ESL students at all levels struggle with language proficiency.
Drama can encourage language learners to explore and express ideas
and feelings in new ways, and provides meaningful and creative
tasks that honour the complexity of language and social
interactions. This research project shows how using drama supported
the development of listening, reading, speaking and writing skills
of ESL students in a university course on the humanities. The book
provides drama strategies designed to examine issues of immigration
and multiculturalism, and to create a context for reflecting on the
narratives of ESL learners' own experiences. The use of both
verbal and non-verbal communication, collaboration, interpretation
of information, imagination and risk-taking in the safety of
fiction supported students' significant engagement through
drama. Results of the study show that the integration of drama
helped students to cross borders of cultures, identities and
literacies in the multicultural second language classroom. This
book provides insights for educators in general, and second
language teachers and researchers in particular, about what happens
when drama is used in second language classrooms.
Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou is an ESL/EFL teacher and a doctoral candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research interests include second language acquisition, drama education, curriculum studies and teacher development.
