Drama in L2 learning: A research synthesis

Abstract

This article closely examines research literature from the last two decades that focuses on the use of drama in L2 learning and teaching. L2 (second language) is used as an umbrella term that refers to any language learned in addition to one’s first language. The authors review on-line teaching resources, position papers, scholarly articles and existing research findings on the impact of implementing drama in L2 learning that were published in English. This review of literature suggests that despite a wide-spread pedagogical interest and scholarly conviction in the possibilities of educational drama in creating a more contextually-situated, engaging, multi-modal, and empowering L2 learning experience, there is still little empirical evidence concerning what is actually taking place in L2 classrooms and how students perceive and react to their learning experiences when drama is introduced. More systematic, long-term research studies are needed to deepen our understanding of the impact of using drama in L2 classrooms on a range of aspects of teaching and learning.

(No) drama with grammar

“…A mixed-method, pretest-posttest design was applied to investigate the effects of drama-based teaching. In fact, scholars stress the necessity of doing more empirical research in drama in education, including the use of comparison groups and quantitative measures (Belliveau & Kim, 2013;Piazzoli, 2011;Weber, 2017). The control group received mainly explicit grammar instructions on English conditional clauses.…”

Tellers, Makers, and Holders of Stories: A Micro-Analytic Understanding of Students’ Identity Work in Drama-based Adult ESL Classrooms

“…Nonetheless, there is still a dearth of empirical evidence on how students' and teachers' identity work is actually done in a drama-based L2 classroom particularly those for a steadily growing population of adult learners from various backgrounds (e.g., international, transnational, refugee, immigrant, etc.). More empirically-grounded investigations of such a question can yield a nuanced and deeper understanding of how using educational drama can affect teaching/learning for adult L2 learners (Belliveau & Kim, 2013;DICE Consortium, 2010;McGovern, 2017;Piazzoli, 2018). As such, the central purpose of the present article is to contribute to a growing body of research knowledge on the topic by investigating classroom interaction in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes with educational drama to pursue the questions: What actually takes place interactionally during the class in an adult ESL class and how are identities constructed and managed in the unfolding moment-to-moment classroom interaction?…”

Understanding innovative pedagogies

“… Drama and movement-based teaching especially for young learners, where kinaesthetic activities help develop decoding skills, vocabulary, and fluency (Rieg and Paquette, 2009), though there is no firm evidence on its impact on learning (Belliveau and Kim, 2013).  Storytelling, where students engage role-play or create a digital narrative around a particular plot and characters; there is some evidence of positive impact on learning outcomes, especially at the primary level (Moodie and Nam, 2016).…”