readerstheater.htm
• PBS Kids stands for children’s programming produced by the
Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. Their website
includes a section with a collection of scripts which can be used
in schools. You can find it here: http://pbskids.org/zoom/activiti
es/playhouse/
• Scripts for Schools is a site created by author Lois Walker.
Despite not all the scripts being free, as a starting point, it is
worth browsing this fantastic compilation and downloading the
available titles. The scripts are organised into different categories
according to topics or genre, for example: “Fables, myths and
legends” and “Asian Tales”. The site can be accessed here: http://
www.scriptsforschools.com
• Story Cart is described as ‘Your Source for Readers Theatre and
More’, and it has been designed for use at elementary school
levels. There are free scripts available for visitors to download
and use. Website: http://www.storycart.com
• The Best Class was launched as a website to improve communi-
cation between parents, students and teachers. It now offers the
possibility to access scripts created to be used in class. You can
visit it here: http://www.thebestclass.org/rtscripts.html

This is just a small selection of resources which can be accessed quickly

using the Internet. However, teachers and students do not need external
resources to implement Readers’ Theatre in class, as they can create
their own scripts and then make them available to other students and
teachers.
158  Raquel Fernández

Conclusions

In this paper, the role of Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom has
been supported by considering its main features. The aim has been to
examine the main aspects of CLIL, and reflect upon how we can make
them work together harmoniously in order to make bilingual education
reach the highest goals. According to literature in the field, the use of
drama can bring about significant learning gains in students, which go
beyond language and communication skills, to cater for cognitive, cul-
tural and content-specific learning goals. If drama is to bring so much
joy into the CLIL classroom, its purported lack of use may be caused
by teachers’ lack of knowledge and/or training. Therefore, it would be
interesting to develop specialised training courses and materials to help
teachers to see the educational value of using Readers’ Theatre as a
drama technique in their CLIL classrooms.
Furthermore, it is also important to highlight that the first steps
of empirical research regarding the use of Readers’ Theatre in CLIL
Classrooms have already been taken (see Drew and Pedersen 2010; and
Pettersen 2013). Hopefully, in the near future, the preliminary results
will allow us to redefine and improve the use of Reader’s Theatre in the
bilingual context. Therefore, it is important to help teachers to think
about its use and make results available to the research community.
One important research area to be explored is the use of Readers’
Theatre with students with learning needs. Within this scope, we can
find a variety of student needs and profiles. It would be very helpful to
distinguish between different learning needs and check whether Read-
ers’ Theatre is helping students reach their learning goals, considering
certain characteristics. Students with dyslexia are indeed very differ-
ent from students diagnosed with Hyperactivity or Autism Spectrum
Disorders. Each student may benefit in a different way from the use of
Readers’ Theatre and, in some cases, its use may be advised against.
Concerning the use of Readers’ Theatre, many empirical stud-
ies have obtained positive results regarding motivation levels in stu-
dents’ performance in class. However, this increase in motivation may
be caused by the introduction of an innovative element into the class,
which creates a sense of distance from traditional classes. Therefore, it
Readers’ Theatre in the CLIL classroom 159

would be interesting to know if this motivation is maintained through

time when Reader’s Theatre becomes mainstream practice in the class-
room.
In the realm of CLIL contexts, it would be interesting to discov-
er whether Readers’ Theatre contributes to learning development in all
content-areas, and whether it can be used as a ‘bridge’ between the Eng-
lish language subject and the content subjects. Also, it would be inter-
esting to find out if the students’ language development increases with
higher exposure to Readers’ Theatre. More specifically, student writing
skills could be the main focus of a longitudinal research to explore how
children increase their linguistic and communicative abilities through
writing with the use of Readers’ Theatre. The research could also study
to what extent the students’ improved writing skills have an impact on
their acquisition of content and creation of meaning.
Together, CLIL and Drama present students with the challenge of
actively participating in class, not only acquiring knowledge, but also
creating meaning and contributing to the lesson by offering up their
experiences and beliefs. They both encourage cognitive development
through the use of critical thinking and multiple intelligences, and are
also sensitive to cultural and moral issues which will be essential to ed-
ucate children as citizens. If Drama can boost CLIL’s educational goals,
it is time to consider how drama techniques can be implemented in the
classroom to create a perfect synergy.

