Page 54 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Approaches to Language Teaching

Classroom Insight: Drama with 2nd Graders
Manca often uses the story-based approach and repetitive phrases in the story. In the
in her teaching in the second grade. She post-listening stage, she works on the story
plans the activities and the stages of the comprehension tasks using a variety of ac-
lessons very carefully before she introduces tivities. In one of the activities, for example,
the story. She works on each story for a few she ‘accidentally’ drops story picture cards
lessons. In the pre-listening stage, she intro- on the floor and the pupils have to help her
duces some of the necessary vocabulary for put the cards in the correct order of the story.
students to understand the story, mostly with In this stage, she also works on the language
the help of visuals and miming. In the while- of the story and new vocabulary by using ac-
listening stage, she tells or reads the story tivities, such as quizzes or TPR games. If the
to the students, while they are sitting on the story is appropriate for drama, they act it out,
floor in a circle. They especially like it when sometimes also for the parents. In observing
she imitates the characters from the story pupils’ communication in class, Manca no-
(e.g. when she becomes Winnie the Witch ticed that they frequently use whole phrases
with a hat, a broom and a toy cat). from the stories, which has encouraged her
Afterwards, she rereads the story with the to use the story-based approach on a regu-
help of the students, focusing on the pictures lar basis.

imagination and curiosity. Another important criterion in selecting the story
is the language level. While it is not necessary for pupils to understand every
word in the story, they should be able to follow the storyline. We also need to
make sure that the pupils understand the critical vocabulary. For example, in
the picture book The Selfish Crocodile by Faustin Charles, understanding the
word ‘selfish’ is critical for following the story so the teacher should consider
pre-teaching it as critical vocabulary in the pre-story stage. It is also useful if
the stories contain a variety of repetitive language patterns which are easily
picked up by the pupils (Pinto, 2012; Mourão, 2009).
According to Cameron (2001, p. 159), stories reflect a holistic approach to
language teaching and learning as they ‘offer a whole imaginary world, cre-
ated by language that children can enter and enjoy, learning language as
they go.’ Read (2008b) also proposes using an integrated approach which
combines storytelling and drama techniques. The proposed approach works
as a scaffold for pupils’ language development, as in acting out and re-telling
the story through drama, they will be able to explore the issues raised in the
storyandin thiswaytransferthelanguageusedto theirown personalworlds.

Task-Based Learning
In task-based learning (TBL) students are presented with a non-linguistic task
they have to carry out or a problem they have to solve. TBL has three basic
stages:

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