Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Blaðsíða 157
anDrEa MILDE anD ÁSTa IngIBJarTSDÓTTIr
unIVErSITY OF ICELanD
Creating Space
Drama in the Foreign Languages at the
university of Iceland
1. Introduction
after several years of involvement in theatre and teaching in for-eign language departments, we both came to realise how impor-
tant it had become for us to involve drama – and other arts if possi-
ble – in our teaching. In line with Fleming1, we think that dramatic
art can enable us to go through and reflect on experiences outside of
our daily life, which would not otherwise be possible, not within a
face-to-face situation anyway. We want to demonstrate that drama ¾
in general and in the two particular ways that we are presenting
here – can provide students with a learning environment in which
they can interact, collaborate, engage with a foreign language, and
get actively involved in their own learning. In this article, one sec-
tion will discuss a theatre project in French, drawing on methods
developed by Pierra2, and will focus on oral expression. another sec-
tion will discuss a theatre project in german which focuses on how
to involve creative writing techniques – which is not a common prac-
tice for drama in language teaching – and a reflective practice
through portfolios that draws on methods suggested by Bräuer3.
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1 Michael Fleming, “Cultural awareness and Dramatic art Forms”, Language Learning in
Intercultural Perspective: Approaches through Drama and Ethnography, ed. Michael
Byram and Michael Fleming, Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1998, pp. 147–157,
here p. 149; Michael Fleming, The Art of Drama Teaching, London: David Fulton
Publishers, 1997, p. 4.
2 gisèle Pierra, Une esthétique théâtrale en langue étrangère, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001.
3 gerd Bräuer, “reflecting the Practice of Foreign Language Learning in Portfolios (1)”,
German as a Foreign Language Journal, no. 2/2009, pp. 3–22, here p. 3.
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