Drama is one of the most useful ways to engage learners because:

(i) it is versatile in classroom management (from individual to pairwork, and/or groupwork), as well as the management of behaviours

(ii) it is multi-sensorial (visual, kinesthetic, auditory, tactile, etc) and can therefore cater to different learning styles

(iii) it engages through emotions, from fear to humour

(iv) it can address sensitive and controversial topics in a dramatic, fictional frame (e.g. dealing with abuse, suicide, bullying) without students “carrying over” the anxiety or trauma into real life – but this must be handled carefully by the teacher with a Drama Contract (e.g. telling the class that Student A is playing Character A, Student B playing Character B, and once the drama is over, the Students are not the Characters)

Some of the most useful drama conventions are:

1. Hot Seating

A hot seat is for a character to be interviewed by the class. Imagine having Cinderella on the hotseat, children can ask questions spontaneously, or through a structured interviewing process, such as: “What did you do to make your stepmother and stepsisters hate you so much?”, “How did you feel when you were asked to scrub the floors every day?” The person on the hotseat can have standard answers from a cue card, or speak improvisationally. If the person on the hotseat is a teacher, you can steer the answers towards educational outcomes, for example, on critical thinking or fostering empathy.

EFL application: interrogatives

2. Teacher-in-Role

The teacher takes on a role, and so invites students to also take on a role in the drama. For example, I can come into the space as a police investigator rounding up the entire class (in role as witness in a crime scene). By adopting an attitude, I (as police) can ask: “Hey, you standing there. Come here. Did you see the accident happen?” [If yes, then ask: “Tell me what you saw”] [If no, then ask: “Did you hear anything?”] This then allows the students to improvise the scene and flesh out details based on the prompts created by the teacher-in-role.

In this video, I play the grandson of a curry puff maker from Singapore – with the learning outcome to get the participants (who are teachers in a primary school) to have a sense of national nostalgia and to ask questions about national identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_XiZqxE3s

EFL application: present continuous tense, past tense, future tense, and specific vocabulary based on the fictional context

3. Tableaux

A tableau or still image gets students up on their feet to “freeze a scene” as if a photo was just taken. But in order for the tableau to work effectively for learning outcomes, it has to have emotional qualities (facial expressions) to the characters, have a possible conflict in the scene (e.g. a pregnant lady being pushed around in the crowd), and the image should be aesthetic in space (i.e. changing the way they use space, levels, intensities). A tableau is a great way to help students visualise a conceptual idea or abstract thinking into a concrete form. Sometimes you can mobilise the scene and get them to talk for a bit, or even more.

An example of tableaux can be seen in the shadow work in Britain’s Got Talent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Fv98jttYA

If you pause the video at any stage, it becomes a “freeze frame” or tableau that can generate discussions on relationships, emotions, content/story, etc.

EFL application: It helps to do movements and still images for those not confident in speaking. Once more confident, they build their oral skills through speaking and listening.

4. Role Play, Process Drama, Forum Theatre

These are some of the more common ways to engage students into a longer scenework, to liven up the class with dialogues, conflicts, characters, etc. Due to the complexity of the form, it is difficult to explain what each does.

The simplest one – the role play – is getting students (pairs or groups) to take on a role. Make sure there is one protagonist and one antagonist. Develop a line of motivation for each character (e.g. what does Character A want, and what does Character B want – which could be adversarial). Then watch your students be playful.

The most important thing in drama is to let students play and imagine roles they may not have the opportunity to do so in real life. When the drama is done, do not just let them go as if they had just performed. There is deep learning that takes place when the roles are removed. Invite your students to think and reflect on what they felt performing or watching it, and how it relates to the content you are teaching. What new insights did they discover – also from the unsaid things by the characters?

What is the story about (that the audience/ class can identify with)?

To a group of police cadets, Cinderella is a story of guards of the prince on the search for his princess. To a group of unmarried, young, pregnant women in a shelter, it is a story of a girl who has been rejected and bullied by an adopted family. Or to some, it is a story of seeking help from a fairy godmother who cares enough to lend her temporary support.

Dorothy Heathcote, one of the pioneers of drama education, says you can find any story using the Brotherhoods Code (“We are in the brotherhood of all those who…”). For example, if she is carrying a tray of food for her daughter, she says to herself, “I am in the brotherhood of all those who serve another’s needs”, and immediately she makes a parallel with other roles throughout history – e.g. a waitress at a drive-in restaurant, or a servant to the king (cf. “Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium, by Betty Jane Wagner, 1976).

Drama allows for ambiguities and unanswered questions to exist. Because drama reflects life’s tensions and conflicts so well, drama is a powerful tool for learning. It humanises the situations from case studies in textbooks, and it brings to life conflicting perspectives that can be debated in a non-threatening way.

That, in itself, is highly motivating – because now their own personal issues matter too. In an EFL classroom, it makes contextualised learning 'real'.

If you've got more advanced, motivated EFL learners, I recommend checking out Reacting to the Past https://reacting.barnard.edu - a role-playing game series using real events in history, involving discussions, debates, and more. Although it was designed for US undergraduate students, first of history, then in other subject areas, I adapted one of the original games for use in an EFL classroom in Japan, to great success. To be fair, this wouldn't likely work well with low to intermediate proficiency level students without further adaptation of the materials.

If you check my page, I recently uploaded a chapter on "contextual literacy EAP" that explains how I used Reacting to the Past in my classroom when I was in Japan. The game was The Threshold of Democracy: Athens 403 B.C., set in the formation period of Western civilisation. Students were given roles of real people of the time who they could research (in their first language, if they like), and were assigned to engage in debates on particular topics. The original textbook doesn't involve so much planning, but with EFL students, it's needed. Also, as the students were being assessed on language ability and not historical accuracy, they were given freedom to be as creative as they wanted with the facts (fun in our post-truth era!).

The strength of the approach was definitely that the students were playing historical characters, not themselves, giving them more courage to engage in debates and arguments without fearing for how they would be received, or taking it personally.

Depending on your “public’s” tastes, drama may serve the purpose both of having students talk and having them use the right intonation.