Bodies and language: process drama and intercultural language learning in a beginner language classroom

Abstract

In this article the author draws on classroom video recordings and student commentary to explore ways in which the kinaesthetic elements of a process drama provided the context and the space for beginner additional language learners to engage with intercultural language learning. In the light of student comments in interviews and questionnaires, she justifies the need for learners to experience the bodily aspect of communication as part of authentic, multi-modal interaction and hence a crucial element in intercultural literacy. Drawing on Kress's concept of interest as a motivation to make meaning, she suggests that learner interests are aroused by dramatic conventions whose multi-modal nature affords students access to multiple ways of participating in the narrative. She argues that a more conscious integration of the kinaesthetic mode into the additional language classroom can stimulate, scaffold and authenticate the verbal participation of beginner learners. Finally, given the students’ overwhelmingly positive response to the kinaesthetic elements of the work, she suggests that, despite the challenge of balancing drama and language imperatives, encouraging language teachers to venture into imaginative worlds and include a kinaesthetic dimension to their communicative practice could improve engagement and outcomes for beginner learners.

Keywords:

• intercultural language learning
• process drama
• kinaesthetic mode
• meaning making

Notes

1. I use ‘speaker’ throughout the article in a Bakhtinian sense (Bakhtin 1981) to mean someone engaged in communication with another, whether it be oral, written, kinaesthetic and/or digital.