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