Author: Dodson, Sarah L..

Title: The Educational Potential of Drama for ESL.

Source: Gerd Bräuer (Ed.): Body and Language. Intercultural Learning Through Drama. Westport, Connecticut & London 2002. P. 161-179.

Publisher: Ablex Publishing.

Published with kind permission of the editor.

Sarah L.Dodson

The Educational Potential of Drama for ESL

INTRODUCTION

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

Moreover, the benefits that students reap in theater are not limited to language skills. Increases in self-esteem, self-confidence, and spontaneity often result from theater activities in the classroom, thus reducing inhibitions, feelings of alienation, and sensitivity to rejection (Via, 1976; Stern, 1980; Kao & O'Neill, 1998). Drama activities frequently increase students' integrative motivation, instilling a desire to learn the language in order to interact with people of the target culture. This leads to longer and more enthusiastic study of the language (Stern, 1980; Kao & O'Neill, 1998; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991). Another benefit of drama is its use in teaching cultural appreciation (Byram & Fleming, 1998). (For a more in-depth review of the literature on the history and the benefits of drama for language learners, see Dodson [2001).)

The process of using drama to teach languages has only increased with the popularity of the communicative approach, where students use language for a purpose, to convey real meaning and solve real problems. Recent research has shown that teachers are moving beyond asking students to read dialogues from the textbook or perform short role-plays in favor of more complex and lengthy activities like process drama (an extended role-playing activity that uses integrated skills to involve the whole class) (Kao & O'Neill, 1998; Liu, this volume) and producing entire plays (Smith, 1984; Wessels, 1987).

Second- and foreign-language (L2/FL) teachers seem to recognize the value of a classroom that encourages students to work together in the target language to improvise or role-play. However, the focus of these activities is usually limited to oral language production, and many teachers use drama only occasionally. In fact, an early proponent of drama in language teaching, Holden (1981), warns of the dangers of too much drama: "It should not be used too often or to the exclusion of other aids. If this happens, it will lose its effectiveness. Fifteen minutes once a week is far more effective than a full hour at sporadic intervals" (p. 29). This chapter, which describes an English as a Second Language (ESL) drama class, shows that four hours of theater instruction per week for an entire academic term is indeed effective and can integrate language skills to teach both oral communication and literacy skills in the target language as well as cross-cultural awareness.

A DRAMA COURSE IN AN INTENSIVE ENGLISH PROGRAM

With these ideas in mind, plus a love for the theater that I wanted to share with my ESL students, I developed and taught an integrated-skills drama class for advanced second-language learners at a midsized university in the western part of the United States. The course, an elective, was taught in the Intensive English Program, which prepares foreign students for academic study. Each IEP course lasts seven weeks; this class met eighty minutes per day, three times a week.

The overall goal of the class was to introduce these advanced language learners to elements of the theater and elicit as much spoken and written language from them as possible. Though the focus of the course was on the process of learning the language and learning about the theater rather than producing a polished play, the final project demonstrated that the students had assimilated the information from the course and were enjoying communicating in English.

The course was given the name "Language and Pronunciation through Theater" in hopes of enticing students who might otherwise not have been interested in a class promising simply "drama." In addition, this title high lighted the fact that the course would indeed improve students' English, and not just be a "fun" elective. Many of the students in the Intensive English Program express a desire to improve their pronunciation, and even though native-like pronunciation was not one of my main goals for this course, I knew we would work on pronunciation regularly, so it seemed worthwhile to include it in the title.

The six students in the class - one Kuwaiti, one Peruvian, one Chinese, one Korean, and two Japanese-were college-aged female ESL students, except for the Peruvian, an immigrant in her thirties. The students were all classified as "advanced" at the IEP, taking 300- and 400-level classes, and intending to enroll soon in university classes. The students, except for the Peruvian, knew each other and me fairly well from having had prior classes together.

USING DRAMA ACTIVITIES TO MEET COURSE OBJECTIVES

"Language and Pronunciation through Theater" offered the students as many choices as possible and provided them with new experiences that they might not have sought out on their own. I developed the following objectives for the class and listed these on the course syllabus:

1. To integrate reading, writing, listening, and speaking

2. To improve pronunciation

3. To learn about the history and conventions of theater in America

4. To read, discuss, and understand plays

5. To use computers and technology to enhance learning

6. To develop improvisation skills

7. To create a final project (a theatrical performance) for IEP students, staff, friends, and family

This chapter briefly discusses the importance of the first six objectives and how they were accomplished using varions drama activities, describes how the students responded to these activities, and explains in-depth how the final project came to fruition.