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List of Tables and Figures

Foreword
Figure 1. Cornerstones in the autonomy classroom..........................11
Figure 2. Extract from K’s logbook..................................................15

1 Drama and CLIL: The power of connection

Figure 1.1. Some drama concepts.......................................................30
Figure 1.2. Comparison of CLIL Component and
Drama Forms.....................................................................35
Figure 1.3. A comparison of thinking skills and Drama.....................37

2 Playback Theatre: Embodying the CLIL methodology

Figure 2.1. Essential elements of Playback Theatre............................51
Figure 2.2. Setup of a Playback Theatre..............................................54
Figure 2.3. Structure of a Playback Theatre enactment.......................55
Table 2.1. Linguistic Role of Playback Theatre members.................66

3 Theatre Acting in Second Language Teacher Education

Table 3.1. Developmental stages of Being Model.............................86
Figure 3.1. BEING Model in action....................................................87
Table 3.2. An analysis of personal and professional identities..........96

4 Developing creativity through the Mantle of the Expert technique

Figure 4.1. Functions of brain hemispheres......................................111
Notes on Contributors

Cem Balcikanli works as an Associate Professor in the ELT Depart-

ment, Gazi Faculty of Education at Gazi University in Turkey and is the
vice director of the School of Foreign Languages at the same university.
He taught Turkish in the University of Florida between 2008 and 2009
as a Fulbright scholar. He completed his PhD degree at Gazi University
in 2010. He has been the editor in chief of the Journal of Language
Learning and Teaching (www.jltl.org) since 2011. His professional in-
terests include learner/teacher autonomy, the role of technology in lan-
guage learning/teaching, teaching Turkish as a second language, second
language teacher education. He has widely published in international
journals “Learner Autonomy in Language Learning: Student Teachers’
Beliefs” (Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 2010), “Learning to
foster autonomy: The role of teacher education materials”-with Rein-
ders (SISAL Journal, 2011), “Metacognitive Awareness Inventory For
Teachers” (Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology,
2011), and “The Use of the EPOSTL to Foster Teacher Autonomy: ELT
Student Teachers’ and Teacher Trainers’ Views”- with Çakır (Australian
Journal of Teacher Education-2012) and presented in international con-
ferences around the world.
Leni Dam is Coordinator of the LA Special Interest Group (IATEFL).
In 1973, she took her first steps towards developing learner autonomy
with a group of 14-year-old mixed-ability students learning English at
a comprehensive school south of Copenhagen. In the following years,
language learner autonomy was developed in all her classes at primary
as well as secondary level. In 1979, she combined teaching at school
with a job as an educational adviser and in-service teacher trainer at
University College, Copenhagen till she retired in 2006. In 2004, she
was awarded an honorary doctorate in pedagogy by Karlstad Univer-
sity, Sweden. Together with Lienhard Legenhausen, Münster Univer-
sity, Germany, she has studied the linguistic development of learners
in autonomous classroom environments. Her areas of interest are the
168  Notes on Contributors

development of learner autonomy, differentiated teaching and learning,

internal evaluation and the use of logbooks and portfolios. Within these
areas, she has produced materials, written articles and books, and given
numerous talks in many different countries. She is now freelance.
Raquel Fernández is a university lecturer working at Centro Univer-
sitario Cardenal Cisneros (CUCC) (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid), where
she has been recently appointed Deputy Director (Educational Inno-
vation and Research). She is also a lecturer for the Master in TEFL
(University of Alcalá), in charge of a subject related to the use of short
stories for creative language teaching. From 2009 to 2014, she has been
in charge of an innovation project, coordinating the Bilingual Project
at CUCC. She holds a Ph.D from Universidad de Alcalá since 2006,
and her main fields of interest are the use of literature in the EFL/CLIL
classroom, the development of literacy in bilingual contexts and CLIL
provision for Infant and Primary teachers. Her Doctoral Dissertation,
published by @becedario with the title “El uso de la literatura en la
enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera”, revolves around the use
of literature in Secondary Education. In 2013, she was awarded with
a BEDA Prize with a didactic project about the development of
CLIL awareness in Higher Education. Also, she has collaborated as a
pedagogical advisor for Edelvives and Vicens Vives, and has worked as
content creator and speaker for University of Dayton Publishing.
Nailya Garipova holds a PhD in English Philology (University of
Almeria). She is a Secondary School teacher with experience on staging
plays at different educational levels. Her main research areas are:
Language and culture of English speaking countries, Russian literature
and culture and its influence on English fiction and Pedagogical
approaches of teaching English as L2 through literature. She serves in
the executive and editorial board of the international department of the
literary journal The Blue Orange (Saint Petersburg). She is a member of
the Russian Association of Writers and Nabokov French Society.
Susan Hillyard is Coordinator for Teaching English through Drama
in Special Education, Ministry of Education, City of Buenos Aires,
Argentina where she is based. She was a NILE Associate trainer and
the Executive Editor for Development of the LACLIL on-line Journal.
Notes on Contributors 169

