Thursday, October 23, 2008

Erika Piazzoli - Process Drama and L2


Erika Piazzoli has been collecting data while running a 7 week course at Griffith University using the Process Drama methodology with 3rd year L2 Italian students. She will present her results at 7.00 pm Qld time (8.00 AEST) on 12 November and give an online introduction to Process Drama for L2 teachers. Erika writes:

Process Drama is a strand of drama that emerged in the late 1980s 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 the related Experiential Drama in Tasmania years ago and that was wonderful. Teachers interested in the Accelerative Integrated Approach will find this illuminating too. Phil Mahnken

BTW "For those who came in late", there is a brief and swanky online animated tutorial called Attend your first Adobe Connect Pro meeting.

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