To Integrate Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking in English

At many Intensive English Programs in the United States, these language skills are taught separately because students with such diverse backgrounds may be at different levels in the different skills-strong in grammar but weak in listening comprehension, for example. However, this separation of skills is not natural, for when we communicate, we are always using more than one isolated skill at a time. I wanted to help prepare my students for living and studying in this country, where they would be constantly calling upon their knowledge of all their language skills together. I also hoped to improve significantly their reading and writing skills, which are not always engaged in traditional acting classes. Therefore, each class and each assignment required that the students use elements of different language skills.

Homework almost always involved reading an article about drama, reading a section of a play, or responding in writing to a play or class activity. Discussions the following day, then, were based on what they had read or written for homework. Pairs of students also wrote scenes; this activity required them to communicate in their common language, English, as well as express creatively in writing their ideas for the scene. Here the skills were naturally integrated for decision-making and problem-solving.

Another major out-of-class assignment that integrated skills was to attend two live plays (a listening activity), write a report reacting to each, and then briefly tell the class about it. There were a variety of student and community performances taking place in town, with at least two plays per weekend. This sort of assignment not only exposed them to an unfamiliar aspect of American culture - live theater - but also meant that they didn't sit passively while they watched the play, because they knew they would be writing and talking about it later.

Writing activities also took place during class sessions, which kept them from being entirely devoted to oral communication. Most classes opened with a short writing assignment: When the students came in, there was a prompt on the board, asking them to reflect on a new idea, comment on what they had done or read for homework, react to a field trip, or preview a new activity. These prompts served several purposes: focusing the students on the material, promoting regular writing, allowing me to verify that the students had done homework without needing to quiz them, and preventing tardy students from disrupting a group activity that would otherwise already be in progress. Moreover, the writing led easily into discussions. Other types of reading and writing that occurred in the class happened during field trips, where the students were required to take notes. In addition, we followed along in the script of a play while listening to it on tape and read poems aloud to practice pronunciation. These activities created various combinations of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

To Improve Pronunciation in English

Many days, the daily writings were followed by a vocal warm-up that practiced the suprasegmental elements of pronunciation rather than discrete sounds. Because these students came from five different language backgrounds, they had different problems with English pronunciation. The week before they performed the play, therefore, I worked with them individually on sounds that were causing comprehension problems. Overall, they all seemed to need work on articulation, volume, intonation, phrasing, and word groups, so this became the focus of our regular vocal warm-up exercises.

On the first day of class, I explained that actors must physically warm up their voices as well as their bodies before they rehearse in order to make their voices as loud, clear, and flexible as possible. I also pointed out that many of these exercises would help Americans understand them better. As a result, the students were motivated to practice this even though they felt self-conscious or foolish at times. Over the course of the term, we used tongue twisters, poems, and short speeches from plays that we were reading. I varied the approaches by sometimes asking for choral readings from the entire group, sometimes pairs, sometimes individuals. Sometimes the students stood in a circle; sometimes they were at the edges of the room. This variety affected how loudly they spoke, how much eye contact they made, and how confident they appeared.

Instead of my telling the students where to stress a word or change the pitch of their voice when they read aloud, we used a copy of the poem or script on the overhead to mark word stress or to draw lines showing the direction of the intonation. Then we practiced. This enabled the students to find patterns and rules instead of just memorizing the stress or intonation for each line. The students were later able to apply some of these techniques on their own lines of dialogue in the play. We also worked on breathing, speaking from the diaphragm, and projecting without shouting, which are all traditional drama techniques to speak more clearly. Overall, the students seemed less anxious about speaking English aloud after these exercises, and their suprasegmentals improved.

To Learn about the History and Conventions of Theater in America

To give the students a background to drama, we took field trips to two theaters in town, interviewed a local playwright, and read articles about drama. In addition to providing new and interesting content information, these activities also exposed the students to places and people they would not have encountered on their own. The activities also encouraged them to integrate language skills while communicating about what they learned.

