Drama Activities to Support Oral Communication and Interaction in English Language Learning in French Higher Education: Still a long way to go...

Virginie Privas-Bréauté (1, 2)

1 ARDAA
2 ATILF - Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française

The didactic value of drama in language teaching has been evident to teachers for a long time, first in primary schools, then in secondary schools and now in higher education. Research in neuroscience has provided a scientific framework for such pedagogical experiments. The paradigm of enaction (Varela, 1993, 1996), which falls within the theories of embodied cognition, has lent strong credibility to language learning through drama (Aden, 2012, 2017). As an English teacher at a French university, I offer my students opportunities to practice their oral communication and interaction skills through drama activities and I have collected their understanding of the didactic value of drama in language classes for improving their linguistic oral abilities in English. In this article, which is based on my talk at the Drama in Education Days 2019, I will examine the results of post-graduate English students’ questionnaires to demonstrate that drama activities need to be implemented far earlier than is currently the case in higher education in the French schooling system.

Mots clés: drama; language learning; language teaching; speaking; interacting

Domaines: Education; Education

Virginie Privas-Bréauté. Drama Activities to Support Oral Communication and Interaction in English Language Learning in French Higher Education: Still a long way to go.... 5th annual conference Drama in Education days 2019, Jul 2019, Zug, Switzerland. ⟨hal-03244430⟩