The document summarizes a panel discussion on effectively using drama and role playing in teaching English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL). It discusses how drama is an effective teaching method based on empirical research showing that both hemispheres of the brain are involved in language acquisition, which involves movement, emotion, and repetition in context. It also draws connections between the work of Russian theorists Lev Vygotsky and Konstantin Stanislavski, showing how their approaches to language acquisition and acting parallel each other and support using drama in language teaching.

1. Acting in the ESL/EFL Classroom
A Panel Discussion
Effectively Using Drama and Role Playing in the Teaching of
ESL/EFL
South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention
Louisville, Kentucky
November 7-9, 2008
Gary Carkin, Ph.D
Graduate Professor, The Institute for Language Education
Southern New Hampshire University
Manchester, NH
Good afternoon. It’s great to be in Louisville, Kentucky for the first time in
my life and at only my second Modern Language Association presentation.
My first such presentation was in 1982 at Michigan State University where I
had prepared a talk on Likay, the Thai popular theatre form which was the
subject of my dissertation. I had meticulously based my presentation on a
slide show illustrating the costumes, sets, musical instruments, and masks
used in presentation of the form. Alas, I was placed in a room with windows
that had no blinds and let in nothing but sunlight, completely extinguishing
the projected images on which my talk was based. Feeling I was part of an
unbearable nightmare, I urged the audience to imagine those images in the
best way they could from my embarrassed and stuttering explanation. The
whole thing turned to unmitigated disaster, summed up by one audience
member afterward trying to help put a kind face on the debacle by saying, “I
greatly enjoyed the pictures. I could almost see the rich colors.” When
preparing for today’s talk, those memories came keenly to mind.
But, now, twenty-six years later, we have Power Point, hopefully, more
dependable and efficient.
Today’s topic being “Effectively Using Drama and Role Playing in the
Teaching of ESL/EFL,” I’ll get directly to the point, focusing on the word,
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2. “effective” and asking the rhetorical question: Just why IS drama in
language teaching so effective?
Actually, this is a question that has just begun to be answered conclusively.
For years, teachers of English, and languages in general, have recognized the
beneficial effects of involving their students in dramatic activity. The
reported benefits are very familiar to most of us: work in drama develops
self-confidence, helps to overcome shyness, improves diction, fosters good
tone, and supports increased volume and voice projection. In the ESL/EFL
world, teachers see it as a means to get students to “negotiate meaning,”
finding the words and gestures that convey meaning while interacting and
“thinking on their feet’ through use of improvisational situations and role
play. While all of these benefits exist and reflect more or less universally
accepted notions of what drama can do, in the last forty years or so, there
have been a number of exciting empirical developments that have focused
on what happens in the brain during dramatic activity as relates to language
acquisition and production.
The first that I want to mention and the most recent is the work of Karl
Pribram (1993), Professor Emeritus of Stanford University, whose
neurobehavioral research in the 90’s led to our understanding of how
language functions occur in the brain. Basically, his work, with holographic
imaging that illuminates the brain areas involved when processing language,
points to four salient factors:
1. Language acquisition is a whole-brain activity. Both left and right
hemispheres are involved. The left hemisphere is involved in
processing symbolic linguistic communication while the right handles
non-verbal communication or “signs and signing”. (Pribram, 1993, p.
71) Imaging, (signs and signing) in other words, is a necessary
component to language acquisition. Symbols and signs work together
in left and right hemispheres where image and information processing
are continuously modified when vocal expression is involved
(Pribram, 1993, p. 71; Wilkinson, 2000, p. 5) based upon momentary
feeling and emotion.
2. “The prosodics, the pauses, the inflections, and the dynamic range of
speech form the context in which the content of communication
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3. occurs (Pribram, p. 73). In other words, the pragmatics of situation
form the basis for communication.
3. Repetition of these “procedural pragmatics” can be “considered to
construct the long sought-after principles of “transformations which are
the cornerstone of Chomskian generative grammar.” (Pribram, 1993, p.
76; Wilkinson, 2000, p.7) In other words, grammar is best learned
through context of situation as found in drama.