The first theater that we visited was very traditional. The tour guide, a drama professor, took the students through the lobby, green room, script library, scene shop, costume shop, dressing rooms, wings, light and sound booth, and onto the stage itself. He told stories about the theater's history, briefly explained the processes that occur in each location, and answered the students' questions as they took notes. The two main goals of this visit were accomplished: to familiarize the students with the insides of a theater and to provide them with the necessary vocabulary to talk about producing plays.

The second field trip was to a small (forty-nine-seat) salon-style theater/art gallery. The house manager explained the history and mission of this theater, showed us around the cramped backstage, answered questions, and then brought us up on stage to play improvisation games. At this point in the course, the students had already participated in improv in class, so they were not surprised or uncomfortable about trying new activities - in fact, they seemed to really enjoy being on stage. And as the leader of these games was a professional in the field, he brought a number of great ideas and dramatic skill to the games.

This manager, in fact, wore many pats: In addition to running the theater, he also acted, directed, and wrote plays. When he revealed the latter, the students became very excited to realize that they now knew a playwright, and asked many questions about the process of writing, about the plot and characters of his plays, and about the differences between writing novels and plays. As none of this had been planned, I could see that the students were using English spontaneously and communicatively. And for the most part, he understood their questions and they understood his answers well enough to ask follow-up questions.

The students also learned about American theater through reading assignments. At the beginning of the course, the students read an essay from Taking Center Stage: Drama in America (Rathburn, 1997), an ESL text about drama. This article, "Origins of American Theater," introduced major periods by explaining what typified these periods and showing pictures of performances. The students completed a worksheet about this reading, which was followed by a class discussion. The Japanese students talked about how Kabuki theater is very different from drama in America, and other students shared their love for musicals. After reading three plays later on in the class, the students were able to identify them as representative of a certain period.

The students read another essay from Taking Center Stage after having finished reading the first play covered in this course. This essay, "The Structure of Drama," explained terms used to describe how literature is structured, such as rising action, climax, and falling action. I drew an arc on the board, and the students marked elements of the plot of the play Stranger in Town on the arc and labeled the different points with the proper terra. For example, they correctly identified the arrival of the stranger, his meeting the waitress, and his finding a job as part of the rising action. We later did this with each of the plays studied.

These various activities encouraged the students to use all their language skills to learn about theater as a content area. The topic engaged them, and they were motivated to learn the ideas and vocabulary about drama, because they knew they would be producing their own play at the end of the term.

To Read, Discuss, and Understand Plays in English

The students read three plays for this class, with the majority of the reading done at home. The first play, Stranger in Town by Lou Spaventa (1992), was written especially for intermediate ESL students. The play ends without resolving the problems presented so that the students can write the conclusion. The vocabulary in this play is limited and recycled throughout, and the plot and characters are not complicated. My students, who are considered "advanced" at the IEP, had no trouble reading it. Throughout the course, I encouraged them to read without referring to dictionaries or electronic translators unless a word or expression had appeared several times and interfered with comprehension. When a student would occasionally ask me in class what a term meant, I brought in the context of the character speaking to help them determine what he was conveying by asking the students what they thought would be realistic for him to say at that point in the play.

In this play, a mysterious man moves to a small town and tries to befriend the people he meets without revealing what all of a sudden brought him there. He finds a job, coaches the school basketball team, and falls in love. Eventually the townspeople discover the truth - that he had been a professional basketball player until he got in trouble with drugs - when a drug dealer from his past shows up and demands that he start selling to the kids on the team, or else the dealer will reveal his past. Spaventa encourages the students to write an ending to the play that shows the townspeople's reactions to this news and decides the stranger's fate.

My students read this play easily and enjoyed it; more importantly, they could identify with the feeling of being a "stranger in town" and having to decide how much to reveal, how much to change. This led to very productive class discussions. For example, at one point the protagonist is falsely arrested for assault. When I asked the students to imagine what he is feeling as he waits in jail overnight, a student from China shared that she too had been arrested by the police in America for something she had not done, and had to spend the night in jail until she spoke with a judge. Her story helped the other students make the necessary connections between what happens in texts studied in school and what happens in real life. Because she and other students could understand what the characters were feeling, they were able to talk easily and comfortably about the play.

Because this was the only play we read set in contemporary America, we spent more time discussing culture based on this script than with the other two plays we studied. We looked at how conversations are carried out, what makes different characters polite or impolite, and what small towns in America are like, among other things.

