Language development through rehearsing Remote Theatre
We’ve restarted our weekly drop in sessions for Remote Theatre. These take place every Wednesday at 3pm Palestine time and they’re open and free to any teacher with some experience to come along with some of their students to rehearse a remote play. Please let us know if you’d like to take part. At the moment we only have two Palestinian teachers attending (Haneen and Luzan) but from next week Argentinian English teacher, Tere will also be joining us with some of her students. Haneen and Luzan are both working on plays from our forthcoming book of plays by ELT authors; “The Guitar'“ by JJ Wilson and “The Door” by Jill Florent.
When rehearsing in these sessions there’s a lot of discussion between the students and the teachers about the play, and the teacher often gives feedback on what the students are doing. The number one purpose of this feedback is to help the students towards the best performance they can achieve of course and, for this reason alone, you may be interested in watching the short extracts of feedback in the video below. However I believe there are also other interesting things happening in terms of language development in the way that feedback is given. Watch the video below and see what you think.
Some things I notice:-
I like the way the theme of the play is explored with the students. This is the very first rehearsal of “The Door” for them and it seems to me like a very good idea to initiate a discussion about what they think might be behind the door, since it’s such a central theme and will help them to play their roles with conviction.
I appreciate the fact that with these younger children (only 10) it’s necessary to use some Arabic in the discussion so that everyone feels at ease and so that it’s easier to build up rapport. At the same time I like that way that with these younger kids a kind of ‘sandwich’ technique is used, saying some things in English where meanings can be made clear. In this way Arabic is used as a kind of scaffold to support the learning of new English vocabulary.
I like the fact that the feedback throughout is focussed not just on whether things are pronounced accurately; it’s also about whether things are pronounced with appropriate feeling and emotion and whether we can see this emotion in facial expressions and gestures. Repeating the lines is a kind of drill, but it’s probably much more memorable and meaningful than a traditional drill because of this emotional factor , and because it’s fully contextualised. It’s also important I think that the feedback is framed from the perspective of the audience. So the aim is to perform well not just to please the teacher, as with a drill but rather for the audience’s benefit.
I like the fact that where it’s possible (with the older kids) everything is done in English. This is such a rich source of exposure to English. There’s a very strong incentive for the students to understand what the teacher is saying because they have to immediately act on it.
I like the honest balance between praising the students when things go well, but also not letting things slip by if they don’t work so well. It’s interesting too that feedback generally happens at the point of need. This is far more useful in my opinion than waiting to the end of the scene when the lines are no longer in working memory and can’t so easily be reprocessed.
I notice that this in many ways is the ultimate controlled practice and free practice activity. There’s a strong focus on accuracy when trying to deliver the lines in the best possible way, but at the same time, all the discussion around staging, props, and facial expressions etc provides a rich and meaningful opportunity for fluency development.
What did you notice when watching the video?