The Linguist

18 The Linguist Vol/62 No/2 thelinguist.uberflip.com A familiar problem in the languages classroom is that students tend to struggle with oral skills, especially in schools. So as a Spanish teacher at an independent secondary school in London, I decided to research ways to increase fluency through practical activities such as drama. Practising the target language in a spontaneous way is vital 1 and this could prove more enjoyable than studying 'grammatical points' for teachers and learners alike. 2 Embracing the realness of everyday communication activities could also yield positive academic results and lead to an improved atmosphere in the classroom. The students get to practise the target language and the teacher gets to teach better. At the same time, according to Hazel Crichton et al, an emphasis on oral skills can lead to "anxiety about 'performing' in a foreign language in front of classmates", which "may inhibit learners' contributions in the modern languages class through fear of embarrassment over possible error production". 3 When dealing with young students this is no small matter, and boosting their confidence remains key. It is important to proceed with care, since fluency cannot be achieved without the learners' cooperation. This means they must be given some control over the learning process and not be put in a potentially embarrassing situation. Drama seems an interesting possibility here. It could help learners not only to speak more fluently but also to familiarise themselves with the culture of the target language, improvise sentences in an entertaining way and gain confidence in their ability to speak the language. 4 Erika Piazzoli found that once her undergraduate students had got used to script-based activities they became more comfortable with unscripted communications. After doing drama exercises in Italian, they were able to speak more spontaneously. 5 The theory is that drama offers a safe space to experiment: the students' confidence grows as they discover new ways to express themselves. Although potentially embarrassing at first, they eventually get used to organising small plays in front of their classmates. I decided to put this to the test in my own International Baccalaureate (IB) classroom. Research design The experiment was simple: my Year 13 students needed to study Lorca's play La casa de Bernarda Alba for the IB, so I extended this to offer a drama programme around the text. First I familiarised them with the characters (what they stood for, their motivations etc) and how to interpret certain lines. The cohort of four students then practised speaking the target language through reading the play aloud, with some light staging of the scenes. For half a term they read the play in the classroom, always assigned the same part in order to cement their understanding of the character. The goal was for them to understand the play better than they would if they read it at home. Soon they started to remember the scenes, and the importance of the objects and events the characters discussed. Slowly but surely their diction improved, reflecting their growing confidence, and they found it easier to read the lines. Getting used to idioms and mentalities that were alien to them proved a challenge. The play is set in highly conservative, 20th-century rural Spain. Fully grasping the new vocabulary, grammatical constructions, religious references and rich symbolism took some time. At first my students could understand the more obvious jokes but not the underlying tone in every interaction. They pronounced some words with a strong English accent, especially those that sounded similar to English ones, such as balcones and pasiones. As a teacher, it is important to find ways to correct without triggering the students' stage fright. Halfway through the autumn term we began watching the 1980s film adaptation. The students recognised the characters, scenes and lines but were also hit with all the non-literary elements of the play, absorbing the subtext and tone. They began to understand it on a different level. They could see Bernarda's stern attitude translated on her ever-serious face and started to read the part in a more serious manner. Suddenly, the story of María Josefa – 'the mad woman in the attic' – lost its tragic component as the students realised the awkward humour of her yelling. The results were clear. When we went back to reading the play, they began to copy the inflections, tone and gestures of the characters DRAMA IN THE CLASSROOM Following a successful A-level intervention, Raúl Sánchez Saura explains how theatrics can help language students

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