The second play we read was The Romancers (in a prose translation), a one-act play in verse by nineteenth-century French author Edmond Rostand. This is a satire of Romeo and Juliet, where the young loyers are not really star-crossed at all: Their parents pretend to hate each other so that their rebellious children will secretly fall in love. Though the language of this play was harder for the students to understand, they still liked the plot and the characters, which inspired a lot of discussion about the characters' motivations, falling in love, and disobeying parents.

The final play studied was Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucile Fletcher (1948). This is a one-act play about a bedridden hypochondriac who spends much of her time on the phone, alone, while her husband works long hours. One night on a crossed telephone line she overhears two hit men planning a murder. The details about the apartment where the victim lives sound very similar to her own apartment. While she is on the phone to the police trying to convince them of the seriousness of the call, she is murdered - it was her husband who had hired the hit men.

This play was performed on the radio show "Suspense" in the 1940s. We listened to this radio play as we read along in the script, pausing to discuss each scene. This is the only play we studied that was read entirely in class. The voices of the actors sounded unusual to the students because movie stars spoke differently sixty years ago and also because the cassette tape was somewhat scratchy with age. These elements presented the students with a listening challenge. Reading along in the script, of course, helped them understand what they heard, while having the context of voices and scary music helped them understand the mood and the tension. Also, not being able to stop and reread or look words up in the dictionary while they listened forced them to focus on the overall meaning of the dialogue and determine vocabulary through context.

The discussion of this play was different from the previous discussions, because the students had trouble identifying with the protagonist. However, they were able to talk about what things frighten them and how they feel when alone in a dark house. In addition, they compared this play to modern horror movies. This play lent itself especially well to the analysis of the structure of drama because of its suspense and the actress's increasing panic.

Throughout the course, the students demonstrated their understanding of the plays and integrated their language skills in the daily in-class writings, postings to the Web forums, in-class discussions, and also as they rewrote scenes or added new oves.

To Use Computers and Technology to Enhance Learning

A Web site (http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/ceilidh/ad440/forum.htm) was set up for this class. It included a list of links to theater sites, chat rooms, a copy of the syllabus, and a Web forum for on-line discussions. In this Web forum, an asynchronous medium for the students and me to discuss class topics in writing, we "talked" about the plays we were reading. The students also posted their reports describing plays they had attended. In addition to using the Web forum, the students were required to type all their assignments, because the ability to type reasonably quickly on American keyboards is a skill that will serve them well if they plan to study at a university.

The experience of posting to the forum allowed the students to write for a different audience - their peers, instead of just their teacher, and in fact, anyone else who might happen to see it - and in a very different medium. lt was a chance for them to "publish," for their postings could be accessed even alter the end of the semester. (I encouraged them to give the URL to their friends and family back home to show what they were doing in this class.) It also offered them a greater chance to reflect on and respond to their peers' ideal, without privileging the more outgoing students: On an asynchronous forum, even the shy students can say as much as they wish or take as much time as they need. Moreover, the back-and-forth quality of the postings forced the students to rethink and justify their earlier messages in order to respond to others' questions, leading to valuable negotiation of meaning.

The content of the on-line discussions, which took place regularly, was related to whatever scene of the play they had read for homework. Each student made comments and wrote or answered questions that the other students and I were supposed to respond to. Here is a typical exchange from the week that we read The Romancers:

• Korean student: I thought the fathers were enemies before I read bottom of p99. but they are not enemies. they are friends and they want to combine their properties and families. so they want their children to get married. so they tried to make them be interested in each others. they thought if they pretend to be enemies, their children will have more interesting about each other.

• Sarah (teacher): These fathers are pretty tricky! I think they have a good plan, though. I wonder how long they have been friends and how they met? The actors who play the fathers/mothers in the play will have to decide what their relationship is and what their history as friends and neighbors is.

• Kuwaiti Student: I absolutely agree with Sarah too. They made a great job although they are friends. They made is seem real. This play reflects or tells us indirectely not to believe all what you hear, You may be wrong sometimes.

With more time, I would also have had the students post reader reviews to Amazon.com on the pages where these plays were sold. This activity, which I've done in other classes, is popular, because the reviews appear on a nationaily known Web site.

