Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Blaðsíða 164
Trust and disinhibition
Dickson points out that drama techniques involve the whole per-
son, the body, the mind, and the emotions, and she thinks that the
fact that they are allowed to “use their own personalities and
experiences as resources for language production”25 is what
motivates them. She underlines this aspect by drawing on
Mcgregor et al. who think that “drama forces students to interact”
because acting-out involves a ‘negotiation of meaning’26. Dickson
thinks that “drama puts the emphasis on meaning rather than on
form”, which according to Maley and Duff27 “forces us to take as
our starting point life not language”. If we take life as our starting
point, we give subjectivity a place in speech as well as authenticity,
and we give the students a chance to communicate their own words
in the foreign language.
Speaking means to take a position among positions. Dickson
says that “both acting and language learning involve self-express-
ion and require a willingness to take chances” because – and she is
drawing on Smith now – “we risk our psychological well-being
every time we try to speak”28. also of relevance to our context is
Dickson’s point that “the language teacher, like the director, must
minimise students’ inhibitions by creating an atmosphere of mutual
trust and cooperation in the classroom”29, which is important for
me in my teaching too. I start the first session of the course by ask-
ing students to sit on the floor in a circle and then ask them why
they have chosen this course and what they expect from it. They
also have to introduce themselves in front of the group. The an -
swers are mostly the same: they would like to talk and improve
their pronunciation and they would like to do something different
in their language studies. They express a little fear because they
CrEaTIng SPaCE
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25 Patricia Dickson, “acting French: Drama Techniques in the Second Language Classroom”,
The French Rewiew, Vol. 63/1989, pp. 300–311, here p. 300.
26 Lynn Mcgregor, Maggie Tate, and Ken robinson, Learning Through Drama, London:
Heineman, 1977, p. 17, cited in: Patricia Dickson, “acting French”, p. 300. regarding
‘negotation of meaning’, see also section 3 of this article, p. 175.
27 alan Maley and alan Duff, Drama Techniques in Language Learning, new York: Cam -
bridge university Press, 1984, p. 15, cited in: Patricia Dickson, “acting French”, p. 300.
28 Stephen M. Smith, The Theater Arts and the Teaching of Second Languages, reading, Ma:
addison-Wesley, 1984, p., cited in: Patricia Dickson, “acting French”, p. 300.
29 Patricia Dickson, “acting French”, p. 300.
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