4. In acquiring language, movement (of both the whole body and the
articulators that produce speech) is essential. Pribram points out that:
“The upper midbrain is made up of ‘motor structures involved in
producing the muscular settings necessary to action.” (Pribram, 1993,
p. 80) “Communicative and linguistic acts also depend on these motor
structures.” (Pribram, 1993, p. 80 in Wilkinson, 2000, p. 9) In other
words: Movement is necessary to language learning.
In addition to the work of Pribram, Russian scientists working at the
Sechenov Institute in Moscow, found that “emotional reactions as well as
language processes are ‘connected with the activity of the deep cerebral
tissues – the subcortical nuclei’. (Deglin, 1976, p.31 in Wilkinson, 2000, p.
10). “Thus drama, the language art form, is movement fuelled by emotion.
English words infused with emotional meaning in the fictional context of
drama creation activate simultaneous neural procedures in the
centrencephalic mechanism where language forms. The intensely-felt
emotion (Bower, 1981) inherent in dramatic action deeply imprints these
words and ideas in memory and language is learned.” (Wilkinson, 2000, p.
10)
Beyond these findings, and integrating them into a systematic approach to
language learning, is the work of two Russian innovators of the 20th Century
one, psycholinguist, Lev Semonovich Vygotsky and the other, the theater
director and acting theorist, Konstantin Stanislavski.
Let us now look into how the psycholinguist and the acting theorist develop
parallel and compatible approaches.
Lev Vygotsky has become well known for his concepts published in Mind
and Society (1978). One of them, the notion of the Zone of Proximal
Development, develops the idea that language acquisition occurs when in
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4. interaction with others who, through example, repetition, simplification, and
more advanced knowledge, can model the language effectively, thus
building upon the textbook used and the instructions of a teacher.
(Lightbown, 1999) One can easily see how drama activities such as play
reading, play writing, improvising, and play building and rehearsing fit
nicely within this framework. Students work on a task, building a product
through reading, writing, discussion of character and theme, repetition of
language, negotiation of meaning to complete tasks, and rehearsing to
complete a final product.
But it is the language acquisition model that Vygotsky provides for us in his
book, Thought and Language (1976) that, to my mind, is truly instructional
and which nicely articulates why teaching English through drama works so
well.
At a skeletal level, Vygotsky’s model looks like this:
A person starts with a MOTIVE to speak. That MOTIVE generates INNER
SPEECH/SUBTEXT. The INNER SPEECH/SUBTEXT generates a
THOUGHT/IMAGE. The THOUGHT/IMAGE generates a FEELING. The
FEELING propels the SPEECH. (Thought and Language, pp. 249-256)
Vygotsky, points out that: “To understand another’s speech, it is not
sufficient to understand his words – we must understand his thought. But
even that is not enough – we must also know its motivation. No
psychological analysis of an utterance is complete until that plane is
reached”. (Ibid, p. 253)
Looking now at an acting text in which Stanislavski’s approach is used,
Acting is Believing, author, Charles McGaw approaches the definition of
motive in the following way.
“ Once the actor has been able to form an idea of “what a character wants,”
he continues analyzing until he understands the character’s desire definitely.
Then, he must state the motivating desire in specific terms…A good name
for the motivating force might be the statement of a specific desire which the
character can attempt to satisfy through action”. (p. 107) This “specific
desire” has been variously described by proponents of the Stanislavski
System as intention, need, or sub-objective. The specific desire or intention
should be noted for each speech of the actor/character. The selection of
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5. character motives leads to the selection of the intention of each line. This in
turn is supported by the subtext, the next step in the job of an actor.
INNER SPEECH OR SUBTEXT
What Stanislavski calls subtext Vygotsky refers to as inner speech.
Vygotsky says, “In reality, the development of verbal thought takes the…
course: from motive which engenders a thought to the shaping of the
thought, first in inner speech, then in meaning of words, and finally in
words” (Ibid.).