Overall, I would say that the students were comfortable using computers in this class and did not question why they had to visit the computer lab so often for a drama class. With more time, I would have in fact increased the number of visits and done other types of computer activities: synchronous "discussions" in class chat rooms to vary the types of response, and Web "treasure hunts" where the students use search engines to find Web sites about drama and then use skimming and scanning skills to answer questions.

To Develop Improvisation Skills in English

As improvisation skills are especially necessary when living in a country where one's native language is not spoken, I felt that the students needed practice communicating on the spot and negotiating meaning. Another reason that we spent class time on improvisation activities was simply because it was a lot of fun for the students, and it seemed to reduce their anxiety and self-consciousness. Therefore, once a week we spent at least an hour acting without scripts and using language spontaneously.

On some of these days, we were joined by "Conversation Partners," American students who volunteer in oral communication classes at the IEP. These students are frequently education, English, or anthropology majors who are interested in meeting people from other countries. Some of these students also receive extra credit in their academic courses for participating. The three conversation partners, whom I called "Drama Partners," were female English majors in the same age group as most of my students, each with extensive experience in studying other languages but no theater background. They could identify with many of my students and were genuinely interested in working with them.

The most popular improv games were Commercials, The Last Scene, Slide Show, and First, Middle, Last. These were all done spontaneously in class, frequently in groups of three: two ESL students and one American. I would give the directions, ask if they had questions, divide them into groups, and tell them how much time they had to prepare (usually five to ten minutes).

Developing "commercials" to sell an item in the classroom is a low-stress way to introduce ESL students to acting. They have enough time - about eight minutes - to choose something to self and to plan out what they're going to say, but not enough to script it word for word. They are encouraged to take an everyday object and find an unusual use for it (for example, one pair used a highlighter pen as an alien communication device). And because they don't need to worry about creating a story with a beginning, middle, and end, this activity takes little time (only about a minute to perform each commercial) and produces little stress. After each commercial, the members of the audience would say whether or not they would buy the advertised item and why.

A more elaborate improv exercice for small groups is The Last Scene (adapted from Maley & Duff, 1982). In this activity, the students must create the end of a story that involves props sitting on a table. The premise is that actors have just run out of a theater, leaving the audience wanting to see the end of the play. The students must perform the last scene with no information about the rest of the play. They look at the items on the table and must develop the scene from there. The structure provided by this activity means that the students don't feel overwhelmed with the idea of creating a skit from scratch. When my class did The Last Scene, the props I included were the following: a Mardi Gras mask with purple feathers, a basket, a can of green beans, and a tape measure. The groups came up with skits that differed drastically. For example, one group created a story about a pregnant woman at a hospital whose mother didn't want to believe her daughter was pregnant. The frantic mother fanned herself with the feathered mask; the doctor took the daughter's blood pressure with the tape measure; and the daughter gave birth to the can of green beans, which the doctor placed into the basket. In another group, a bandit wore the mask and brandished the tape measure (with the tape extended) like a sword. I was very pleased with both their creativity and their ease with English in this game.

Another activity, Slide Show, is structured differently in that it is a game where traditionally, all the actors work together, but not everyone actually speaks. I modified this so that all students had to communicate to make the activity work. In Slide Show, the actors (or sometimes the audience) choose a place and a relationship between two people who have been on vacation and are now narrating a slide show about their trip. The other students then become the slides themselves. While the two vacationers turn their backs, the others create a tableau (as complicated and amusing as possible). Traditionally, the tableau is created in seconds with no conversation among the actors. However, in my class, the students talked about how and why they wanted to arrange themselves; frequently they disagreed and had to rearrange. For example, during one slide of "Egypt," some students wanted to depict belly dancing, but the others were trying to form a pyramid. This was a good exercice for improving language because the students had to convince each other of the merits of their ideas and come to a compromise very quickly.

First, Middle, Last is another improv game that focuses on the language and not the acting. Actors take turns placing themselves in a row and saying a sentence. The next person must have a sentence that connects the people before him to those after. In the end, the actors and their sentences have created a story. One of the stories my class created in this activity was about a flying elephant. When we tried this in class, we also practiced saying the lines in different ways - loudly, whispering, with actions, sadly, excitedly, and even in their own languages using body language to show what they were saying.

