Slow-release learning: playing with language through playscripts
At the Hands up Project we’ve been supporting Palestinian children to learn the lines of short plays in English for a long time, and we’ve written posts about the benefits of doing this on our blog several times already.
But with the recent excellent production of ‘The Screen’ - by Alma, Leen and Salma at the Hands up school in Cairo (watch it below) - I’ve been thinking a lot about another useful thing that can happen when students learn the lines of a play in a second language.
‘The screen’ is probably the first piece of remote theatre ever written. I wrote it as a way to present something of the Palestinian situation and struggle to the outside world, whilst at the same time providing controlled practice of lots of simple, high frequency, and useful chunks of English so it could be performed by children at lower levels of English.
If you read the whole text below you’ll see lots of examples of such chunks (It’s so dark/cold; I don’t know which way to go; But wait; I can see something/people; In front of (us) / on the other side; Take it please etc)
‘The Screen’ from ‘Doing Remote theatre’ The Hands up Project (2021)
Having just spent a few weeks in Cairo, managing our school for Palestinian children there, it’s been really interesting how much fun the girls have had playing with some of the lines of the play and making them work in the context they’ve found themselves in. This applies to Alma, Leen and Salma – the three girls who acted in the play – but also to the other students in the school who watched them rehearsing and saw the final performance.
Here are some examples of things that I’ve noticed..
1) Hello – Something often said in the same dramatic style as in the play when students meet each other at the beginning of the class etc.
2) It’s cold. So cold. – It has been pretty cold in Cairo recently so they said this quite naturally, but often followed by laughter. They’ve also used ‘so’ a lot with other adjectives and even nouns (It’s difficult. So difficult; It’s easy. So easy. It’s Nick. So Nick etc)
3) Where are we? I don’t know which way to go. I’m lost. – These lines were said a lot in a playful way when we all left the school together to try to buy candles for the final performance, or a place to buy falefels for lunch etc.
4) But wait – said with the same intonation patterns as it was used in the play when people were rushing ahead
5) So take it. Take it please – This was often said in a jokey way when anybody gave anybody anything in the class.
6) It’s no good. They can’t see us. They’re not looking. They can’t hear us. They’re not listening. They don’t care (or any variation on these) Said by anyone in the class in a jokey way when they felt they weren’t being listened to, and even by me on one occasion when I was failing to get the class’s attention!
So why might this be a good thing that this is happening?
I think it shows that the language items that have been learnt in order to perform the play are also becoming part of the students’ spoken repertoire in their everyday lives, and the more fun they can have when using language items, the more memorable those language items will become. I also think that this process is likely to continue happening for quite a long time after the play has been performed - until they really own them. Of course the chunks that they’re learning contain grammar which can be ultimately drawn on in order to produce other variants. So for example ‘I don’t know which way to go’ may generate forms such as ‘I don’t know which one to buy’ or ‘I don’t know which shirt to wear’ etc.
The idea of using play scripts as a way to help students take ownership of language is a good one. So take it! Take it please!