And, Vygotsky describes inner speech in the following way:
The rule of inner speech is abbreviation of syntax…In another way, it is like
writing a first draft. We have a mental draft before the written one. This is
inner speech. Predication is the natural form of inner speech,
psychologically it consists of predicates only…inner speech is speech almost
without words…inner speech works with semantics, not phonetics (Ibid. pp.
236-244).
Vygotsky, familiar with the work of Stanislavski, writes in Thought and
Language:
“ In Griboedov’s comedy Woe for Wit, the hero, Chatsky, says to
the heroine, who maintains that she has never stopped thinking of him,
“Thrice blessed who believes. Believing warms the heart.” Stanislavski
(according to Vygotsky) interpreted this as “Let us stop this talk”; but it
could just as well be interpreted as, “I do not believe you. You say it to
comfort me,” or as “Don’t you see how you torment me? I wish I could
believe you. That would be bliss.” Every sentence that we say in real
life has some kind of subtext, a thought hidden behind it…Thought,
unlike speech, does not consist of separate units. When I wish to
communicate the thought that today I saw a barefoot boy in a blue shirt
running down the street, I do not see every item separately: the boy, the
shirt, its color, his running, the absence of shoes. I conceive of all this
in one thought.” (Ibid. pp. 250-251)The important thing here is that the
thought produces an image. The image produces a sense.
In speaking of inner speech, Vygotsky explains:
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6. “ The first and basic (peculiarity) is the preponderance of sense of a word
over its meaning – the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our
consciousness by (a) word. A word acquires a sense from the context in
which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense. This enrichment
of words by the sense they gain from the context is the fundamental law of
the dynamics of word meanings. A word in a context means both more and
less than the word in isolation.” (Ibid, p. 245) This also reflects Pribram’s
findings in that the context supplies the frame for the affect that is attached
to a word. The image supplies the context and the sense of a word. The
context gives a word connotational meaning, a meaning that can be sensed.
In his introduction to Thought and Language, Alex Kozulin, explains:
“Inner speech becomes a psychological interface between, on the one
hand, culturally sanctioned symbolic systems and, on the other hand, private
“language” and imagery. The concretization of psychological activity
appears as a psychological mechanism for creating new symbols and word
senses capable of eventually being incorporated into the cultural stock”
(Ibid. p. xxxviii). In other words, this is the point where the image/sense
becomes associated with new words and where language acquisition,
including second language acquisition, occurs. We have seen that more
recent neourobehavioural research has supported this thesis (Pribram, 1993).
From this perspective, we can see that context of situation (or pragmatics) is
the key to facilitating language acquisition. This, drama supports.
From the context then, image is created. From the extended contexts of the
drama, images are created and associated with the new words being
acquired.
IMAGE
To recap a bit, the actor’s job, or the language learner’s job when learning
English through drama, is to construct the through-line of intentions and
objectives with the flow of inner speech (subtext) which will generate the
images and subsequent feeling/sense that will support the use of the L2
words that will complete the intention expressed through the chosen words,
whether scripted or improvised. This is the process wherein new vocabulary
is utilized, new grammar structures are ingrained, and new fluency is
achieved.
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7. To illustrate this, let’s try a mental exercise. I will say a series of words. You
close your eyes and visualize a detailed and specific picture. Try to imagine
what you would do if you were there. Give yourself some action, perhaps a
series of actions. Build your images with as many details as possible.
Remember, don’t try to feel anything, but let any feelings arise naturally as a
result of what you visualize. I will say, ”Visualize” and you will visualize.
Fountain
Tree
Shoe
Chair
Sister
Wedding
Ship
Beach
Mansion
Now, try some abstract words. Turn the abstract concepts into concrete
images that are meaningful to you and that can stir response. For example,
“power” might be an image of a gigantic ocean liner bearing down on you in
a small boat that you are in.