She has co-authored “Global Issues” an RBT for OUP. She has written
materials for Inglés, Inglês, English: ESP for South American Teachers
for the British Council and co-authored the TDI-TKT on-line course
for Pearson, New York. Susan likes to teach and moderate on-line, espe-
cially for TESOL’s EVO Drama courses and to deliver presentations at
conferences and lead workshops on, amongst other topics, developing
ELT through Drama, CLIL and Global Issues, Leadership and Manage-
ment. Trained at Warwick University, UK, in the heyday of Educational
Drama, growing with Dorothy Heathcote’s Drama as a Learning Medi-
um, she has lived in and taught EFL/ESL in five countries and has work
experience in a further twelve.
Donna Lee Fields has a Ph.D in Spanish literature and is a Professor
at the International University of Valencia, Spain. She specializes in
the CLIL method and magisterial classes. She is a teacher-trainer and
gives talks on teaching methods and the philosophy and creative tools
to use to stimulate virtual classes. She has published articles and papers
internationally on distance learning and the CLIL method. Coordinator
for the on-line English courses at the Diputación of Valencia, and ex-
aminer for level exams at the Consellería d’Educació in Valencia. She
has taught primary, secondary and adult classes in public and private
schools both in the United States and in Spain and currently working on
a book about the role of the witch in fairy tales from a philosophical/
psychological perspective.
Patricia Martín Ortiz is Associate Professor of English at the Uni-
versity of Salamanca where she teaches English Language and Chil-
dren’s Literature. She received her degree in English Philology in 1994
at the University of Salamanca where she earned her PhD in 2002.
Her main fields of interest are teaching English language to young
learners, literature and literacy in Early English Language Education
and children’s literature. She has been English Teacher in Secondary
School since 1996. She has published books such as Language Teach-
ing: Theoretical Basis and Curricular Design, The Golden Tree of 19th
and Early 20th Century Children’s Literature in English, English and
American Literature. A Practical Approach and La literatura infantil
en Roald Dahl.
170  Notes on Contributors

Tomás Motos Teruel has a Ph.D in Philosophy and the Science of

Education, as well as a degree in Psychology. Professor and Lecturer of
Didactics and Educational Management at University of Valencia, for
more than twenty years. Now retired he is even more active, as the Di-
rector of “Theatre in Education: Theatrical Pedagogy” at the University
of Valencia and a teacher on various postgraduate courses, He gives
teacher-training courses, seminars and lectures in different countries, and
participates in national and international congresses. He has authored
books and papers and has collaborated on publications on Creativity,
Body Language, Theatre in Education, Arts Education, Social Thea-
tre, and Teaching of Language and Literature. His latest publication is
“Otros escenarios para el Teatro” (2013). A playwright as well, his most
recent work is “Sylvia, leona de Dios”, on the life of American poet
Sylvia Plath. At the moment, his main focus has been in Applied Thea-
tre, working with the company “Teatro Playback Inestable” in Valencia.
Kemal Sinan Özmen currently works as a faculty member at Gazi Uni-
versity, English language teaching program in Turkey. He holds a PhD
degree on teaching English as a foreign language with a specific focus
on pre-service teacher education. Dr. Özmen also studied at University
of Rochester, Warner School of Education as a Fulbright PhD visiting
researcher. His research interests are centered on teacher cognition in-
cluding variables such as teacher beliefs, teacher identity, critical think-
ing and teaching as a performing art. Some of his relevant publications
are: ‘Exploring student-teachers’ beliefs about language learning and
teaching’ (Current Issues in Education, 2012), ‘Washback and teach-
er burnout’ (The Teacher Trainer Journal, 2012), ‘The impact of and
acting course on prospective teachers’ beliefs about language teaching’
(Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 2011) and ‘Fostering non-
verbal immediacy and teacher identity through an acting course’ (Aus-
tralian Journal of Teacher Education, 2010).