Tuesday, July 8, 2008

July break

For three reasons we are having a break in July. It's school holidays for some. Phil is off to Armidale and Sydney. And the server is having a break(down) too. So opportune time to relax, read Roland Sussex's article in the Courier Mail Monolingual Aussies left behind in international business of 28 June 2008. Or contemplate the speakers in the next half of the year including Wendy Maxwell, founder of the Canadian AIM system, Angela Scarino, Denis Cunningham and Lia Tedesco on 'Schools of Languages', and Erika Pazzoli on Process Drama. Erika writes:

Process Drama is a strand of drama that emerged in the late 80s and has become recognised as a tool to teach a variety of disciplines including history, art, geography and literature. More recently PD has been used as an approach to L2 teaching, with very promising results (See Kao & O'Neill, 1998, for research findings).

"PD falls under the humanistic teaching umbrella, promoting student's intrinsic learning and activating their own knowledge. It shares the key features of the communicative method, but it takes it a step further by providing a common thread to the role plays we tend to use in L2 teaching and injecting meaning into the scenarios, making them more authentic for the students. Personally, I believe there is great potential for PD in L2 acquisition."


I learned something about Experiential Drama in Tasmania years ago and that was wonderful. Erika says this is related. We are also collecting names of school principals willing to come discuss the fate of languages education from their point of view and to hear ours. Is yours game?

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