The students looked forward to the days we devoted to improvisation games. They really enjoyed interacting with the American drama partners, and they laughed a lot on these days. The affective barrier had been lowered: They were more comfortable and less self-conscious speaking in English as a result.

To Create a Final Project (A Theatrical Performance)

Two and a half weeks before the end of the class, after having read the three plays, I presented the students with the options for the final performance: perform selected scenes, present a play we've read, present a different play, or write and present an original play. I was hoping for the latter, but I wanted to give the students a choice. I also stressed that memorization wouldn't be necessary, because they could benefit from the play without the immense stress of needing to memorize lines in such a short time. And as stated before, my focus for this class was on the process of learning about drama in English, not on a professional-quality final performance.

The students debated the pros and cons of the various options. They wanted to do a play, rather than a series of scenes. They wanted to do one they had already studied, rather than write one from scratch. Because Stranger in Town had so many characters and because it wasn't a comedy, they decided against it. They liked Sorry, Wrong Number, which would work well as reader's theater, since it was written for radio. However, they realized that this play has one main character and a number of very small roles. The students agreed that they'd rather have a play with equal roles for everyone. The Romancers worried them because of the language, which is flowery and poetic. The students feared that it would be too hard to pronounce and even harder for an audience of other ESL students to understand. When I told them that they could modify the language to make it more modern, they decided that they wanted to try it.

However, more than just the language in The Romancers needed to be rewritten. Only five characters have speaking parts in the play, and there were six students in the class. Possible solutions to the dilemma of having an unequal number of students and roles include turning one character into two and dividing his lines; having one or more student take on backstage roles (lights, set, costumes, publicity), become the stage manager, or work as the assistant director; writing in extra characters to accommodate the number of actors; or eliminating characters or doubling up on roles when there are too few actors. The students in my class wanted to write a sixth character so that everyone could participate as equally as possible. Therefore, we created a narrator who would introduce each scene and remain on stage in character throughout the whole play, reacting nonverbally to the dialogue around her: This student played the wall that divides the two families' land. This was a very clever idea, for it is the fact that the two familier are separated that draws the young lovers together - the wall is the reason for the play! And Rostand, the playwright, has the characters anthropomorphize the wall, talking about it as if it were human, which made it easy for the actress playing this role to blush and drop her eyes during compliments and get angry when the parents talked about pulling it down to get it out of the way.

Another issue with characters that came up was that most of the female students didn't want to play the male characters - but Rostand only wrote one woman into the play. So very quickly, the fathers turned into mothers and the kidnapper became a woman. The casting then was simple: The students wrote down three characters they would like to play, and fortunately the students didn't scramble for the same parts.

In the following class, we discussed how we wanted to rewrite the play. We first talked about the setting - where and when it should take place. I told them we could deviate from Rostand's original old-fashioned France. There was no group consensus, so I asked them to act out the beginning in two ways - Shakespeare's time and modern days - and then decide which they liked best. After the two lovers tried to make it modern, acting like slangy teenagers and talking about going to the movies together, the others decided that it didn't work as well that way and that they should set it in olden days but modernize the language, keeping the ideas and the character motivations the same.

At this point, the students had just finished reading the play for homework, so we had not yet discussed how the play ended. As we discussed Rostand's happy ending, where the kidnapper hired by the fathers abducts the girl, the boy saves her, and the parents pretend to be so grateful they allow their children to marry, the students expressed dissatisfaction that it was so orderly and predictable. They had been expecting a funnier and more calamitous conclusion. So I suggested that as long as we were changing the language and the gender of mort of the characters and writing in a part for the wall, we might as well rewrite the ending. They agreed, and after discussion, came up with an excellent idea - because the kidnapper is being played by a woman, why doesn't she fall in love with the boy and kidnap him instead of the girl, which she has been hired to do? Then the girl must fight to cave her boyfriend from the clutches of this villainous woman who wants to take him away from her.

Pleased with the new outcome of the play, students started to work on modifying their dialogue. In pairs, they read through a scene and decided what they wanted to change. Rewriting in this fashion asked them not just to integrate language skills but also to demonstrate comprehension and critical thinking. Each time they condensed a melodramatic paragraph-long speech, the students proved that they had understood it so well that they were able to summarize effectively. By using both a tape player and a video camera and with me working with one group at a time and taking notes, we were able to catch the changes orally; later I listened to the tapes and typed up the changes to the script, which I posted to the Web forum so that the students could access the most current draft without waiting for the next class period to get a paper copy from me. (See Appendix A for examples of the revision and http://lamar.colostate.edu/-sdodson for the entire rewritten script.)