Power
Speed
Love
Happiness
Poverty
Wealth
Mercy
Elegance
Kindness
Injustice *
*From Acting is Believing, by Charles McGaw
Now, in the exercises you have just done, you have been creating “a film” of
visual images that lead you to some level of emotion. Let me quote again
from Charles McGaw’s, Acting is Believing:
In the process you have been obliquely using another helpful
technique called inner monologue. What the actor is thinking – what is in
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8. his mind – each moment he is onstage is vastly important to his
performance. THE INNER MONOLOGUE IS A TECHNIQUE FOR
CONTROLLING HIS THINKING AND MAKING IT SERVE THE
OVERALL PURPOSE. It is used when he is not speaking the
playwright’s words, that is, during pauses in his own speeches and during
the lines of the other characters. It is one of the actor’s truly creative
contributions because, except in some special instances, it is not given by
the dramatist. It should be carefully planned, written out, memorized, and
thought at each rehearsal and performance, just as the actor memorizes
and speaks the playwright’s lines. (p. 91) (Emphasis added).
Thus, the inner monologue extends the subtext and is its other half. The
actor/language learner must engage in thinking the subtext while delivering
his text and the inner monologue goes on while listening to the words of
other characters engaging in the drama with him/her. The language learner
here is learning to keep his/her thinking engaged within the target language.
David Magarshack, in his preface to Stanislavski and the Art of the Stage
says:
The actor needs…an uninterrupted series of visual images which
have some connection with the given circumstances (the context). He
needs, in short, an uninterrupted line not of plain but of illustrated given
circumstance. Indeed, at every moment of his presence on the stage…
the actor must be aware of what is taking place outside him on the
stage...or of what is taking place inside him, in his own imagination,
that is, those visual images which illustrate the given circumstances of
the life of his part. Out of all these things there is formed, sometimes
outside and sometimes inside him, an uninterrupted and endless series
of inner and outer visual images or kind of film. While the work goes
on, the film is unwinding itself endlessly, reflecting on the screen of his
inner vision the illustrated given circumstances of his part, among
which he lives on the stage (p. 38).
Charles McGaw simply says: “When an actor acts, he sees a picture. He
keeps the images before him as if they were on a television or a motion
picture screen”. (Op. cit. p. 90)
So, in this short acting lesson, what do we have to do to bring language and
drama to life? First, we define the character’s intention or motive for the
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9. speech utterance, next, we determine the words (inner speech) of the
subtext and write them out (I want to… I wish to….) in so far as these wants
and wishes affect another person interacting with us. We then generate,
write out and rehearse an inner monologue that keeps our thoughts rooted
in our part while listening to the lines of others onstage and then we allow
this play of inner speech and inner monologue to generate a flow of images
that in turn create the feeling that supports the L2 speech.
Now, the opposite process occurs as I listen to the words of another
character speaking to me. His or her words excite a flow of images (the inner
monologue) that release feelings that motivate a reply, both in movement
and speech, and the whole process continues back and forth in the ongoing
dialogue whether through a written play, role-play, or improvisation. That’s
where not only good acting, but real language acquisition, occurs.
_____________________________________________________________
Drama is effective in language learning because it mimics real life
acquisition of symbols (words) related to signs (images) processed through
action (use of words and movement) in the context of dramatic
circumstances that arouse emotions associated with the words and images
used in the satisfaction of motive, need, or desire.
Effective drama as well as language acquisition will adhere to the processes
outlined above as suggested by Lev Semenovich Vygotsky and Konstantine
Stanislavski. Vygotsky shows us how the language acquisition process
occurs, and Stanislavski shows us how it occurs when acting.
References
Bower, G.H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36,
129-148.
Deglin, V.L. (1976). Our split brain: Part IV – “Artist” and “Thinker”: Two
hemispheres in competition. The UNESCO Courier, January, 14, 16, 31-32.
Lightbown, P. (1999). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
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10. Magarshack, D. (1961). Stanislaviski, and the art of the stage. New York:
Hill and Wang
McGaw, C. (1975) Acting is believing. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston
Pribram, K.H. (1993). Brain and meaning. In J.A. Wilkinson (Ed.) The
symbolic dramatic play – literacy connection: whole brain, whole body,
whole learning (pp. 69-80). Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press
Wilkinson, J.A. (2000) The power of drama in English language training:
The research evidence. A paper read at the Second International Conference
on ESL and Drama. Tainan University of Technology, Tainan, Taiwan.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher
psychological processes. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1976, 1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press.
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