Performative didactics: tapping into learners’ attitudes towards text- and performance-based approaches in foreign language learning

ABSTRACT

This article engages with learners’ attitudes towards authentic plays and dramatic approaches, implemented in English as foreign language classes (L2) within a compulsory curriculum. The mixed-method approach study, which employs a quasi-experimental design, was conducted longitudinally with final-year high-school Italian students whose English language level ranged from low-intermediate to upper-intermediate. The experimental group (n = 10) was exposed to two interventions conducted over a term each: a text-based approach (TBA) in the first term followed by a performance-based approach (PBA) in the second. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected by implementing a questionnaire and a follow-up interview. Learners’ attitudes in terms of interest, usefulness, enjoyment, difficulties encountered and preferences, levels of comfort and of language perceived towards the two approaches were examined in the questionnaire while the follow-up interview shed a deeper light on learners’ numerical choices as given in the questionnaire. The findings display diverse, but essentially highly favourable attitudes regarding the employment of a TBA and a PBA in the L2 classroom.

KEYWORDS:

• Language learning
• authentic contemporary plays
• text-based approach
• performance-based approach
• attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Simona Floare Bora is a GTA on TEFL, an EAP tutor and an invited lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex (UK) where she has recently completed her PhD in teaching English through authentic play scripts and dramatic approaches within compulsory high-school curriculum. Her research interests include literature-based pedagogy, drama and theatre in language learning, foreign language teaching and learning, second language acquisition, CLIL and EAP writing. She had previously worked as an English language teacher across all levels of education and as a Translator and Linguistic mediator in Romania, Italy and the UK.

ORCID

Simona Floare Bora http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2223-1323

Notes

1 This paper reports on a small part of a larger study in which a control group was taught by a school teacher using a traditional approach which he generally employs in his language classes. In the course of the autumn term, the same school teacher taught the experimental group, prior to it being assigned to the researcher. The aim of the study was to measure the level of oral skills achieved by the learners who were taught through drama approaches as compared to the control group. However, reporting on the above aim is beyond the scope of the present paper.