The next day that we met, the students read through the scenes that they had modified and then continued revising the rest. I met with the narrator individually to help her write her lines. In class, she worked with the lovers to help them with their lines. The integrated-skills theme of this class continued through the end, therefore, because the original reading assignment led to discussion and then to more reading and writing.

Then, with eight days left before the performance, we were ready to run through the entire play. This was a day that our conversation partners were scheduled to work with the class, so we asked them if they would be our "extras" and play the nonspeaking roles like the messenger and kidnapper's henchmen. They were very happy to help out (and fortunately, were also available the evening of the performance).

The last week was spent rehearsing and revising and taking care of details like set, props, and costumes. The students did most of the work, shopping at a thrift store, loaning each other clothing and props. A volunteer made swords out of cardboard and aluminum foil. The university theater department loaned us fake ivy vines to decorate the sparse set. During the rehearsals, the students watched their classmates perform, suggesting other ways to move and to speak. We also did a "line-through" rehearsal, where the actors sit in a circle and read their lines from the script as quickly and loudly as possible. This helps to keep the energy up and to encourage the actors to pick up on their cues right away. The students also planned an extra rehearsal the day of the show and met by themselves in the room they were to perform in.

The day before the performance, a journalist from the student newspaper interviewed the class and wrote a very enthusiastic article that was published in time for opening night. She interviewed some of the students, who commented on how much they were enjoying the experience:

"This is exciting for us ... None of us have been in a play that was in English," explained the Peruvian, who continued, "The pronunciation is improving and it makes us feel more comfortable and secure when we are trying to finish our complete sentences. When people ask me questions, I feel more pressure, but now (after working on the play) I feel that I can do it, because we have fun; that makes it easier."

The Chinese student explained that “You get more practice ... you can speak and act at the same time.”

Approximately forty people attended the play, mostly IEP students and teachers. It took place in a large room at the student center. The two doors to the hallway served as exits and entrances for the "stage," and the set consisted of a table covered with ivy, a stool for the narrator to sit on directly in front of the table, and a chair on either side of the wall.

The students were nervous and excited. I had warned them before they went on stage that they would need to pause whenever the audience laughed, but they gave me looks that seemed to say that they didn't expect that to happen. Therefore, when the audience did indeed start laughing, the students were first surprised, then delighted. Each burst of laughter from the audience seemed to boost the actors' self-esteem, and they began speaking louder and more confidently. By this point, many of them had memorized most of their lines, even though it was not required. They still referred to their scripts on stage, but were familiar enough with the dialogue to also make eye contact with the other actors.

The play was only half an hour long, and the time seemed to fly by. After the applause and the curtain call, audience members came up to the actors individually and congratulated them. The students were very proud of their final project and their overall performance in the drama class: They had demonstrated that they could understand and use English in a variety of communicative ways.

CONCLUSION

On the teacher evaluation forms, students expressed their satisfaction with the class. They felt as if they had learned a lot about the English language as well as the theater-and liked it. Additionally, they noticed improvement in their affective factors, such as self-confidence. The anonymous comments included:

• I had fun in this class because I enjoyed using English through the theater. I think is the way I don't feel shy. However, practice in this class helped me more in my daily life.

• I really enjoyed this class. It is surprising that it is easier for me to play in English than in Japanese.

• And this class has a lot of fun. We have improved our pronunciation and performance ability.

• I really enjoyed acting in was a big step for me. I feel that I gained confident in Speaking and I am more enthusiastic and optimistic thanks to you.

• I'm very satisfied with this class. Because all of us can participated in all activities together. At first I ashamed to act or to speak loudly, but the play was interesting.

The teacher evaluations also included statements about the class and the instructor. Using a five-point Likert scale, the students responded to the statements with agreement or disagreement. Representative statements include "I made progress in my study of English" (average of 4.3 out of 5 possible points) and "Overall, how would you rate this course?" (4.7 out of 5). Some friends of the students in this class also approached me to ask when I would be teaching it again.

I feel that this class was successful because it offered a different approach to learning English, and the content engaged the students. The frequent laughter kept the students comfortable speaking and in good spirits. Integrating the language skills allowed us to take off in many directions and prepare the students for real interactions with native speakers. They now have more knowledge of American culture and the conventions of communicating in this country. Their literacy skills also improved, which will benefit them greatly as they begin university study. Because the students so enjoyed the activities and were so proud of their play, they grew more confident in using English.

The students also grew more appreciative of each other's cultures and more cognizant of American culture. Class discussions about the themes and characters of the play were enlightening. The students and I clearly saw that we do not all approach the idea of a stranger in town or picking the right person to marry or even the genre of drama in similar ways, and we were able to talk about these differences without criticizing each other's cultures. The students also learned how conversations happen in English, developing an awareness of social niceties and discourse that most had not studied explicitly before. Moreover, throughout the course we talked about various aspects of American culture (in the contexts of the readings, the field trips, and what the improvisations brought to light) as well as how Americans speak, including paralinguistic elements like body language, gestures, and proxemics, which are perhaps as important to communicating as the grammar, syntax, and lexical items themselves (Wessels, 1987; Black, 1999).

Overall, then, I would say that my objectives for this course were met - even exceeded - and I will continue to incorporate drama and other communicative activities as I teach other language classes. After all, for language students to benefit from drama, they do not need to take entire courses devoted to theater. Drama also has a place in traditional language courses as well: I have seen that students enjoy pantomimes that elicit certain verb tenses in grammar classes, role-plays that demonstrate comprehension in reading classes, and improvisation activities that practice spontaneous speech in listening and speaking classes. (For more ideas on how to integrate theater techniques into language courses, see Dodson [20001.)

APPENDIX A: THE ROMANCERS, BEFORE AND AFTER

Here are some examples of how the students rewrote the nineteenth-century play to make the language more accessible and the ending more engaging.

Original kidnapping scene:

Sylvette: The hour has struck. He must be waiting. (Sylvette is kidnapped.) Help! Help!

Percinet: Great Heavens!

Sylvette: Percinet, they are carrying me off!

Percinet: (Leaping to the wall) I am coming! (He fights the kidnappers and wounds them. Runs to Sylvette) Sylvette!

Sylvette: My savior!

Pasquinot (Sylvette's father): Bergamin's son! Your savior? Why, then I give you to him!

Sylvette and Percinet: Heavens!

Revised and extended kidnapping scene:

Patrick: I love sitting here at night. But I'm so nervous right now! I hope Sylvette comes soon.

Sylvette: (appears on the other side of the wall) Patrick, I'm here!

Susan (the kidnapper): (runs to Sylvette and puts a scarf over her head, gives her to Jacques, who holds a sword by her throat) Patrick, I'm here!

Pat: Sylvette?

Syl: Patrick! Help!

Susan: (jumps over wall and runs to Patrick) Don't marry her - marry me!

Pat: Marry you? Who are you?

Sus: I'm Susan, and I have loved you since the first moment I saw you.

Pat: I don't love you. I love Sylvette!

(Sylvette struggles with Jacques to try to escape)

Sus: Give me a chance! I'm very talented. I'm a kidnapper!

Pat: But do you like to read Shakespeare?

Sus: No, but I can fight with my sword.

(Sylvette escapes from Jacques, grabs his sword, climbs the wall to rescue Patrick)

Syl: Give him back to me!

Sus: No, first fight me. (Susan throws Patrick to Brutus, who holds him back)

(Sword fight between Sylvette and Susan. At first Susan is winning.)

Pat: Sylvette, save me!!

(Sylvette wins the sword fight by stabbing Susan, who falls down. Sylvette and Patrick hug each other.)

Sar: (cornes rushing in to her side of the wall) Sylvette, what happened? Why are you on the other side of the wall?

Patt: (Comes rushing in) What happened?

Syl: That woman tried to take Patrick away! But I saved him!

Pau: You saved him?

Syl: Yes I did!

Pat: Yes she did! She's my hero.

Syl: (to Paulette) Can I marry your son?

Pau: Let's ask your mother. Sarah, what do you think? Should we let them get married?

Sar: Yes, we should. I agree because my daughter really loves your son. (Sylvette and Patrick hug and walk out, arm-in-arm. Sarah climbs over the wall.)

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